The pictures had presumably come out of storage with various other family articles of furnishing. Mary Restarick had no doubt selected certain personal objects to supplement the furniture of Crosshedges for which Sir Roderick had made room. He wondered whether Mary Restarick, the new wife, had liked hanging up that particular pair of portraits. More natural, perhaps, if she had put the first wife’s portrait in an attic! But then he reflected that she would probably not have had an attic to stow away unwanted objects at Crosshedges. Presumably Sir Roderick had made room for a few family things whilst the returned couple were looking about for a suitable house in London. So it had not mattered much, and it would have been easier to hang both portraits. Besides, Mary Restarick seemed a sensible type of woman –not a jealous or emotional type.
“Tout de meme^ thought Hercule Poirot to himself, “les femmes, they are all capable of jealousy, and sometimes the ones you would consider the least likely!” His thoughts passed to Mary Restarick, and he considered her in turn. It struck him that what was really odd was that he had so few thoughts about her! He had seen her only the once, and she had, somehow or other, not made much impression on him. A certain efficiency, he thought, and also a certain–how could he put it? — artificiality? (“But there, my friend,” said Hercule Poirot, again in parenthesis, “there you are considering her wig!”) It was absurd really that one should know so little about a woman. A woman who was efficient and who wore a wig, and who was good-looking, and who was sensible, and who could feel anger. Yes, she had been angry when she had found the Peacock Boy wandering uninvited in her house. She had displayed it sharply and unmistakably. And the boy — he had seemed what? Amused, no more. But she had been angry, very angry at finding him there. Well, that was natural enough. He would not be any mother’s choice for her daughter — Poirot stopped short in his thoughts, shaking his head vexedly. Mary Restarick was not Norma’s mother. Not for her the agony, the apprehension about a daughter making an unsuitable unhappy marriage, or announcing an illegitimate baby with an unsuitable father! What did Mary feel about Norma? Presumably, to begin with, that she was a thoroughly tiresome girl — who had picked up with a young man who was going to be obviously a source of worry and annoyance to Andrew Restarick. But after that? What had she thought and felt about a step-daughter who was apparently deliberately trying to poison her?
Her attitude seemed to have been the sensible one. She had wanted to get Norma out of the house, herself out of danger, and to co-operate with her husband in suppressing any scandal about what had happened.
Norma came down for an occasional weekend to keep up appearances, but her life henceforward was bound to centre in London. Even when the Restaricks moved into the house they were looking for, they would not suggest Norma living with them. Most girls, nowadays, lived away from their families. So that problem had been settled.
Except that, for Poirot, the question of who had administered poison to Mary Restarick was very far from settled. Restarick himself believed it was his daughter — But Poirot wondered.
His mind played with the possibilities of the girl Sonia. What was she doing in that house? Why had she come there? She had Sir Roderick eating out of her hand all right — perhaps she had no wish to go back to her own country? Possibly her designs were purely matrimonial — old men of Sir Roderick’s age married pretty young girls every day of the week. In the worldly sense, Sonia could do very well for herself.
A secure social position, and widowhood to look forward to with a settled and sufficient income — or were her aims quite different? Had she gone to Kew Gardens with Sir Roderick’s missing papers tucked between the pages of a book?
Had Mary Restarick become suspicious of her — of her activities, of her loyalties, of where she went on her days off, and of whom she met? And had Sonia, then, administered the substances which in cumulative small doses, would arouse no suspicion of anything but ordinary gastroenteritis?