Restarick.” “I heard you suggesting a few.” “Well, there is usually something possible…” “Murder desired…” said Poirot thoughtfully… “But not yet committed.”
CHAPTER THREE
MRS. OLIVER drove into the inner court of Borodene Mansions.
-There were six cars filling the parking space. As Mrs. Oliver hesitated, one of the cars reversed out and drove away. Mrs. Oliver hurried neatly into the vacant space.
She descended, banged the door and stood looking up to the sky. It was a recent block, occupying a space left by the havoc of a land mine in the last war. It might, Mrs. Oliver thought, have been lifted en bloc from the Great West Road and, first deprived of some such legend as SLYLARK’S FEATHER RAZOR BLADES, have been deposited as a block of flats in situ. It looked extremely functional and whoever had built it had obviously scorned any ornamental additions.
It was a busy time. Cars and people were going in and out of the courtyard as the day’s work came to a close.
Mrs. Oliver glanced down at her wrist.
Ten minutes to seven. About the right time, as far as she could judge. The kind of time when girls in jobs might be presumed to have returned, either to renew their makeup, change their clothes to tight exotic pants or whatever their particular addiction was, and go out again, or else to settle down to home life and wash their smalls and their stockings. Anyway, quite a sensible time to try. The block was exactly the same on the east and the west, with big swing doors set in the centre.
Mrs. Oliver chose the left hand side but immediately found that she was wrong.
All this side were numbers from 100 to 200. She crossed over to the other side.
No. 67 was on the sixth floor. Mrs.
Oliver pressed the button of the lift. The doors opened like a yawning mouth with a menacing clash. Mrs. Oliver hurried into the yawning cavern. She was always afraid of modern lifts.
Crash. The doors came to again. The lift went up. It stopped almost immediately (that was frightening too!). Mrs. Oliver scuttled out like a frightened rabbit.
She looked up at the wall and went along the right hand passage. She came to a door marked 67 in metal numbers affixed to the centre of the door. The numeral 7 detached itself and fell on her feet as she arrived.
“This place doesn’t like me,” said Mrs.
Oliver to herself as she winced with pain and picked the number up gingerly and affixed it by its spike to the door again.
She pressed the bell. Perhaps everyone was out.
However, the door opened almost at once. A tall handsome girl stood in the doorway. She was wearing a dark, wellcut suit with a very short skirt, a white silk shirt, and was very well shod. She had swept-up dark hair, good but discreet make-up, and for some reason was slightly alarming to Mrs. Oliver.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Oliver, galvanising herself to say the right thing. “Is Miss Restarick in, by any chance?” “No, I’m sorry, she’s out. Can I give her a message?” Mrs. Oliver said, “Oh” again—before proceeding. She made a play of action by producing a parcel rather untidily done up in brown paper. “I promised her a book,” she explained. “One of mine that she hadn’t read. I hope I’ve remembered actually which it was. She won’t be in soon,I suppose?” “I really couldn’t say. I don’t know what she is doing tonight.” “Oh. Are you Miss Reece-Holland?” The girl looked slightly surprised.
“Yes, I am.” “I’ve met your father,” said Mrs. Oliver.
She went on, “I’m Mrs. Oliver. I write books,” she added in the usual guilty style in which she invariably made such announcement.
“Won’t you come in?” Mrs. Oliver accepted the invitation, and Claudia Reece-Holland led her into a sitting-room. All the rooms of the flats were papered the same with an artificial raw wood pattern. Tenants could then display their modern pictures or apply any forms of decoration they fancied. There was a foundation of modern built-in furniture, cupboard, bookshelves and so on, a large settee and a pull-out type of table. Personal bits and pieces could be added by the tenants. There were also signs of individuality displayed here by a gigantic Harlequin pasted on one wall, and a stencil of a monkey swinging from branches of palm fronds on another wall.