What about a drink? Whisky? No?
Sure you won’t stop and have a drop of tea?” “Thank you, but I am staying with friends.” “Well, I must say I have enjoyed this chat with you very much. Nice to remember some of the things that happened in the old days. Sonia, dear, perhaps you’ll take Monsieur — sorry, what’s your name, it’s gone again — ah, yes, Poirot. Take him down to Mary, will you?” “No, no,” Hercule Poirot hastily waved aside the offer. “I could not dream of troubling Madame any more. I am quite all right. Quite all right. I can find my way perfectly. It has been a great pleasure to meet you again.” He left the room.
“Haven’t the faintest idea who that chap was,” said Sir Roderick, after Poirot had gone.
“You do not know who he was?” Sonia asked, looking at him in a startled manner.
“Personally I don’t remember who half the people are who come up and talk to me nowadays. Of course, I have to make a good shot at it. One learns to get away with that, you know. Same thing at parties. Up comes a chap and says, ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me. I last saw you in I9″•’ I have to say ‘Of course I remember,’ but I don’t. It’s a handicap being nearly blind and deaf. We got pally with a lot of frogs like that towards the end of the war. Don’t remember half of them. Oh, he’d been there all right. He knew me and I knew a good many of the chaps he talked about. That story about me and the stolen car, that was true enough. Exaggerated a bit, of course, they made a pretty good story of it at the time. Ah well, I don’t think he knew I didn’t remember him. Clever chap, I should say, but a thorough frog, isn’t he? You know, mincing and dancing and bowing and scraping. Now then, where were we?” Sonia picked up a letter and handed it to him. She tentatively proffered a pair of spectacles which he immediately rejected.
“Don’t want those damned things — I can see all right.” He screwed up his eyes and peered down at the letter he was holding. Then he capitulated and thrust it back into her hands.
“Well, perhaps you’d better read it to me.” She started reading it in her clear soft voice.
CHAPTER FIVE
HERCULE POIROT stood upon the landing for a moment. His head was a little on one side with a listening air. He could hear nothing from downstairs.
He crossed to the landing window and looked out. Mary Restarick was below on the terrace, resuming her gardening work. Poirot nodded his head in satisfaction.
He walked gently along the corridor.
One by one in turn he opened the doors.
A bathroom, a linen cupboard, a double bedded spare room, an occupied single bedroom, a woman’s room, with a double bed (Mary Restarick’s?). The next door was that of an adjoining room and was, he guessed, the room belonging to Andrew Restarick. He turned to the other side of the landing. The door he opened first was a single bedroom. It was not, he judged, occupied at the time, but it was a room which possibly was occupied at weekends.
There were toilet brushes on the dressingtable.
He listened carefully, then tiptoed in. He opened the wardrobe. Yes, there were some clothes hanging up there.
Country clothes.
There was a writing table but there was nothing on it. He opened the desk drawers very softly. There were a few odds and ends, a letter or two, but the letters were trivial and dated some time ago. He shut the desk drawers. He walked downstairs, and going out of the house, bade farewell to his hostess. He refused her offer of tea.
He had promised to get back, he said as he had to catch a train to town very shortly afterwards.
“Don’t you want a taxi? We could order you one, or I could drive you in the car.” “No, no, Madame, you are too kind.” Poirot walked back to the village and turned down the lane by the church. He crossed a little bridge over a stream.