Third Girl

He arrived at a gate to which the nameplate Crosshedges was attached. He surveyed the house. It was a conventional house dating perhaps to the beginning of the century. It was neither beautiful nor ugly. Commonplace was perhaps the word to describe it. The garden was more attractive than the house and had obviously been the subject of a great deal of care and attention in its time, though it had been allowed to fall into disarray. It still had smooth green lawns, plenty of flower beds, carefully planted areas of shrubs to display a certain landscape effect. It was all in good order. A gardener was certainly employed in this garden, Poirot reflected.

A personal interest was perhaps also taken, since he noted in a corner near the house a woman bending over one of the flower beds, tying up dahlias, he thought. Her head showed as a bright circle of pure gold colour. She was tall, slim but squareshouldered.

He unlatched the gate, passed through and walked up towards the house.

The woman turned her head and then straightened herself, turning towards him enquiringly.

She remained standing, waiting for him to speak, some garden twine hanging from her left hand. She looked, he noted, puzzled.

"Yes?" she said.

Poirot, very foreign, took off his hat with a flourish and bowed. Her eyes rested on his moustaches with a kind of fascination.

"Mrs. Restarick?" "Yes. I - " "I hope that I do not derange you, Madame." A faint smile touched her lips. "Not at all. Are you - " I have permitted myself to pay a visit on you. A friend of mine, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver - " "Oh, of course. I know who you must be. Monsieur Poiret." "Monsieur Poirot," he corrected her with an emphasis on the last syllable.

"Hercule Poirot, at your service. I was passing through this neighbourhood and I ventured to call upon you here in the hope that I might be allowed to pay my respects to Sir Roderick Horsefield." "Yes. Naomi Lorrimer told us you might turnup." "I hope it is not inconvenient?" "Oh, it is not inconvenient at all.

Ariadne Oliver was here last weekend. She came over with the Lorrimers. Her books are most amusing, aren't they? But perhaps you don't find detective stories amusing.

You are a detective yourself, aren't you - a real one?" "I am all that there is of the most real," said Hercule Poirot.

He noticed that she repressed a smile.

He studied her more closely. She was handsome in a rather artificial fashion.

Her golden hair was stiffly arranged. He wondered whether she might not at heart be secretly unsure of herself, whether she were not carefully playing the part of the English lady absorbed in her garden. He wondered a little what her social background might have been.

"You have a very fine garden here," he said.

"You like gardens?" "Not as the English like gardens. You have for a garden a special talent in England. It means something to you that it does not to us." "To French people, you mean?" "I am not French. I am Belgian." "Oh yes. I believe that Mrs. Oliver mentioned that you were once with the Belgian Police Force?" "That is so. Me, I am an old Belgian police dog." He gave a polite little laugh and said, waving his hands, "But your gardens, you English, I admire. I sit at your feet! The Latin races, they like the formal garden, the gardens of the chateau of Versailles in miniature, and also of course they invented the potager. Very important, the potager. Here in England you have the potager, but you got it from France and you do not love your potager as much as you love your flowers. Hein?

That is so?" "Yes, I think you are right," said Mary Restarick. "Do come into the house. You came to see my uncle." "I came, as you say, to pay homage to Sir Roderick, but I pay homage to you also, Madame. Always I pay homage to beauty when I meet it." He bowed.

She laughed with slight embarrassment.

"You mustn't pay me so many compliments." She led the way through an open french window and he followed her.

"I knew your uncle slightly in 1944." "Poor dear, he's getting quite an old man now. He's very deaf, I'm afraid." "It was long ago that I encountered him.

He will probably have forgotten. It was a matter of espionage and of scientific developments of a certain invention. We owed that invention to the ingenuity of Sir Roderick. He will be willing, I hope, to receive me." "Oh, I'm sure he'll love it," said Mrs.

Restarick. "He has rather a dull life in some ways nowadays. I have to be so much in London - we are looking for a suitable house there." She sighed and said, "Elderly people can be very difficult sometimes." "I know,3' said Poirot. "Frequently I, too, am difficult." She laughed. "Ah no, M. Poirot, come now, you mustn't pretend you're old." "Sometimes I am told so," said Poirot.

He sighed. "By young girls," he added mournfully.

"That's very unkind of them. It's probably the sort of thing that our daughter would do," she added.

"Ah, you have a daughter?" "Yes. At least, she is my stepdaughter." "I shall have much pleasure in meeting her," said Poirot politely.