Third Girl

"You always mix me up," she complained.

"I am talking about a murder, but what murder?" "The murder of the stepmother, I suppose." "But the stepmother is not murdered.

She is alive." "You really are the most maddening man," said Mrs. Oliver.

Poirot sat up in his chair. He brought the tips of his fingers together and prepared - or so Mrs. Oliver suspected - to enjoy himself.

"You refuse to reflect," he said. "But to get anywhere we must reflect." "I don't want to reflect. What I want to know is what you've been doing about everything while I've been in hospital.

You must have done something. What have you done?" Poirot ignored this question.

"We must begin at the beginning.

One day you rang me up. I was in distress.

Yes, I admit it, I was in distress. Something extremely painful had been said to me. You, Madame, were kindness itself.

You cheered me, you encouraged me.

You gave me a delicious tasse de chocolat. And what is more you not only offered to help me, but you did help me. You helped me to find a girl who had come to me and said that she thought she might have committed a murder! Let us ask ourselves, Madame, what about this murder?

Who has been murdered? Where have they been murdered? Why have they been murdered?" "Oh do stop," said Mrs. Oliver. "You're making my head ache again, and that's bad for me." Poirot paid no attention to this plea.

"Have we got a murder at all? You say - the stepmother - but I reply that the stepmother is not dead - so as yet we have no murder. But there ought to have been a murder. So me, I enquire first of all, who is dead? Somebody comes to me and mentions a murder. A murder that has been committed somewhere and somehow.

But I cannot find that murder, and what you are about to say once again, that the attempted murder of Mary Restarick will do very well, does not satisfy Hercule Poirot." "I really can't think what more you want," said Mrs. Oliver.

"I want a murder^ said Hercule Poirot.

"It sounds very bloodthirsty when you say it like that!" "I look for a murder and I cannot find a murder. It is exasperating - so I ask you to reflect with me." "I've got a splendid idea," said Mrs.

Oliver. "Suppose Andrew Restarick murdered his first wife before he went off in a hurry to South Africa. Had you thought of that possibility?" "I certainly did not think of any such thing," said Poirot indignantly.

"Well, Pve thought of it," said Mrs.

Oliver. "It's very interesting. He was in love with this other woman, and he wanted like Crippen to go off with her, and so he murdered the first one and nobody ever suspected." Poirot drew a long, exasperated sigh. "But his wife did not die until eleven or twelve years after he'd left this country for South Africa, and his child could not have been concerned in the murder of her own mother at the age of five years old." "She could have given her mother the wrong medicine or perhaps Restarick just said that she died. After all, we don't know that she's dead." "I do," said Hercule Poirot. "I have made enquiries. The first Mrs. Restarick died on the i4th April 1963." "How can you know these things?" "Because I have employed someone to check the facts. I beg of you, Madame, do not jump to impossible conclusions in this rash way." "I thought I was being rather clever," said Mrs. Oliver obstinately. "If I was making it happen in a book that's how / would arrange it. And I'd make the child have done it. Not meaning to, but just by her father telling her to give her mother a drink made of pounded up box hedge." "Nom (Tun nom (Tun nom /" said Poirot.

"All right," said Mrs. Oliver. "You tell it your way." "Alas, I have nothing to tell. I look for a murder and I do not find one." "Not after Mary Restarick is ill and goes to hospital and gets better and comes back and is ill again, and if they looked they'd probably find arsenic or something hidden away by Norma somewhere." "That is exactly what they did find." "Well, really, M. Poirot, what more do you want?" "I want you to pay some attention to the meaning of language. That girl said to me the same thing as she had said to my manservant, Georges. She did not say on either occasion I have tried to kill someone. or I have tried to kill my stepmother'.

She spoke each time of a deed that had been done, something that had already happened. Definitely happened. In the past «tense." "I give up," said Mrs. Oliver. "You just won't believe that Norma tried to kill her stepmother." "Yes, I believe it is perfectly possible that Norma may have tried to kill her stepmother. I think it is probably what happened - it is in accord psychologically.

With her distraught frame of mind. But it is not proved. Anyone, remember, could have hidden a preparation of arsenic amongst Norma's things. It could even have been put there by the husband." "You always seem to think that husbands are the ones who kill their wives," said Mrs. Oliver.