Third Girl

"Now then there are lots of things I want to know," said Mrs. Oliver. Her voice was accusatory.

Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.

"But, chere Madame, consider. What I owe to you I can hardly express. All, but all, my good ideas were suggested to me by you." Mrs. Oliver looked at him doubtfully.

"Was it not you who introduced to me the phrase Third Girl'? It is there that I started - and there, too, that I ended - at the third girl of three living in a flat.

Norma was always technically, I suppose, the Third Girl-but when I looked at things the right way round it all fell into place. The missing answer, the lost piece of the puzzle, every time it was the same - the third girl.

"It was always, if you comprehend me, the person who was not there. She was a name to me, no more." "I wonder I never connected her with Mary Restarick," said Mrs. Oliver. "I'd seen Mary Restarick at Crosshedges, talked to her. Of course the first time I saw Frances Cary, she had black hair hanging all over her face. That would have put anyone off!" "Again it was you, Madame, who drew my attention to how easily a woman's appearance is altered by the way she arranges her hair. Frances Cary, remember, had had dramatic training. She knew all about the art of swift make-up. She could alter her voice at need. As Frances, she had long black hair, framing her face and half hiding it, heavy dead white maquillage, dark pencilled eyebrows and mascara, with a drawling husky voice. Mary Restarick, with her wig of formally arranged golden hair with crimped waves, her conventional clothes, her slight Colonial accent, her brisk way of talking, presented a complete contrast. Yet one felt, from the beginning, that she was not quite real. What kind of a woman was she? I did not know.

"I was not clever about her - No - I, Hercule Poirot, was not clever at all." "Hear, hear," said Dr. Stillingfleet.

"First time I've ever heard you say that, Poirot! Wonders will never cease!" "I don't really see why she wanted two personalities," said Mrs. Oliver. "It seems unnecessarily confusing." "No. It was very valuable to her. It gave her, you see, a perpetual alibi whenever she wanted it. To think that it was there, all the time, before my eyes, and I did not see it!

There was the wig - I kept being subconsciously worried by it, but not seeing why I was worried. Two women - never, at any time, seen together. Their lives so arranged that no one noticed the large gaps in their time schedules when they were unaccounted for. Mary goes often to London, to shop, to visit house agents, to depart with a sheaf of orders to view, supposedly to spend her time that way.

Frances goes to Birmingham, to Manchester, even flies abroad, frequents Chelsea with her special coterie of arty young men whom she employs in various capacities which would not be looked on with approval by the law. Special picture frames were designed for the Wedderburn Gallery.

Rising young artists had 'shows' there- their pictures sold quite well, and were shipped abroad or sent on exhibition with there frames stuffed with secret packets of heroin - Art rackets - skilful forgeries of the more obscure Old Masters - She arranged and organised all these things.

David Baker was one of the artists she employed. He had the gift of being a marvellous copyist." Norma murmured: "Poor David. When I first met him I thought he was wonderful."

"That picture," said Poirot dreamily. "Always, always, I came back to that in my mind. Why had Restarick brought it up to his office? What special significance did it have for him? Enfin, I do not admire myself for being so dense." "I don't understand about the picture?" "It was a very clever idea. It served as a kind of certificate of identity. A pair of portraits, husband and wife, by a celebrated and fashionable portrait painter of his day.

David Baker, when they come out of store, replaces Restarick's portrait with one of Orwell, making him about twenty years younger in appearance. Nobody would have dreamed that the portrait was a fake, the style, the brush strokes, the canvas, it was a splendidly convincing bit of work. Restarick hung it over his desk. Anyone who knew Restarick years ago, might say: 'I'd ^ hardly have known you!' Or "You've changed quite a lot', would look up at the portrait, but would only think that he himself had really forgotten what the other man had looked like!" "It was a great risk for Restarick - or rather Orwell - to take," said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully.

"Less than you might think. He was never a claimant, you see, in the Tichborne sense. He was only a member of a wellknown City firm, returning home after his brother's death to settle up his brother's affairs after having spent some years abroad.