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abrupt transition. On one side, set back from the road, was a row of newly built council houses, a strip of green in front of them and a gay note set by each house having been given a different coloured front door. Beyond the council houses the sway of fields and hedges resumed its course interspersed now and then by the occasional “desirable residences” of a house agent's list, with their own trees and gardens and a general air of reserve and of keeping themselves to themselves.
    Ahead of him farther down the road Poirot discovered a house, the top story of which displayed an unusual note of bulbous construction. Something had evidently been tacked on up there not so many years ago. This no doubt was the Mecca towards which his feet were bent.
    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 square-shouldered.
    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 turn up.”
    “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,