Third Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 womanturned her head and then straightened herself, turning towards him inquiringly.
    She remained standing, waiting for him to speak, some garden twine hanging from her left hand. She looked, he noted, puzzled.
    â€œYes?” 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.
    â€œMrs. Restarick?”
    â€œYes. I—”
    â€œI hope I do not derange you, Madame.”
    A faint smile touched her lips. “Not at all. Are you—”
    â€œI have permitted myself to pay a visit on you. A friend of mine, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver—”
    â€œOh, of course. I know who you must be. Monsieur Poiret.”
    â€œMonsieur 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.”
    â€œYes. Naomi Lorrimer told us you might turn up.”
    â€œI hope it is not inconvenient?”
    â€œOh, 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?”
    â€œI 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 goldenhair 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.
    â€œYou have a very fine garden here,” he said.
    â€œYou like gardens?”
    â€œNot 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.”
    â€œTo French people, you mean? Oh yes. I believe that Mrs. Oliver mentioned that you were once with the Belgian Police Force?”
    â€œThat 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 château, the Château 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?”
    â€œYes, I think you are right,” said Mary Restarick. “Do come into the house. You came to see my uncle.”
    â€œI 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.”