It might be of the utmost importance that some letters or papers should be destroyed, or else passed to some foreign government.

Who better to undertake that task than a charming young lady who assists and aids an elderly notability to collect material for his Memoirs. Everyone is writing their memoirs nowadays. One cannot stop them from doing so! Suppose that the stepmother gets a little something in her food on the day that the helpful secretary plus au pair girl is doing the cooking? And suppose it is she who arranges that suspicion should fall on Norma?" "What a mind you have," said Mrs.

Oliver. "Tortuous, that's what I call it.

I mean, all these things can't have happened." "That is just it. There are too many patterns. Which is the right one? The girl Norma leaves home, goes to London.

She is, as you have instructed me, a third girl sharing a flat with two other girls.

There again you may have a pattern.

The two girls are strangers to her. But then what do I learn? Claudia ReeceHolland is private secretary to Norma Restarick's father. Here again we have a link. Is that mere chance? Or could there be a pattern of some kind behind it.

The other girl, you tell me, acts as a model, and is acquainted with the boy you call 'the Peacock' with whom Norma is in love. Again a link. More links. And what is David-the Peacock-doing in all this? Is he in love with Norma? It would seem so. Her parents dislike it as is only probable and natural." "It's odd about Claudia ReeceHolland being Restarick's secretary," said Mrs.

Oliver thoughtfully. "I should judge she was unusually efficient at anything she undertook. Perhaps it was she who pushed the woman out of the window on the seventh floor." Poirot turned slowly towards her. "What are you saying?" he demanded. "What are you saying?" "Just someone in the flats - I don't even know her name, but she fell out of a window or threw herself out of a window on the seventh floor and killed herself." Poirot's voice rose high and stern.

"And you never told me?" he said accusingly.

Mrs. Oliver stared at him in surprise.

"I don't know what you mean." "What I mean? I ask you to tell me of a death. That is what I mean. A death. And you say there are no deaths. You can think only of an attempted poisoning. And yet here is a death. A death at - what is the name of those mansions?" "Borodene Mansions." "Yes, yes. And when did it happen?" "This suicide? Or whatever it was? I think - yes - I think it was about a week before I went there." "Perfect! How did you hear about it?" "A milkman told me." "A milkman, bon Dieu\" "He was just being chatty," said Mrs.

Oliver. "It sounded rather sad. It was in the day time - very early in the morning, I think." "What was her name?" "I've no idea. I don't think he mentioned it." "Young, middle-aged, old?" Mrs. Oliver considered. "Well, he didn't say her exact age. Fifty-ish, I think, was what he said." "I wonder now. Anyone the three girls knew?" "How can I tell? Nobody has said anything about it." "And you never thought of telling me." "Well, really. M. Poirot, I cannot see that it has anything to do with all this.

Well, I suppose it may have - but nobody seems to have said so, or thought of it." "But yes, there is the link. There is this girl, Norma, and she lives in those flats, and one day somebody commits suicide (for that, I gather, was the general impression).

That is, somebody throws herself or falls out of a seventh-floor high window and is killed. And then? Some days later this girl Norma, after having heard you talk about me at a party, comes to call upon me and she says to me that she is afraid that she may have committed a murder. Do you not see? A death - and not many days later someone who thinks she may have committed a murder. Yes, this must be the murder" Mrs. Oliver wanted to say "nonsense" but she did not quite dare to do so.

Nevertheless, she thought it.

"This then must be the one piece of knowledge that had not yet come to me.

This ought to tie up the whole thing!

Yes, yes, I do not see yet how, but it must be so. I must think. That is what I must do.

I must go home and think until slowly the pieces fit together - because this will be the key piece that ties them all together… Yes. At last. At last I shall see my way." He rose to his feet and said "Adieu, chere Madame," and hurried from the room. Mrs. Oliver at last relieved her feelings.

"Nonsense," she said to the empty room. "Absolute nonsense. I wonder if four would be too many aspirins to take?"

Chapter Fifteen

Hercule Poirot's elbow was a tisane prepared for him by George. He sipped at it and thought. He thought in a certain way peculiar to himself. It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation. He sipped his tisane, put down the cup, rested his hands on the arms of his chair and let various pieces of his puzzle come one by one into his mind. Once he recognised them all, he would select.

Pieces of shy, pieces of green bank, perhaps striped pieces like those of a tiger.

The painfulness of his own feet in patent-leather shoes. He started there.

Walking along a road set on this path by his good friend, Mrs. Oliver. A stepmother.

He saw himself with his hand on a gate.

A woman who turned, a woman bending her head cutting out the weak growth of a rose, turning and looking at him? What was there for him there? Nothing. A golden head, a golden head bright as a cornfield, with twists and loops of hair slightly reminiscent of Mrs. Oliver's own in shape. He smiled a little. But Mary Restarick's hair was more tidily arranged than Mrs. Oliver's ever was. A golden frame for her face that seemed just a little too large for her. He remembered that old Sir Roderick had said that she had to wear a wig, because of an illness. Sad for so young a woman. There was, when he came to think of it, something unusually heavy about her head. Far too static, too perfectly arranged. He considered Mary Restarick's wig - if it was a wig - for he was by no means sure that he could depend on Sir Roderick. He examined the possibilities of the wig in case they should be of significance. He reviewed the conversation they had had. Had they said anything important? He thought not. He remembered the room into which they had gone. A characterless room recently inhabited in someone else's house. Two pictures on the wall, the picture of a woman in a dove-grey dress. Thin mouth, lips set closely together. Hair that was greyish brown. The first Mrs. Restarick.

She looked as though she might have been older than her husband. His picture was on the opposite wall, facing her. Good portraits, both of them. Lansberger had been a good portrait painter. His mind dwelt on the portrait of the husband. He had not seen it so well that first day, as he had later in Restarick's office.

Andrew Restarick and Claudia ReeceHolland.

Was there anything there? Was their association more than a merely secretarial one? It need not be. Here was a man who had come back to this country after year of absence, who had no near friends or relatives, who was perplexed and troubled over his daughter's character and conduct. It was probably natural enough that he should turn to his recently acquired eminently competent secretary and ask her to suggest somewhere for his daughter to live in London. It would be a favour on her part to provide that accommodation since she was looking for a Third Girl. Third girl… The phrase that he had acquired from Mrs. Oliver always seemed to be coming to his mind. As though it had a second significance which for some reason he could not see.