Agatha Christie - Cat Among the Pigeons

‘How do you do?’ said Poirot. ‘I am a very old friend of Julia Upjohn. She came to London to find me.’

‘Julia went to London?’ said Jennifer, slightly surprised. ‘Why?’

‘To ask my advice,’ said Hercule Poirot.

Jennifer looked unbelieving.

‘I was able to give it to her,’ said Poirot. ‘She is now back at Meadowbank,’ he added.

‘So her Aunt Isabel didn’t take her away,’ said Jennifer, shooting an irritated look at her mother.

Poirot looked at Mrs Sutcliffe and for some reason, perhaps because she had been in the middle of counting the laundry when Poirot arrived and perhaps because of some unexplained compulsion, she got up and left the room.

‘It’s a bit hard,’ said Jennifer, ‘to be out of all that’s going on there. All this fuss! I told Mummy it was silly. After all, none of the pupils have been killed.’

‘Have you any ideas of your own about the murders?’ asked Poirot.

Jennifer shook her head. ‘Someone who’s batty?’ she offered. She added thoughtfully, ‘I suppose Miss Bulstrode will have to get some new mistresses now.’

‘It seems possible, yes,’ said Poirot. He went on, ‘I am interested, Mademoiselle Jennifer, in the woman who came and offered you a new racquet for your old one. Do you remember?’

‘I should think I do remember,’ said Jennifer. ‘I’ve never found out to this day who really sent it. It wasn’t Aunt Gina at all.’

‘What did this woman look like?’ said Poirot.

‘The one who brought the racquet?’ Jennifer half closed her eyes as though thinking. ‘Well, I don’t know. She had on a sort of fussy dress with a little cape, I think. Blue, and a floppy sort of hat.’

‘Yes?’ said Poirot. ‘I meant perhaps not so much her clothes as her face.’

‘A good deal of make-up, I think,’ said Jennifer vaguely. ‘A bit too much for the country, I mean, and fair hair. I think she was an American.’

‘Had you ever seen her before?’ asked Poirot.

‘Oh no,’ said Jennifer. ‘I don’t think she lived down there. She said she’d come down for a luncheon party or a cocktail party or something.’

Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He was interested in Jennifer’s complete acceptance of everything that was said to her. He said gently,

‘But she might not have been speaking the truth?’

‘Oh,’ said Jennifer. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘You’re quite sure you hadn’t seen her before? She could not have been, for instance, one of the girls dressed up? Or one of the mistresses?’

‘Dressed up?’ Jennifer looked puzzled.

Poirot laid before her the sketch Eileen Rich had done for him of Mademoiselle Blanche.

‘This was not the woman, was it?’

Jennifer looked at it doubtfully.

‘It’s a little like her—but I don’t think it’s her.’

Poirot nodded thoughtfully.

There was no sign that Jennifer recognized that this was actually a sketch of Mademoiselle Blanche.

‘You see,’ said Jennifer, ‘I didn’t really look at her much. She was an American and a stranger, and then she told me about the racquet—’

After that, it was clear, Jennifer would have had eyes for nothing but her new possession.

‘I see,’ said Poirot. He went on, ‘Did you ever see at Meadowbank anyone that you’d seen out in Ramat?’

‘In Ramat?’ Jennifer thought. ‘Oh no—at least—I don’t think so.’

Poirot pounced on the slight expression of doubt. ‘But you are not sure , Mademoiselle Jennifer.’

‘Well,’ Jennifer scratched her forehead with a worried expression, ‘I mean, you’re always seeing people who look like somebody else. You can’t quite remember who it is they look like. Sometimes you see people that you have met but you don’t remember who they are. And they say to you “You don’t remember me,” and then that’s awfully awkward because really you don’t. I mean, you sort of know their face but you can’t remember their names or where you saw them.’

‘That is very true,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, that is very true. One often has that experience.’ He paused a moment then he went on, prodding gently, ‘Princess Shaista, for instance, you probably recognized her when you saw her because you must have seen her in Ramat.’

‘Oh, was she in Ramat?’

‘Very likely,’ said Poirot. ‘After all she is a relation of the ruling house. You might have seen her there?’

‘I don’t think I did,’ said Jennifer frowning. ‘Anyway, she wouldn’t go about with her face showing there, would she? I mean, they all wear veils and things like that. Though they take them off in Paris and Cairo, I believe. And in London, of course,’ she added.

‘Anyway, you had no feeling of having seen anyone at Meadowbank whom you had seen before?’

‘No, I’m sure I hadn’t. Of course most people do look rather alike and you might have seen them anywhere. It’s only when somebody’s got an odd sort of face like Miss Rich, that you notice it.’

‘Did you think you’d seen Miss Rich somewhere before?’

‘I hadn’t really. It must have been someone like her. But it was someone much fatter than she was.’

‘Someone much fatter,’ said Poirot thoughtfully.

‘You couldn’t imagine Miss Rich being fat,’ said Jennifer with a giggle. ‘She’s so frightfully thin and nobbly. And anyway Miss Rich couldn’t have been in Ramat because she was away ill last term.’

‘And the other girls?’ said Poirot, ‘had you seen any of the girls before?’

‘Only the ones I knew already,’ said Jennifer. ‘I did know one or two of them. After all, you know, I was only there three weeks and I really don’t know half of the people there even by sight. I wouldn’t know most of them if I met them tomorrow.’

‘You should notice things more,’ said Poirot severely.

‘One can’t notice everything,’ protested Jennifer. She went on: ‘If Meadowbank is carrying on I would like to go back. See if you can do anything with Mummy. Though really,’ she added, ‘I think it’s Daddy who’s the stumbling-block. It’s awful here in the country. I get no opportunity to improve my tennis.’

‘I assure you I will do what I can,’ said Poirot.

Chapter 21 Gathering Threads

‘I want to talk to you, Eileen,’ said Miss Bulstrode.

Eileen Rich followed Miss Bulstrode into the latter’s sitting-room. Meadowbank was strangely quiet. About twenty-five pupils were still there. Pupils whose parents had found it either difficult or unwelcome to fetch them. The panic-stricken rush had, as Miss Bulstrode had hoped, been checked by her own tactics. There was a general feeling that by next term everything would have been cleared up. It was much wiser of Miss Bulstrode, they felt, to close the school.

None of the staff had left. Miss Johnson fretted with too much time on her hands. A day in which there was too little to do did not in the least suit her. Miss Chadwick, looking old and miserable, wandered round in a kind of coma of misery. She was far harder hit to all appearance than Miss Bulstrode. Miss Bulstrode, indeed, managed apparently without difficulty to be completely herself, unperturbed, and with no sign of strain or collapse. The two younger mistresses were not averse to the extra leisure. They bathed in the swimming pool, wrote long letters to friends and relations and sent for cruise literature to study and compare. Ann Shapland had a good deal of time on her hands and did not appear to resent the fact. She spent a good deal of that time in the garden and devoted herself to gardening with quite unexpected efficiency. That she preferred to be instructed in the work by Adam rather than by old Briggs was perhaps a not unnatural phenomenon.