‘So you’re the famous sleuth, eh?’
They were in the cocktail bar, a favourite haunt of Mr Blatt’s.
Hercule Poirot acknowledged the remark with his usual lack of modesty.
Mr Blatt went on.
‘And what are you doing down here—on a job?’
‘No, no. I repose myself. I take the holiday.’
Mr Blatt winked.
‘You’d say that anyway, wouldn’t you?’
Poirot replied:
‘Not necessarily.’
Horace Blatt said:
‘Oh! Come now. As a matter of fact you’d be safe enough with me. I don’t repeat all I hear! Learnt to keep my mouth shut years ago. Shouldn’t have got on the way I have if I hadn’t known how to do that. But you know what most people are—yap, yap, yap about everything they hear! Now you can’t afford that in your trade! That’s why you’ve got to keep it up that you’re here holiday-making and nothing else.’
Poirot asked:
‘And why should you suppose the contrary?’
Mr Blatt closed one eye.
He said:
‘I’m a man of the world. I know the cut of a fellow’s jib. A man like you would be at Deauville or Le Touquet or down at Juan les Pins. That’s your—what’s the phrase?—spiritual home.’
Poirot sighed. He looked out of the window. Rain was falling and mist encircled the island. He said:
‘It is possible that you are right! There, at least, in wet weather there are the distractions.’
‘Good old Casino!’ said Mr Blatt. ‘You know, I’ve had to work pretty hard most of my life. No time for holidays or kickshaws. I meant to make good and I have made good. Now I can do what I please. My money’s as good as any man’s. I’ve seen a bit of life in the last few years, I can tell you.’
Poirot murmured:
‘Ah, yes?’
‘Don’t know why I came to this place,’ Mr Blatt continued.
Poirot observed:
‘I, too, wondered?’
‘Eh, what’s that?’
Poirot waved an eloquent hand.
‘I, too, am not without observation. I should have expected you most certainly to choose Deauville or Biarritz.’
‘Instead of which, we’re both here, eh?’
Mr Blatt gave a hoarse chuckle.
‘Don’t really know why I came here,’ he mused. ‘I think, you know, it sounded romantic. Jolly Roger Hotel, Smugglers’ Island. That kind of address tickles you up, you know. Makes you think of when you were a boy. Pirates, smuggling, all that.’
He laughed, rather self-consciously.
‘I used to sail quite a bit as a boy. Not this part of the world. Off the East coast. Funny how a taste for that sort of thing never quite leaves you. I could have a tip-top yacht if I liked, but somehow I don’t really fancy it. I like mucking about in that little yawl of mine. Redfern’s keen on sailing, too. He’s been out with me once or twice. Can’t get hold of him now—always hanging round that red-haired wife of Marshall’s.’
He paused, then lowering his voice, he went on:
‘Mostly a dried up lot of sticks in this hotel! Mrs Marshall’s about the only lively spot! I should think Marshall’s got his hands full looking after her. All sorts of stories about her in her stage days—and after! Men go crazy about her. You’ll see, there’ll be a spot of trouble one of these days.’
Poirot asked: ‘What kind of trouble?’
Horace Blatt replied:
‘That depends. I’d say, looking at Marshall, that he’s a man with a funny kind of temper. As a matter of fact, I know he is. Heard something about him. I’ve met that quiet sort. Never know where you are with that kind. Redfern had better look out—’
He broke off, as the subject of his words came into the bar. He went on speaking loudly and self-consciously.
‘And, as I say, sailing round this coast is good fun. Hullo, Redfern, have one with me? What’ll you have? Dry Martini? Right. What about you, M. Poirot?’
Poirot shook his head.
Patrick Redfern sat down and said:
‘Sailing? It’s the best fun in the world. Wish I could do more of it. Used to spend most of my time as a boy in a sailing dinghy round this coast.’
Poirot said:
‘Then you know this part of the world well?’
‘Rather! I knew this place before there was a hotel on it. There were just a few fishermen’s cottages at Leathercombe Bay and a tumbledown old house, all shut up, on the island.’
‘There was a house here?’
‘Oh, yes, but it hadn’t been lived in for years. Was practically falling down. There used to be all sorts of stories of secret passages from the house to Pixy’s Cave. We were always looking for that secret passage, I remember.’
Horace Blatt spilt his drink. He cursed, mopped himself and asked:
‘What is this Pixy’s Cave?’
Patrick said:
‘Oh, don’t you know it? It’s on Pixy Cove. You can’t find the entrance to it easily. It’s among a lot of piled up boulders at one end. Just a long thin crack. You can just squeeze through it. Inside it widens out into quite a big cave. You can imagine what fun it was to a boy! An old fisherman showed it to me. Nowadays, even the fishermen don’t know about it. I asked one the other day why the place was called Pixy Cove and he couldn’t tell me.’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘But I still do not understand. What is this pixy?’
Patrick Redfern said:
‘Oh! that’s typically Devonshire. There’s the pixy’s cave at Sheepstor on the Moor. You’re supposed to leave a pin, you know, as a present for the pixy. A pixy is a kind of moor spirit.’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘Ah! but it is interesting, that.’
Patrick Redfern went on.
