out of his room and down the stairs. He heard afar the dictatorial baying of Mrs Masterton’s deep voice. Nearer at hand, Sir George’s voice rose with an amorous intonation.
‘Damned becoming that yashmak thing. Wish I had you in my harem, Sally. I shall come and have my fortune told a good deal tomorrow. What’ll you tell me, eh?’
There was a slight scuffle and Sally Legge’s voice said breathlessly:
‘George, you mustn’t.’
Poirot raised his eyebrows, and slipped out of a conveniently adjacent side door. He set off at top speed down a back drive which his sense of locality enabled him to predict would at some point join the front drive.
His manoeuvre was successful and enabled him – panting very slightly – to come up beside Mrs Folliat and relieve her in a gallant manner of her gardening basket.
‘You permit, Madame?’
‘Oh, thank you, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. But it’s not heavy.’
‘Allow me to carry it for you to your home. You live near here?’
‘I actually live in the lodge by the front gate. Sir George very kindly rents it to me.’
The lodge by the front gate of her former home…How did she really feel about that, Poirot wondered. Her composure was so absolute that he had no clue to her feelings. He changed the subject by observing:
‘Lady Stubbs is much younger than her husband, is she not?’
‘Twenty-three years younger.’
‘Physically she is very attractive.’
Mrs Folliat said quietly:
‘Hattie is a dear good child.’
It was not an answer he had expected. Mrs Folliat went on:
‘I know her very well, you see. For a short time she was under my care.’
‘I did not know that.’
‘How should you? It is in a way a sad story. Her people had estates, sugar estates, in the West Indies. As a result of an earthquake, the house there was burned down and her parents and brothers and sisters all lost their lives. Hattie herself was at a convent in Paris and was thus suddenly left without any near relatives. It was considered advisable by the executors that Hattie should be chaperoned and introduced into society after she had spent a certain time abroad. I accepted the charge of her.’ Mrs Folliat added with a dry smile: ‘I can smarten myself up on occasions and, naturally, I had the necessary connections – in fact, the late Governor had been a close friend of ours.’
‘Naturally, Madame, I understand all that.’
‘It suited me very well – I was going through a difficult time. My husband had died just before the outbreak of war. My elder son who was in the navy went down with his ship, my younger son, who had been out in Kenya, came back, joined the commandos and was killed in Italy. That meant three lots of death duties and this house had to be put up for sale. I myself was very badly off and I was glad of the distraction of having someone young to look after and travel about with. I became very fond of Hattie, all the more so, perhaps, because I soon realized that she was – shall we say – not fully capable of fending for herself ? Understand me, M. Poirot, Hattie is not mentally deficient, but she is what country folk describe as “simple.” She is easily imposed upon, over docile, completely open to suggestion. I think myself that it was a blessing that there was practically no money. If she had been an heiress her position might have been one of much greater difficulty. She was attractive to men and being of an affectionate nature was easily attracted and influenced – she had definitely to be looked after. When, after the final winding up of her parents’ estate, it was discovered that the plantation was destroyed and there were more debts than assets, I could only be thankful that a man such as Sir George Stubbs had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her.’
‘Possibly – yes – it was a solution.’
‘Sir George,’ said Mrs Folliat, ‘though he is a self-made man and – let us face it – a complete vulgarian, is kindly and fundamentally decent, besides being extremely wealthy. I don’t think he would ever ask for mental companionship from a wife, which is just as well. Hattie is everything he wants. She displays clothes and jewels to perfection, is affectionate and willing, and is completely happy with him. I confess that I am very thankful that that is so, for I admit that I deliberately influenced her to accept him. If it had turned out badly’ – her voice faltered a little – ‘it would have been my fault for urging her to marry a man so many years older than herself. You see, as I told you, Hattie is completely suggestible. Anyone she is with at the time can dominate her.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Poirot approvingly, ‘that you made there a most prudent arrangement for her. I am not, like the English, romantic. To arrange a good marriage, one must take more than romance into consideration.’
He added:
‘And as for this place here, Nasse House, it is a most beautiful spot. Quite, as the saying goes, out of this world.’
‘Since Nasse had to be sold,’ said Mrs Folliat, with a faint tremor in her voice, ‘I am glad that Sir George bought it. It was requisitioned during the war by the Army and afterwards it might have been bought and made into a guest house or a school, the rooms cut up and partitioned, distorted out of their natural beauty. Our neighbours, the Fletchers, at Hoodown, had to sell their place and it is now a Youth Hostel. One is glad that young people should enjoy themselves – and fortunately Hoodown is late-Victorian, and of no great architectural merit, so that the alterations do not matter. I’m afraid some of the young people trespass on our grounds. It makes Sir George very angry. It’s true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about – they come through here trying to get a short cut to the ferry across the river.’
They were standing now by the front gate. The lodge, a small white one-storied building, lay a little back from the drive with a small railed garden round it.
Mrs Folliat took back her basket from Poirot with a word of thanks.
‘I was always very fond of the lodge,’ she said, looking at it affectionately. ‘Merdle, our head gardener for thirty years, used to live there. I much prefer it to the top cottage, though that has been enlarged and modernized by Sir George. It had to be; we’ve got quite a young man now as head gardener, with a young wife – and these young women must have electric irons and modern cookers and television, and all that. One must go with the times…’ She sighed. ‘There is hardly a person left now on the estate from the old days – all new faces.’
‘I am glad, Madame,’ said Poirot, ‘that you at least have found a haven.’
‘You know those lines of Spenser’s? “Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please…”’
She paused and said without any change of tone: ‘It’s a very wicked world, M. Poirot. And there are very wicked people in the world. You probably know that as well as I do. I don’t say so before the younger people, it might discourage them, but it’s true…Yes, it’s a very wicked world…’
She gave him a little nod, then turned and went into the lodge. Poirot stood still, staring at the shut door.
