House, Nassecombe. A car or taxi will meet you at the station at Nassecombe.’
‘But why do you need me? What is all this about?’ Poirot repeated frantically.
‘Telephones are in such awkward places,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘This one’s in the hall… People passing through and talking… I can’t really hear. But I’m expecting you. Everybody will be so thrilled. Goodbye.’
There was a sharp click as the receiver was replaced. The line hummed gently.
With a baffled air of bewilderment, Poirot put back the receiver and murmured something under his breath. Miss Lemon sat with her pencil poised, incurious. She repeated in muted tones the final phrase of dictation before the interruption.
‘– allow me to assure you, my dear sir, that the hypothesis you have advanced…’
Poirot waved aside the advancement of the hypothesis.
‘That was Mrs Oliver,’ he said. ‘Ariadne Oliver, the detective novelist. You may have read…’ But he stopped, remembering that Miss Lemon only read improving books and regarded such frivolities as fictional crime with contempt. ‘She wants me to go down to Devonshire today, at once, in’ – he glanced at the clock – ‘thirty-five minutes.’
Miss Lemon raised disapproving eyebrows.
‘That will be running it rather fine,’ she said. ‘For what reason?’
‘You may well ask! She did not tell me.’
‘How very peculiar. Why not?’
‘Because,’ said Hercule Poirot thoughtfully, ‘she was afraid of being overheard. Yes, she made that quite clear.’
‘Well, really,’ said Miss Lemon, bristling in her employer’s defence. ‘The things people expect! Fancy thinking that you’d go rushing off on some wild goose chase like that! An important man like you! I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced – no sense of proportion. Shall I telephone through a telegram: Regret unable leave London?’
Her hand went out to the telephone. Poirot’s voice arrested the gesture.
‘Du tout!’ he said. ‘On the contrary. Be so kind as to summon a taxi immediately.’ He raised his voice. ‘Georges! A few necessities of toilet in my small valise. And quickly, very quickly, I have a train to catch.’
II
The train, having done one hundred and eighty-odd miles of its two hundred and twelve miles journey at top speed, puffed gently and apologetically through the last thirty and drew into Nassecombe station. Only one person alighted, Hercule Poirot. He negotiated with care a yawning gap between the step of the train and the platform and looked round him. At the far end of the train a porter was busy inside a luggage compartment. Poirot picked up his valise and walked back along the platform to the exit. He gave up his ticket and walked out through the booking-office.
A large Humber saloon was drawn up outside and a chauffeur in uniform came forward.
‘Mr Hercule Poirot?’ he inquired respectfully.
He took Poirot’s case from him and opened the door of the car. They drove away from the station over the railway bridge and turned down a country lane which wound between high hedges on either side. Presently the ground fell away on the right and disclosed a very beautiful river view with hills of a misty blue in the distance. The chauffeur drew into the hedge and stopped.
‘The River Helm, sir,’ he said. ‘With Dartmoor in the distance.’
It was clear that admiration was necessary. Poirot made the necessary noises, murmuring Magnifique! several times. Actually, Nature appealed to him very little. A well-cultivated neatly arranged kitchen garden was far more likely to bring a murmur of admiration to Poirot’s lips. Two girls passed the car, toiling slowly up the hill. They were carrying heavy rucksacks on their backs and wore shorts, with bright coloured scarves tied over their heads.
‘There is a Youth Hostel next door to us, sir,’ explained the chauffeur, who had clearly constituted himself Poirot’s guide to Devon. ‘Hoodown Park. Mr Fletcher’s place it used to be. The Youth Hostel Association bought it and it’s fairly crammed in summer time. Take in over a hundred a night, they do. They’re not allowed to stay longer than a couple of nights – then they’ve got to move on. Both sexes and mostly foreigners.’
Poirot nodded absently. He was reflecting, not for the first time, that seen from the back, shorts were becoming to very few of the female sex. He shut his eyes in pain. Why, oh why, must young women array themselves thus? Those scarlet thighs were singularly unattractive!
‘They seem heavily laden,’ he murmured.
‘Yes, sir, and it’s a long pull from the station or the bus stop. Best part of two miles to Hoodown Park.’ He hesitated. ‘If you don’t object, sir, we could give them a lift?’
‘By all means, by all means,’ said Poirot benignantly. There was he in luxury in an almost empty car and here were these two panting and perspiring young women weighed down with heavy rucksacks and without the least idea how to dress themselves so as to appear attractive to the other sex. The chauffeur started the car and came to a slow purring halt beside the two girls. Their flushed and perspiring faces were raised hopefully.
Poirot opened the door and the girls climbed in.
‘It is most kind, please,’ said one of them, a fair girl with a foreign accent. ‘It is longer way than I think, yes.’
The other girl, who had a sunburnt and deeply flushed face with bronzed chestnut curls peeping out beneath her headscarf, merely nodded her head several times, flashed her teeth, and murmured, Grazie. The fair girl continued to talk vivaciously.
‘I to England come for two week holiday. I come from Holland. I like England very much. I have been Stratford Avon, Shakespeare Theatre and Warwick Castle. Then I have been Clovelly, now I have seen Exeter Cathedral and Torquay – very nice – I come to famous beauty spot here and tomorrow I cross river, go to Plymouth where discovery of New World was made from Plymouth Hoe.’
‘And you, signorina?’ Poirot turned to the other girl. But she only smiled and shook her curls.
‘She does not much English speak,’ said the Dutch girl kindly. ‘We both a little French speak – so we talk in train. She is coming from near Milan and has relative in England married to gentleman who keeps shop for much groceries. She has come with friend to Exeter yesterday, but friend has eat veal ham pie not good from shop in Exeter and has to stay there sick. It is not good in hot weather, the veal ham pie.’
At this point the chauffeur slowed down where the road forked. The girls got out, uttered thanks in two languages and proceeded up the left-hand road. The chauffeur laid aside for a moment his Olympian aloofness and said feelingly to Poirot:
‘It’s not only veal and ham pie – you want to be careful of Cornish pasties too. Put anything in a pasty they will, holiday time!’
He restarted the car and drove down the right-hand road which shortly afterwards passed into thick woods. He proceeded to give a final verdict on the occupants of Hoodown Park Youth Hostel.
‘Nice enough young
