“Well—I don’t know what to say,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. “Really I don’t know what to say—” .She looked with definite distaste at Hercule Poirot.
“Henry, of course,” she said, “is not at home.”
The meaning of this pronouncement was slightly obscure, but Hercule Poirot thought that he knew what was in her mind. Henry, she was feeling, would be able to deal with this sort of thing. Henry had so many international dealings. He was always flying to the Middle East and to Ghana and to South America and to Geneva, and even occasionally, but not so often, to Paris.
“The whole thing,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe, “has been most distressing. I was so glad to have Jennifer safely at home with me. Though, I must say,” she added, with a trace of vexation, “Jennifer has really been most tiresome. After having made a great fuss about going to Meadowbank and being quite sure she wouldn’t like it there, and saying it was a snobby kind of school and not the kind she wanted to go to, now she sulks all day long because I’ve taken her away. It’s really too bad.”
“It is undeniably a very good school,” said Hercule Poirot. “Many people say the best school in England.”
“It was, I daresay,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe.
“And will be again,” said Hercule Poirot.
“You think so?” Mrs. Sutcliffe looked at him doubtfully. His sympathetic manner was gradually piercing her defences. There is nothing that eases the burden of a mother’s life more than to be permitted to unburden herself of the difficulties, rebuffs and frustrations which she has in dealing with her offspring. Loyalty so often compels silent endurance. But to a foreigner like Hercule Poirot Mrs. Sutcliffe felt that this loyalty was not applicable. It was not like talking to the mother of another daughter.
“Meadowbank,” said Hercule Poirot, “is just passing through an unfortunate phase.”
It was the best thing he could think of to say at the moment. He felt its inadequacy and Mrs. Sutcliffe pounced upon the inadequacy immediately.
“Rather more than unfortunate!” she said. “Two murders! And a girl kidnapped. You can’t send your daughter to a school where the mistresses are being murdered all the time.”
It seemed a highly reasonable point of view.
“If the murders,” said Poirot, “turn out to be the work of one person and that person is apprehended, that makes a difference, does it not?”
“Well—I suppose so. Yes,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe doubtfully. “I mean—you mean—oh, I see, you mean like Jack the Ripper or that other man—who was it? Something to do with Devonshire. Cream? Neil Cream. Who went about killing an unfortunate type of woman. I suppose this murderer just goes about killing schoolmistresses! If once you’ve got him safely in prison, and hanged too, I hope, because you’re only allowed one murder, aren’t you?—like a dog with a bite—what was I saying? Oh yes, if he’s safely caught, well, then I suppose it would be different. Of course there can’t be many people like that, can there?”
“One certainly hopes not,” said Hercule Poirot.
“But then there’s this kidnapping too,” pointed out Mrs. Sutcliffe. “You don’t want to send your daughter to a school where she may be kidnapped, either, do you?”
“Assuredly not, madame. I see how clearly you have thought out the whole thing. You are so right in all you say.”
Mrs. Sutcliffe looked faintly pleased. Nobody had said anything like that to her for some time. Henry had merely said things like “What did you want to send her to Meadowbank for anyway?” and Jennifer had sulked and refused to answer.
“I have thought about it,” she said. “A great deal.”
“Then I should not let kidnapping worry you, madame. Entre nous, if I may speak in confidence, about Princess Shaista—It is not exactly a kidnapping—one suspects a romance—”
“You mean the naughty girl just ran away to marry somebody?”
“My lips are sealed,” said Hercule Poirot. “You comprehend it is not desired that there should be any scandal. This is in confidence entre nous. I know you will say nothing.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe virtuously. She looked down at the letter that Poirot had brought with him from the Chief Constable. “I don’t quite understand who you are, M.—er—Poirot. Are you what they call in books—a private eye?”
“I am a consultant,” said Hercule Poirot loftily.
This flavour of Harley Street encouraged Mrs. Sutcliffe a great deal.
“What do you want to talk to Jennifer about?” she demanded.
“Just to get her impressions of things,” said Poirot. “She is observant—yes?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t say that,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. “She’s not what I call a noticing kind of child at all. I mean, she is always so matter of fact.”
“It is better than making up things that have never happened at all,” said Poirot.
“Oh, Jennifer wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe, with certainty. She got up, went to the window and called “Jennifer.”
“I wish,” she said, to Poirot, as she came back again, “that you’d try and get it into Jennifer’s head that her father and I are only doing our best for her.”
Jennifer came into the room with a sulky face and looked with deep suspicion at Hercule Poirot.
“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 makeup, 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.
[Cat Among the Pigeons -Agatha Christie] Twenty Conversation