‘I find it very confusing,’ he said. ‘So many paths, and one is never sure where they lead. And trees, trees everywhere.’

‘You sound like that disgruntled woman we’ve just left.’

They passed the Folly and zig-zagged down the path to the river. The outlines of the boathouse showed beneath them.

Poirot remarked that it would be awkward if the murder searchers were to light upon the boathouse and find the body by accident.

‘A sort of short cut? I thought of that. That’s why the last clue is just a key. You can’t unlock the door without it. It’s a Yale. You can only open it from the inside.’

A short steep slope led down to the door of the boathouse which was build out over the river, with a little wharf and a storage place for boats underneath. Mrs Oliver took a key from a pocket concealed amongst her purple folds and unlocked the door.

‘We’ve just come to cheer you up, Marlene,’ she said brightly as she entered.

She felt slightly remorseful at her unjust suspicions of Marlene’s loyalty, for Marlene, artistically arranged as ‘the body,’ was playing her part nobly, sprawled on the floor by the window.

Marlene made no response. She lay quite motionless. The wind blowing gently through the open window rustled a pile of ‘comics’ spread out on the table.

‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Oliver impatiently. ‘It’s only me and M. Poirot. Nobody’s got any distance with the clues yet.’

Poirot was frowning. Very gently he pushed Mrs Oliver aside and went and bent over the girl on the floor. A suppressed exclamation came from his lips. He looked up at Mrs Oliver.

‘So…’ he said. ‘That which you expected has happened.’

‘You don’t mean…’ Mrs Oliver’s eyes widened in horror. She grasped for one of the basket chairs and sat down. ‘You can’t mean…She isn’t dead?’

Poirot nodded.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘She is dead. Though not very long dead.’

‘But how –?’

He lifted the corner of the gay scarf bound round the girl’s head, so that Mrs Oliver could see the ends of the clothes line.

‘Just like my murder,’ said Mrs Oliver unsteadily. ‘But who? And why?’

‘That is the question,’ said Poirot.

He forebore to add that those had also been her questions.

And that the answers to them could not be her answers, since the victim was not the Yugoslavian first wife of an Atom Scientist, but Marlene Tucker, a fourteen-year-old village girl who, as far as was known, had not an enemy in the world.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Detective-Inspector Bland sat behind a table in the study. Sir George had met him on arrival, had taken him down to the boathouse and had now returned with him to the house. Down at the boathouse a photographic unit was now busy and the fingerprint men and the medical officer had just arrived.