‘If you ask me,’ she said, ‘it’s one of them nasty foreigners up at the Hostel. You never know where you are with foreigners. Nice spoken as most of them are, some of the shirts they wear you wouldn’t believe. Shirts with girls on them with these bikinis, as they call them. And all of them sunning themselves here and there with no shirts at all on – it all leads to trouble. That’s what I say!’

Still weeping, Mrs Tucker was escorted from the room by Constable Hoskins. Bland reflected that the local verdict seemed to be the comfortable and probably age-long one of attributing every tragic occurrence to unspecified foreigners.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

‘Got a sharp tongue, she has,’ Hoskins said when he returned. ‘Nags her husband and bullies her old father. I dare say she’s spoke sharp to the girl once or twice and now she’s feeling bad about it. Not that girls mind what their mothers say to them. Drops off ’em like water off a duck’s back.’

Inspector Bland cut short these general reflections and told Hoskins to fetch Mrs Oliver.

The inspector was slightly startled by the sight of Mrs Oliver. He had not expected anything so voluminous, so purple and in such a state of emotional disturbance.

‘I feel awful,’ said Mrs Oliver, sinking down in the chair in front of him like a purple blancmange. ‘Awful,’ she added in what were clearly capital letters.

The inspector made a few ambiguous noises, and Mrs Oliver swept on.

‘Because, you see, it’s my murder. I did it!’

For a startled moment Inspector Bland thought that Mrs Oliver was accusing herself of the crime.

‘Why I should ever have wanted the Yugoslavian wife of an Atom Scientist to be the victim, I can’t imagine,’ said Mrs Oliver, sweeping her hands through her elaborate hair-do in a frenzied manner with the result that she looked slightly drunk. ‘Absolutely asinine of me. It might just as well have been the second gardener who wasn’t what he seemed – and that wouldn’t have mattered half as much because, after all, most men can look after themselves. If they can’t look after themselves they ought to be able to look after themselves, and in that case I shouldn’t have minded so much. Men get killed and nobody minds – I mean, nobody except their wives and sweethearts and children and things like that.’

At this point the inspector entertained unworthy suspicions about Mrs Oliver. This was aided by the faint fragrance of brandy which was wafted towards him. On their return to the house Hercule Poirot had firmly administered to his friend this sovereign remedy for shocks.

‘I’m not mad and I’m not drunk,’ said Mrs Oliver, intuitively divining his thoughts, ‘though I dare say with that man about who thinks I drink like a fish and says everybody says so, you probably think so too.’