christened "The Labours of Hercules".
Somehow, he thought, this was not an
English garden in which he was sitting.
There was an atmosphere here. He tried
to pin it down. It had qualities of magic, of
enchantment, certainly of beauty, bashful
beauty, yet wild. Here, if you were staging
a scene in the theatre, you would have
your nymphs, your fauns, you would have
Greek beauty, you would have fear too.
Yes, he thought, in this sunk garden there
is fear. What did Spence's sister say?
Something about a murder that took place
in the original quarry years ago? Blood had
stained the rock there, and afterwards,
death had been forgotten, all had been
covered over, Michael Garfield had come,
had planned and had created a garden of
great beauty, and an elderly woman who
had not many more years to live had paid
out money for it.
He saw now it was a young man who
stood on the other side of the hollow,
framed by golden red leaves, and a young
159
man, so Poirot now recognised, of an
unusual beauty. One didn't think of young
men that way nowadays. You said of a
young man that he was sexy or madly
attractive, and these evidences of praise are
often quite justly made. A man with a
craggy face, a man with wild greasy hair
and whose features were far from regular.
You didn't say a young man was beautiful.
If you did say it, you said it apologetically
as though you were praising some quality
that had been long dead. The sexy girls
didn't want Orpheus with his lute, they
wanted a pop singer with a raucous voice,
expressive eyes and large masses of unruly
hair.
Poirot got up and walked round the
path. As he got to the other side of the
steep descent, the young man came out
from the trees to meet him. His youth
seemed the most characteristic thing about
him, yet, as Poirot saw, he was not really
young. He was past thirty, perhaps nearer
forty. The smile on his face was very, very
faint. It was not quite a welcoming smile,
it was just a smile of quiet recognition.
He was tall, slender, with features of great
perfection such as a classical sculptor
160
might have produced. His eyes were dark, his hair was black and fitted him as a
woven chain mail helmet or cap might
have done. For a moment Poirot wondered
whether he and this young man might not
be meeting in the course of some pageant
that was being rehearsed. If so, thought
Poirot, looking down at his galoshes, I, alas, shall have to go to the wardrobe
mistress to get myself better equipped. He
said:
"I am perhaps trepassing here. If so, I
must apologise. I am a stranger in this part
of the world. I only arrived yesterday."
"I don't think one could call it trespassing."
The voice was very quiet; it was
polite yet in a curious way uninterested, as
if this man's thoughts were really somewhere
quite far away. "It's not exactly
open to the public, but people do walk
round here. Old Colonel Weston and his
wife don't mind. They would mind if there
was any damage done, but that's not really
very likely."
"No vandalism," said Poirot, looking
round him. "No litter that is noticeable.
Not even a little basket. That is very
unusual, is it not? And it seems deserted
161
—strange. Here you would think," he
went on, "there would be lovers walking."
"Lovers don't come here," said the
young man. "It's supposed to be unlucky
for some reason."
"Are you, I wonder, the architect? But
perhaps I'm guessing wrong."
"My name is Michael Garfield," said the
young man.
"I thought it might be," said Poirot. He
gesticulated with a hand around him.
"You made this?"
"Yes," said Michael Garfield.
"It is very beautiful," said Poirot.
"Somehow one feels it is always rather
unusual when something beautiful is made
in—well, frankly, what is a dull part of
the English landscape.
"I congratulate you," he said. "You
must be satisfied with what you have done
here."
"Is one ever satisfied? I wonder."
"You made it, I think, for a Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe. No longer alive, I
believe. There is a Colonel and Mrs.
Weston, I believe? Do they own it now?"
"Yes. They got it cheap. It's a big,
ungainly house—not easy to run—not
162
what most people want. She left it in her
Will to me."
"And you sold it."
"I sold the house."
"And not the Quarry Garden?"
"Oh yes. The Quarry Garden went with
it, practically thrown in, as one might
say."
"Now why?" said Poirot. "It is
interesting, that. You do not mind if I am
perhaps a little curious?"
"Your questions are not quite the usual
ones," said Michael Garfield.
"I ask not so much for facts as for
reasons. Why did A do so and so? Why
did B do something else? Why was C's
behaviour quite different from that of A
and B?"
"You should be talking to a scientist,"
said Michael. "It is a matter—or so we are
told nowadays—of genes or chromosomes.
The arrangement, the pattern, and so on."
"You said just now you were not
entirely satisfied because no-one ever was.
Was your employer, your patron, whatever
you like to call her—was she satisfied?
With this thing of beauty?"
163
"Up to a point," said Michael. "I saw
to that. She was easy to satisfy."
"That seems most unlikely," said
Hercule Poirot. "She was, I have learned, over sixty. Sixty-five at least. Are people
of that age often satisfied?"
"She was assured by me that what I had
carried out was the exact carrying out of
her instructions and imagination and
ideas."
"And was it?"
"Do you ask me that seriously?"
"No," said Poirot. "No. Frankly I do
not."
"For success in life," said Michael
Garfield, "one has to pursue the career one
wants, one has to satisfy such artistic leanings
as one has got, but one has as well to
be a tradesman. You have to sell your
wares. Otherwise you are tied to carrying
out other people's ideas in a way which
will not accord with one's own. I carried
out mainly my own ideas and I sold them, marketed them perhaps is a better word, to the client who employed me, as a direct
carrying out of her plans and schemes. It
is
not a very difficult art to learn. There is
no more to it than selling a child brown
164
eggs rather than white ones. The customer
has to be assured they are the best ones, the right ones. The essence of the countryside.
Shall we say, the hen's own preference?
Brown, farm, country eggs. One
does not sell them if one says They are
just eggs. There is only one difference
in eggs. They are new laid or they are
not.9"
"You are an unusual young man," said
Poirot. "Arrogant," he said thoughtfully.
"Perhaps."
"You have made here something very
beautiful. You have added vision and planning
to the rough material of stone
hollowed out in the pursuit of industry, with no thought of beauty in that hacking
out. You have added imagination, a result
seen in the mind's eye, that you have
managed to raise the money to fulfil. I
congratulate you. I pay my tribute. The
tribute of an old man who is approaching
a time when the end of his own work is
come."
"But at the moment you are still
carrying it on?"
"You know who I am, then?"
Poirot was pleased indubitably. He liked
165
people to know who he was. Nowadays,
he feared, most people did not.
"You follow the trail of blood ... It is
already known here. It is a small
community, news travels. Another public
success brought you here."
"Ah, you mean Mrs. Oliver."
"Ariadne Oliver. A best seller. People
wish to interview her, to know what she
thinks about such subjects as student
unrest, socialism, girls' clothing, should
sex be permissive, and many other things
that are no concern of hers."
"Yes, yes," said Poirot, "deplorable, I
think. They do not learn very much, I
have noticed, from Mrs. Oliver. They
learn only that she is fond of apples. That
has now been known for twenty years at
least, I should think, but she still repeats
it with a pleasant smile. Although now, I
fear, she no longer likes apples."
"It was apples that brought you here,
was it not?"
"Apples at a Hallowe'en party," said
Poirot. "You were at that party?"
"No."
"You were fortunate."
"Fortunate?" Michael Garfield repeated
166
the word, something that sounded faintly
like surprise in his voice.
"To have been one of the guests at a
party where murder is committed is not a
pleasant experience. Perhaps you have not
experienced it, but I tell you, you are
fortunate because—" Poirot became a little
more foreign "—il ya a des ennuis, vous
comprenez^ People ask you times, dates,
impertinent questions." He went on, "You
knew the child?"
"Oh yes. The Reynolds are well known
here. I know most of the people living
round here. We all know each other in
Woodleigh Common, though in varying
degrees. There is some intimacy, some
friendships, some people remain merest
acquaintances, and so on."
"What was she like, the child Joyce?"
"She was—how can I put it?—not
important. She had rather an ugly voice.
Shrill. Really, that's about all I remember
about her. Fm not particularly fond of
children. Mostly they bore me. Joyce
bored me. When she talked, she talked
about herself."
"She was not interesting?"
167
Michael Garfield looked slightly
surprised.
"I shouldn't think so," he said. "Does
she have to be?"
"It is my view that people devoid of
interest are unlikely to be murdered.
People are murdered for gain, for fear or
for love. One takes one's choice, but one
has to have a starting point--"
He broke off and glanced at his watch.
"I must proceed. I have an engagement
to fulfil. Once more, my felicitations."
He went on down, following the path
and picking his way carefully. He was glad
that for once he was not wearing his tight
patent leather shoes.
Michael Garfield was not the only
person he was to meet in the sunk garden
that day. As he reached the bottom he
noted that three paths led from here in
slightly different directions. At the
entrance of the middle path, sitting on a
fallen trunk of a tree, a child was awaiting
him. She made this clear at once.
"I expect you are Mr. Hercule Poirot, aren't you?" she said.
Her voice was clear, almost bell-like in
tone. She was a fragile creature. Some168
thing about her matched the sunk garden.
A dryad or some elf-like being.
"That is my name," said Poirot.
"I came to meet you," said the child.
"You are coming to tea with us, aren't
you?"
"With Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Oliver?
Yes."
"That's right. That's Mummy and Aunt
Ariadne." She added with a note of
censure: "You're rather late."
"I am sorry. I stopped to speak to
someone."
"Yes, I saw you. You were talking to
Michael, weren't you?"
"You know him?"
"Of course. We've lived here quite a
long time. I know everybody."
Poirot wondered how old she was. He
asked her. She said,
"I'm twelve years old. I'm going to
boarding-school next year."
"Will you be sorry or glad?"
don't think I like this place very much,
not as much as I did." She added, "I think
you'd better come with me, now, please."
"But certainly. But certainly. I apologise
for being late."
"Oh, it doesn't really matter."
"What's your name?"
"Miranda."
"I think it suits you," said Poirot.
"Are you thinking of Shakespeare?"
"Yes. Do you have it in lessons?"
"Yes. Miss Ernlyn read us some of it. I
asked Mummy to read some more. I liked
it. It has a wonderful sound. A brave new
world. There isn't anything really like
that, is there?"
"You don't believe in it?"
"Do you?"
"There is always a brave new world,"
said Poirot, "but only, you know, for very
special people. The lucky ones. The ones
who carry the making of that world within
themselves."
"Oh, I see," said Miranda, with an air
of apparently seeing with the utmost ease,
though what she saw Poirot rather
wondered.
She turned, started along the path and
said,
"We go this way. It's not very far. You
can go through the hedge of our garden."
170
Then s
he looked back over her shoulder
and pointed, saying:
"In the middle there, that's where the
fountain was."
"A fountain?"
"Oh, years ago. I suppose it's still there,
underneath the shrubs and the azaleas and
the other things. It was all broken up, you
see. People took bits of it away but nobody
has put a new one there."
"It seems a pity."
"I don't know. I'm not sure. Do you
like fountains very much?"
"Ca depend," said Poirot.
"I know some French," said Miranda.
"That's it depends, isn't it?"
"You are quite right. You seem very
well educated."
"Everyone says Miss Ernlyn is a very
fine teacher. She's our head-mistress. She's
awfully strict and a bit stern, but she's
terribly interesting sometimes in the things
she tells us."
"Then she is certainly a good teacher,"
said Hercule Poirot. "You know this place
very well—you seem to know all the
paths. Do you come here often?"
"Oh yes, it's one of my favourite walks.
171
Nobody knows wliere I am, you see, when
I come here. 1. sit in trees--on the
branches, and wsitch things. I like that.
Watching things lhappen."
"What sort of tthings?"
"Mostly birds and squirrels. Birds are
very quarrelsome^ aren't they? Not like in
the bit of poetry that says 'birds in their
little nests agree". They don't really, do
they? And I watc:h squirrels."
"And you watc± people?"
"Sometimes. iBut there aren't many
people who come; here."
"Why not, I wonder?"
"I suppose the^y are afraid."
"Why should tAey be afraid?"
"Because some;one was killed here long
ago. Before it wass a garden, I mean. It was
a quarry once anod then there was a gravel
pile or a sand pLie and that's where they
found her. In tluat. Do you think the old
saying is true--^bout you're born to be
hanged or born t:o be drowned?"
"Nobody is born to be hanged
nowadays. You <do not hang people any
longer in this country."
"But they ha<ig them in some other
172
countries. They hang them in the streets.
I've read it in the papers."
"Ah. Do you think that is a good thing
or a bad thing?"
Miranda's response was not strictly in
answer to the question, but Poirot felt that
it was perhaps meant to be.
"Joyce was drowned," she said.