Heard Mrs. Olivera's high, complaining, clucking voice.
"I really will not tolerate your rudeness, Jane.
I shall take steps to see that you do not interfere -"
The secretary said, "Then at a little before six tomorrow, M. Poirot?"
Poirot nodded assent mechanically.
He was standing like a man who has seen a ghost.
But it was his ears, not his eyes, that had given him the shock.
Two of the sentences that had drifted in through the open door were almost identical with those he had heard last night through the telephone, and he knew why the voice had been faintly familiar.
As he walked out into the sunshine he shook his head blankly.
Mrs. Olivera?
But it was impossible!
It could not have been Mrs. Olivera who had spoken over the phone!
That empty-headed society woman – selfish, brainless, grasping, self-centered?
What had he called her to himself just now?
"That good fat hen? C'est ridicule!" said Hercule Poirot.
His ears, he decided, must have deceived him.
And yet -
VI The Rolls called punctually for Poirot at a little before six.
Alistair Blunt and his secretary were the only occupants.
Mrs. Olivera and Jane had gone down in another car earlier, it seemed.
The drive was uneventful.
Blunt talked a little, mostly of his garden and of a recent horticultural show.
Poirot congratulated him on his escape from death, at which Blunt demurred.
He said: "Oh, that!
Don't think the fellow was shooting at me particularly.
Anyway, the poor chap hadn't the first idea of how to aim!
Just one of these half-crazed students.
There's no harm in them really.
They just get worked up and fancy that a pot shot at the P.M. ill alter the course of history.
It's pathetic, really."
"There have been other attempts on your life, have there not?"
"Sounds quite melodramatic," said Blunt, with a slight twinkle. "Someone sent me a bomb by post not long ago. It wasn't a very efficient bomb. You know, these fellows who want to take on the management of the world – what sort of an efficient business do they think they could make of it, when they can't even devise an effectual bomb?"
He shook his head.
"It's always the same thing – long-haired, woolly idealists – without one practical bit of knowledge in their heads.
I'm not a clever chap – never have been – but I can just read and write and do arithmetic.
D'you understand what I mean by that?"
"I think so, but explain to me further."
"Well, if I read something that is written down in English I can understand what it means – I am not talking of abstruse stuff, formulae or philosophy – just plain businesslike English – most people can't!
If I want to write down something I can write down what I mean – I've discovered that quite a lot of people can't do that either!
And, as I say, I can do plain arithmetic.
If Jones has eight bananas and Brown takes ten away from him, how many will Jones have left?
That's the kind of sum people like to pretend has a simple answer.
They won't admit, first, that Brown can't do it – and second, that there won't be an answer in plus bananas!"
"They prefer the answer to be a conjuring trick?"
"Exactly.
Politicians are just as bad.
But I've always held out for plain common sense.
You can't beat it, you know, in the end."
He added with a slightly self-conscious laugh:
"But I mustn't talk shop.