Hickory Dickory Dock. Агата Кристи

is my impression… I wonder, madame, if I could speak to Miss Patricia Lane. I would like to examine the ring that was stolen.’

      ‘Why, of course, M. Poirot. I’ll go down and send her up to you. I want to speak to Len Bateson about something.’

      Patricia Lane came in shortly afterwards with an inquiring look on her face.

      ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, Miss Lane.’

      ‘Oh, that’s all right. I wasn’t busy. Mrs Hubbard said you wanted to see my ring.’

      She slipped it off her finger and held it out to him.

      ‘It’s quite a large diamond really, but of course it’s an old-fashioned setting. It was my mother’s engagement ring.’

      Poirot, who was examining the ring, nodded his head.

      ‘She is alive still, your mother?’

      ‘No. Both my parents are dead.’

      ‘That is sad.’

      ‘Yes. They were both very nice people but somehow I was never quite so close to them as I ought to have been. One regrets that afterwards. My mother wanted a frivolous pretty daughter, a daughter who was fond of clothes and social things. She was very disappointed when I took up archaeology.’

      ‘You have always been of a serious turn of mind?’

      ‘I think so, really. One feels life is so short one ought really to be doing something worth while.’

      Poirot looked at her thoughtfully.

      Patricia Lane was, he guessed, in her early thirties. Apart from a smear of lipstick, carelessly applied, she wore no make-up. Her mouse-coloured hair was combed back from her face and arranged without artifice. Her quite pleasant blue eyes looked at you seriously through glasses.

      ‘No allure, bon Dieu,’ said Poirot to himself with feeling. ‘And her clothes! What is it they say? Dragged through a hedge backwards? Ma foi, that expresses it exactly!’

      He was disapproving. He found Patricia’s well-bred unaccented tones wearisome to the ear. ‘She is intelligent and cultured, this girl,’ he said to himself, ‘and, alas, every year she will grow more boring! In old age—’ His mind darted for a fleeting moment to the memory of Countess Vera Rossakoff. What exotic splendour there, even in decay! These girls of nowadays—

      But that is because I grow old,’ said Poirot to himself. ‘Even this excellent girl may appear a veritable Venus to some man.’ But he doubted that.

      Patricia was saying:

      ‘I’m really very shocked about what happened to Bess—to Miss Johnston. Using that green ink seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to make it look as though it was Nigel’s doing. But I do assure you, M. Poirot, Nigel would never do a thing like that.’