“Alas, the proverb is true. When you are courting, two is company, is it not, three is none?”
Jane said:
“Courting? What a word!”
“But yes, it is the right word, is it not? For a young man who pays attention to a young lady before asking her hand in marriage? They say, do they not, a courting couple?”
“Your friends seem to say some very funny things.”
Hercule Poirot chanted softly:
“Thirteen, fourteen, maids are courting. See, all around us they are doing it.”
Jane said sharply:
“Yes—I’m just one of the crowd, I suppose….”
She turned suddenly to Poirot.
“I want to apologize to you. I made a mistake the other day. I thought you had wormed your way in and come down to Exsham just to spy on Howard. But afterwards Uncle Alistair told me that he had definitely asked you because he wanted you to clear up this business of that missing woman—Sainsbury Seale. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.”
“So I’m sorry for what I said to you that evening. But it did look like it, you know. I mean—as though you were just following Howard and spying on us both.”
“Even if it were true, Mademoiselle—I was an excellent witness to the fact that Mr. Raikes bravely saved your uncle’s life by springing on his assailant and preventing him from firing another shot.”
“You’ve got a funny way of saying things, M. Poirot. I never know whether you’re serious or not.”
Poirot said gravely:
“At the moment I am very serious, Miss Olivera.”
Jane said with a slight break in her voice:
“Why do you look at me like that? As though—as though you were sorry for me?”
“Perhaps because I am sorry, Mademoiselle, for the things that I shall have to do so soon….”
“Well, then—don’t do them!”
“Alas, Mademoiselle, but I must….”
She stared at him for a minute or two, then she said:
“Have you—
found that woman?”
Poirot said:
“Let us say—that I know where she is.”
“Is she dead?”
“I have not said so.”
“She’s alive, then?”