Free Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie Page B

Folly and zig-zagged down the path to the river. The outlines of the boathouse showed beneath them.
    Poirot remarked that it would be awkward if the murder searchers were to light upon the boathouse and find the body by accident.
    “A sort of short cut? I thought of that. That's why the last clue is just a key. You can't unlock the door without it. It's a Yale. You can only open it from the inside.”
    A short steep slope led down to the door of the boathouse which was built out over the river, with a little wharf and a storage place for boats underneath. Mrs Oliver took a key from a pocket concealed amongst her purple folds and unlocked the door.
    “We've just come to cheer you up, Marlene,” she said brightly as she entered.
    She felt slightly remorseful at her unjust suspicions of Marlene's loyalty, for Marlene, artistically arranged as “the body,” was playing her part nobly, sprawled on the floor by the window.
    Marlene made no response. She lay quite motionless. The wind blowing gently through the open window rustled a pile of “comics” spread out on the table.
    “It's all right,” said Mrs Oliver impatiently. “It's only me and M. Poirot. Nobody's got any distance with the clues yet.”
    Poirot was frowning. Very gently he pushed Mrs Oliver aside and went and bent over the girl on the floor. A suppressed exclamation came from his lips. He looked up at Mrs Oliver.
    “So...” he said. “That which you expected has happened.”
    “You don't mean...” Mrs Oliver's eyes widened in horror. She grasped for one of the basket chairs and sat down. “You can't mean... She isn't dead?”
    Poirot nodded.
    “Oh, yes,” he said. “She is dead. Though not very long dead.”
    “But how -?”
    He lifted the corner of the gay scarf bound round the girl's head, so that Mrs Oliver could see the ends of the clothes line.
    “Just like my murder,” said Mrs Oliver unsteadily. “But who? And why?”
    “That is the question,” said Poirot.
    He forbore to add that those had also been her questions.
    And that the answers to them could not be her answers, since the victim was not the Yugoslavian first wife of an Atom Scientist, but Marlene Tucker, a fourteen-year-old village girl who, as far as was known, had not an enemy in the world.

Dead Man's Folly

Chapter 7
    Detective Inspector Bland sat behind a table in the study. Sir George had met him on arrival, had taken him down to the boathouse and had now returned with him to the house. Down at the boathouse a photographic unit was now busy and the fingerprint men and the medical officer had just arrived.
    “This do for you here all right?” asked Sir George.
    “Very nicely, thank you, sir.”
    “What am I to do about this show that's going on, tell 'em about it, stop it, or what?”
    Inspector Bland considered for a moment or two.
    “What have you done so far, Sir George?” he asked.
    “Haven't said anything. There's a sort of idea floating round that there's been an accident. Nothing more than that. I don't think anyone's suspected yet that it's - er - well, murder.”
    “Then leave things as they are just for the moment,” decided Bland. “The news will get round fast enough, I dare say,” he added cynically. He thought again for a moment or two before asking, “How many people do you think there are at this affair?”
    “Couple of hundred I should say,” answered Sir George, “and more pouring in every moment. People seem to have come from a good long way round. In fact the whole thing's being a roaring success. Damned unfortunate.”
    Inspector Bland inferred correctly that it was the murder an not the success of the fкte to which Sir George was referring.
    “A couple of hundred,” he mused, “and any one of them I suppose could have done it.”
    He sighed.
    “Tricky, said Sir George sympathetically. ”But I don't see what reason any one of them could have had. The whole thing seems quite fantastic - don't see who would want to go murdering a girl