Free Third Girl by Agatha Christie Page A

getting up and looking at her face in a rather unflattering small kitchen mirror, “I think it might have been me he really came to see.”
    â€œYou’re too idiotic! He came here looking for Norma.”
    â€œThat girl’s mental,” said Frances.
    â€œSometimes I really think she is!”
    â€œWell, I know she is. Look here, Claudia, I’m going to tell you that something now. You ought to know. I broke the string of my bra the other day and I was in a hurry. I know you don’t like anyone fiddling with your things—”
    â€œI certainly don’t,” said Claudia.
    â€œâ€”but Norma never minds, or doesn’t notice. Anyway, I went into her room and I rootled in her drawer and I—well, I found something. A knife.”
    â€œA knife!” said Claudia, surprised. “What sort of a knife?”
    â€œYou know we had that sort of shindy thing in the courtyard?A group of beats, teenagers who’d come in here and were having a fight with flick-knives and all that? And Norma came in just after.”
    â€œYes, yes, I remember.”
    â€œOne of the boys got stabbed, so a reporter told me, and he ran away. Well, the knife in Norma’s drawer was a flick-knife. It had got a stain on it—looked like dried blood.”
    â€œFrances! You’re being absurdly dramatic.”
    â€œPerhaps. But I’m sure that’s what it was. And what on earth was that doing hidden away in Norma’s drawer, I should like to know?”
    â€œI suppose—she might have picked it up.”
    â€œWhat—a souvenir? And hidden it away and never told us?”
    â€œWhat did you do with it?”
    â€œI put it back,” said Frances slowly. “I—I didn’t know what else to do…I couldn’t decide whether to tell you or not. Then yesterday I looked again and it was gone, Claudia. Not a trace of it.”
    â€œYou think she sent David here to get it?”
    â€œWell, she might have done…I tell you, Claudia, in future I’m going to keep my door locked at night.”

Seven
    M rs. Oliver woke up dissatisfied. She saw stretching before her a day with nothing to do. Having packed off her completed manuscript with a highly virtuous feeling, work was over. She had now only, as many times before, to relax, to enjoy herself; to lie fallow until the creative urge became active once more. She walked about her flat in a rather aimless fashion, touching things, picking them up, putting them down, looking in the drawers of her desk, realising that there were plenty of letters there to be dealt with but feeling also that in her present state of virtuous accomplishment, she was certainly not going to deal with anything so tiresome as that now. She wanted something interesting to do. She wanted—what did she want?
    She thought about the conversation she had had with Hercule Poirot, the warning he had given her. Ridiculous! After all, why shouldn’t she participate in this problem which she was sharing with Poirot? Poirot might choose to sit in a chair, put the tips of hisfingers together, and set his grey cells whirring to work while his body reclined comfortably within four walls. That was not the procedure that appealed to Ariadne Oliver. She had said, very forcibly, that she at least was going to do something. She was going to find out more about this mysterious girl. Where was Norma Restarick? What was she doing? What more could she, Ariadne Oliver, find out about her?
    Mrs. Oliver prowled about, more and more disconsolate. What could one do? It wasn’t very easy to decide. Go somewhere and ask questions? Should she go down to Long Basing? But Poirot had already been there—and found out presumably what there was to be found out. And what excuse could she offer for barging into Sir Roderick Horsefield’s house?
    She considered another visit to Borodene Mansions. Something still to be found out there, perhaps? She would