"I expect you are Mr. Hercule Poirot, aren't you?" she said.

Her voice was clear, almost bell-like in tone. She was a fragile creature. Some168 thing about her matched the sunk garden.

A dryad or some elf-like being.

"That is my name," said Poirot.

"I came to meet you," said the child.

"You are coming to tea with us, aren't you?"

"With Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Oliver?

Yes."

"That's right. That's Mummy and Aunt Ariadne." She added with a note of censure: "You're rather late."

"I am sorry. I stopped to speak to someone."

"Yes, I saw you. You were talking to Michael, weren't you?"

"You know him?"

"Of course. We've lived here quite a long time. I know everybody."

Poirot wondered how old she was. He asked her. She said, "I'm twelve years old. I'm going to boarding-school next year."

"Will you be sorry or glad?"

"I don't really know till I get there. I don't think I like this place very much, not as much as I did." She added, "I think you'd better come with me, now, please."

"But certainly. But certainly. I apologise for being late."

"Oh, it doesn't really matter."

"What's your name?"

"Miranda."

"I think it suits you," said Poirot.

"Are you thinking of Shakespeare?"

"Yes. Do you have it in lessons?"

"Yes. Miss Ernlyn read us some of it. I asked Mummy to read some more. I liked it. It has a wonderful sound. A brave new world. There isn't anything really like that, is there?"

"You don't believe in it?"

"Do you?"

"There is always a brave new world," said Poirot, "but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves."

"Oh, I see," said Miranda, with an air of apparently seeing with the utmost ease, though what she saw Poirot rather wondered.

She turned, started along the path and said, "We go this way. It's not very far. You can go through the hedge of our garden."

Then she looked back over her shoulder and pointed, saying:

"In the middle there, that's where the fountain was."

"A fountain?"

"Oh, years ago. I suppose it's still there, underneath the shrubs and the azaleas and the other things. It was all broken up, you see.

People took bits of it away but nobody has put a new one there."

"It seems a pity."

"I don't know. I'm not sure. Do you like fountains very much?"

"Ca depend," said Poirot.

"I know some French," said Miranda.

"That's it depends, isn't it?"

"You are quite right. You seem very well educated."

"Everyone says Miss Ernlyn is a very fine teacher. She's our head-mistress. She's awfully strict and a bit stern, but she's terribly interesting sometimes in the things she tells us."

"Then she is certainly a good teacher," said Hercule Poirot.

"You know this place very well you seem to know all the paths. Do you come here often?"

"Oh yes, it's one of my favourite walks.

Nobody knows where I am, you see, when I come here. I. sit in trees-on the branches, and wsitch things. I like that.

Watching things lhappen."

"What sort of tthings?"

"Mostly birds and squirrels. Birds are very quarrelsome^ aren't they?

Not like in the bit of poetry that says 'birds in their little nests agree". They don't really, do they? And I watch squirrels."

"And you watc people?"

"Sometimes. iBut there aren't many people who come; here."

"Why not, I wonder?"

"I suppose the^y are afraid."

"Why should tAey be afraid?"

"Because someone was killed here long ago. Before it wass a garden, I mean. It was a quarry once anod then there was a gravel pile or a sand pLie and that's where they found her. In tluat. Do you think the old saying is true-About you're born to be hanged or born to be drowned?"

"Nobody is born to be hanged nowadays. You do not hang people any longer in this country."

"But they ha«ig them in some other countries. They hang them in the streets.

I've read it in the papers."

"Ah. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?"

Miranda's response was not strictly in answer to the question, but Poirot felt that it was perhaps meant to be.

"Joyce was drowned," she said.

"Mummy didn't want to tell me, but that was rather silly, I think, don't you? I mean, I'm twelve years old."

"Was Joyce a friend of yours?"

"Yes. She was a great friend in a way.

She told me very interesting things sometimes.

All about elephants and rajahs.

She'd been to India once. I wish I'd been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all our secrets. I haven't so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy's been to Greece, you know. That's where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn't take me."

"Who told you about Joyce?"

"Mrs. Perring. She's our cook. She was talking to Mrs. Minden who comes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water."

"Have you any idea who that someone was?"

"I shouldn't think so. They didn't seem to know, but then they're both rather stupid really."

"Do you know, Miranda?"

"I wasn't there. I had a sore throat and a temperature so Mummy wouldn't take me to the party. But I think I could know.

Because she was drowned. That's why I asked if you thought people were born to be drowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes."

Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from the Quarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with her elfin slimness it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous for Poirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding back the more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in the garden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cucumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neat garden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalow house. Miranda led the way through an open french window, announcing with the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of a rare beetle:

"I've got him all right."

"Miranda, you didn't bring him through the hedge, did you? You ought to have gone round by the path at the side gate."

"This is a better way," said Miranda.

"Quicker and shorter."

"And much more painful, I suspect."

"I forget," said Mrs. Oliver "I did introduce you, didn't I, to my friend Mrs.

Butler?"

"Of course. In the post office."

The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments while there had been a queue in front of the counter.

Poirot was better able now to study Mrs.

Oliver's friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matter of a slim woman in a disguising head-scarf and a mackintosh.

Judith Butler was a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled a dryad or a wood-nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water spirit She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply on her shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintly hollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea green eyes fringed with long eyelashes.

"I'm very glad to thank you properly, Monsieur Poirot," said Mrs.

Butler.

"It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you."

"When my friend, Mrs. Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have to do it," said Poirot.

"What nonsense," said Mrs. Oliver.

"She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all about this beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen?

You'll find the scones on the wire tray above the oven."

Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile directed at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say,

"She's getting me out of the way for a short time."