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Please.”
    “You're trespassing,” bellowed Sir George.
    “Please?”
    “Trespassing! No way through. You've got to go back. BACK! The way you came.”
    They stared as he gesticulated. Then they consulted together in a flood of foreign speech. Finally, doubtfully, blue-scarf said:
    “Back? To Hostel?”
    “That's right. And you take the road - road - round that way.”
    They retreated unwillingly. Sir George mopped his brow and looked down at Poirot.
    “Spend my time turning people off,” he said. “Used to come through the top gate. I've padlocked that. Now they come through the woods, having got over the fence. Think they can get down to the shore and the quay easily this way. Well, they can, of course, much quicker. But there's no right of way - never has been. And they're practically all foreigners - don't understand what you say, and just jabber back at you in Dutch or something.”
    “Of these, one is German and the other Italian, I think - I saw the Italian girl on her way from the station yesterday.”
    “Every kind of language they talk... Yes, Hattie? What did you say?” He drew back into the room.
    Poirot turned to find Mrs Oliver and a well-developed girl of fourteen dressed in Guide uniform close behind him.
    “This is Marlene,” said Mrs Oliver.
    Marlene acknowledged the introduction with a pronounced snuffle. Poirot bowed politely.
    “She's the Victim,” said Mrs Oliver.
    Marlene giggled.
    “I'm the horrible Corpse,” she said. “But I'm not going to have any blood on me.” Her tone expressed disappointment.
    “No?”
    “No. Just strangled with a cord, that's all. I'd of liked to be stabbed - and have lashings of red paint.”
    “Captain Warburton thought it might look too realistic,” said Mrs Oliver.
    “In a murder I think you ought to have blood,” said Marlene sulkily. She looked at Poirot with hungry interest. “Seen lots of murders, haven't you? So she says.”
    “One or two,” said Poirot modestly.
    He observed with alarm that Mrs Oliver was leaving them.
    “Any sex maniacs?” asked Marlene with avidity.
    “Certainly not.”
    “I like sex maniacs,” said Marlene with relish. “Reading about them, I mean.”
    “You would probably not like meeting one.”
    “Oh, I dunno. D'you know what? I believe we've got a sex maniac round here. My granddad saw a body in the woods once. He was scared and ran away, and when he come back it was gone. It was a woman's body. But of course he's batty, my granddad is, so no one listens to what he says.”
    Poirot managed to escape and regaining the house by a circuitous route, took refuge in his bedroom. He felt in need of repose.

Dead Man's Folly

Chapter 6
    Lunch was an early and quickly snatched affair of a cold buffet. At two-thirty a minor film star was to open the fкte. The weather, after looking ominously like rain, began to improve. By three o'clock the fкte was in full swing. People were paying the admission charge of half a crown in large numbers, and cars were lining one side of the long drive. Students from the Youth Hostel arrived in batches conversing loudly in foreign tongues. True to Mrs Masterton's forecast, Lady Stubbs had emerged from her bedroom just before half-past two, dressed in a cyclamen dress with an enormous coolie-shaped hat of black straw. She wore large quantities of diamonds.
    Miss Brewis murmured sardonically:
    “Thinks it's the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, evidently!”
    But Poirot complimented her gravely.
    “It is a beautiful creation that you have on, Madame.”
    “It is nice, isn't it,” said Hattie happily. “I wore it for Ascot.”
    The minor film star was arriving and Hattie moved forward to greet her.
    Poirot retreated into the background. He wandered around disconsolately - everything seemed to be proceeding in the normal fashion of fкtes. There was a coconut shy, presided over by Sir George in his heartiest fahion, a skittle alley and a hoop-la. There were various “stalls” displaying