After a moment or two Poirot said:
“Many people. Mademoiselle, must envy you.”
Rosamund Darnley said coolly: “Oh – yes. Naturally.”
She thought about it, her lips curved upward in their ironic smile.
“Yes, I’m really the perfect type of the successful woman! I enjoy the artistic satisfaction of the successful creative artist (I really do like designing clothes) and the financial satisfaction of the successful business woman. I’m very well off, I’ve a good figure, a passable face, and a not too malicious tongue.” She paused. Her smile widened. “Of course – I haven’t got a husband! I’ve failed there, haven’t I, M. Poirot?”
Poirot said gallantly: “Mademoiselle, if you are not married, it is because none of my sex have been sufficiently eloquent. It is from choice, not necessity, that you remain single.”
Rosamund Darnley said: “And yet, like all men, I’m sure you believe in your heart that no woman is content unless she is married and has children.”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“To marry and have children that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred – more, in a thousand – can make for herself a name and a position as you have done.”
Rosamund grinned at him. “And yet, all the same, I’m nothing but a wretched old maid! That’s what I feel today, at any rate. I’d be happier with a twopence a year and a big silent brute of a husband and a brood of brats running after me. That’s true, isn’t it?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “Since you say so, then, yes, Mademoiselle.”
Rosamund laughed, her equilibrium suddenly restored. She took out a cigarette and lit it. She said:
“You certainly know how to deal with women, M. Poirot. I now feel like taking the opposite point of view and arguing with you in favour of careers for women. Of course I’m damned well off as I am – and I know it!”
“Then everything in the garden – or shall we say at the seaside? – is lovely, Mademoiselle.”
“Quite right.”
Poirot, in his turn, extracted his cigarette case and lit one of those tiny cigarettes which it was his affectation to smoke. Regarding the ascending haze with a quizzical eye, he murmured:
“So Mr – no, Captain – Marshall is an old friend of yours, Mademoiselle?”
Rosamund sat up. She said:
“Now how do you know that? Oh, I suppose Ken told you.”
Poirot shook his head. “Nobody has told me anything. After all, Mademoiselle, I am a detective. It was the obvious conclusion to draw.”
Rosamund Darnley said: “I don’t see it.”
