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up to Uncle Roddy - he has his own rooms upstairs.”
    She led the way out of the room. Poirot looked back over his shoulder. A dull room, a room without character - except perhaps for the two portraits. By the style of the woman's dress, Poirot judged that they dated from some years back. If that was the first Mrs Restarick, Poirot did not think that he would have liked her.
    He said, “Those are fine portraits, Madame.”
    “Yes. Lansberger did them.”
    It was the name of a famous and exceedingly expensive fashionable portrait painter of twenty years ago. His meticulous naturalism had now gone out of fashion, and since his death, he was little spoken of. His sitters were sometimes sneeringly spoken of as “clothes props”, but Poirot thought they were a good deal more than that. He suspected that there was a carefully concealed mockery behind the smooth exteriors that Lansberger executed so effortlessly.
    Mary Restarick said as she went up the stairs ahead of him,
    “They have just come out of storage - and been cleaned up and -”
    She stopped abruptly - coming to a dead halt, one hand on the stair-rail.
    Above her, a figure had just turned the corner of the staircase on its way down. It was a figure that seemed strangely incongruous. It might have been someone in fancy dress, someone who certainly did not match with this house.
    He was a figure familiar enough to Poirot in different conditions, a figure often met in the streets of London or even at parties. A representative of the youth of today. He wore a black coat, an elaborate velvet waistcoat, skin tight pants, and rich curls of chestnut hair hung down on his neck. He looked exotic and rather beautiful, and it needed a few moments to be certain of his sex.
    “David!” Mary Restarick spoke sharply. “What on earth are you doing here?”
    The young man was by no means taken aback.
    “Startled you?” he asked. “So sorry.”
    “What are you doing here - in this house? You - have you come down here with Norma?”
    “Norma? No. I hoped to find her here.”
    “Find her here - what do you mean? She's in London.”
    “Oh, but my dear, she isn't. At any rate, she's not at 67 Borodene Mansions.”
    “What do you mean, she isn't there?”
    “Well, since she didn't come back this weekend, I thought she was probably here with you. I came down to see what she was up to.”
    “She left here Sunday night as usual.”
    She added in an angry voice, “Why didn't you ring the bell and let us know you were here? What are you doing roaming about the house?”
    “Really, darling, you seem to be thinking I'm going to pinch the spoons or something. Surely it's natural to walk into a house in broad daylight. Why ever not?”
    “Well, we're old-fashioned and we don't like it.”
    “Oh dear, dear.” David sighed. “The fuss everyone makes. Well, my dear, if I'm not going to have a welcome and you don't seem to know where your stepdaughter is, I suppose I'd better be moving along. Shall I turn out my pockets before I go?”
    “Don't be absurd, David.”
    “Ta-ta, then.” The young man passed them, waved an airy hand and went on down and out through the open front door.
    “Horrible creature,” said Mary Restarick, with a sharpness of rancour that startled Poirot. “I can't bear him. I simply can't stand him. Why is England absolutely full of these people nowadays?”
    “Ah, Madame, do not disquiet yourself. It is all a question of fashion. There have always been fashions. You see less in the country, but in London you meet plenty of them.”
    “Dreadful,” said Mary. “Absolutely dreadful. Effeminate, exotic.”
    “And yet not unlike a Vandyke portrait, do you not think so, Madame? In a gold frame, wearing a lace collar, you would not then say he was effeminate or exotic.”
    “Daring to come down here like that. Andrew would have been furious. It worries him dreadfully. Daughters can be very worrying. It's not even as though Andrew knew Norma well. He's been