She seemed pleased at Jane’s graciousness and complimentary sayings. A face that you liked but that you would find it hard to know again if you were to meet her, say, in different clothes. Soft dark hair, eyes a rather colourless pale blue, pale face and a mobile sensitive mouth. She was a kind of personified soft agreement. It consisted in an absence of any jarring or strident note. She had, I thought, distinct charm, but charm of a somewhat negative order. I studied her with some attention now that I had a chance to do so at close quarters. She was a quiet girl with a pleasant low voice. The exaggerated self-consciousness of a vain man too accustomed to playing a part to lay it aside easily.Ĭarlotta Adams, at any rate, was behaving naturally enough.

But that, I told myself, might be merely characteristic of a film star. Bryan Martin? He was certainly not behaving quite naturally. No, the undercurrents that I sensed were nothing to do with Jane Wilkinson. She had been highly amused, as a child might be amused, by the clever counterfeit of herself. Her desire to include Carlotta Adams in the party had been, I decided, a mere whim. Now she was obviously in high good humour. She had desired an interview with Poirot, and had carried her point and obtained her desire without delay. She was obviously a young woman who saw only one thing at a time. Jane Wilkinson I acquitted of any subtleties. The supper party that followed was quite a merry one, yet I sometimes had the feeling that there were undercurrents which I was incapable of appreciating. It looked to me exactly the same as before and quite incapable of improvement. I presume that Jane had now ‘fixed her face’, whatever that term denoted, to her own satisfaction.

At that moment Jane sailed in from the next room, Carlotta Adams behind her.

Poirot jane wilkinson