“Why those two? There is no error in them.”
“They are firms you’ve only just begun to deal with. It looks bad to pay too promptly when you’ve just opened an account—looks as though you were working up to get some credit later on.”
“Ah!” murmured Poirot. “I bow to your superior knowledge of the British tradesman.”
“There’s nothing much I don’t know about them,” said Miss Lemon grimly.
II
The letter to Miss Amelia Barrowby was duly written and sent, but no reply was forthcoming. Perhaps, thought Hercule Poirot, the old lady had unravelled her mystery herself. Yet he felt a shade of surprise that in that case she should not have written a courteous word to say that his services were no longer required.
It was five days later when Miss Lemon, after receiving her morning’s instructions, said, “That Miss Barrowby we wrote to—no wonder there’s been no answer. She’s dead.”
Hercule Poirot said very softly, “Ah—dead.” It sounded not so much like a question as an answer.
Opening her handbag, Miss Lemon produced a newspaper cutting. “I saw it in the tube and tore it out.”
Just registering in his mind approval of the fact that, though Miss Lemon used the word “tore,” she had neatly cut the entry with scissors, Poirot read the announcement taken from the Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Morning Post: “On March 26th—suddenly—at Rosebank, Charman’s Green, Amelia Jan Barrowby, in her seventy-third year. No flowers, by request.”
Poirot read it over. He murmured under his breath, “Suddenly.” Then he said briskly, “If you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss Lemon?”
The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system, took down in rapid and correct shorthand:
Dear Miss Barrowby,
I have received no reply from you, but as I shall be in the neighbourhood of Charman’s Green on Friday, I will call upon you on that day and discuss more fully the matter mentioned to me in your letter.
Yours, etc.
“Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at once, it should get to Charman’s Green tonight.”
On the following morning a letter in a black-edged envelope arrived by the second post:
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter my aunt, Miss Barrowby, passed away on the twenty-sixth, so the matter you speak of is no longer of importance.
Yours truly,
Mary Delafontaine
Poirot smiled to himself. “No longer of importance . . . Ah—that is what we shall see. En avant—to Charman’s Green.”
Rosebank was a house that seemed likely to live up to its name, which is more than can be said for most houses of its class and character.
Hercule Poirot paused as he walked up the path to the front door and looked approvingly at the neatly planned beds on either side of him. Rose trees that promised a good harvest later in the year, and at present daffodils, early tulips, blue hyacinths—the last bed was partly edged with shells.
Poirot murmured to himself, “How does it go, the English rhyme the children sing?
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells, and silver bells.
And pretty maids all in a row.
“Not a row, perhaps,” he considered, “but here is at least one pretty maid to make the little rhyme come right.”
The front door had opened and a neat little maid in cap and apron was looking somewhat dubiously at the spectacle of a heavily moustached foreign gentleman talking aloud to himself in the front garden. She was, as Poirot had noted, a very pretty little maid, with round blue eyes and rosy cheeks.
Poirot raised his hat with courtesy and addressed her: “Pardon, but does a Miss Amelia Barrowby live here?”
The little maid gasped and her eyes grew rounder. “Oh, sir, didn’t you know? She’s dead. Ever so sudden it was. Tuesday night.”
She hesitated, divided between two strong instincts: the first, distrust of a foreigner; the second, the pleasurable enjoyment of her class in dwelling on the subject of illness and death.
“You amaze me,” said Hercule Poirot, not very truthfully. “I had an appointment with the lady for today. However, I can perhaps see the other lady who lives here.”
The little maid seemed slightly doubtful. “The mistress? Well, you could see her, perhaps, but I don’t know whether she’ll be seeing anyone or not.”
“She will see me,” said Poirot, and handed her a card.
The authority of his tone had its effect. The rosy-cheeked maid fell back and ushered Poirot into a sitting room on the right of the hall. Then, card in hand, she departed to summon her mistress.
Hercule Poirot looked round him. The room was a perfectly conventional drawing room—oatmeal-coloured paper with a frieze round the top, indeterminate cretonnes, rose-coloured cushions and curtains, a good many china knickknacks and ornaments. There was nothing in the room that stood out, that announced a definite personality.
Suddenly Poirot, who was very sensitive, felt eyes watching him. He wheeled round. A girl was standing in the entrance of the French window—a small, sallow girl, with very black hair and suspicious eyes.
She came in, and as Poirot made a little bow she burst out abruptly, “Why have you come?”
Poirot did not reply. He merely raised his eyebrows.
“You are not a lawyer—no?” Her English was good, but not for a minute would anyone have taken her to be English.
“Why should I be a lawyer, mademoiselle?”
The girl stared at him sullenly. “I thought you might be. I thought you had come perhaps to say that she did not know what she was doing. I have heard of such things—the not due influence; that is what they call it, no? But that is not right. She wanted me to have the money, and I shall have it. If it is needful I shall have a lawyer of my own. The money is mine. She wrote it down so, and so it shall be.” She looked ugly, her chin thrust out, her eyes gleaming.
The door opened and a tall woman entered and said, “Katrina.”
The girl shrank, flushed, muttered something and went out through the window.
Poirot turned to face the newcomer who had so effectually dealt with the situation by uttering a single word. There had been authority in her voice, and contempt and a shade of well-bred irony. He realized at once that this was the owner of the house, Mary Delafontaine.
“M. Poirot? I wrote to you. You cannot have received my letter.”
“Alas, I have been away from London.”
“Oh, I see; that explains it. I must introduce myself. My name is Delafontaine. This is my husband. Miss Barrowby was my aunt.”
Mr. Delafontaine had entered so quietly that his arrival had passed unnoticed. He was a tall man with grizzled hair and an indeterminate manner. He had a nervous way of fingering his chin. He looked often towards his wife, and it was plain that he expected her to take the lead in any conversation.
“I must regret that I intrude in the midst of your bereavement,” said Hercule Poirot.
“I quite realize that it is not your fault,” said Mrs. Delafontaine. “My aunt died on Tuesday evening. It was quite unexpected.”
“Most unexpected,” said Mr. Delafontaine. “Great blow.” His eyes watched the window where the foreign girl had disappeared.
“I apologize,” said Hercule Poirot. “And I withdraw.” He moved a step towards the door.
“Half a sec,” said Mr. Delafontaine. “You—er—had an appointment with Aunt Amelia, you say?”
“Parfaitement.”
“Perhaps you will tell us about it,” said his wife. “If there is anything we can do—”
“It was of a private nature,” said Poirot. “I am a detective,” he added simply.
Mr. Delafontaine knocked over a little china figure he was handling. His wife looked puzzled.
“A detective? And you had an appointment with Auntie? But how extraord
inary!” She stared at him. “Can’t you tell us a little more, M. Poirot? It—it seems quite fantastic.”
Poirot was silent for a moment. He chose his words with care.
“It is difficult for me, madame, to know what to do.”
“Look here,” said Mr. Delafontaine. “She didn’t mention Russians, did she?”
“Russians?”
“Yes, you know—Bolshies, Reds, all that sort of thing.”
“Don’t be absurd, Henry,” said his wife.
Mr. Delafontaine collapsed. “Sorry—sorry—I just wondered.”
Mary Delafontaine looked frankly at Poirot. Her eyes were very blue—the colour of forget-me-nots. “If you can tell us anything, M. Poirot, I should be glad if you would do so. I can assure you that I have a—a reason for asking.”
Mr. Delafontaine looked alarmed. “Be careful, old girl—you know there may be nothing in it.”
Again his wife quelled him with a glance. “Well, M. Poirot?”
Slowly, gravely, Hercule Poirot shook his head. He shook it with visible regret, but he shook it. “At present, madame,” he said, “I fear I must say nothing.”
He bowed, picked up his hat and moved to the door. Mary Delafontaine came with him into the hall. On the doorstep he paused and looked at her.
“You are fond of your garden, I think, madame?”
“I? Yes, I spend a lot of time gardening.”
“Je vous fais mes compliments.”
He bowed once more and strode down to the gate. As he passed out of it and turned to the right he glanced back and registered two impressions—a sallow face watching him from the first floor window, and a man of erect and soldierly carriage pacing up and down on the opposite side of the street.
Hercule Poirot nodded to himself. “Definitivement,” he said. “There is a mouse in this hole! What move must the cat make now?”
His decision took him to the nearest post office. Here he put through a couple of telephone calls. The result seemed to be satisfactory. He bent his steps to Charman’s Green police station, where he inquired for Inspector Sims.
Inspector Sims was a big, burly man with a hearty manner. “M. Poirot?” he inquired. “I thought so. I’ve just this minute had a telephone call through from the chief constable about you. He said you’d be dropping in. Come into my office.”
The door shut, the inspector waved Poirot to one chair, settled himself in another, and turned a gaze of acute inquiry upon his visitor.
“You’re very quick on to the mark, M. Poirot. Come to see us about this Rosebank case almost before we know it is a case. What put you on to it?”
Poirot drew out the letter he had received and handed it to the inspector. The latter read it with some interest.
“Interesting,” he said. “The trouble is, it might mean so many things. Pity she couldn’t have been a little more explicit. It would have helped us now.”
“Or there might have been no need for help.”
“You mean?”
“She might have been alive.”
“You go as far as that, do you? H’m—I’m not sure you’re wrong.”
“I pray of you, Inspector, recount to me the facts. I know nothing at all.”
“That’s easily done. Old lady was taken bad after dinner on Tuesday night. Very alarming. Convulsions—spasms—whatnot. They sent for the doctor. By the time he arrived she was dead. Idea was she’d died of a fit. Well, he didn’t much like the look of things. He hemmed and hawed and put it with a bit of soft sawder, but he made it clear that he couldn’t give a death certificate. And as far as the family go, that’s where the matter stands. They’re awaiting the result of the postmortem. We’ve got a bit further. The doctor gave us the tip right away—he and the police surgeon did the autopsy together—and the result is in no doubt whatever. The old lady died of a large dose of strychnine.”
“Aha!”
“That’s right. Very nasty bit of work. Point is, who gave it to her? It must have been administered very shortly before death. First idea was it was given to her in her food at dinner—but, frankly, that seems to be a washout. They had artichoke soup, served from a tureen, fish pie and apple tart.
“Miss Barrowby, Mr. Delafontaine and Mrs. Delafontaine. Miss Barrowby had a kind of nurse-attendant—a half-Russian girl—but she didn’t eat with the family. She had the remains as they came out from the dining room. There’s a maid, but it was her night out. She left the soup on the stove and the fish pie in the oven, and the apple tart was cold. All three of them ate the same thing—and, apart from that, I don’t think you could get strychnine down anyone’s throat that way. Stuff’s as bitter as gall. The doctor told me you could taste it in a solution of one in a thousand, or something like that.”
“Coffee?”
“Coffee’s more like it, but the old lady never took coffee.”
“I see your point. Yes, it seems an insuperable difficulty. What did she drink at the meal?”
“Water.”
“Worse and worse.”
“Bit of a teaser, isn’t it?”
“She had money, the old lady?”
“Very well to do, I imagine. Of course, we haven’t got exact details yet. The Delafontaines are pretty badly off, from what I can make out. The old lady helped with the upkeep of the house.”
Poirot smiled a little. He said, “So you suspect the Delafontaines. Which of them?”
“I don’t exactly say I suspect either of them in particular. But there it is; they’re her only near relations, and her death brings them a tidy sum of money, I’ve no doubt. We all know what human nature is!”
“Sometimes inhuman—yes, that is very true. And there was nothing else the old lady ate or drank?”
“Well, as a matter of fact—”
“Ah, voilà! I felt that you had something, as you say, up your sleeve—the soup, the fish pie, the apple tart—a bêtise! Now we come to the hub of the affair.”
“I don’t know about that. But as a matter of fact, the old girl took a cachet before meals. You know, not a pill or a tablet; one of those rice paper things with a powder inside. Some perfectly harmless thing for the digestion.”
“Admirable. Nothing is easier than to fill a cachet with strychnine and substitute it for one of the others. It slips down the throat with a drink of water and is not tasted.”
“That’s all right. The trouble is, the girl gave it to her.”
“The Russian girl?”
“Yes. Katrina Rieger. She was a kind of lady-help, nurse-companion to Miss Barrowby. Fairly ordered about by her, too, I gather. Fetch this, fetch that, fetch the other, rub my back, pour out my medicine, run round to the chemist—all that sort of business. You know how it is with these old women—they mean to be kind, but what they need is a sort of black slave!”
Poirot smiled.
“And there you are, you see,” continued Inspector Sims. “It doesn’t fit in what you might call nicely. Why should the girl poison her? Miss Barrowby dies and now the girl will be out of a job, and jobs aren’t easy to find—she’s not trained or anything.”
“Still,” suggested Poirot, “if the box of cachets was left about, anyone in the house might have the opportunity.”
“Naturally we’re making inquiries—quiet like, if you understand me. When the prescription was last made up, where it was usually kept; patience and a lot of spade work—that’s what will do the trick in the end. And then there’s Miss Barrowby’s solicitor. I’m having an interview with him tomorrow. And the bank manager. There’s a lot to be done still.”
Poirot rose. “A little favour, Inspector Sims; you will send me a little word how the affair marches. I would esteem it a great favour. Here is my telephone number.”
“Why, certainly, M. Poirot. Two heads are better than one; and besides, you ought to be in on this, having had that letter and all.”
“You are too amiable, Inspector.” Politely, Poirot shook hands and took his leave.
III
br /> He was called to the telephone on the following afternoon. “Is that M. Poirot? Inspector Sims here. Things are beginning to sit up and look pretty in the little matter you and I know of.”
“In verity? Tell me, I pray of you.”
“Well, here’s item No. 1—and a pretty big item. Miss B. left a small legacy to her niece and everything else to K. In consideration of her great kindness and attention—that’s the way it was put. That alters the complexion of things.”
A picture rose swiftly in Poirot’s mind. A sullen face and a passionate voice saying, “The money is mine. She wrote it down and so it shall be.” The legacy would not come as a surprise to Katrina—she knew about it beforehand.
“Item No. 2,” continued the voice of Inspector Sims. “Nobody but K. handled that cachet.”
“You can be sure of that?”
“The girl herself doesn’t deny it. What do you think of that?”
“Extremely interesting.”
“We only want one thing more—evidence of how the strychnine came into her possession. That oughtn’t to be difficult.”
“But so far you haven’t been successful?”
“I’ve barely started. The inquest was only this morning.”
“What happened at it?”
“Adjourned for a week.”
“And the young lady—K.?”
“I’m detaining her on suspicion. Don’t want to run any risks. She might have some funny friends in the country who’d try to get her out of it.”
“No,” said Poirot. “I do not think she has any friends.”
“Really? What makes you say that, M. Poirot?”
“It is just an idea of mine. There were no other ‘items,’ as you call them?”
“Nothing that’s strictly relevant. Miss B. seems to have been monkeying about a bit with her shares lately—must have dropped quite a tidy sum. It’s rather a funny business, one way and another, but I don’t see how it affects the main issue—not at present, that is.”
“No, perhaps you are right. Well, my best thanks to you. It was most amiable of you to ring me up.”
“Not at all. I’m a man of my word. I could see you were interested. Who knows, you may be able to give me a helping hand before the end.”