Hercule Poirot 3-Book Collection 1: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates. Agatha Christie
I cried, ‘I congratulate you! This is a great discovery.’
‘What is a great discovery?’
‘Why, that it was the cocoa and not the coffee that was poisoned. That explains everything! Of course, it did not take effect until the early morning, since the cocoa was only drunk in the middle of the night.’
‘So you think that the cocoa—mark well what I say, Hastings, the cocoa—contained strychnine?’
‘Of course! That salt on the tray, what else could it have been?’
‘It might have been salt,’ replied Poirot placidly.
I shrugged my shoulders. If he was going to take the matter that way, it was no good arguing with him. The idea crossed my mind, not for the first time, that poor old Poirot was growing old. Privately I thought it lucky that he had associated with him someone of a more receptive type of mind.
Poirot was surveying me with quietly twinkling eyes.
‘You are not pleased with me, mon ami?’
‘My dear Poirot,’ I said coldly, ‘it is not for me to dictate to you. You have a right to your own opinion, just as I have to mine.’
‘A most admirable sentiment,’ remarked Poirot, rising briskly to his feet. ‘Now I have finished with this room. By the way, whose is the smaller desk in the corner?’
‘Mr Inglethorp’s.’
‘Ah!’ He tried the roll top tentatively. ‘Locked. But perhaps one of Mrs Inglethorp’s keys would open it.’ He tried several, twisting and turning them with a practised hand, and finally uttering an ejaculation of satisfaction. ‘Voila! It is not the key, but it will open it at a pinch.’ He slid back the roll top, and ran a rapid eye over the neatly filed papers. To my surprise, he did not examine them, merely remarking approvingly as he relocked the desk: ‘Decidedly, he is a man of method, this Mr Inglethorp!’
A ‘man of method’ was, in Poirot’s estimation, the highest praise that could be bestowed on any individual.
I felt that my friend was not what he had been as he rambled on disconnectedly:
‘There were no stamps in his desk, but there might have been, eh, mon ami? There might have been? Yes’—his eyes wandered round the room—‘this boudoir has nothing more to tell us. It did not yield much. Only this.’
He pulled a crumpled envelope out of his pocket, and tossed it over to me. It was rather a curious document. A plain, dirty-looking old envelope with a few words scrawled across it, apparently at random. The following is a facsimile of it:
‘Where did you find this?’ I asked Poirot, in lively curiosity.
‘In the waste-paper basket. You recognize the handwriting?’
‘Yes, it is Mrs Inglethorp’s. But what does it mean?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘I cannot say—but it is suggestive.’
A wild idea flashed across me. Was it possible that Mrs Inglethorp’s mind was deranged? Had she some fantastic idea of demoniacal possession? And, if that were so, was it not also possible that she might have taken her own life?
I was about to expound these theories to Poirot, when his own words distracted me.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘now to examine the coffee-cups!’
‘My dear Poirot! What on earth is the good of that, now that we know about the cocoa?’
‘Oh, làlà! That miserable cocoa!’ cried Poirot flippantly.
He laughed with apparent enjoyment, raising his arms to heaven in mock despair, in what I could not but consider the worst possible taste.
‘And, anyway,’ I said, with increasing coldness, ‘as Mrs Inglethorp took her coffee upstairs with her, I do not see what you expect to find, unless you consider it likely that we shall discover a packet of strychnine on the coffee tray!’
Poirot was sobered at once.
‘Come, come, my friend,’ he said, slipping his arm through mine. ‘Ne vous fâchez pas! Allow me to interest myself in my coffee cups, and I will respect your cocoa. There! Is it a bargain?’
He was so quaintly humorous that I was forced to laugh; and we went together to the drawing-room, where the coffee cups and tray remained undisturbed as we had left them.
Poirot made me recapitulate the scene of the night before, listening very carefully, and verifying the position of the various cups.
‘So Mrs Cavendish stood by the tray—and poured out. Yes. Then she came across to the window where you sat with Mademoiselle Cynthia. Yes. Here are the three cups. And the cup on the mantelpiece, half drunk, that would be Mr Lawrence Cavendish’s. And the one on the tray?’
‘John Cavendish’s. I saw him put it down there.’
‘Good. One, two, three, four, five—but where, then, is the cup of Mr Inglethorp?’
‘He does not take coffee.’
‘Then all are accounted for. One moment, my friend.’
With infinite care, he took a drop or two from the grounds in each cup, sealing them up in separate test tubes, tasting each in turn as he did so. His physiognomy underwent a curious change. An expression gathered there that I can only describe as half puzzled, and half relieved.
‘Bien!’ he said at last. ‘It is evident! I had an idea—but clearly I was mistaken. Yes, altogether I was mistaken. Yet it is strange. But no matter!’
And, with a characteristic shrug, he dismissed whatever it was that was worrying him from his mind. I could have told him from the beginning that this obsession of his over the coffee was bound to end in a blind alley, but I restrained my tongue. After all, though he was old, Poirot had been a great man in his day.
‘Breakfast is ready,’ said John Cavendish, coming in from the hall. ‘You will breakfast with us, Monsieur Poirot?’
Poirot acquiesced. I observed John. Already he was almost restored to his normal self. The shock of the events of the last night had upset him temporarily, but his equable poise soon swung back to the normal. He was a man of very little imagination, in sharp contrast with his brother, who had, perhaps, too much.
Ever since the early hours of the morning, John had been hard at work, sending telegrams—one of the first had gone to Evelyn Howard—writing notices for the papers, and generally occupying himself with the melancholy duties that a death entails.
‘May I ask how things are proceeding?’ he said. ‘Do your investigations point to my mother having died a natural death—or—or must we prepare ourselves for the worst?’
‘I think, Mr Cavendish,’ said Poirot gravely, ‘that you would do well not to buoy yourself up with any false hopes. Can you tell me the views of the other members of the family?’
‘My brother Lawrence is convinced that we are making a fuss over nothing. He says that everything points to its being a simple case of heart failure.’
‘He does, does he? That is very interesting—very interesting,’ murmured Poirot softly. ‘And Mrs Cavendish?’
A faint cloud passed over John’s face.
‘I have not the least idea what my wife’s views on the subject