‘Well, it seems a waitress at the Corner House read this and she remembered that a lady she had served that evening had had such a box in her hand. She remembered the C.A. on it. And she got excited and began talking to all her friends—perhaps a paper would give her something?
‘A young newspaper man soon got on to it and there’s going to be a good sobstuff article in tonight’s Evening Shriek. The last hours of the talented actress. Waiting—for the man who never came—and a good bit about the actress’s sympathetic intuition that something was not well with her sister woman. You know the kind of bilge, M. Poirot?’
‘And how has it come to your ears so quickly?’
‘Oh! well, we’re on very good terms with the Evening Shriek. It got passed on to me while their particular bright young man tried to get some news out of me about something else. So I rushed along to the Corner House straight away—’
Yes, that was the way things ought to be done. I felt a pang of pity for Poirot. Here was Japp getting all this news at first hand—quite possibly missing valuable details, and here was Poirot placidly content with stale news.
‘I saw the girl—and I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. She couldn’t pick out Carlotta Adams’ photograph, but then she said she didn’t notice the lady’s face particularly. She was young and dark and slim, and very well dressed, the girl said. Had got on one of the new hats. I wish women looked at faces a bit more and hats a bit less.’
‘The face of Miss Adams is not an easy one to observe,’ said Poirot. ‘It had the mobility, the sensitiveness—the fluid quality.’
‘I daresay you’re right. I don’t go in for analysing these things. Dressed in black the lady was, so the girl said, and she had an attaché-case with her. The girl noticed that particularly, because it struck her as odd that a lady so well dressed should be carrying a case about. She ordered some scrambled eggs and some coffee, but the girl thinks she was putting in time and waiting for someone. She’d got a wrist-watch on and she kept looking at it. It was when the girl came to give her the bill that she noticed the box. The lady took it out of her handbag and had it on the table looking at it. She opened the lid and shut it down again. She was smiling in a pleased dreamy sort of way. The girl noticed the box particularly because it was such a lovely thing. “I’d like to have a gold box with my initials in rubies on it!” she said.
‘Apparently Miss Adams sat there some time after paying her bill. Then, finally, she looked at her watch once more, seemed to give it up and went out.’
Poirot was frowning.
‘It was a rendez-vous,’ he murmured. ‘A rendez-vous with someone who did not turn up. Did Carlotta Adams meet that person afterwards? Or did she fail to meet him and go home and try to ring him up? I wish I knew—oh! how I wish I knew.’
‘That’s your theory, M. Poirot. Mysterious Man-in-the-Background. That Man-in-the-Background’s a myth. I don’t say she mayn’t have been waiting for someone—that’s possible. She may have made an appointment to meet someone there after her business with his lordship was settled satisfactorily. Well, we know what happened. She lost her head and stabbed him. But she’s not one to lose her head for long. She changes her appearance at the station, gets out the case, goes to the rendezvous, and then what they call the “reaction” gets her. Horror of what she’d done. And when her friend doesn’t turn up, that finished her. He may be someone who knew she was going to Regent Gate that evening. She feels the game’s up. So she takes out her little box of dope. An overdose of that and it’ll be all over. At any rate she won’t be hanged. Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.’
Poirot’s hand strayed doubtfully to his nose, then his fingers dropped to his moustaches. He caressed them tenderly with a proud expression.