I must admit that it gave me rather a shock to run into Parker just outside the door. I have faithfully recorded that fact.
Then later, when the body was discovered, and I sent Parker to telephone for the police, what a judicious use of words: ‘I did what little had to be done!’ It was quite little just to shove the dictaphone into my bag and push back the chair against the wall in its proper place. I never dreamed that Parker would have noticed that chair. Logically, he ought to have been so agog over the body as to be blind to everything else. But I hadn’t reckoned with the trained servant complex.
I wish I could have known beforehand that Flora was going to say she’d seen her uncle alive at a quarter to ten.
That puzzled me more than I can say. In fact, all through the case there have been things that puzzled me hopelessly.
Everyone seems to have taken a hand.
My greatest fear all through has been Caroline. I have fancied she might guess. Curious the way she spoke that day of my ‘strain of weakness.’ Well, she will never know the truth. There is, as Poirot said, one way out…
I can trust him. He and Inspector Raglan will manage it between them. I should not like Caroline to know. She is fond of me, and then, too, she is proud… My death will be a grief to her, but grief passes…
When I have finished writing, I shall enclose this whole manuscript in an envelope and address it to Poirot.
And then – what shall it be? Veronal? There would be a kind of poetic justice. Not that I take any responsibility for Mrs Ferrars’s death. It was the direct consequence of her own actions. I feel no pity for her.
I have no pity for myself either.
So let it be veronal.
But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.
The End