The body had, of course, been removed. The curtains were drawn and the electric light was on. Poirot and Japp were standing in the middle of the room looking round them.
‘Nothing here,’ Japp was saying.
And Poirot replied with a smile:
‘Alas! not the cigarette ash—nor the footprint—nor a lady’s glove—nor even a lingering perfume! Nothing that the detective of fiction so conveniently finds.’
‘The police are always made out to be as blind as bats in detective stories,’ said Japp with a grin.
‘I found a clue once,’ said Poirot dreamily. ‘But since it was four feet long instead of four centimetres no one would believe in it.’
I remembered the circumstance and laughed. Then I remembered my mission.
‘It’s all right, Poirot,’ I said. ‘I watched, but no one was spying upon you as far as I could see.’
‘The eyes of my friend Hastings,’ said Poirot in a kind of gentle mockery. ‘Tell me, my friend, did you notice the rose between my lips?’
‘The rose between your lips?’ I asked in astonishment. Japp turned aside spluttering with laughter.
‘You’ll be the death of me, M. Poirot,’ he said. ‘The death of me. A rose. What next?’
‘I had the fancy to pretend I was Carmen,’ said Poirot quite undisturbed.
I wondered if they were going mad or if I was.
‘You did not observe it, Hastings?’ There was reproach in Poirot’s voice.
‘No,’ I said, staring. ‘But then I couldn’t see your face.’
‘No matter.’ He shook his head gently.
Were they making fun of me?
‘Well,’ said Japp. ‘No more to do here, I fancy. I’d like to see the daughter again if I could. She was too upset before for me to get anything out of her.’
He rang the bell for the butler.
‘Ask Miss Marsh if I can see her for a few moments?’
The man departed. It was not he, however, but Miss Carroll who entered the room a few minutes later.
‘Geraldine is asleep,’ she said. ‘She’s had a terrible shock, poor child. After you left I gave her something to make her sleep and she’s fast asleep now. In an hour or two, perhaps.’
Japp agreed.
‘In any case there’s nothing she can tell you that I can’t,’ said Miss Carroll firmly.
‘What is your opinion of the butler?’ asked Poirot.
‘I don’t like him much and that’s a fact,’ replied Miss Carroll. ‘But I can’t tell you why.’
We had reached the front door.
‘It was up there that you stood, was it not, last night, Mademoiselle?’ said Poirot suddenly, pointing with his hands up the stairs.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘And you saw Lady Edgware go along the hall into the study?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you saw her face distinctly?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you could not have seen her face, Mademoiselle. You can only have seen the back of her head from where you were standing.’
Miss Carroll flushed angrily. She seemed taken aback.
‘Back of her head, her voice, her walk! It’s all the same thing. Absolutely unmistakable! I tell you I know it was Jane Wilkinson—a thoroughly bad woman if there ever was one.’
And turning away she flounced upstairs.
Chapter 8
Possibilities
Japp had to leave us. Poirot and I turned into Regent’s Park and found a quiet seat.
‘I see the point of your rose between the lips now,’ I said, laughing. ‘At the moment I thought you had gone mad.’
He nodded without smiling.
‘You observe, Hastings, that the secretary is a dangerous witness, dangerous because inaccurate. You notice that she stated positively that she saw the visitor’s face? At the time I thought that impossible. Coming from the study—yes, but not going to the study. So I made my little experiment which resulted as I thought, and then sprung my trap upon her. She immediately changed her ground.’
‘Her belief was quite unaltered, though,’ I argued. ‘And after all, a voice and a walk are just as unmistakable.’
‘No, no.’
‘Why, Poirot, I think a voice and the general gait are about the most characteristic things about a person.’
‘I agree. And therefore they are the most easily counterfeited.’
‘You think—’
‘Cast your mind back a few days. Do you remember one evening as we sat in the stalls of a theatre—’