‘So easy to come in. None to see,’ murmured Poirot as he sprang up the stairs.
On the first floor was a kind of partition and a narrow door with a Yale lock. Ross’s card was stuck in the centre of the door.
We paused there. Everywhere there was dead silence.
I pushed the door—to my surprise it yielded.
We entered.
There was a narrow hall and an open door one side, another in front of us opening into what was evidently the sitting-room.
Into this sitting-room we went. It was the divided half of a big front drawing-room. It was cheaply but comfortably furnished and it was empty. On a small table was the telephone, the receiver stood down beside the instrument.
Poirot took a swift step forward, looked round, then shook his head.
‘Not here. Come, Hastings.’
We retraced our steps and, going into the hall, we passed through the other door. The room was a tiny dining-room. At one side of the table, fallen sideways from a chair and sprawled across the table, was Ross.
Poirot bent over him.
He straightened up—his face was white.
‘He’s dead. Stabbed at the base of the skull.’
For long afterwards the events of that afternoon remained like a nightmare in my mind. I could not rid myself of a dreadful feeling of responsibility.
Much later, that evening, when we were alone together, I stammered out to Poirot my bitter self-reproachings. He responded quickly.
‘No, no, do not blame yourself. How could you have suspected? The good God has not given you a suspicious nature to begin with.’
‘You would have suspected?’
‘That is different. All my life, you see, I have tracked down murderers. I know how, each time, the impulse to kill becomes stronger, till, at last, for a trivial cause—’ He broke off.
He had been very quiet ever since our ghastly discovery. All through the arrival of the police, the questioning of the other people in the house, the hundred and one details of the dreadful routine following upon a murder, Poirot had remained aloof—strangely quiet—a far-away speculative look in his eyes. Now, as he broke off his sentence, that same far-away speculative look returned.
‘We have no time to waste in regrets, Hastings,’ he said quietly. ‘No time to say “If”—The poor young man who is dead had something to tell us. And we know now that that something must have been of great importance—otherwise he would not have been killed. Since he can no longer tell us—we have got to guess. We have got to guess—with only one little clue to guide us.’
‘Paris,’ I said.
‘Yes, Paris.’ He got up and began to stroll up and down.
‘There have been several mentions of Paris in this business, but unluckily in different connections. There is the word Paris engraved in the gold box. Paris in November last. Miss Adams was there then—perhaps Ross was there also. Was there someone else there whom Ross knew? Whom he saw with Miss Adams under somewhat peculiar circumstances?’
‘We can never know,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, we can know. We shall know! The power of the human brain, Hastings, is almost unlimited. What other mentions of Paris have we in connection with the case? There is the short woman with the pince-nez who called for the box at the jeweller’s there. Was she known to Ross? The Duke of Merton was in Paris when the crime was committed. Paris, Paris, Paris. Lord Edgware was going to Paris—Ah! possibly we have something there. Was he killed to prevent him going to Paris?’
He sat down again, his brows drawn together. I could almost feel the waves of his furious concentration of thought.
‘What happened at that luncheon?’ he murmured. ‘Some casual word or phrase must have shown to Donald Ross the significance of knowledge which was in his possession, but which up to then he had not known was significant. Was there some mention of France? Of Paris? Up your end of the table, I mean.’
‘The word Paris was mentioned but not in that connection.’
I told him about Jane Wilkinson’s ‘gaffe’.
‘That probably explains it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The word Paris would be sufficient—taken in conjunction with something else. But what was that something else? At what was Ross looking? Or of what had he been speaking when that word was uttered?’