I didn’t say anything. Hadn’t I felt the same thing just now when we were all cooped up round the table?
Slowly Poirot prowled round the room. He took up a photograph from the chest of drawers. It was of an elderly man with a white goatee beard. He looked inquiringly at me.
‘Mrs Leidner’s father,’ I said. ‘She told me so.’
He put it down again and glanced over the articles on the dressing-table—all of plain tortoiseshell—simple but good. He looked up at a row of books on a shelf, repeating the titles aloud.
‘Who were the Greeks? Introduction to Relativity. Life of Lady Hester Stanhope. Crewe Traine. Back to Methuselah. Linda Condon. Yes, they tell us something, perhaps. She was not a fool, your Mrs Leidner. She had a mind.’
‘Oh! she was a very clever woman,’ I said eagerly. ‘Very well read and up in everything. She wasn’t a bit ordinary.’
He smiled as he looked over at me.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve already realized that.’
He passed on. He stood for some moments at the washstand, where there was a big array of bottles and toilet creams.
Then, suddenly, he dropped on his knees and examined the rug.
Dr Reilly and I came quickly to join him. He was examining a small dark brown stain, almost invisible on the brown of the rug. In fact it was only just noticeable where it impinged on one of the white stripes.
‘What do you say, doctor?’ he said. ‘Is that blood?’
Dr Reilly knelt down.
‘Might be,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure if you like?’
‘If you would be so amiable.’
Mr Poirot examined the jug and basin. The jug was standing on the side of the washstand. The basin was empty, but beside the washstand there was an empty kerosene tin containing slop water.
He turned to me.
‘Do you remember, nurse? Was this jug out of the basin or in it when you left Mrs Leidner at a quarter to one?’
‘I can’t be sure,’ I said after a minute or two. ‘I rather think it was standing in the basin.’
‘Ah?’
‘But you see,’ I said hastily, ‘I only think so because it usually was. The boys leave it like that after lunch. I just feel that if it hadn’t been in I should have noticed it.’
He nodded quite appreciatively.
‘Yes. I understand that. It is your hospital training. If everything had not been just so in the room, you would quite unconsciously have set it to rights hardly noticing what you were doing. And after the murder? Was it like it is now?’
I shook my head.
‘I didn’t notice then,’ I said. ‘All I looked for was whether there was any place anyone could be hidden or if there was anything the murderer had left behind him.’
‘It’s blood all right,’ said Dr Reilly, rising from his knees. ‘Is it important?’
Poirot was frowning perplexedly. He flung out his hands with petulance.
‘I cannot tell. How can I tell? It may mean nothing at all. I can say, if I like, that the murderer touched her—that there was blood on his hands—very little blood, but still blood—and so he came over here and washed them. Yes, it may have been like that. But I cannot jump to conclusions and say that it was so. That stain may be of no importance at all.’
‘There would have been very little blood,’ said Dr Reilly dubiously. ‘None would have spurted out or anything like that. It would have just oozed a little from the wound. Of course, if he’d probed it at all…’
I gave a shiver. A nasty sort of picture came up in my mind. The vision of somebody—perhaps that nice pig-faced photographic boy, striking down that lovely woman and then bending over her probing the wound with his finger in an awful gloating fashion and his face, perhaps, quite different…all fierce and mad…
Dr Reilly noticed my shiver.
‘What’s the matter, nurse?’ he said.
‘Nothing—just goose-flesh,’ I said. ‘A goose walking over my grave.’
Mr Poirot turned round and looked at me.
‘I know what you need,’ he said. ‘Presently when we have finished here and I go back with the doctor to Hassanieh we will take you with us. You will give Nurse Leatheran tea, will you not, doctor?’