Poirot read it over. He murmured under his breath, ‘Suddenly.’ Then he said briskly, ‘If you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss Lemon?’
The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system, took down in rapid and correct shorthand:
Dear Miss Barrowby,
I have received no reply from you, but as I shall be in the neighbourhood of Charman’s Green on Friday, I will call upon you on that day and discuss more fully the matter mentioned to me in your letter.
Yours, etc.
‘Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at once, it should get to Charman’s Green tonight.’
On the following morning a letter in a black-edged envelope arrived by the second post:
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter my aunt, Miss Barrowby, passed away on the twenty-sixth, so the matter you speak of is no longer of importance.
Yours truly,
Mary Delafontaine
Poirot smiled to himself. ‘No longer of importance…Ah—that is what we shall see. En avant—to Charman’s Green.’
Rosebank was a house that seemed likely to live up to its name, which is more than can be said for most houses of its class and character.
Hercule Poirot paused as he walked up the path to the front door and looked approvingly at the neatly planned beds on either side of him. Rose trees that promised a good harvest later in the year, and at present daffodils, early tulips, blue hyacinths—the last bed was partly edged with shells.
Poirot murmured to himself, ‘How does it go, the English rhyme the children sing?
‘Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells, and silver bells.
And pretty maids all in a row.
‘Not a row, perhaps,’ he considered, ‘but here is at least one pretty maid to make the little rhyme come right.’
The front door had opened and a neat little maid in cap and apron was looking somewhat dubiously at the spectacle of a heavily moustached foreign gentleman talking aloud to himself in the front garden. She was, as Poirot had noted, a very pretty little maid, with round blue eyes and rosy cheeks.
Poirot raised his hat with courtesy and addressed her: ‘Pardon, but does a Miss Amelia Barrowby live here?’
The little maid gasped and her eyes grew rounder. ‘Oh, sir, didn’t you know? She’s dead. Ever so sudden it was. Tuesday night.’
She hesitated, divided between two strong instincts: the first, distrust of a foreigner; the second, the pleasurable enjoyment of her class in dwelling on the subject of illness and death.
‘You amaze me,’ said Hercule Poirot, not very truthfully. ‘I had an appointment with the lady for today. However, I can perhaps see the other lady who lives here.’
The little maid seemed slightly doubtful. ‘The mistress? Well, you could see her, perhaps, but I don’t know whether she’ll be seeing anyone or not.’
‘She will see me,’ said Poirot, and handed her a card.
The authority of his tone had its effect. The rosy-cheeked maid fell back and ushered Poirot into a sitting-room on the right of the hall. Then, card in hand, she departed to summon her mistress.
Hercule Poirot looked round him. The room was a perfectly conventional drawing-room—oatmeal-coloured paper with a frieze round the top, indeterminate cretonnes, rose-coloured cushions and curtains, a good many china knick-knacks and ornaments. There was nothing in the room that stood out, that announced a definite personality.
Suddenly Poirot, who was very sensitive, felt eyes watching him. He wheeled round. A girl was standing in the entrance of the french window—a small, sallow girl, with very black hair and suspicious eyes.
She came in, and as Poirot made a little bow she burst out abruptly, ‘Why have you come?’
Poirot did not reply. He merely raised his eyebrows.
‘You are not a lawyer—no?’ Her English was good, but not for a minute would anyone have taken her to be English.
‘Why should I be a lawyer, mademoiselle?’
The girl stared at him sullenly. ‘I thought you might be. I thought you had come perhaps to say that she did not know what she was doing. I have heard of such things—the not due influence; that is what they call it, no? But that is not right. She wanted me to have the money, and I shall have it. If it is needful I shall have a lawyer of my own. The money is mine. She wrote it down so, and so it shall be.’ She looked ugly, her chin thrust out, her eyes gleaming.