‘That is good. Once, mademoiselle, I loved a beautiful young English girl, who resembled you greatly—but alas!—she could not cook. So perhaps everything was for the best.’
There was a faint sadness in his voice, and Jimmy Faulkener looked at him curiously.
Once in the flat, however, he exerted himself to please and amuse. The grim tragedy below was almost forgotten.
The omelette had been consumed and duly praised by the time that Inspector Rice’s footsteps were heard. He came in accompanied by the doctor, having left the constable below.
‘Well, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said. ‘It all seems clear and above-board—not much in your line, though we may find it hard to catch the man. I’d just like to hear how the discovery came to be made.’
Donovan and Jimmy between them recounted the happenings of the evening. The inspector turned reproachfully to Pat.
‘You shouldn’t leave your lift door unbolted, miss. You really shouldn’t.’
‘I shan’t again,’ said Pat, with a shiver. ‘Somebody might come in and murder me like that poor woman below.’
‘Ah, but they didn’t come in that way, though,’ said the inspector.
‘You will recount to us what you have discovered, yes?’ said Poirot.
‘I don’t know as I ought to—but seeing it’s you, M. Poirot—’
‘Précisément,’ said Poirot. ‘And these young people—they will be discreet.’
‘The newspapers will get hold of it, anyway, soon enough,’ said the inspector. ‘There’s no real secret about the matter. Well, the dead woman’s Mrs Grant, all right. I had the porter up to identify her. Woman of about thirty-five. She was sitting at the table, and she was shot with an automatic pistol of small calibre, probably by someone sitting opposite her at table. She fell forward, and that’s how the bloodstain came on the table.’
‘But wouldn’t someone have heard the shot?’ asked Mildred.
‘The pistol was fitted with a silencer. No, you wouldn’t hear anything. By the way, did you hear the screech the maid let out when we told her her mistress was dead? No. Well, that just shows how unlikely it was that anyone would hear the other.’
‘Has the maid no story to tell?’ asked Poirot.
‘It was her evening out. She’s got her own key. She came in about ten o’clock. Everything was quiet. She thought her mistress had gone to bed.’
‘She did not look in the sitting-room, then?’
‘Yes, she took the letters in there which had come by the evening post, but she saw nothing unusual—any more than Mr Faulkener and Mr Bailey did. You see, the murderer had concealed the body rather neatly behind the curtains.’
‘But it was a curious thing to do, don’t you think?’
Poirot’s voice was very gentle, yet it held something that made the inspector look up quickly.
‘Didn’t want the crime discovered till he’d had time to make his getaway.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps—but continue with what you were saying.’
‘The maid went out at five o’clock. The doctor here puts the time of death as—roughly—about four to five hours ago. That’s right, isn’t it?’
The doctor, who was a man of few words, contented himself with jerking his head affirmatively.
‘It’s a quarter to twelve now. The actual time can, I think, be narrowed down to a fairly definite hour.’
He took out a crumpled sheet of paper.
‘We found this in the pocket of the dead woman’s dress. You needn’t be afraid of handling it. There are no fingerprints on it.’
Poirot smoothed out the sheet. Across it some words were printed in small, prim capitals.
I WILL COME TO SEE YOU THIS EVENING AT HALF PAST SEVEN.
J.F.
‘A compromising document to leave behind,’ commented Poirot, as he handed it back.
‘Well, he didn’t know she’d got it in her pocket,’ said the inspector. ‘He probably thought she’d destroyed it. We’ve evidence that he was a careful man, though. The pistol she was shot with we found under the body—and there again no fingerprints. They’d been wiped off very carefully with a silk handkerchief.’
‘How do you know,’ said Poirot, ‘that it was a silk handkerchief?’
‘Because we found it,’ said the inspector triumphantly. ‘At the last, as he was drawing the curtains, he must have let it fall unnoticed.’