Two

Peter Lord stared at him, took out a handkerchief, wiped his face and threw himself down in achair.

“Whoof!” he said. “You got me all worked up! I didn’t see in the least what you were gettingat!”

Poirot said:

“I was examining the case against Elinor Carlisle. Now I know it. Morphine was administeredto Mary Gerrard; and, as far as I can see, it must have been given in the sandwiches. Nobodytouched those sandwiches except Elinor Carlisle. Elinor Carlisle had a motive¹ for killing² MaryGerrard, and she is, in your opinion, capable of killing Mary Gerrard, and in all probability she didkill Mary Gerrard. I see no reason for believing otherwise.

“That, mon ami, is one side of the question. Now we will proceed to stage two. We will dismissall those considerations from our mind and we will approach the matter from the opposite angle: IfElinor Carlisle did not kill Mary Gerrard, who did? Or did Mary Gerrard commit suicide?”

Peter Lord sat up. A frown creased³ his forehead. He said:

“You weren’t quite accurate just now.”

“I? Not accurate?”

Poirot sounded affronted⁴.

Peter Lord pursued relentlessly⁵:

“No. You said nobody but Elinor Carlisle touched those sandwiches. You don’t know that.”

“There was no one else in the house.”

“As far as we know. But you are excluding a short period of time. There was a time duringwhich Elinor Carlisle left the house to go down to the Lodge⁶. During that period of time thesandwiches were on a plate in the pantry, and somebody could have tampered⁷ with them.”

Poirot drew a deep breath.

He said:

“You are right, my friend. I admit it. There was a time during which somebody could have hadaccess to the plate of sandwiches. We must try to form some idea who that somebody could be;that is to say, what kind of person….”

He paused.

“Let us consider this Mary Gerrard. Someone, not Elinor Carlisle, desires her death. Why? Didanyone stand to gain by her death? Had she money to leave?”

Peter Lord shook his head.

“Not now. In another month she would have had two thousand pounds. Elinor Carlisle wasmaking that sum over to her because she believed her aunt would have wished it. But the oldlady’s estate isn’t wound up yet.”

Poirot said:

“Then we can wash out the money angle. Mary Gerrard was beautiful, you say. With that thereare always complications. She had admirers?”

“Probably. I don’t know much about it.”

“Who would know?”

Peter Lord grinned.

“I’d better put you on to Nurse Hopkins. She’s the town crier. She knows everything that goeson in Maidensford.”

“I was going to ask you to give me your impressions of the two nurses.”

“Well, O’Brien’s Irish, good nurse, competent, a bit silly, could be spiteful, a bit of a liar—theimaginative kind that’s not so much deceitful, but just has to make a good story out ofeverything.”

Poirot nodded.

“Hopkins is a sensible, shrewd, middle-aged⁸ woman, quite kindly⁹ and competent, but a sight toomuch interested in other people’s business!”

“If there had been trouble over some young man in the village, would Nurse Hopkins knowabout it?”

“You bet!”

He added slowly:

“All the same, I don’t believe there can be anything very obvious in that line. Mary hadn’t beenhome long. She’d been away in Germany for two years.”

“She was twenty-one?”

“Yes.”

“There may be some German complication.”

Peter Lord’s face brightened.

He said eagerly:

“You mean that some German fellow may have had it in for her? He may have followed herover here, waited his time, and finally achieved his object?”

“It sounds a little melodramatic,” said Hercule Poirot doubtfully.

“But it’s possible?”

“Not very probable, though.”

Peter Lord said:

“I don’t agree. Someone might get all het up about the girl, and see red when she turned himdown. He may have fancied she treated him badly. It’s an idea.”

“It is an idea, yes,” said Hercule Poirot, but his tone was not encouraging.

Peter Lord said pleadingly:

“Go on, M. Poirot.”

“You want me, I see, to be the conjurer. To take out of the empty hat rabbit after rabbit.”

“You can put it that way if you like.”

“There is another possibility,” said Hercule Poirot.

“Go on.”

“Someone abstracted a tube of morphine from Nurse Hopkins’ case that evening in June.

Suppose Mary Gerrard saw the person who did it?”

“She would have said so.”

“No, no, mon cher. Be reasonable. If Elinor Carlisle, or Roderick Welman, or Nurse O’Brien, oreven any of the servants, were to open that case and abstract a little glass tube, what would anyonethink? Simply that the person in question had been sent by the nurse to fetch something from it.

The matter would pass straight out of Mary Gerrard’s mind again, but it is possible that, later, shemight recollect¹⁰ the fact and might mention it casually¹¹ to the person in question—oh, without theleast suspicion in the world. But to the person guilty of the murder of Mrs. Welman, imagine theeffect of that remark! Mary had seen: Mary must be silenced at all costs! I can assure you, myfriend, that anyone who has once committed a murder finds it only too easy to commit another!”

Peter Lord said with a frown:

“I’ve believed all along that Mrs. Welman took the stuff herself….”

“But she was paralysed—helpless—she had just had a second stroke.”

“Oh, I know. My idea was that, having got hold of morphine somehow or other, she kept it byher in a receptacle close at hand.”

“But in that case she must have got hold of the morphine before her second attack and the nursemissed it afterwards.”

“Hopkins may only have missed the morphine that morning. It might have been taken a coupleof days before, and she hadn’t noticed it.”

“How would the old lady have got hold of it?”

“I don’t know. Bribed¹² a servant, perhaps. If so, that servant’s never going to tell.”

“You don’t think either of the nurses were bribable¹³?”

Lord shook his head.

“Not on your life! To begin with, they’re both very strict about their professional ethics—and inaddition they’d be scared to death to do such a thing. They’d know the danger to themselves.”

Poirot said:

“That is so.”

He added thoughtfully:

“It looks, does it not, as though we return to our muttons? Who is the most likely person to havetaken that morphine tube? Elinor Carlisle. We may say that she wished to make sure of inheritinga large fortune. We may be more generous and say that she was actuated by pity, that she took themorphine and administered it in compliance¹⁴ with her aunt’s often-repeated request; but she took it—and Mary Gerrard saw her do it. And so we are back at the sandwiches and the empty house,and we have Elinor Carlisle once more—but this time with a different motive: to save her neck.”

Peter Lord cried out:

“That’s fantastic. I tell you, she isn’t that kind of person! Money doesn’t really mean anythingto her—or to Roderick Welman, either, I’m bound to admit. I’ve heard them both say as much!”

“You have? That is very interesting. That is the kind of statement I always look upon with agood deal of suspicion myself.”

Peter Lord said:

“Damn you, Poirot, must you always twist everything round so that it comes back to that girl?”

“It is not I that twist things round: they come round of themselves. It is like the pointer at thefair. It swings round, and when it comes to rest it points always at the same name—ElinorCarlisle.”

Peter Lord said:

“No!”

Hercule Poirot shook his head sadly.

Then he said:

“Has she relations, this Elinor Carlisle? Sisters, cousins? A father or mother?”

“No. She’s an orphan—alone in the world….”

“How pathetic it sounds! Bulmer, I am sure, will make great play with that! Who, then, inheritsher money if she dies?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought.”

Poirot said reprovingly:

“One should always think of these things. Has she made a will, for instance?”

Peter Lord flushed. He said uncertainly:

“I—I don’t know.”

Hercule Poirot looked at the ceiling and joined his fingertips.

He remarked:

“It would be well, you know, to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Exactly what is in your mind — no matter how damaging it may happen to be to ElinorCarlisle.”

“How do you know—?”

“Yes, yes, I know. There is something—some incident in your mind! It will be as well to tellme, otherwise I shall imagine it is something worse than it is!”

“It’s nothing, really—”

“We will agree it is nothing. But let me hear what it is.”

Slowly, unwillingly¹⁵, Peter Lord allowed the story to be dragged from him—that scene of Elinorleaning in at the window of Nurse Hopkins’ cottage, and of her laughter.

Poirot said thoughtfully:

“She said that, did she, ‘So you’re making your will, Mary? That’s funny—that’s very funny.’

And it was very clear to you what was in her mind…She had been thinking, perhaps, that MaryGerrard was not going to live long….”

Peter Lord said:

“I only imagined that. I don’t know.”

Poirot said:

“No, you did not only imagine it….”

 

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