III

They stood at last in the room where Mary Gerrard had died.

The house had a strange atmosphere in it: it seemed alive with memories and forebodings.

Peter Lord flung up one of the windows.

He said with a slight shiver:

“This place feels like a tomb….”

Poirot said:

“If walls could speak… It is all here, is it not, here in the house—the beginning of the wholestory.”

He paused and then said softly:

“It was here in this room that Mary Gerrard died.”

Peter Lord said:

“They found her sitting in that chair by the window….”

Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully:

“A young girl—beautiful—romantic? Did she scheme and intrigue¹? Was she a superior personwho gave herself airs? Was she gentle and sweet, with no thought of intrigue…just a young thingbeginning life…a girl like a flower?…”

“Whatever she was,” said Peter Lord, “someone wished her dead.”

Hercule Poirot murmured:

“I wonder….”

Lord stared at him.

“What do you mean?”

Poirot shook his head.

“Not yet.”

He turned about.

“We have been all through the house. We have seen all that there is to be seen here. Let us godown to the Lodge².”

Here again all was in order: the rooms dusty, but neat and emptied of personal possessions. Thetwo men stayed only a few minutes. As they came out into the sun, Poirot touched the leaves of apillar rose growing up a trellis. It was pink and sweet-scented.

He murmured:

“Do you know the name of this rose? It is Zephyrine Drouhin, my friend.”

Peter Lord said irritably⁴:

“What of it?”

Hercule Poirot said:

“When I saw Elinor Carlisle, she spoke⁵ to me of roses. It was then that I began to see—notdaylight, but the little glimpse of light that one gets in a train when one is about to come out of atunnel. It is not so much daylight, but the promise of daylight.”

Peter Lord said harshly:

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me of her childhood, of playing here in this garden, and of how she and RoderickWelman were on different sides. They were enemies, for he preferred the white rose of York—cold and austere—and she, so she told me, loved red roses, the red rose of Lancaster. Red rosesthat have scent³ and colour and passion and warmth. And that, my friend, is the difference betweenElinor Carlisle and Roderick Welman.”

Peter Lord said:

“Does that explain—anything?”

Poirot said:

“It explains Elinor Carlisle—who is passionate⁶ and proud and who loved desperately⁷ a manwho was incapable⁸ of loving her….”

Peter Lord said:

“I don’t understand you….”

Poirot said:

“But I understand her… I understand both of them. Now my friend, we will go back once moreto that little clearing in the shrubbery.”

They went there in silence. Peter Lord’s freckled⁹ face was troubled and angry.

When they came to the spot, Poirot stood motionless for some time, and Peter Lord watchedhim.

Then suddenly the little detective gave a vexed¹⁰ sigh.

He said:

“It is so simple, really. Do you not see, my friend, the fatal fallacy in your reasoning?

According to your theory someone, a man, presumably, who had known Mary Gerrard inGermany came here intent on killing¹¹ her. But look, my friend, look! Use the two eyes of yourbody, since the eyes of the mind do not seem to serve you. What do you see from here: a window,is it not? And at that window—a girl. A girl cutting sandwiches. That is to say, Elinor Carlisle. Butthink for a minute of this: What on earth was to tell the watching man that those sandwiches weregoing to be offered to Mary Gerrard? No one knew that but Elinor Carlisle—herself—nobody!

Not even Mary Gerrard, nor Nurse Hopkins.

“So what follows—if a man stood here watching, and if he afterwards went to that window andclimbed in and tampered¹² with the sandwiches? What did he think and believe? He thought, hemust have thought, that the sandwiches were to be eaten by Elinor Carlisle herself….”

 

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