[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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 wash-stand 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 wash-stand. The basin
was empty, but beside the wash-stand there was an old 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 were 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?"
"Delighted."
"Oh, no, doctor," I protested. "I couldn't think of such a thing."
M. Poirot gave me a little friendly tap on the shoulder. Quite an English tap, not a foreign one.
"You, ma soeur, will do as you are told," he said. "Besides, it will be of advantage to me. There is a
good deal more that I want to discuss, and I cannot do it here where one must preserve the decencies.
The good Dr. Leidner, he worshipped his wife and he is sure - oh, so sure - that everybody else felt the
same about her! But that, in my opinion, would not be human nature! No, we want to discuss Mrs.
Leidner with - how do you say - the gloves removed? That is settled then. When we have finished here,
we take you with us to Hassanieh."
"I suppose," I said doubtfully, "that I ought to be leaving anyway. It's rather awkward."
"Do nothing for a day or two," said Dr. Reilly. "You can't very well go until after the funeral."
"That's all very well," I said. "And supposing I get murdered too, doctor?"
I said it half jokingly and Dr. Reilly took it in the same fashion and would, I think, have made some
jocular response.
But M. Poirot, to my astonishment stood stock-still in the middle of the floor and clasped his hands to
his head.
"Ah! if that were possible," he murmured. "It is a danger - yes - a great danger - and what can one do?
How can one guard against it?"
"Why, M. Poirot," I said, "I was only joking! Who'd want to murder me, I should like to know?"
"You - or another," he said, and I didn't like the way he said it at all. Positively creepy.
"But why?" I persisted.
He looked at me very straight then.
"I joke, mademoiselle," he said, "and I laugh. But there are some things that are no joke. There are
things that my profession has taught me. And one of these things, the most terrible thing, is this:
"Murder is a habit..."
Chapter 18
TEA AT DR. REILLY'S
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]