On the following morning Inspector Morton called at the cottage.
He was a quiet middle-aged man with a soft country burr in his voice. His manner was quiet and unhurried, but his eyes were shrewd.
'You realise what this is about, Mrs Banks?' he said. 'Dr Proctor has already told you about Miss Gilchrist. The few crumbs of wedding cake that he took from here have been analysed and show traces of arsenic.'
'So somebody deliberately wanted to poison her?'
'That's what it looks like. Miss Gilchrist herself doesn't seem able to help us. She keeps repeating that it's impossible – that nobody would do such a thing. But somebody did. You can't throw any light on the matter?'
Susan shook her head.
'I'm simply dumbfounded,' she said. 'Can't you find out anything from the postmark? Or the handwriting?'
'You've forgotten – the wrapping paper was presumably burnt. And there's a little doubt whether it came through the post at all. Young Andrews, the driver of the postal van, doesn't seem able to remember delivering it. He's got a big round, and he can't be sure – but there it is – there's a doubt about it.'
'But – what's the alternative?'
'The alternative, Mrs Banks, is that an old piece of brown paper was used that already had Miss Gilchrist's name and address on it and a cancelled stamp, and that the package was pushed through the letter box or deposited inside the door by hand to create the impression that it had come by post.'
He added dispassionately:
'It's quite a clever idea, you know, to choose wedding cake. Lonely middle-aged women are sentimental about wedding cake, pleased at having been remembered. A box of sweets, or something of that kind might have awakened suspicion.'
Susan said slowly:
'Miss Gilchrist speculated a good deal about who could have sent it, but she wasn't at all suspicious – as you say, she was pleased and yes – flattered.'
She added: 'Was there enough poison in it to – kill?'
'That's difficult to say until we get the quantitative analysis. It rather depends on whether Miss Gilchrist ate the whole of the wedge. She seems to think that she didn't. Can you remember?'
'No – no, I'm not sure. She offered me some and I refused and then she ate some and said it was a very good cake, but I don't remember if she finished it or not.'
'I'd like to go upstairs if you don't mind, Mrs Banks.'
'Of course.'
She followed him up to Miss Gilchrist's room. She said apologetically:
'I'm afraid it's in a rather disgusting state. But I didn't have time to do anything about it with my aunt's funeral and everything, and then after Dr Proctor came I thought perhaps I ought to leave it as it was.'
'That was very intelligent of you, Mrs Banks. It's not everyone who would have been so intelligent.'
He went to the bed and slipping his hand under the pillow raised it carefully. A slow smile spread over his face.
'There you are,' he said.
A piece of wedding cake lay on the sheet looking somewhat the worse for wear.
'How extraordinary,' said Susan.
'Oh no, it's not. Perhaps your generation doesn't do it. Young ladies nowadays mayn't set so much store on getting married. But it's an old custom. Put a piece of wedding cake under your pillow and you'll dream of your future husband.'
'But surely Miss Gilchrist -'
'She didn't want to tell us about it because she felt foolish doing such a thing at her age. But I had a notion that's what it might be.' His face sobered. 'And if it hadn't been for an old maid's foolishness, Miss Gilchrist mightn't be alive today.'
'But who could have possibly wanted to kill her?'
His eyes met hers, a curious speculative look in them that made Susan feel uncomfortable.
'You don't know? 'he asked.
'No – of course I don't.'
'It seems then as though we shall have to find out,' said Inspector Morton.
Chapter 12
Two elderly men sat together in a room whose furnishings were of the most modern kind. There were no curves in the room. Everything was square. Almost the only exception was Hercule Poirot himself who was full of curves. His stomach was pleasantly rounded, his head resembled an egg in shape, and his moustaches curved upwards in a flamboyant flourish.
He was sipping a glass of sirop and looking thoughtfully at Mr Goby.
Mr Goby was small and spare and shrunken. He had always been refreshingly nondescript in appearance and he was now so nondescript as practically not to be there at all. He was not looking at Poirot because Mr Goby never looked at anybody.
Such remarks as he was now making seemed to be addressed to the left-hand corner of the chromium-plated fireplace curb.
Mr Goby was famous for the acquiring of information. Very few people knew about him and very few employed his services – but those few were usually extremely rich. They had to be, for Mr Goby was very expensive. His speciality was the acquiring of information quickly. At the flick of Mr Goby's double jointed thumb, hundreds of patient questioning plodding men and women, old and young, of all apparent stations in life, were despatched to question, and probe, and achieve results.
Mr Goby had now practically retired from business. But he occasionally 'obliged' a few old patrons. Hercule Poirot was one of these.
'I've got what I could for you,' Mr Goby told the fire curb in a soft confidential whisper. 'I sent the boys out. They do what they can – good lads – good lads all of them, but not what they used to be in the old days. They don't come that way nowadays. Not willing to learn, that's what it is. Think they know everything after they've only been a couple of years on the job. And they work to time. Shocking the way they work to time.'
He shook his head sadly and shifted his gaze to an electric plug socket.
'It's the Government,' he told it. 'And all this education racket. It gives them ideas. They come back and tell us what they think. They can't think, most of them, anyway. All they know is things out of books. That's no good in our business. Bring in the answers – that's all that's needed – no thinking.'
Mr Goby flung himself back in his chair and winked at a lampshade.
'Mustn't crab the Government, though! Don't know really what we'd do without it. I can tell you that nowadays you can walk in most anywhere with a notebook and pencil, dressed right, and speaking BBC, and ask people all the most intimate details of their daily lives and all their back history, and what they had for dinner on November 23rd because that was a test day for middle-class incomes – or whatever it happens to be (making it a grade above to butter them up!) – ask 'em any mortal thing you can; and nine times out of ten they'll come across pat, and even the tenth time though they may cut up rough, they won't doubt for a minute that you're what you say you are – and that the Government really wants to know – for some completely unfathomable reason! I can tell you, M. Poirot,' said Mr Goby, still talking to the lampshade, 'that it's the best line we've ever had; much better than taking the electric meter or tracing a fault in the telephone – yes, or than calling as nuns, or the Girl Guides or the Boy Scouts asking for subscriptions – though we use all those too. Yes, Government snooping is God's gift to investigators and long may it continue!'
Poirot did not speak. Mr Goby had grown a little garrulous with advancing years, but he would come to the point in his own good time.
