“Is it really necessary to ask all these questions?”
“Not at all,” I said, with an air of surprise and a tinge of apology in my manner. “I had no idea you would mind answering them. I am very sorry.”
Her anger left her and she became confused again.
“Oh! I don’t mind answering them. I assure you I don’t. Why should I? It—it just seemed a little odd, you know. That’s all. A little odd.”
One advantage of being a medical practitioner is that you can usually tell when people are lying to you. I should have known from Mrs. Folliott’s manner, if from nothing else, that she did mind answering my questions—minded intensely. She was thoroughly uncomfortable and upset, and there was plainly some mystery in the background. I judged her to be a woman quite unused to deception of any kind, and consequently rendered acutely uneasy when forced to practise it. A child could have seen through her.
But it was also clear the she had no intention of telling me anything further. Whatever the mystery centering round Ursula Bourne might be, I was not going to learn it through Mrs. Folliott.
Defeated, I apologized once more for disturbing her, took my hat and departed.
I went to see a couple of patients and arrived home about six o’clock. Caroline was sitting beside the wreck of tea things. She had that look of suppressed exultation on her face which I know only too well. It is a sure sign with her, of either the getting or the giving of information. I wondered which it had been.
“I’ve had a very interesting afternoon,” began Caroline, as I dropped into my own particular easy chair and stretched out my feet to the inviting blaze in the fireplace.
“Have you?” I said. “Miss Gannett drop in to tea?”
Miss Gannett is one of the chief of our newsmongers.
“Guess again,” said Caroline, with intense complacency.
I guessed several times, working slowly through all the members of Caroline’s Intelligence Corps. My sister received each guess with a triumphant shake of the head. In the end she volunteered the information herself.
“M. Poirot!” she said. “Now, what do you think of that?”
I thought a good many things of it, but I was careful not to say them to Caroline.
“Why did he come?” I asked.
“To see me, of course. He said that, knowing my brother so well, he hoped he might be permitted to make the acquaintance of his charming sister—your charming sister, I’ve got mixed up, but you know what I mean.”
“What did he talk about?” I asked.
“He told me a lot about himself and his cases. You know that Prince Paul of Mauretania—the one who’s just married a dancer?”
“Yes?”
“I saw a most intriguing paragraph about her in Society Snippets the other day, hinting that she was really a Russian Grand Duchess—one of the Czar’s daughters who managed to escape from the Bolsheviks. Well, it seems that M. Poirot solved a baffling murder mystery that threatened to involve them both. Prince Paul was beside himself with gratitude.”
“Did he give him an emerald tie pin the size of a plover’s egg?” I inquired sarcastically.
“He didn’t mention it. Why?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I thought it was always done. It is in detective fiction anyway. The super-detective always has his rooms littered with rubies and pearls and emeralds from grateful Royal clients.”
“It’s very interesting to hear about these things from the inside,” said my sister complacently.
It would be—to Caroline. I could not but admire the ingenuity of M. Hercule Poirot, who had selected unerringly the case of all others that would most appeal to an elderly maiden lady living in a small village.
“Did he tell you if the dancer was really a Grand Duchess?” I inquired.
“He was not at liberty to speak,” said Caroline importantly.
I wondered how far Poirot had strained the truth in talking to Caroline—probably not at all. He had conveyed his innuendoes by means of his eyebrows and his shoulders.
“And after all this,” I remarked, “I suppose you were ready to eat out of his hand?”
“Don’t be coarse, James. I don’t know where you get these vulgar expressions from.”
“Probably from my only link with the outside world—my patients. Unfortunately, my practice does not lie amongst Royal princes and interesting Russian émigrés.”
Caroline pushed her spectacles up and looked at me. “You seem very grumpy, James. It must be your liver. A blue pill, I think, tonight.”
To see me in my own home, you would never imagine that I was a doctor of medicine. Caroline does the home prescribing both for herself and me.
“Damn my liver,” I said irritably. “Did you talk about the murder at all?”
“Well, naturally, James. What else is there to talk about locally? I was able to set M. Poirot straight upon several points. He was very grateful to me. He said I had the makings of a born detective in me—and a wonderful psychological insight into human nature.”
Caroline was exactly like a cat that is full to overflowing with rich cream. She was positively purring.
“He talked a lot about the little grey cells of the brain, and of their functions. His own, he says, are of the first quality.”
“He would say so,” I remarked bitterly. “Modesty is certainly not his middle name.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so horribly American, James. He thought it very important that Ralph should be found as soon as possible, and induced to come forward and give an account of himself. He says that his disappearance will produce a very unfortunate impression at the inquest.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I agreed with him,” said Caroline importantly. “And I was able to tell him the way people were talking already about it.”
“Caroline,” I said sharply, “did you tell M. Poirot what you overheard in the wood that day?”
“I did,” said Caroline complacently.
I got up and began to walk about. “You realize what you’re doing, I hope,” I jerked out. “You’re putting a halter round Ralph Paton’s neck as surely as you’re sitting
