cloud, and after that he caused great anxiety on several occasions. The police would not accept the view that it was kleptomania. A very clever young gentleman, sir, but vicious through and through, if you take my meaning. His Grace shipped him to Australia, and I hear he was convicted out there under another name. Very odd, sir, but there it is. The young gentleman, I need hardly say, was not in want financially.”
Poirot nodded his head slowly.
“Love of excitement,” he murmured, “and a little kink in the brain somewhere. I wonder now-”
He drew out the telegram from his pocket and read it again.
“Then there was Lady Mary Fox's daughter,” continued the valet in a mood of reminiscence. “Swindled tradespeople something shocking, she did. Very worrying to the best families, if I may say so, and there are many other queer cases I could mention.”
“You have a wide experience, Georges,” murmured Poirot. “I often wonder having lived so exclusively with titled families that you demean yourself by coming as a valet to me. I put it down to love of excitement on your part.”
“Not exactly, sir,” said George. “I happened to see in
“Ah,” said Poirot, “one always likes to know the reason for things.”
He remained in thought for a few moments and then said:
“You rang up Mademoiselle Papopolous?”
“Yes, sir; she and her father will be pleased to dine with you tonight.”
“Ah,” said Poirot thoughtfully. He drank off his chocolate, set the cup and saucer neatly in the middle of the tray, and spoke gently, more to himself than to the valet.
“The squirrel, my good Georges, collects nuts. He stores them up in the autumn so that they may be of advantage to him later. To make a success of humanity, Georges, we must profit by the lessons of those below us in the animal kingdom. I have always done so. I have been the cat, watching at the mouse hole. I have been the good dog following up the scent, and not taking my nose from the trail. And also, my good Georges, I have been the squirrel. I have stored away the little fact here, the little fact there. I go now to my store and I take out one particular nut, a nut that I stored away – let me see, seventeen years ago. You follow me, Georges?”
“I should hardly have thought, sir,” said George, “that nuts would have kept so long as that, though I know one can do wonders with preserving bottles.”
Poirot looked at him and smiled.
Chapter 28. Poirot Plays the Squirrel
Poirot started to keep his dinner appointment with a margin of three-quarters of an hour to spare. He had an object in this. The car took him, not straight to Monte Carlo, but to Lady Tamplin's house at Cap Martin, where he asked for Miss Grey. The ladies were dressing and Poirot was shown into a small salon to wait, and here, after a lapse of three or four minutes, Lenox Tamplin came to him.
“Katherine is not quite ready yet,” she said. “Can I give her a message, or would you rather wait until she comes down?”
Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He was a minute or two in replying, as though something of great weight hung upon his decision. Apparently the answer to such a simple question mattered.
“No,” he said at last, “no, I do not think it is necessary that I should wait to see Mademoiselle Katherine. I think, perhaps, that it is better that I should not. These things are sometimes difficult.”
Lenox waited politely, her eyebrows slightly raised.
“I have a piece of news,” continued Poirot. “You will, perhaps, tell your friend. M. Kettering was arrested to- night for the murder of his wife.”
“You want me to tell Katherine that?” asked Lenox. She breathed rather hard, as though she had been running; her face, Poirot thought, looked white and strained – rather noticeably so.
“If you please. Mademoiselle.”
“Why?” said Lenox. “Do you think Katherine will be upset? Do you think she cares?”
“I don't know. Mademoiselle,” said Poirot. “See, I admit it frankly. As a rule I know everything, but in this case, I – well, I do not. You, perhaps, know better than I do.”
“Yes,” said Lenox, “I know – but I am not going to tell you all the same.”
She paused for a minute or two, her dark brows drawn together in a frown.
“You believe he did it?” she said abruptly.
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“The police say so.”
“Ah,” said Lenox, “hedging, are you? So lere is something to hedge about.”
Again she was silent, frowning. Poirot said gently:
“You have known Derek Kettering a long time, have you not?”
“Off and on ever since I was a kid,” said Lenox gruffly. Poirot nodded his head several times without speaking.
With one of her brusque movements Lenox drew forward a chair and sat down on it, her elbows on the table and her face supported by her hands. Sitting thus, she looked directly across the table at Poirot.
“What have they got to go on?” she demanded. “Motive, I suppose. Probably came into money at her death.”
“He came into two million.”
“And if she had not died he would have been ruined?”
“Yes.”
“But there must have been more than that,” persisted Lenox. “He travelled by the same train, I know, but – that would not be enough to go on by itself.”
“A cigarette case with the letter 'K' on it which did not belong to Mrs. Kettering was found in her carriage, and he was seen by two people entering and leaving the compartment just before the train got into Lyons.”
“What two people?”
“Your friend Miss Grey was one of them. The other was Mademoiselle Mirelle, the dancer.”
“And he, Derek, what has he got to say about it?” demanded Lenox sharply.
“He denies having entered his wife's compartment at all,” said Poirot.
“Fool!” said Lenox crisply, frowning. “Just before Lyons, you say? Does nobody know when – when she died?”
“The doctors' evidence necessarily cannot be very definite,” said Poirot; “they are inclined to think that death was unlikely to have occurred after leaving Lyons. And we know this much, that a few moments after leaving Lyons Mrs. Kettering was dead.”
“How do you know that?”
Poirot was smiling rather oddly to himself.
“Some one else went into her compartment and found her dead.”
“And they did not rouse the train?”
“No.”
“Why was that?”
“Doubtless they had their reasons.”
Lenox looked at him sharply.
“Do you know the reason?”
“I think so – yes.”
Lenox sat still turning things over in her mind. Poirot watched her in silence. At last he looked up. A soft colour had come into er cheeks and her eyes were shining.
“You think some one on the train must have killed her, but that need not be so at all. What is to stop any one swinging themelves on to the train when it stopped at Lyons? They could go straight to her compartment, strangle
