'Yes, yes, this is a very trifling matter. I only wondered if anything on the table – Madame Giselle's table, I mean – was disarranged?'
'You mean when – when I found her?'
'Yes. The spoons and forks, the saltcellar – anything like that?'
The man shook his head.
'There wasn't anything of that kind on the tables. Everything was cleared away, but the coffee cups. I didn't notice anything myself. I shouldn't, though. I was much too flustered. But the police would know that, sir; they searched the plane through and through.'
'Ah, well,' said Poirot, 'it is no matter. Sometime I must have a word with your colleague Davis.'
'He's on the early 8:45 a.m. service now, sir.'
'Has this business upset him much?'
'Oh, well, sir, you see, he's only a young fellow. If you ask me, he's almost enjoyed it all. The excitement! And everyone standing him drinks and wanting to hear about it.'
'Has he, perhaps, a young lady?' asked Poirot. 'Doubtless his connection with the crime would be very thrilling to her.'
'He's courting old Johnson's daughter at the Crown and Feathers,' said Mrs Mitchell. 'But she's a sensible girl; got her head screwed on the right way. She doesn't approve of being mixed up with a murder.'
'A very sound point of view,' said Poirot, rising. 'Well, thank you, Mr Mitchell – and you, Mrs Mitchell – and I beg of you, my friend, do not let this weigh upon your mind.'
When he had departed, Mitchell said: 'The thick heads in the jury at the inquest thought he'd done it. But if you ask me, he's secret service.'
'If you ask me,' said Mrs Mitchell, 'there's Bolshies at the back of it.'
Poirot had said that he must have a word with the other steward, Davis, sometime. As a matter of fact, he had it not many hours later, in the bar of the Crown and Feathers.
He asked Davis the same question he had asked Mitchell.
'Nothing disarranged, no, sir. You mean upset? That kind of thing?'
'I mean – well, shall we say something missing from the table, or something that would not usually be there?'
Davis said slowly:
'There was something. I noticed it when I was clearing up after the police had done with the place. But I don't suppose that it's the sort of thing you mean. It's only that the dead lady had two coffee spoons in her saucer. It does sometimes happen when we're serving in a hurry. I noticed it because there's a superstition about that; they say two spoons in a saucer means a wedding.'
'Was there a spoon missing from anyone else's saucer?'
'No, sir, not that I noticed. Mitchell or I must have taken the cup and saucer along that way – as I say, one does sometimes, what with the hurry and all. I laid two sets of fish knives and forks only a week ago. On the whole, it's better than laying the table short, for then you have to interrupt yourself and go and fetch the extra knife or whatever it is you've forgotten.'
Poirot asked one more question – a somewhat jocular one:
'What do you think of French girls, Davis?'
'English is good enough for me, sir.'
And he grinned at a plump fair-haired girl behind the bar.
Chapter 18
Mr James Ryder was rather surprised when a card bearing the name of M. Hercule Poirot was brought to him.
He knew that the name was familiar but for the moment he could not remember why. Then he said to himself:
'Oh, that fellow!' And told the clerk to show the visitor in.
M. Hercule Poirot was looking very jaunty. In one hand he carried a cane. He had a flower in his buttonhole.
'You will forgive my troubling you, I trust,' said Poirot. 'It is this affair of the death of Madame Giselle.'
'Yes?' said Mr Ryder. 'Well, what about it? Sit down, won't you? Have a cigar?'
'I thank you, no. I smoke always my own cigarettes. Perhaps you will accept one?'
Ryder regarded Poirot's tiny cigarettes with a somewhat dubious eye.
'Think I'll have one of my own, if it's all the same to you. Might swallow one of those by mistake.' He laughed heartily.
'The inspector was round here a few days ago,' said Mr Ryder, when he had induced his lighter to work. 'Nosey, that's what those fellows are. Can't mind their own business.'
'They have, I suppose, to get information,' said Poirot mildly.
'They needn't be so offensive about it,' said Mr Ryder bitterly. 'A man's got his feelings and his business reputation to think about?'
'You are, perhaps, a little oversensitive.'
'I'm in a delicate position, I am,' said Mr Ryder. 'Sitting where I did – just in front of her – well, it looks fishy, I suppose. I can't help where I sat. If I'd known that woman was going to be murdered, I wouldn't have come by that plane at all. I don't know, though, perhaps I would.'
He looked thoughtful for a moment.
'Has good come out of evil,' asked Poirot, smiling.
'It's funny, your saying that. It has and it hasn't, in a manner of speaking. I mean I've had a lot of worry. I've been badgered. Things have been insinuated. And why me – that's what I say. Why don't they go and worry that Doctor Hubbard – Bryant, I mean. Doctors are the people who can get hold of highfaluting undetectable poisons. How'd I get hold of snake juice? I ask you!'
'You were saying,' said Poirot, 'that although you had been put to a lot of inconvenience -'
'Ah, yes, there was a bright side to the picture. I don't mind telling you I cleaned up a tidy little sum from the papers. Eyewitness stuff – though there was more of the reporter's imagination than of my eyesight; but that's neither here nor there.'
'It is interesting,' said Poirot, 'how a crime affects the lives of people who are quite outside it. Take yourself, for example; you make suddenly a quite unexpected sum of money – a sum of money perhaps particularly welcome at the moment.'
'Money's always welcome,' said Mr Ryder.
He eyed Poirot sharply.
'Sometimes the need of it is imperative. For that reason men embezzle, they make fraudulent entries -' he waved his hands – 'all sorts of complications arise.'
'Well, don't let's get gloomy about it,' said Mr Ryder.
'True. Why dwell on the dark side of the picture? This money was grateful to you, since you failed to raise a loan in Paris.'
'How the devil did you know that?' asked Mr Ryder angrily.
Hercule Poirot smiled.
'At any rate, it is true.'
'It's true enough. But I don't particularly want it to get about.'
'I will be discretion itself, I assure you.'
'It's odd,' mused Mr Ryder, 'how small a sum will sometimes put a man in Queer Street. Just a small sum of ready money to tide him over a crisis. And if he can't get hold of that infinitesimal sum, to hell with his credit. Yes, it's odd. Money's odd. Credit's odd. Come to that, life is odd!'
'Very true.'
'By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?'
