rightly?'
Peter Lord said, 'It was wide open. It was a hot day, remember.'
Hercule Poirot said musingly, 'Then if anyone wished to watch unseen what was going on, somewhere about here would be a good spot.'
The two men cast about. Peter Lord said, 'There's a place here – behind these bushes. Some stuff's been trampled down here. It's grown up again now, but you can see plainly enough.'
Poirot joined him. He said thoughtfully, 'Yes, this is a good place. It is concealed from the path, and that opening in the shrubs gives one a good view of the window. Now, what did he do, our friend who stood here? Did he perhaps smoke?'
They bent down, examining the ground and pushing aside the leaves and branches. Suddenly Hercule Poirot uttered a grunt.
Peter Lord straightened up from his own search. 'What is it?'
'A match box, my friend. An empty match box, trodden heavily into the ground, sodden and decayed.'
With care and delicacy he salvaged the object. He displayed it at last on a sheet of notepaper taken from his pocket.
Peter Lord said, 'It's foreign. My God! German matches! '
Hercule Poirot said, 'And Mary Gerrard had recently come from Germany!'
Peter Lord said exultingly, 'We've got something now! You can't deny it.'
Hercule Poirot said slowly, 'Perhaps.'
'But, damn it all, man. Who on earth round here would have had foreign matches?'
Hercule Poirot said, 'I know – I know.'
His eyes, perplexed eyes, went to the gap in the bushes and the view of the window. He said, 'It is not quite so simple as you think. There is one great difficulty. Do you not see it yourself?'
'What? Tell me.'
Poirot sighed. 'If you do not see for yourself – But come, let us go on.'
They went on to the house. Peter Lord unlocked the back door with a key.
He led the way through the scullery to the kitchen, through that, along a passage where there was a cloakroom on one side and the butler's pantry on the other. The two men looked round the pantry.
It had the usual cupboards with sliding glass doors for glass and china. There was a gas ring and two kettles and canisters marked Tea and Coffee on a shelf above. There was a sink and draining-board and a washing-up bowl. In front of the window was a table.
Peter Lord said, 'It was on this table that Elinor Carlisle cut the sandwiches. The fragment of the morphine label was found in this crack in the floor under the sink.'
Poirot said thoughtfully, 'The police are careful searchers. They do not miss much.'
Peter Lord said violently, 'There's no evidence that Elinor ever handled that tube! I tell you, someone was watching her from the shrubbery outside. She went down to the lodge and he saw his chance and slipped in, uncorked the tube, crushed some tablets of morphine to powder, and put them into the top sandwich. He never noticed that he'd torn a bit off the label of the tube, and that it had fluttered down the crack. He hurried away, started up his car, and went off again.'
Poirot sighed. 'And still you do not see! It is extraordinary how dense an intelligent man can be.'
Peter Lord demanded angrily, 'Do you mean to say that you don't believe someone stood in those bushes watching this window?'
Poirot said, 'Yes, I believe that.'
'Then we've got to find whoever it was!'
Poirot murmured, 'We shall not have to look far, I fancy.'
'Do you mean you know?'
'I have a very shrewd idea.'
Peter Lord said slowly, 'Then your minions who made inquiries in Germany did bring you something.'
Hercule Poirot said, tapping his forehead, 'My friend, it is all here, in my head. Come, let us look over the house.'
III
They stood at last in the room where Mary Gerrard had died. The house had a strange atmosphere in it; it seemed alive with memories and forebodings.
Peter Lord flung up one of the windows. He said with a slight shiver, 'This place feels like a tomb.'
Poirot said, 'If walls could speak. It is all here, is it not, here in the house – the beginning of the whole story.'
He paused and then said softly, 'It was in this room that Mary Gerrard died?'
Peter Lord said, 'They found her sitting in that chair by the window.'
Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully, 'A young girl – beautiful – romantic. Did she scheme and intrigue? Was she a superior person who gave herself airs? Was she gentle and sweet, with no thought of intrigue – just a young thing beginning life – a girl like a flower?'
'Whatever she was,' said Peter Lord, 'someone wished her dead.'
Hercule Poirot murmured, 'I wonder -' Lord stared at him.
'What do you mean?'
Poirot shook his head. 'Not yet.'
He turned about. 'We have been all through the house. We have seen all that there is to be seen here. Let us go down to the lodge.'
Here again all was in order, the rooms dusty, but neat and emptied of personal possessions. The two men stayed only a few minutes. As they came out into the sun, Poirot touched the leaves of a pillar rose growing up a trellis. It was pink and sweet-scented.
He murmured, 'Do you know the name of this rose? It is Zephyrine Droughin, my friend.'
Peter Lord said irritably, 'What of it?'
Hercule Poirot said, 'When I saw Elinor Carlisle, she spoke to me of roses. It was then that I began to see – not daylight, but the little glimpse of light that one gets in a train when one is about to come out of a tunnel. It is not so much daylight, but the promise of daylight.'
Peter Lord said harshly, 'What did she tell you?'
'She told me of her childhood, of playing here in this garden, and of how she and Roderick Welman were on different sides. They were enemies, for he preferred the white rose of York – cold and austere – and she, so she told me, loved red roses, the red rose of Lancaster. Red roses that have scent and color and passion and warmth. And that, my friend, is the difference between Elinor Carlisle and Roderick Welman.'
Peter Lord said, 'Does that explain – anything?'
Poirot said, 'It explains Elinor Carlisle – who is passionate and proud and who loved desperately a man who was incapable of loving her.'
Peter Lord said, 'I don't understand you.'
Poirot said, 'But I understand her. I understand both of them. Now, my friend, we will go back once more to that little clearing in the shrubbery.'
They went there in silence. Peter Lord's freckled face was troubled and angry.
When they came to the spot, Poirot stood motionless for sometime, and Peter Lord watched him. Then suddenly the little detective gave a vexed sigh. He said, 'It is so simple, really. Do you not see, my friend, the fatal fallacy in your reasoning? According to your theory, someone, a man, presumably, who had known Mary Gerrard in Germany came here intent on killing her. But look, my friend, look! Use the two eyes of your body, since the eyes of the mind do not seem to serve you. What do you see from here? A window, is it not? And at that window – a girl. A girl cutting sandwiches. That is to say, Elinor Carlisle. But think for a minute of this: What on earth was to tell the watching man that those sandwiches were going to be offered to Mary Gerrard? No one knew that but Elinor Carlisle herself – nobody! Not even Mary Gerrard, nor Nurse Hopkins.'
