'So incredible, the whole damn' thing. Where can she be?'
'The inquest will be held at the Institute on Thursday,' said Miss Brewis. 'They rang up to tell us.'
Her employer looked at her as if he did not understand.
'Inquest?' he said. 'Oh, yes, of course.' He sounded dazed and uninterested. After another sip or two of coffee he said, 'Women are incalculable. What does she think she's doing?'
Miss Brewis pursed her lips. Poirot observed acutely enough that she was in a state of taut nervous tension.
'Hodgson's coming to see you this morning,' she remarked, 'about the electrification of the milking sheds on the farm. And at twelve o'clock there's the -'
Sir George interrupted.
'I can't see anyone. Put 'em all off! How the devil d'you think a man can attend to business when he's worried half out of his mind about his wife?'
'If you say so, Sir George.' Miss Brewis gave the domestic equivalent of a barrister saying 'as your lordship pleases.' Her dissatisfaction was obvious.
'Never know,' said Sir George, 'what women get into their heads, or what fool things they're likely to do! You agree, eh?' He shot the last question at Poirot.
'Les femmes! They are incalculable,' said Poirot, raising his eyebrows and his hands with Gallic fervour. Miss Brewis blew her nose in an annoyed fashion.
'She seemed all right,' said Sir George. 'Damn pleased about her new ring, dressed herself up to enjoy the fete. All just the same as usual. Not as though we'd had words or a quarrel of any kind. Going off without a word.'
'About those letters, Sir George,' began Miss Brewis.
'Damn the bloody letters to hell,' said sir George, and pushed aside his coffee-cup.
He picked up the letters by his plate and more or less threw them at her.
'Answer them any way you like! I can't be bothered.' He went on more or less to himself in an injured tone, 'Doesn't seem to be anything I can do… Don't even know if that police chap's any good. Very soft spoken and all that.'
'The police are, I believe' said Miss Brewis, 'very efficient. They have ample facilities for tracing the whereabouts of missing persons.'
'They take days sometimes,' said Sir George, 'to find some miserable kid who's run off and hidden himself in a haystack.'
'I don't think Lady Stubbs is likely to be in a haystack, Sir George.'
'If only I could do something,' repeated the unhappy husband. 'I think, you know, I'll put an advertisement in the papers. Take it down, Amanda, will you?' He paused a moment in thought. 'Hattie. Please come home. Desperate about you. George. All the papers, Amanda.'
Miss Brewis said acidly:
'Lady Stubbs doesn't often read the papers, Sir George. She's no interest at all in current affairs or what's going on in th world.' She added, rather cattily, but Sir George was not in the mood to appreciate cattiness, 'Of course you could put an advertisement in Vogue. That might catch her eye.'
Sir George said simply:
'Anywhere you think but get on with it.'
He got up and walked towards the door. With his hand on the handle he paused and came back a few steps. He spoke directly to Poirot.
'Look here, Poirot,' he said, 'you don't think she's dead, do you?'
Poirot fixed his eyes on his coffee-cup as he replied:
'I should say it is far too soon, Sir George, to assume anything of that kind. There is no reason as yet to entertain such an idea.'
'So you do think so,' said Sir George, heavily. 'Well,' he added defiantly. 'I don't! I say she's quite all right.' He nodded his head several times with increasing defiance, and went out banging the door behind him.
Poirot buttered a piece of toast thoughtfully. In cases where there was any suspicion of a wife being murdered, he always automatically suspected the husband. (Similarly, with a husband's demise, he suspected the wife.) But in this case he did not suspect Sir George with having done away with Lady Stubbs. From his brief observation of them he was quite convinced that Sir George was devoted to his wife. Moreover, as far as his excellent memory served him (and it served him pretty well), Sir George had been present on the lawn the entire afternoon until he himself had left with Mrs Oliver to discover the body. He had been there on the lawn when they had returned with the news. No, it was not Sir George who was responsible for Hattie's death. That is, if Hattie were dead. After all, Poirot told himself, there was no reason to believe so as yet. What he had just said to Sir George was true enough. But in his own mind the conviction was unalterable. The pattern, he thought, was the pattern of murder – a double murder.
Miss Brewis interrupted his thoughts by speaking with almost tearful venom.
'Men are such fools,' she said, 'such absolute fools! They're quite shrewd in most ways, and then they go marrying entirely the wrong sort of woman.'
Poirot was always willing to let people talk. The more people who talked to him, and the more they said, the better. There was nearly always a grain of wheat among the chaff.
'You think it has been an unfortunate marriage?' he demanded,
'Disastrous – quite disastrous.'
'You mean – that they were not happy together?'
'She'd a thoroughly bad influence over him in every way.'
'Now I find that very interesting. What kind of a bad influence?'
'Making him run to and fro at her beck and call, getting expensive presents out of him – far more jewels than one woman could wear. And furs. She's got two mink coats and a Russian ermine. What could any woman want with two mink coats, I'd like to know?'
Poirot shook his head.
'That I would not know,' he said.
'Sly,' continued Miss Brewis. 'Deceitful! Always playing the simpleton – especially when people were here. I suppose because she thought he liked her that way!'
'And did he like her that way?'
'Oh, men!' said Miss Brewis, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. 'They don't appreciate efficiency or unselfishness, or loyalty or any of those qualities! Now with a clever, capable wife Sir George would have got somewhere.'
'Got where?' asked Poirot.
'Well, he could take a prominent part in local affairs. Or stand for Parliament. He's a much more able man than poor Mr Masterton. I don't know if you've ever heard Mr Masterton on a platform – a most halting and uninspired speaker. He owes his position entirely to his wife. It's Mrs Masterton who's the power behind the throne. She's got all the drive and the initiative and the political acumen.'
Poirot shuddered inwardly at the thought of being married to Mrs Masterton, but he agreed quite truthfully with Miss Brewis's words.
'Yes,' he said, 'she is all that you say. A femme formidable,' he murmured to himself.
'Sir George doesn't seem ambitious,' went on Miss Brewis; 'he seems quite content to live here and potter about and play the country squire, and just go to London occasionally to attend to all his city directorships and all that, but he could make far more of himself than that with his abilities. He's really a very remarkable man, M. Poirot. That woman never understood him. She just regards him as a kind of machine for tipping out fur coats and jewels and expensive clothes. If he were married to someone who really appreciated his abilities…' She broke off, her voice wavering uncertainly.
Poirot looked at her with a real compassion. Miss Brewis was in love with her employer. She gave him a faithful, loyal and passionate devotion of which he was probably quite unaware and in which he would certainly not be interested. To Sir George, Amanda Brewis was an efficient machine who took the drudgery of daily life off his shoulders, who answered telephone calls, wrote letters, engaged servants, ordered meals and generally made life smooth for him. Poirot doubted if he had ever once thought of her as a woman. And that, he reflected, had its
