Poirot smiled across at Katherine.
“It is strange, is it not,” he murmured, “that my words should have come true so quickly?”
“Mademoiselle, alas! can tell us very little,” said the Commissary.
“I have been explaining,” said Katherine, “that this poor lady was a complete stranger to me.”
Poirot nodded.
“But she talked to you, did she not?” he said gently. “You formed an impression—is it not so?”
“Yes,” said Katherine thoughtfully. “I suppose I did.”
“And that impression was—?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle”—the Commissary jerked himself forward—“let us by all means have your impressions.”
Katherine sat turning the whole thing over in her mind. She felt in a way as if she were betraying a confidence, but with that ugly word “Murder” ringing in her ears she dared not keep anything back. Too much might hang upon it. So, as nearly as she could, she repeated word for word the conversation she had had with the dead woman.
“That is interesting,” said the Commissary, glancing at the other. “Eh, M. Poirot, that is interesting? Whether it has anything to do with the crime—” He left the sentence unfinished.
“I suppose it could not be suicide,” said Katherine, rather doubtfully.
“No,” said the Commissary, “it could not be suicide. She was strangled with a length of black cord.”
“Oh!” Katherine shivered. M. Caux spread out his hands apologetically. “It is not nice—no. I think that our train robbers are more brutal than they are in your country.”
“It is horrible.”
“Yes, yes”—he was soothing and apologetic—“but you have great courage, Mademoiselle. At once, as soon as I saw you, I said to myself, ‘Mademoiselle has great courage.’ That is why I am going to ask you to do something more—something distressing, but I assure you very necessary.”
Katherine looked at him apprehensively.
He spread out his hands apologetically.
“I am going to ask you, Mademoiselle, to be so good as to accompany me to the next compartment.”
“Must I?” asked Katherine in a low voice.
“Someone must identify her,” said the Commissary, “and since the maid has disappeared”—he coughed significantly—“you appear to be the person who has seen most of her since she joined the train.”
“Very well,” said Katherine quietly; “if it is necessary—”
She rose. Poirot gave her a little nod of approval.
“Mademoiselle is sensible,” he said. “May I accompany you, M. Caux?”
“Enchanted, my dear M. Poirot.”
They went out into the corridor, and M. Caux unlocked the door of the dead woman’s compartment. The blinds on the far side had been drawn halfway up to admit light. The dead woman lay on the berth to their left, in so natural a posture that one could have thought her asleep. The bedclothes were drawn up over her, and her head was turned to the wall, so that only the red auburn curls showed. Very gently M. Caux laid a hand on her shoulder and turned the body back so that the face came into view. Katherine flinched a little and dug her nails into her palms. A heavy blow had disfigured the features almost beyond recognition. Poirot gave a sharp exclamation.
“When was that done, I wonder?” he demanded. “Before death or after?”
“The doctor says after,” said M. Caux.
“Strange,” said Poirot, drawing his brows together. He turned to Katherine. “Be brave, Mademoiselle; look at her well. Are you sure that this is the woman you talked to in the train yesterday?”
Katherine had good nerves. She steeled herself to look long and earnestly at the recumbent figure. Then she leaned forward and took up the dead woman’s hand.
“I am quite sure,” she replied at length. “The face is too disfigured to recognize, but the build and carriage and hair are exact, and besides I noticed this”—she pointed to a tiny mole on the dead woman’s wrist—“while I was talking to her.”
“Bon,” approved Poirot. “You are an excellent witness, Mademoiselle. There is, then, no question as to the identity, but it is strange, all the same.” He frowned down on the dead woman in perplexity.
M. Caux shrugged his shoulders.
“The murderer was carried away by rage, doubtless,” he suggested.
“If she had been struck down, it would have been comprehensible,” mused Poirot, “but the man who strangled her slipped up behind and caught her unawares. A little choke—a little gurgle—that is all that would be heard, and then afterwards—that smashing blow on her face. Now why? Did he hope that if the face were unrecognizable she might not be identified? Or did he hate her so much that he could not resist striking that blow even after she was dead?”
Katherine shuddered, and he turned at once to her kindly.
“You must not let me distress you, Mademoiselle,” he said. “To you this is all very new and terrible. To me, alas! it is an old story. One moment, I pray of you both.”
They stood against the door watching him as he went quickly round the compartment. He noted the dead woman’s clothes neatly folded on the end of the berth, the big fur coat that hung from a hook, and the little red lacquer hat tossed on the rack. Then he passed through into the adjoining compartment, that in which Katherine had seen the maid sitting. Here the berth had not been made up. Three or four rugs were piled loosely on the seat; there was a hatbox and a couple of suitcases. He turned suddenly to Katherine.
“You were in here yesterday,” he said. “Do you see anything changed, anything missing?”
Katherine looked carefully round both compartments.
“Yes,” she said, “there is something missing—a scarlet morocco case. It had the initials ‘R.V.K.’ on it. It might have been a small dressing case or a big jewel case. When I saw it, the maid was holding it.”
“Ah!” said Poirot.
“But, surely,” said Katherine, “I—of course, I don’t know anything about such things, but surely it is plain enough, if the maid and the jewel-case are missing?”
“You mean that it was the maid who was the thief? No, Mademoiselle, there is a very good reason against that.”
“What?”
“The maid was left behind in Paris.”
He turned to Poirot. “I should like you to hear the conductor’s story yourself,” he murmured confidentially. “It is very suggestive.”
“Mademoiselle would doubtless like to hear it also,” said Poirot. “You do not object, Monsieur le Commissaire?”
“No,” said the Commissary, who clearly did object very much. “No, certainly, M. Poirot, if you say so. You have finished here?”
“I think so. One little minute.”
He had been turning over the rugs, and now he took one to the window and looked at it, picking something off it with his fingers.
“What is it?” demanded M. Caux sharply.
“Four auburn hairs.” He bent over the dead woman. “Yes, they are from the head of Madame.”
“And what of it? Do you attach importance to them?”
Poirot let the rug drop back on the seat.
“What is important? What is not? One cannot say at this stage. But we must note each little fact carefully.”
They went back again into the first compartment, and in a minute or two the conductor of the carriage arrived to be questioned.
“Your name is Pierre Michel?” said the Commissary.
“Yes, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
“I should like you to repeat to this gentleman”—he indicated Poirot—“the story that you told me as to what happened in Paris.”
“Very good, Monsieur le Commissaire. It was after we had left the Gare de Lyon I came along to make the beds, thinking that Madame would be at dinner, but she had a dinner basket in her compartment. She said to me that she had been obliged to leave her maid behind in Paris, so that I only need make up one berth. She took her dinner basket into the ad
joining compartment, and sat there while I made up the bed; then she told me that she did not wish to be wakened early in the morning, that she liked to sleep on. I told her I quite understood, and she wished me ‘goodnight.’ ”
“You yourself did not go into the adjoining compartment?”
“No, Monsieur.”
“Then you did not happen to notice if a scarlet morocco case was amongst the luggage there?”
“No, Monsieur, I did not.”
“Would it have been possible for a man to have been concealed in the adjoining compartment?”
The conductor reflected.
“The door was half open,” he said. “If a man had stood behind the door I should not have been able to see him, but he would, of course, have been perfectly visible to Madame when she went in there.”
“Quite so,” said Poirot. “Is there anything more you have to tell us?”