‘I must apologize for having been misinformed.’ He paused at the door. ‘By the way, just as a matter of curiosity, what made you call Dr Bryant Dr Hubbard just now?’
‘Blessed if I know. Let me see—Oh, yes, I think it must have been the flute. The nursery rhyme, you know. Old Mother Hubbard’s dog—But when she came back he was playing the flute. Odd thing how you mix up names.’
‘Ah, yes, the flute…These things interest me, you understand, psychologically.’
Mr Ryder snorted at the word psychologically. It savoured to him of what he called that tom-fool business psychoanalysis.
He looked at Poirot with suspicion.
Chapter 19
Enter and Exit Mr Robinson
The Countess of Horbury sat in her bedroom at 315 Grosvenor Square in front of her toilet table. Gold brushes and boxes, jars of face cream, boxes of powder—dainty luxury all around her. But in the midst of the luxury Cicely Horbury sat with dry lips and a face on which the rouge showed up in unbecoming patches on her cheeks.
She read the letter for the fourth time.
The Countess of Horbury.
Dear Madam,
re: Madame Giselle, deceased.
I am the holder of certain documents formerly in the possession of the deceased lady. If you or Mr Raymond Barraclough are interested in the matter, I should be happy to call upon you with a view to discussing the affair.
Or perhaps you would prefer me to deal with your husband in the matter?
Yours truly,
John Robinson.
Stupid, to read the same thing over and over again…
As though the words might alter their meaning.
She picked up the envelope—two envelopes, the first with ‘Personal’ on it, the second with ‘Private and Very Confidential.’
‘Private and Very Confidential…’
The beast…the beast…
And that lying old Frenchwoman, who had sworn that ‘all arrangements were made to protect clients in case of her own sudden demise…’
Damn her…Life was hell—hell…
‘Oh God, my nerves,’ thought Cicely. ‘It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair…’
Her shaking hand went out to a gold-topped bottle…
‘It will steady me, pull me together…’
She snuffed the stuff up her nose.
There. Now she could think! What to do? See the man, of course. Though where she could raise any money—perhaps a lucky flutter at that place in Carlos Street…
But time enough to think of that later. See the man—find out what he knows.
She went over to the writing-table, dashed off in her big, unformed handwriting: