Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)

Poirot smiled.

“You, Hastings, you would have put it straight in the wastepaper basket?”

“I’m afraid I should.” I frowned down on the letter. “I suppose I’m being dense, as usual, but I can’t see anything of interest in this letter!”

“Yet there is one point in it of great interest—a point that struck me at once.”

“Wait,” I cried. “Don’t tell me. Let me see if I can’t discover it for myself.”

It was childish of me, perhaps. I examined the letter very thoroughly. Then I shook my head.

“No, I don’t see it. The old lady’s got the wind up, I realize that—but then, old ladies often do! It may be about nothing—it may conceivably be about something, but I don’t see that you can tell that that is so. Unless your instinct—”

Poirot raised an offended hand.

“Instinct! You know how I dislike that word. ‘Something seems to tell me’—that is what you infer. Jamais de la vie! Me, I reason. I employ the little grey cells. There is one interesting point about that letter which you have overlooked utterly, Hastings.”

“Oh, well,” I said wearily. “I’ll buy it.”

“Buy it

? Buy what?”

“An expression. Meaning that I will permit you to enjoy yourself by telling me just where I have been a fool.”

“Not a fool, Hastings, merely unobservant.”

“Well, out with it. What’s the interesting point? I suppose, like the ‘incident of the dog’s ball,’ the point is that there is no interesting point!”

Poirot disregarded this sally on my part. He said quietly and calmly:

“The interesting point is the date.”

“The date?”

I picked up the letter. On the top left-hand corner was written April 17th.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “That is odd. April 17th.”

“And we are today June 28th. C’est curieux, n’est ce pas? Over two months ago.”

I shook my head doubtfully.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything. A slip. She meant to put June and wrote April instead.”

“Even then it would be ten or eleven days old—an odd fact. But actually you are in error. Look at the colour of the ink. That letter was written more than ten or eleven days ago. No, April 17th is the date assuredly. But why was the letter not sent?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“That’s easy. The old pussy changed her mind.”

“Then why did she not destroy the letter? Why keep it over two months and post it now?”

I had to admit that that was harder to answer. In fact I couldn’t think of a really satisfactory answer. I merely shook my head and said nothing.

Poirot nodded.

“You see—it is a point! Yes, decidedly a curious point.”