“Yes, yes—I understand….”
“My fault—” Simon urged. His eyes went to Cornelia. “Someone—ought to stay with her. She might—hurt herself—”
Dr. Bessner injected the needle. Cornelia said, with quiet competence: It’s all right, Mr. Doyle. Miss Bowers is going to stay with her all night….”
A grateful look flashed over Simon’s face. His body relaxed. His eyes closed. Suddenly he jerked them open. “Fanthorp?”
“Yes, Doyle.”
“The pistol…ought not to leave it…lying about. The boys will find it in the morning….”
Fanthorp nodded. “Quite right. I’ll go and get hold of it now.”
He went out of the cabin and along the deck. Miss Bowers appeared at the door of Jacqueline’s cabin.
“She’ll be all right now,” she announced.
“I’ve given her a morphine injection.”
“But you’ll stay with her?”
“Oh, yes. Morphia excites some people. I shall stay all night.”
Fanthorp went on to the lounge.
Some three minutes later there was a tap on Bessner’s cabin door.
“Dr. Bessner?”
“Yes?” The stout man appeared.
Fanthorp beckoned him out on the deck.
“Look here—I can’t find that pistol….”
“What is that?”
“The pistol. It dropped out of the girl’s hand. She kicked it away and it went under a settee. It isn’t under that settee now.”
They stared at each other.
“But who can have taken it?”
Fanthorp shrugged his shoulders.
Bessner said: “It is curious, that. But I do not see what we can do about it.”
Puzzled and vaguely alarmed, the two men separated.
Thirteen
Hercule Poirot was just wiping the lather from his freshly shaved face when there was a quick tap on the door, and hard on top of it Colonel Race entered unceremoniously. He closed the door behind him.
He said: “Your instinct was quite correct. It’s happened.”
Poirot straightened up and asked sharply: “What has happened?”
“Linnet Doyle’s dead—shot through the head last night.”