At the same time he realized that clearly his host could not be in the room. He murmured gently:
“You knew I was coming, madame?”
“Oh—oh, yes . . .” Her manner was not convincing. “I think—I mean I suppose so, but I am so terribly impractical, M. Poirot. I forget everything.” Her tone held a melancholy pleasure in the fact. “I am told things. I appear to take them in—but they just pass through my brain and are gone! Vanished! As though they had never been.”
Then, with a slight air of performing a duty long overdue, she glanced round her vaguely and murmured:
“I expect you know everybody.”
Though this was patently not the case, the phrase was clearly a well-worn formula by means of which Lady Chevenix-Gore spared herself the trouble of introduction and the strain of remembering people’s right names.
Making a supreme effort to meet the difficulties of this particular case, she added:
“My daughter—Ruth.”
The girl who stood before him was also tall and dark, but she was of a very different type. Instead of the flattish, indeterminate features of Lady Chevenix-Gore, she had a well-chiselled nose, slightly aquiline, and a clear, sharp line of jaw. Her black hair swept back from her face into a mass of little tight curls. Her colouring was of carnation clearness and brilliance, and owed little to makeup. She was, so Hercule Poirot thought, one of the loveliest girls he had seen.
He recognized, too, that she had brains as well as beauty, and guessed at certain qualities of pride and temper. Her voice, when she spoke, came with a slight drawl that struck him as deliberately put on.
“How exciting,” she said, “to entertain M. Hercule Poirot! The old man arranged a little surprise for us, I suppose.”
“So you did not know I was coming, mademoiselle?” he said quickly.
“I hadn’t an idea of it. As it is, I must postpone getting my autograph book until after dinner.”
The notes of a gong sounded from the hall, then the butler opened the door and announced:
“Dinner is served.”
And then, almost before the last word, “served,” had been uttered, something very curious happened. The pontificial domestic figure became, just for one moment, a highly astonished human being. . . .
The metamorphosis was so quick and the mask of the well-trained servant was back again so soon, that anyone who had not happened to be looking would not have noticed the change. Poirot, however, had happened to be looking. He wondered.
The butler hesitated in the doorway. Though his face was again correctly expressionless, an air of tension hung about his
figure.
Lady Chevenix-Gore said uncertainly:
“Oh, dear—this is most extraordinary. Really, I—one hardly knows what to do.”
Ruth said to Poirot:
“This singular consternation, M. Poirot, is occasioned by the fact that my father, for the first time for at least twenty years, is late for dinner.”
“It is most extraordinary—” wailed Lady Chevenix-Gore. “Gervase never—”
An elderly man of upright soldierly carriage came to her side. He laughed genially.
“Good old Gervase! Late at last! Upon my word, we’ll rag him over this. Elusive collar stud, d’you think? Or is Gervase immune from our common weaknesses?”
Lady Chevenix-Gore said in a low, puzzled voice:
“But Gervase is never late.”
It was almost ludicrous, the consternation caused by this simple contretemps. And yet, to Hercule Poirot, it was not ludicrous . . . Behind the consternation he felt uneasiness—perhaps even apprehension. And he, too, found it strange that Gervase Chevenix-Gore should not appear to greet the guest he had summoned in such a mysterious manner.
In the meantime, it was clear that nobody knew quite what to do. An unprecedented situation had arisen with which nobody knew how to deal.