There was no need of speculation. The picture was clear. Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore had shot himself.
Three
For a moment or two the group in the doorway stood motionless, staring at the scene. Then Poirot strode forward.
At the same moment Hugo Trent said crisply:
“My God, the Old Man’s shot himself!”
And there was a long, shuddering moan from Lady Chevenix-Gore.
“Oh, Gervase—Gervase!”
Over his shoulder Poirot said sharply:
“Take Lady Chevenix-Gore away. She can do nothing here.”
The elderly soldierly man obeyed. He said:
“Come, Vanda. Come, my dear. You can do nothing. It’s all over. Ruth, come and look after your mother.”
But Ruth Chevenix-Gore had pressed into the room and stood close by Poirot’s side as he bent over the dreadful sprawled figure in the chair—the figure of a man of Herculean build with a Viking beard.
She said in a low, tense voice, curiously restrained and muffled:
“You’re quite sure he’s—dead?”
Poirot looked up.
The girl’s face was alive with some emotion—an emotion sternly checked and repressed—that he did not quite understand. It was not grief—it seemed more like a kind of half-fearful excitement.
The little woman in the pince-nez murmured:
“Your mother, my dear—don’t you think—?”
In a high, hysterical voice the girl with the red hair cried out:
“Then it wasn’t a car or a champagne cork! It was a shot we heard. . . .”
Poirot turned and faced them all.
“Somebody must communicate with the police—”
Ruth Chevenix-Gore cried out violently:
“No!”
The elderly man with the legal face said:
“Unavoidable, I am afraid. Will you see to that, Burrows? Hugo—”
Poirot said:
“You are Mr. Hugo Trent?” to the tall young man with the moustache. “It would be well, I think, if everyone except you and I were to leave this room.”
Again his authority was not questioned. The lawyer shepherded the others away. Poirot and Hugo Trent were left alone.
The latter said, staring: