Appointment With Death (Hercule Poirot 19)

‘There might have been an overdose in this particular bottle. A mistake of the chemist who made it up?’

‘I think that is very unlikely,’ she replied quietly.

‘Ah, well: the analysis will soon tell us.’

Nadine said: ‘Unfortunately the bottle was broken.’

Poirot eyed her with sudden interest.

‘Indeed. Who broke it?’

‘I’m not quite sure. One of the servants, I think. In carrying my mother-in-law’s body into her cave, there was a good deal of confusion and the light was very poor. A table got knocked over.’

Poirot eyed her steadily for a minute or two.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is very interesting.’

Nadine Boynton shifted wearily in her chair.

‘You are suggesting, I think, that my mother-in-law did not die of shock, but of an overdose of digitalis?’ she said, and went on: ‘That seems to me most improbable.’

Poirot leaned forward.

‘Even when I tell you that Dr Gerard, the French physician who was staying in the camp, had missed an appreciable quantity of a preparation of digitoxin from his medicine chest?’

Her face grew very pale. He saw the clutch of her hand on the table. Her eyes dropped. She sat very still. She was like a Madonna carved in stone.

‘Well, madame,’ said Poirot at last, ‘what have you to say to that?’

The seconds ticked on but she did not speak. It was quite two minutes before she raised her head, and he started a little when he saw the look in her eyes.

‘M. Poirot, I did not kill my mother-in-law. That you know! She was alive and well when I left her. There are many people who can testify to that! Therefore, being innocent of the crime, I can venture to appeal to you. Why must you mix yourself up in this business? If I swear to you on my honour that justice and only justice has been done, will you not abandon this inquiry? There has been so much suffering—you do not know. Now that at last there is peace and the possibility of happiness, must you destroy it all?’

Poirot sat up very straight. His eyes shone with a green light. ‘Let me be clear, madame; what are you asking me to do?’

‘I am telling you that my mother-in-law died a natural death and I am asking you to accept that statement.’

‘Let us be definite. You believe that your mother-in-law was deliberately killed, and you are asking me to condone murder!’

‘I am asking you to have pity!’

‘Yes—on someone who had no pity!’

‘You do not understand—it was not like that.’

‘Did you commit the crime yourself, madame, that you know so well?’

Nadine shook her head. She showed no signs of guilt. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘She was alive when I left her.’

‘And then—what happened? You know—or you suspect?’

Nadine said passionately:

‘I have heard, M. Poirot, that once, in that affair of the Orient Express, you accepted an official verdict of what had happened?’

Poirot looked at her curiously. ‘I wonder who told you that?’

‘Is it true?’