Her eyes, anxious and scared, looked hopefully at Hercule Poirot. He put as much reassurance into his voice as he could.
“You may be sure that you have done absolutely the right thing in telling me, Agnes,” he said.
“Well, I must say, sir, it does take a load off my mind. You see, I’ve kept saying to myself as perhaps I ought to tell. And then, you see, I thought of getting mixed up with the police and what mother would say. She’s always been so particular about us all….”
“Yes, yes,” said Hercule Poirot hastily.
He had had, he felt, as much of Agnes’ mother as he could stand for one afternoon.
II
Poirot called at Scotland Yard and asked for Japp. When he was taken up to the Chief Inspector’s room: “I want to see Carter,” said Hercule Poirot.
Japp shot him a quick, sideways glance.
He said:
“What’s the big idea?”
“You are unwilling?”
Japp shrugged his shoulders. He said:
“Oh, I shan’t make objections. No good if I did. Who’s the Home Secretary’s little pet? You are. Who’s got half the Cabinet in his pocket? You have. Hushing up their scandals for them.”
Poirot’s mind flew for a moment to that case that he had named the Case of the Augean Stables. He murmured, not without complacence:
“It was ingenious, yes? You must admit it. Well imagined, let us say.”
“Nobody but you would ever have thought of such a thing! Sometimes, Poirot, I think you haven’t any scruples at all!”
Poirot’s face became suddenly grave. He said:
“That is not true.”
“Oh, all right, Poirot, I didn’t mean it. But you’re so pleased sometimes with your damned ingenuity. What do you
want to see Carter for? To ask him whether he really murdered Morley?”
To Japp’s surprise, Poirot nodded his head emphatically.
“Yes, my friend, that is exactly the reason.”
“And I suppose you think he’ll tell you if he did?”
Japp laughed as he spoke. But Hercule Poirot remained grave. He said:
“He might tell me—yes.”
Japp looked at him curiously. He said:
“You know, I’ve known you a long time—twenty years? Something like that. But I still don’t always catch on to what you’re driving at. I know you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about young Frank Carter. For some reason or other, you don’t want him to be guilty—”
Hercule Poirot shook his head energetically.
“No, no, there you are wrong. It is the other way about—”
“I thought perhaps it was on account of that girl of his—the blonde piece. You’re a sentimental old buzzard in some ways—”