“Can I go now? Is that all?”
Colonel Weston said:
“Yes, yes, that’s all. Thank you, Miss Linda.”
He got up to open the door for her. Then came back to the table and lit a cigarette.
“Phew,” he said. “Not a nice job, ours. I can tell you I felt a bit of a cad questioning that child about the relations between her father and her stepmother. More or less inviting a daughter to put a rope round her father’s neck. All the same, it had to be done. Murder is murder. And she’s the person most likely to know the truth of things. I’m rather thankful, though, that she’d nothing to tell us in that line.”
Poirot said:
“Yes, I thought you were.”
Weston said with an embarrassed cough:
“By the way, Poirot, you went a bit far, I thought at the end. All that hands sinking into flesh business! Not quite the sort of idea to put into a kid’s head.”
Hercule Poirot looked at him with thoughtful eyes. He said:
“So you thought I put ideas into her head?”
“Well, didn’t you? Come now.”
Poirot shook his head.
Weston sheered away from the point. He said:
“On the whole we got very little useful stuff out of her. Except a more or less complete alibi for the Redfern woman. If they were together from half past ten to a quarter to twelve that lets Christine Redfern out of it. Exit the jealous wife suspect.”
Poirot said:
“There are better reasons than that for leaving Mrs. Redfern out of it. It would, I am convinced, be physically impossible and mentally impossible for her to strangle anyone. She is cold rather than warm blooded, capable of deep devotion and unswerving constancy, but not of hot-blooded passion or rage. Moreover, her hands are far too small and delicate.”
Colgate said:
“I agree with M. Poirot. She’s out of it. Dr. Neasden says it was a full-sized pair of hands that throttled that dame.”
Weston said:
“Well, I suppose we’d better see the Redferns next. I expect he’s recovered a bit from the shock now.”
III
Patrick Redfern had recovered full composure by now. He looked pale and haggard and suddenly very young, but his manner was quite composed.
“You are Mr. Patrick Redfern of Crossgates, Seldon, Princes Risborough?”
“Yes.”
“How long had you known Mrs. Marshall?”
Patrick Redfern hesitated, then said:
“Three months.”
Weston went on:
“Captain Marshall has told us that you and she met casually at a cocktail party. Is that right?”