‘What’s come to the house, sir? Ever since the master was murdered it doesn’t seem like the same place. I feel the whole time as though I was going about in a dream. I mix things up, and I sometimes feel I can’t trust my own eyes.’
Hercule Poirot shook his head. He said:
‘You are wrong. Your own eyes are just what you must trust.’
Tressilian said, shaking his head:
‘My sight’s bad—I can’t see like I used to do. I get things mixed up—and people. I’m getting too old for my work.’
Hercule Poirot clapped him on the shoulder and said:
‘Courage.’
‘Thank you, sir. You mean it kindly, I know. But there it is, I am too old. I’m always going back to the old days and the old faces. Miss Jenny and Master David and Master Alfred. I’m always seeing them as young gentlemen and ladies. Ever since that night when Mr Harry came home—’
Poirot nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is what I thought. You said just now “Ever since the master was murdered”—but it began before that. It is ever since Mr Harry came home, is it not, that things have altered and seemed unreal?’
The butler said:
‘You’re quite right, sir. It was then. Mr Harry always brought trouble into the house, even in the old days.’
His eyes wandered back to the empty stone base.
‘Who can have taken it, sir?’ he whispered. ‘And why? It’s—it’s like a madhouse.’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘It is not madness I am afraid of. It is sanity! Somebody, Tressilian, is in great danger.’
He turned and re-entered the house.
At that moment Pilar came out from the study. A red spot shone on either cheek. She held her head high and her eyes glittered.
As Poirot came up to her, she suddenly stamped her foot and said: ‘I will not take it.’
Poirot raised his eyebrows. He said:
‘What is it that you will not take, mademoiselle?’
Pilar said:
‘Alfred has just told me that I am to have my mother’s share of the money my grandfather left.’
‘Well?’
‘I could not get it by law, he said. But he and Lydia and the others consider it should be mine. They say it is a matter
of justice. And so they will hand it over to me.’
Poirot said again:
‘Well?’
Pilar stamped once more with her foot.
‘Do you not understand? They are giving it to me—giving it to me.’