He said:
“You are right, my friend. I admit it. There was a time during which somebody could have had access to the plate of sandwiches. We must try to form some idea who that somebody could be; that is to say, what kind of person….”
He paused.
“Let us consider this Mary Gerrard. Someone, not Elinor Carlisle, desires her death. Why? Did anyone stand to gain by her death? Had she money to leave?”
Peter Lord shook his head.
“Not now. In another month she would have had two thousand pounds. Elinor Carlisle was making that sum over to her because she believed her aunt would have wished it. But the old lady’s estate isn’t wound up yet.”
Poirot said:
“Then we can wash out the money angle. Mary Gerrard was beautiful, you say. With that there are always complications. She had admirers?”
“Probably. I don’t know much about it.”
“Who would know?”
Peter Lord grinned.
“I’d better put you on to Nurse Hopkins. She’s the town crier. She knows everything that goes on in Maidensford.”
“I was going to ask you to give me your impressions of the two nurses.”
“Well, O’Brien’s Irish, good nurse, competent, a bit silly, could be spiteful, a bit of a liar—the imaginative kind that’s not so much deceitful, but just has to make a good story out of everything.”
Poirot nodded.
“Hopkins is a sensible, shrewd, middle-aged woman, quite kindly and competent, but a sight too much interested in other people’s business!”
“If there had been trouble over some young man in the village, would Nurse Hopkins know about it?”
“You bet!”
He added slowly:
“All the same, I don’t believe there can be anything very obvious in that line. Mary hadn’t been home long. She’d been away in Germany for two years.”
“She was twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“There may be some German complication.”
Peter Lord’s face brightened.
He said eagerly:
“You mean that some German fellow may have had it in for her? He may have followed her over here, waited his time, and finally achieved his object?”
“It sounds a little melodramatic,” said Hercule Poirot doubtfully.
“But it’s possible?”
“Not very probable, though.”
Peter Lord said: