Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot 22)

“If anybody had come up to the house—up to the pantry window—you wouldn’t have seen them?”

“No, I wouldn’t, sir.”

Peter Lord said:

“When did you go to your dinner?”

“One o’clock, sir.”

“And you didn’t see anything—any man hanging about—or a car outside—anything like that?”

The man’s eyebrows rose in slight surprise.

“Outside the back gate, sir? There was your car there—nobody else’s.”

Peter Lord cried:

“My car: It wasn’t my car! I was over Withenbury direction that morning. Didn’t get back till after two.”

Horlick looked puzzled.

“I made sure it was your car, sir,” he said doubtfully.

Peter Lord said quickly:

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Good morning, Horlick.”

He and Poirot moved on. Horlick stared after them for a minute or two, then slowly resumed his progress with the wheelbarrow.

Peter Lord said softly—but with great excitement:

“Something—at last. Whose car was it standing in the lane that morning?”

Poirot said:

“What make is your car, my friend?”

“A Ford ten—sea-green. They’re pretty common, of course.”

“And you are sure that it was not yours? You haven’t mistaken the day?”

“Absolutely certain. I was over at Withenbury, came back late, snatched a bit of lunch, and then the call came through about Mary Gerrard and I rushed over.”

Poirot said softly:

“Then it would seem, my friend, that we have come upon something tangible at last.”

Peter Lord said:

“Someone was here that morning…someone who was not Elinor Carlisle, nor Mary Gerrard, nor Nurse Hopkins….”

Poirot said:

“This is very interesting. Come, let us make our investigations. Let us see, for instance, supposing a man (or woman) were to wish to approach the house unseen, how they would set about it.”

Halfway along the drive a path branched off through some shrubbery. They took this and at a certain turn in it Peter Lord clutched Poirot’s arm, pointing to a window.

He said: