Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot 22)

“It is not quite so simple as you think. There is one great difficulty. Do you not see it yourself?”

“What? Tell me.”

Poirot sighed.

“If you do not see for yourself… But come, let us go on.”

They went on to the house. Peter Lord unlocked the back door with a key.

He led the way through the scullery to the kitchen, through that, along a passage where there was a cloakroom on one side and the butler’s pantry on the other. The two men looked round the pantry.

It had the usual cupboards with sliding glass doors for glass and china. There was a gas ring and two kettles and canisters marked Tea and Coffee on a shelf above. There was a sink and draining board and a papier-mâché washing-up bowl. In front of the window was a table.

Peter Lord said:

“It was on this table that Elinor Carlisle cut the sandwiches. The fragment of the morphine label was found in this crack in the floor under the sink.”

Poirot said thoughtfully:

“The police are careful searchers. They do not miss much.”

Peter Lord said violently:

“There’s no evidence that Elinor ever handled that tube! I tell you, someone was watching her from the shrubbery outside. She went down to the Lodge and he saw his chance and slipped in, uncorked the tube, crushed some tablets of morphine to powder and put them into the top sandwich.

He never noticed that he’d torn a bit off the label of the tube, and that it had fluttered down the crack. He hurried away, started up his car and went off again.”

Poirot sighed.

“And still you do not see! It is extraordinary how dense an intelligent man can be.”

Peter Lord demanded angrily:

“Do you mean to say that you don’t believe someone stood in those bushes watching the window?”

Poirot said:

“Yes, I believe that….”

“Then we’ve got to find whoever it was!”

Poirot murmured:

“We shall not have to look far, I fancy.”

“Do you mean you know?”

“I have a very shrewd idea.”

Peter Lord said slowly:

“Then your minions who made inquiries in Germany did bring you something….”

Hercule Poirot said, tapping his forehead:

“My friend, it is all here, in my head… Come, let us look over the house.”

III