Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot 22)

“It was in my case. I’m sure of it.”

Sir Edwin sighed.

“You didn’t feel at all uneasy about the disappearance of the morphia?”

“Not—uneasy—no.”

“Oh, so you were quite at ease, notwithstanding the fact that a large quantity of a dangerous drug had disappeared?”

“I didn’t think at the time anyone had taken it.”

“I see. You just couldn’t remember for the moment what you had done with it?”

“Not at all. It was in the case.”

“Twenty half grain tablets—that is, ten grains of morphia. Enough to kill several people, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But you are no

t uneasy—and you don’t even report the loss officially?”

“I thought it was all right.”

“I put it to you that if the morphia had really disappeared the way it did you would have been bound, as a conscientious person, to report the loss officially.”

Nurse Hopkins, very red in the face, said:

“Well, I didn’t.”

“That was surely a piece of criminal carelessness on your part? You don’t seem to take your responsibilities very seriously. Did you often mislay these dangerous drugs?”

“It never happened before.”

It went on for some minutes. Nurse Hopkins, flustered, red in the face, contradicting herself…an easy prey to Sir Edwin’s skill.

“Is it a fact that on Thursday, July 6th, the dead girl, Mary Gerrard, made a will?”

“She did.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because she thought it was the proper thing to do. And so it was.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t because she was depressed and uncertain about her future?”

“Nonsense.”

“It showed, though, that the idea of death was present in her mind—that she was brooding on the subject.”

“Not at all. She just thought it was the proper thing to do.”

“Is this the will? Signed by Mary Gerrard, witnessed by Emily Biggs and Roger Wade, confectioners’ assistants, and leaving everything of which she died possessed to Mary Riley, sister of Eliza Riley?”

“That’s right.”

It was handed to the jury.