Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot 12)

Fournier stared at him curiously.

‘I do not follow you, M. Poirot.’

‘Because you are deducing from things that you have seen. Nothing can be so misleading as observation.’

Fournier shook his head again and spread out his hands. ‘I give up. I cannot catch your meaning.’

‘Our friend Giraud would urge you to pay no attention to my vagaries. “Be up and doing,” he would say. “To sit still in an armchair and think, that is the method of an old man past his prime.” But I say that a young hound is often so eager upon the scent that he overruns it…For him is the trail of the red herring. There, it is a very good hint I have given you there…’

And, leaning back, Poirot closed his eyes, it may have been to think, but it is quite certain that five minutes later he was fast asleep.

On arrival in Paris they went straight to No. 3 Rue Joliette.

The Rue Joliette is on the south side of the Seine. There was nothing to distinguish No. 3 from the other houses. An aged concierge admitted them and greeted Fournier in a surly fashion.

‘So we have the police here again! Nothing but trouble. This will give the house a bad name.’

He retreated grumbling into his apartment.

‘We will go to Giselle’s office,’ said Fournier. ‘It is on the first floor.’

He drew a key from his pocket as he spoke and explained that the French police had taken the precaution of locking and sealing the door whilst awaiting the result of the English inquest.

‘Not, I fear,’ said Fournier, ‘that there is anything here to help us.’

He detached the seals, unlocked the door, and they entered. Madame Giselle’s office was a small, stuffy apartment. It had a somewhat old-fashioned type of safe in a corner, a writing desk of business-like appearance and several shabbily upholstered chairs. The one window was dirty and it seemed highly probable that it had never been opened.

Fournier shrugged his shoulders as he looked round.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Poirot passed round behind the desk. He sat down in the chair and looked across the desk at Fournier. He passed his hand gently across the surface of the wood, then down underneath it.

‘There is a bell here,’ he said.

‘Yes, it rings down to the concierge.’

‘Ah, a wise precaution. Madame’s clients might sometimes become obstreperous.’

He opened one or two of the drawers. They contained stationery, a calendar, pens and pencils, but no papers and nothing of a personal nature.

Poirot merely glanced into them in a cursory manner.

‘I will not insult you, my friend, by a close search. If there were anything to find you would have found it, I am sure.’ He looked across at the safe. ‘Not a very efficacious pattern, that?’

‘Somewhat out of date,’ agreed Fournier.

‘It was empty?’

‘Yes. That cursed maid had destroyed everything.’

‘Ah, yes, the maid. The confidential maid. We must see her. This room, as you say, has nothing to tell us. It is significant that, do you not think so?’

‘What do you mean by significant, M. Poirot?’

‘I mean that there is in this room no personal touch…I find that interesting.’

‘She was hardly a woman of sentiment,’ said Fournier dryly.