“A vous la parole! Describe this man.”
She looked at him blankly.
“I can’t…I don’t know how…He had glasses, I think—and a shabby overcoat….”
“Mieux que ça, mademoiselle.”
“He stooped…I don’t know. I hardly looked at him. He wasn’t the sort of man you’d notice….”
Poirot said gravely:
“You are quite right, mademoiselle. The whole secret of the murders lies there in your description of the murderer—for without a doubt he was the murderer! ‘He wasn’t the sort of man you’d notice.’ Yes—there is no doubt about it…You have described the murderer!”
Twenty-two
NOT FROM CAPTAIN HASTINGS’ PERSONAL NARRATIVE
I
Mr. Alexander Bonaparte Cust sat very still. His breakfast lay cold and untasted on his plate. A newspaper was propped up against the teapot and it was this newspaper that Mr. Cust was reading with avid interest.
Suddenly he got up, paced to and fro for a minute, then sank back into a chair by the window. He buried his head in his hands with a stifled groan.
He did not hear the sound of the opening door. His landlady, Mrs. Marbury, stood in the doorway.
“I was wondering, Mr. Cust, if you’d fancy a nice—why, whatever is it? Aren’t you feeling well?”
Mr. Cust raised his head from his hands.
“Nothing. It’s nothing at all, Mrs. Marbury. I’m not—feeling very well this morning.”
Mrs. Marbury inspected the breakfast tray.
“So I see. You haven’t touched your breakfast. Is it your head troubling you again?”
“No. At least, yes…I—I just feel a bit out of sorts.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I’m sure. You’ll not be going away today, then?”
Mr. Cust sprang up abruptly.
“No, no. I have to go. It’s business. Important. Very important.”
His hands were shaking. Seeing him so agitated, Mrs. Marbury tried to soothe him.
“Well, if you must—you must. Going far this time?”
“No. I’m going to”—he hesitated for a minute or two—“Cheltenham.”
There was something so peculiar about the tentative way he said the wor
d that Mrs. Marbury looked at him in surprise.
“Cheltenham’s a nice place,” she said conversationally. “I went there from Bristol one year. The shops are ever so nice.”
“I suppose so—yes.”
Mrs. Marbury stooped rather stiffly—for stooping did not suit her figure—to pick up the paper that was lying crumpled on the floor.