Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)

“Yes. Overdose of sleeping draught. Chloral.”

Poirot got up.

“Come, Hastings, we must go there at once.”

“Is this what you feared—last night? When you said you were always nervous towards the end of a case?”

“I feared another death—yes.”

Poirot’s face was set and stern. We said very little as we drove towards Euston. Once or twice Poirot shook his head.

I said timidly:

“You don’t think—? Could it be an accident?”

“No, Hastings—no. It was not an accident.”

“How on earth did he find out where she had gone?”

Poirot only shook his head without replying.

The Coniston was an unsavoury-looking place quite near Euston station. Poirot, with his card, and a suddenly bullying manner, soon fought his way into the manager’s office.

The facts were quite simple.

Mrs. Peters as she had called herself and her two children had arrived about half past twelve. They had had lunch at one o’clock.

At four o’clock a man had arrived with a note for Mrs. Peters. The note had been sent up to her. A few minutes later she had come down with the two children and a suitcase. The children had then left with the visitor. Mrs. Peters had gone to the office and explained that she should only want the one room after all.

She had not appeared exceptionally distressed or upset, indeed she had seemed quite calm and collected. She had had dinner about seven thirty and had gone to her room soon afterwards.

On calling her in the morning the chambermaid had found her dead.

A doctor had been sent for and had pronounced her to have been dead for some hours. An empty glass was found on the table by the bed. It seemed fairly obvious that she had taken a sleeping draught, and by mistake, taken an overdose. Chloral hydrate, the doctor said, was a somewhat uncertain drug. There were no indications of suicide. No letter had been left. Searching for means of notifying her relations, Miss Lawson’s name and address had been found and she had been communicated with by telephone.

Poirot asked if anything had been found in the way of letters or papers. The letter, for instance, brought by the man who had called for the children.

No papers of any kind had been found, the man said, but there was a pile of charred paper on the hearth.

Poirot nodded thoughtfully.

As far as anyone could say, Mrs. Peters had had no visitors and no one had come to her room—with the solitary exception of the man who had called for the two children.

I questioned the porter myself as to his appearance, but the man was very vague. A man of medium height—he thought fair-haired—rather military build—of somewhat nondescript appearance. No, he was positive the man had no beard.

“It wasn’t Tanios,” I murmured to Poirot.

“My dear Hastings! Do you really believe that Mrs. Tanios, after all the trouble she was taking to get the children away from their father, would quite meekly hand them over to him without the least fuss or protest? Ah, that, no!”

“Then who was the man?”

“Clearly it was someone in whom Mrs. Tanios had confidence or rather it was someone sent by a third person in whom Mrs. Tanios had confidence.”

“A man of medium height,” I mused.

“You need hardly trouble yourself about his appearance, Hastings. I am quite sure that the man who actually called for the children was some quite unimportant personage. The real agent kept himself in the background!”

“And the note was from this third person?”