Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)
But now, after the doctor had stumped away, the old lady lay with a frown on her face, thinking—thinking—responding absentmindedly to Minnie Lawson’s well-meant fussing—and then suddenly coming back to consciousness and rending her with a vitriolic tongue.
“Poor little Bobsie,” twittered Miss Lawson, bending over Bob who had a rug spread on the corner of his mistress’s bed. “Wouldn’t little Bobsie be unhappy if he knew what he’d done to his poor, poor Missus?”
Miss Arundell snapped:
“Don’t be idiotic, Minnie. And where’s your English sense of justice? Don’t you know that everyone in this country is accounted innocent until he or she is proved guilty?”
“Oh, but we do know—”
Emily snapped:
“We don’t know anything at all. Do stop fidgeting, Minnie. Pulling this and pulling that. Haven’t you any idea how to behave in a sickroom? Go away and send Ellen to me.”
Meekly Miss Lawson crept away.
Emily Arundell looked after her with a slight feeling of self-reproach. Maddening as Minnie was, she did her best.
Then the frown settled down again on her face.
She was desperately unhappy. She had all a vigorous strong-minded old lady’s dislike of inaction in any given situation. But in this particular situation she could not decide upon her line of action.
There were moments when she distrusted her own faculties, her own memory of events. And there was no one, absolutely no one in whom she could confide.
Half an hour later, when Miss Lawson tiptoed creakingly into the room, carrying a cup of beef tea, and then paused irresolute at the view of her employer lying with closed eyes, Emily Arundell suddenly spoke two words with such force and decision that Miss Lawson nearly dropped the cup.
“Mary Fox,” said Miss Arundell.
“A box, dear?” said Miss Lawson. “Did you say you wanted a box?”
“You’re getting deaf, Minnie. I didn’t say anything about a box. I said Mary Fox. The woman I met at Cheltenham last year. She was the sister of one of the Canons of Exeter Cathedral. Give me that cup. You’ve spilt it into the saucer. And don’t tiptoe when you come into a room. You don’t know how irritating it is. Now go downstairs and get me the London telephone book.”
“Can I find the number for you, dear? Or the address?”
“If I’d wanted you to do that I’d have told you so. Do what I tell you. Bring it here, and put my writing things by the bed.”
Miss Lawson obeyed orders.
As she was going out of the room after having done everything required of her, Emily Arundell said unexpectedly:
“You’re a good, faithful creature, Minnie. Don’t mind my bark. It’s a good deal worse than my bite. You’re very patient and good to me.”
Miss Lawson went out of the room with
her face pink and incoherent words burbling from her lips.
Sitting up in bed, Miss Arundell wrote a letter. She wrote it slowly and carefully, with numerous pauses for thought and copious underlining. She crossed and recrossed the page—for she had been brought up in a school that was taught never to waste notepaper. Finally, with a sigh of satisfaction, she signed her name and put it into an envelope. She wrote a name upon the envelope. Then she took a fresh sheet of paper. This time she made a rough draft and after having reread it and made certain alterations and erasures, she wrote out a fair copy. She read the whole thing through very carefully, then satisfied that she had expressed her meaning she enclosed it in an envelope and addressed it to William Purvis, Esq., Messrs Purvis, Purvis, Charlesworth and Purvis, Solicitors, Harchester.
She took up the first envelope again, which was addressed to M. Hercule Poirot, and opened the telephone directory. Having found the address she added it.
A tap sounded at the door.
Miss Arundell hastily thrust the letter she had just finished addressing—the letter to Hercule Poirot—inside the flap of her writing case.
She had no intention of rousing Minnie’s curiosity. Minnie was a great deal too inquisitive.
She called “Come in” and lay back on her pillows with a sigh of relief.
She had taken steps to deal with the situation.