The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (Hercule Poirot 21)

letters couched in crazy language, he had suso

pected her of composing them herself. She had ac-tually

done such a thing once or twice before. She

was a woman of hysterical tendencies who craved

ceaselessly for excitement.

Now, all that seemed to me very natural--indeed,

we have a young woman in the village who

does much the same thing. The danger with such

people is that when anything at all extraordinary

really does happen to them, nobody believes they

are speaking the truth. It seemed to me that that

was what had happened in this case. The police, I

gathered, merely believed that Mr. Rhodes was

making up this unconvincing tale in order to avert

suspicion from himself.

I asked if there had been any women staying by

themselves in the Hotel. It seems there were two

--a Mrs. Granby, an Anglo-Indian widow, and a

Miss Carruthers, rather a horsey spinster who

dropped her g's. Mr. Petherick added that the

most minute inquiries had failed to elicit anyone

who had seen either of them near the scene of the

crime and there was nothing to connect either of

them with it in any way. I asked him to describe

their personal appearance. He said that Mrs.

Granby had reddish hair rather untidily done, was

sallow-faced and about fifty years of age. Her

clothes were rather picturesque, being made

mostly of native silks, etc. Miss Carruthers was

about forty, wore pince-nez, had close-cropped