Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot 22)

They stood at last in the room where Mary Gerrard had died.

The house had a strange atmosphere in it: it seemed alive with memories and forebodings.

Peter Lord flung up one of the windows.

He said with a slight shiver:

“This place feels like a tomb….”

Poirot said:

“If walls could speak… It is all here, is it not, here in the house—the beginning of the whole story.”

He paused and then said softly:

“It was here in this room that Mary Gerrard died.”

Peter Lord said:

“They found her sitting in that chair by the window….”

Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully:

“A young girl—beautiful—romantic? Did she scheme and intrigue? Was she a superior person who gave herself airs? Was she gentle and sweet, with no thought of intrigue…just a young thing beginning life…a girl like a flower?…”

“Whatever she was,” said Peter Lord, “someone wished her dead.”

Hercule Poirot murmured:

“I wonder….”

Lord stared at him.

“What do you mean?”

&nbs

p; Poirot shook his head.

“Not yet.”

He turned about.

“We have been all through the house. We have seen all that there is to be seen here. Let us go down to the Lodge.”

Here again all was in order: the rooms dusty, but neat and emptied of personal possessions. The two men stayed only a few minutes. As they came out into the sun, Poirot touched the leaves of a pillar rose growing up a trellis. It was pink and sweet-scented.

He murmured:

“Do you know the name of this rose? It is Zephyrine Drouhin, my friend.”

Peter Lord said irritably:

“What of it?”

Hercule Poirot said:

“When I saw Elinor Carlisle, she spoke to me of roses. It was then that I began to see—not daylight, but the little glimpse of light that one gets in a train when one is about to come out of a tunnel. It is not so much daylight, but the promise of daylight.”