Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot 22)

It was no mere housemaid who wakened Elinor the following morning. It was Mrs. Bishop in person, rustling in her old-fashioned black, and weeping unashamedly.

“Oh, Miss Elinor, she’s gone….”

“What?”

Elinor sat up in bed.

“Your dear aunt. Mrs. Welman. My dear mistress. Passed away in her sleep.”

“Aunt Laura? Dead?”

Elinor stared. She seemed unable to take it in.

Mrs. Bishop was weeping now with more abandon.

“To think of it,” she sobbed. “After all these years! Eighteen years I’ve been here. But indeed it doesn’t seem like it….”

Elinor said slowly:

“So Aunt Laura died in her sleep—quite peacefully… What a blessing for her!”

Mrs. Bishop wept.

“So sudden. The doctor saying he’d call again this morning and everything just as usual.”

Elinor said rather sharply:

“It wasn’t exactly sudden. After all, she’s been ill for some time. I’m just so thankful she’s been spared more suffering.”

Mrs. Bishop said tearfully that there was indeed that to be thankful for. She added:

“Who’ll tell Mr. Roderick?”

Elinor said:

“I will.”

She threw on a dressing gown and went along to his door and tapped. His voice answered, saying, “Come in.”

She entered.

“Aunt Laura’s dead, Roddy. She died in her sleep.”

Roddy, sitting up in bed, drew a deep sigh.

“Poor dear Aunt Laura! Thank God for it, I say. I couldn’t have borne to see her go on lingering in the state she was yesterday.”

Elinor said mechanically:

“I didn’t know you’d seen her?”

He nodded rather shamefacedly.

“The truth is, Elinor, I felt the most awful coward, because I’d funked it! I went along there yesterday evening. The nurse, the fat one, left the room for something—went down with a hot-water bottle, I think—and I slipped in. She didn’t know I was there, of course. I just stood a bit and looked at her. Then, when I heard Mrs. Gamp stumping up the stairs again, I slipped away. But it was—pretty terrible!”

Elinor nodded.

“Yes, it was.”