“Oh, but that’s absurd!” And turning on her heel she left them abruptly and without ceremony, running up the steps of the Gothic House and letting herself in with a key.
“Well!” said Japp, staring after her, “that’s an extraordinary thing to say.”
“Interesting,” observed Poirot mildly.
Japp pulled himself together, glanced at his watch and hailed an approaching taxi.
“We’ll have time to take the Sainsbury Seale on our way to the Savoy.”
IX
Miss Sainsbury Seale was in the dimly lit lounge of the Glengowrie Court Hotel having tea.
She was flustered by the appearance of a police officer in plain clothes—but her excitement was of a pleasurable nature, he observed. Poirot noticed, with sorrow, that she had not yet sewn the buckle on her shoe.
“Really, officer,” fluted Miss Sainsbury Seale, g
lancing round, “I really don’t know where we could go to be private. So difficult—just teatime—but perhaps you would care for some tea—and—and your friend—”
“Not for me, Madam,” said Japp. “This is M. Hercule Poirot.”
“Really?” said Miss Sainsbury Seale. “Then perhaps—you’re sure—you won’t either of you have tea? No. Well, perhaps we might try the drawing room, though that’s very often full—Oh, I see, there is a corner over there—in the recess. The people are just leaving. Shall we go there—”
She led the way to the comparative seclusion of a sofa and two chairs in an alcove. Poirot and Japp followed her, the former picking up a scarf and a handkerchief that Miss Sainsbury Seale had shed en route.
He restored them to her.
“Oh, thank you—so careless of me. Now please, Inspector—No, Chief Inspector, isn’t it?—do ask me anything you like. So distressing, the whole business. Poor man—I suppose he had something on his mind? Such worrying times we live in!”
“Did he seem to you worried, Miss Sainsbury Seale?”
“Well—” Miss Sainsbury Seale reflected, and finally said unwillingly:
“I can’t really say, you know, that he did! But then perhaps I shouldn’t notice—not under the circumstances. I’m afraid I’m rather a coward, you know.” Miss Sainsbury Seale tittered a little and patted her bird’s-nest-like curls.
“Can you tell us who else was in the waiting room while you were there?”
“Now let me see—there was just one young man there when I went in. I think he was in pain because he was muttering to himself and looking quite wild and turning over the leaves of a magazine just anyhow. And then suddenly he jumped up and went out. Really acute toothache he must have had.”
“You don’t know whether he left the house when he went out of the room?”
“I don’t know at all. I imagined he just felt he couldn’t wait any longer and must see the dentist. But it couldn’t have been Mr. Morley he was going to, because the boy came in and took me up to Mr. Morley only a few minutes later.”
“Did you go into the waiting room again on your way out?”
“No. Because, you see, I’d already put on my hat and straightened my hair up in Mr. Morley’s room. Some people,” went on Miss Sainsbury Seale, warming to her subject, “take off their hats downstairs in the waiting room, but I never do. A most distressing thing happened to a friend of mine who did that. It was a new hat and she put it very carefully on a chair, and when she came down, would you believe it, a child had sat on it and squashed it flat. Ruined! Absolutely ruined!”
“A catastrophe,” said Poirot politely.
“I blame the mother entirely,” said Miss Sainsbury Seale judicially. “Mothers should keep an eye on their children. The little dears do not mean any harm, but they have to be watched.”
Japp said:
“Then this young man with toothache was the only other patient you noticed at 58, Queen Charlotte Street.”
“A gentleman came down the stairs and went out just as I went up to Mr. Morley—Oh! and I remember—a very peculiar looking foreigner came out of the house just as I arrived.”
Japp coughed. Poirot said with dignity: