He'll think you're bursting with guilt."
"I'm certainly not bursting with guilt," said Anne coldly.
"Darling, I know that.
You couldn't murder anybody if you tried.
But horrible suspicious foreigners don't know that.
I think we ought to go nicely to his house.
Otherwise he'll come down here and try to worm things out of the servants."
"We haven't got any servants."
"We've got Mother Astwell.
She can wag a tongue with anybody!
Come on, Anne, let's go. It will be rather fun, really."
"I don't see why he wants to see me." Anne was obstinate.
"To put one over on the official police, of course," said Rhoda impatiently. "They always do - the amateurs, I mean.
They make out that Scotland Yard are all boots and brainlessness."
"Do you think this man Poirot is clever?"
"He doesn't look a Sherlock," said Rhoda. "I expect he has been quite good in his day.
He's gaga now, of course.
He must be at least sixty.
Oh, come on, Anne, let's go and see the old boy.
He may tell us dreadful things about the others."
"All right," said Anne and added, "You do enjoy all this so, Rhoda."
"I suppose because it isn't my funeral," said Rhoda. "You were a noodle, Anne, not just to have looked up at the right minute.
If only you had, you could live like a duchess for the rest of your life on blackmail."
So it came about that, at three o'clock of that same afternoon, Rhoda Dawes and Anne Meredith sat primly on their chairs in Poirot's neat room and sipped blackberry sirop, which they disliked very much but were too polite to refuse, from old-fashioned glasses.
"It was most amiable of you to accede to my request, mademoiselle," Poirot was saying.
"I'm sure I shall be glad to help you in any way I can," murmured Anne vaguely.
"It is a little matter of memory."
"Memory?"
"Yes, I have already put these questions to Mrs. Lorrimer, to Doctor Roberts, and to Major Despard.
None of them, alas; have given me the response that I hoped for."
Anne continued to look at him inquiringly.
"I want you, mademoiselle, to cast your mind back to that evening in the drawing-room of Mr. Shaitana."
A weary shadow passed over Anne's face.
Was she never to be free of that nightmare?
Poirot noticed the expression.
"I know, mademoiselle, I know," he said kindly. "C'est penible, n'est ce pas!
That is very natural.
You, so young as you are, to be brought in contact with horror for the first time.
Probably you have never known or seen a violent death."
Rhoda's feet shifted a little uncomfortably on the floor.
"Well," said Anne.
"Cast your mind back.
I want you to tell me what you remember of that room?"
Anne stared at him suspiciously.
"I don't understand?"
"But, yes. The chairs, the tables, the ornaments, the wallpaper, the curtains, the fire irons.
You saw them all. Can you not then describe them?"
"Oh, I see." Anne hesitated, frowning. "It's difficult.
I don't really think I remember.
I couldn't say what the wallpaper was like.