You do not take the trouble to go out on your balcony and hurl it into the sea!
For one thing you might hit some one, for another it would be too much trouble.
No, you would only do that if you did not want any one to see that particular bottle."
Weston stared at him.
Weston said: "I know that Chief Inspector Japp, whom I met over a case not long ago, always says you have a damned tortuous mind.
You're not going to tell me now that Arlena Marshall wasn't strangled at all, but poisoned out of some mysterious bottle with a mysterious drug?"
"No, no, I do not think there was poison in that bottle."
"Then what was there?"
"I do not know at all. That's why I am interested."
Gladys Narracott came back. She was a little breathless.
She said: "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't find anything missing.
I'm sure there's nothing gone from Captain Marshall's room or Miss Linda Marshall's room or Mr and Mrs Redfern's room, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing gone from Miss Darnley's either.
But I couldn't say about Mrs Marshall's.
As I say, she's got such a lot."
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
He said: "No matter.
We will leave it."
Gladys Narracott said: "Is there anything more, sir?" She looked from one to the other of them.
Weston said: "Don't think so. Thank you." Poirot said: "I thank you, no.
You are sure, are you not, that there is nothing - nothing at all, that you have forgotten to tell us?"
"About Mrs Marshall, sir?"
"About anything at all.
Anything unusual, out of the way, unexplained, slightly peculiar, rather curious - enfin, something that has made you say to yourself or to one of your colleagues: That's funny!'?" Gladys said doubtfully: "Well, not the sort of thing that you would mean, sir?" Hercule Poirot said: "Never mind what I mean. You do not know what I mean. It is true, then, that you have said to yourself or to a colleague today: 'That is funny!'?"
He brought out the three words with ironic detachment.
Gladys said: "It was nothing really.
Just a bath being run. And I did pass the remark to Elsie, downstairs, that it was funny somebody having a bath round about twelve o'clock."
"Whose bath, who had a bath?"
"That I couldn't say, sir.
We heard it going down the waste from this wing, that's all, and that's when I said what I did to Elsie."
"You're sure it was a bath?
Not one of the handbasins?"
"Oh! quite sure, sir.
You can't mistake bath-water running away."
Poirot displaying no further desire to keep her, Gladys Narracott was permitted to depart.
Weston said:
"You don't think this bath question is important, do you, Poirot?
I mean, there's no point to it.
No bloodstains or anything like that to wash off.
That's the -" He hesitated. Poirot cut in:
"That, you would say, is the advantage of strangulation!
No bloodstains, no weapon - nothing to get rid of or conceal!
Nothing is needed but physical strength - and the soul of a killer!"
His voice was so fierce, so charged with feeling, that Weston recoiled a little. Hercule Poirot smiled at him apologetically.
"No, no," he said, "the bath is probably of no importance.
Any one may have had a bath. Mrs Redfern before she went to play tennis. Captain Marshall, Miss Darnley. As I say, any one.
There is nothing in that."
A Police Constable knocked at the door, and put in his head.
"It's Miss Darnley, sir.
She says she'd like to see you again for a minute.
There's something she forgot to tell you, she says."