“I can’t say.
She had on a shingle cap and I only saw the back of her head.”
“And in build?”
“Tallish and slim, I should judge, but it’s difficult to say.
The kimono was embroidered with dragons.”
“Yes, yes, that is right – dragons.”
He was silent a minute.
He murmured to himself.
“I cannot understand.
I cannot understand.
None of this makes sense.” Then, looking up, he said: “I need not keep you further, Mademoiselle.”
“Oh!” She seemed rather taken aback but rose promptly. In the doorway, however, she hesitated a minute and then came back. “The Swedish lady – Miss Ohlsson, is it? – seems rather worried.
She says you told her she was the last person to see this man alive.
She thinks, I believe, that you suspect her on that account.
Can’t I tell her that she has made a mistake?
Really, you know, she is the kind of creature who wouldn’t hurt a fly.” She smiled a little as she spoke.
“What time was it that she went to fetch the aspirin from Mrs. Hubbard?”
“Just after half-past ten.”
“She was away – how long?”
“About five minutes.”
“Did she leave the compartment again during the night?”
“No.”
Poirot turned to the doctor.
“Could Ratchett have been killed as early as that?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Then I think you can reassure your friend, Mademoiselle.”
“Thank you.” She smiled suddenly at him, a smile that invited sympathy. “She’s like a sheep, you know.
She gets anxious and bleats.” She turned and went out.
12.
The Evidence of the German Lady’s-Maid
M. Bouc was looking at his friend curiously.
“I do not quite understand you, mon vieux.
You were trying to do – what?”
“I was searching for a flaw, my friend.”
“A flaw?”
“Yes – in the armour of a young lady’s self-possession.
I wished to shake her sang-froid.
Did I succeed?
I do not know.
But I know this: she did not expect me to tackle the matter as I did.”
“You suspect her,” said M. Bow slowly. “But why?
She seems a very charming young lady – the last person in the world to be mixed up in a crime of this kind.”
“I agree,” said Constantine. “She is cold. She has not emotions.
She would not stab a man – she would sue him in the law courts.”
Poirot sighed.
“You must, both of you, get rid of your obsession that this is an unpremeditated and sudden crime.
As for the reasons why I suspect Miss Debenham, there are two.
One is because of something that I overheard, and that you do not as yet know.” He retailed to them the curious interchange of phrases he had overheard on the journey from Aleppo.
“That is curious, certainly,” said M. Bouc when he had finished. “It needs explaining.
If it means what you suspect it means, then they are both of them in it together – she and the stiff Englishman.”