The Princess listened to him in silence, her small toad-like face quite impassive.
“If it is necessary, Messieurs,” she said quietly when he had finished, “that is all there is to it.
My maid has the keys.
She will attend to it with you.”
“Does your maid always carry your keys, Madame?” asked Poirot.
“Certainly, Monsieur.”
“And if, during the night at one of the frontiers, the customs officials should require a piece of luggage to be opened?”
The old lady shrugged her shoulders.
“It is very unlikely. But in such a case, the conductor would fetch her.”
“You trust her, then, implicitly, Madame?”
“I have told you so already,” said the Princess quietly. “I do not employ people whom I do not trust.”
“Yes,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “Trust is indeed something in these days.
It is perhaps better to have a homely woman whom one can trust than a more chic maid – for example, some smart Parisienne.”
He saw the dark intelligent eyes come slowly round and fasten themselves upon his face.
“What exactly are you implying, M. Poirot?”
“Nothing, Madame. I?
Nothing.”
“But yes. You think, do you not, that I should have a smart Frenchwoman to attend to my toilet?”
“It would be perhaps more usual, Madame.”
She shook her head.
“Schmidt is devoted to me.” Her voice dwelt lingeringly on the words. “Devotion – c’est impayable.”
The German woman had arrived with the keys.
The Princess spoke to her in her own language, telling her to open the valises and help the gentlemen in their search.
She herself remained in the corridor looking out at the snow, and Poirot remained with her, leaving M. Bouc to the task of searching the luggage.
She regarded him with a grim smile.
“Well, Monsieur, do you not wish to see what my valises contain?”
He shook his head.
“Madame, it is a formality, that is all.”
“Are you so sure?”
“In your case, yes.”
“And yet I knew and loved Sonia Armstrong.
What do you think, then?
That I would not soil my hands with killing such canailleas that man Cassetti?
Well, perhaps you are right.”
She was silent a minute or two.
Then she said:
“With such a man as that, do you know what I should have liked to do?
I should have liked to call to my servants:
‘Flog this man to death and fling him out on the rubbish heap!’
That is the way things were done when I was young, Monsieur.”
Still he did not speak, just listened attentively.
She looked at him with a sudden impetuosity. “You do not say anything, M. Poirot. What is it that you are thinking, I wonder?”
He looked at her with a very direct glance.
“I think, Madame, that your strength is in your will – not in your arm.”
She glanced down at her thin, black-clad arms ending in those claw-like yellow hands with the rings on the fingers.
“It is true,” she said. “I have no strength in these – none.
I do not know whether I am sorry or glad.” Then she turned abruptly back towards her carriage where the maid was busily packing up the cases.
The Princess cut short M. Bouc’s apologies.
“There is no need for you to apologise, Monsieur,” she said. “A murder has been committed.
Certain actions have to be performed.