“Listen, Mademoiselle, I will recall to you another incident.
There was a delay to the train on the day we were to reach Stamboul.
You were very agitated, Mademoiselle.
You, so calm, so self-controlled. You lost that calm.”
“I did not want to miss my connection.”
“So you said.
But, Mademoiselle, the Orient Express leaves Stamboul every day of the week.
Even if you had missed the connection it would only have been a matter of twenty-four hours’ delay.”
Miss Debenham for the first time showed signs of losing her temper.
“You do not seem to realise that one may have friends awaiting one’s arrival inLondon, and that a day’s delay upsets arrangements and causes a lot of annoyance.”
“Ah, it is like that?
There are friends awaiting your arrival? You do not want to cause them inconvenience?”
“Naturally.”
“And yet – it is curious–”
“What is curious?”
“On this train – again we have a delay.
And this time a more serious delay, since there is no possibility of sending a telegram to your friends or of getting them on the long – the long–” “Long distance? The telephone, you mean.” “Ah, yes, the portmanteau call, as you say inEngland.”
Mary Debenham smiled a little in spite of herself. “Trunk call,” she corrected.
“Yes, as you say, it is extremely annoying not to be able to get any word through, either by telephone or by telegraph.”
“And yet, Mademoiselle, this time your manner is quite different.
You no longer betray the impatience.
You are calm and philosophical.”
Mary Debenham flushed and bit her lip. She no longer felt inclined to smile.
“You do not answer, Mademoiselle?”
“I am sorry.
I did not know that there was anything to answer.”
“Your change of attitude, Mademoiselle.”
“Don’t you think that you are making rather a fuss about nothing, M. Poirot?”
Poirot spread out his hands in an apologetic gesture.
“It is perhaps a fault with us detectives.
We expect the behaviour to be always consistent.
We do not allow for changes of mood.”
Mary Debenham made no reply.
“You know Colonel Arbuthnot well, Mademoiselle?”
He fancied that she was relieved by the change of subject.
“I met him for the first time on this journey.”
“Have you any reason to suspect that he may have known this man Ratchett?”
She shook her head decisively.
“I am quite sure he didn’t.”
“Why are you sure?”
“By the way he spoke.”
“And yet, Mademoiselle, we found a pipe-cleaner on the floor of the dead man’s compartment.
And Colonel Arbuthnot is the only man on the train who smokes a pipe.”
He watched her narrowly, but she displayed neither surprise nor emotion, merely said:
“Nonsense.
It’s absurd. Colonel Arbuthnot is the last man in the world to be mixed up in a crime – especially a theatrical kind of crime like this.”
It was so much what Poirot himself thought that he found himself on the point of agreeing with her.
He said instead:
“I must remind you that you do not know him very well, Mademoiselle.”
She shrugged her shoulders.