On the chest of drawers there was a tray with a spirit lamp and a small saucepan on it. A small quantity of a dark fluid remained in the saucepan, and an empty cup and saucer that had been drunk out of stood near it.
I wondered how I could have been so unobservant as to overlook this.
Here was a clue worth having.
Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and tasted it gingerly.
He made a grimace.
"Coco—with—I think—rum in it."
He passed on to the debris on the floor, where the table by the bed had been overturned.
A reading-lamp, some books, matches, a bunch of keys, and the crushed fragments of a coffee-cup lay scattered about.
"Ah, this is curious," said Poirot.
"I must confess that I see nothing particularly curious about it."
"You do not?
Observe the lamp—the chimney is broken in two places; they lie there as they fell.
But see, the coffee-cup is absolutely smashed to powder."
"Well," I said wearily,
"I suppose some one must have stepped on it."
"Exactly," said Poirot, in an odd voice. "Some one stepped on it."
He rose from his knees, and walked slowly across to the mantelpiece, where he stood abstractedly fingering the ornaments, and straightening them—a trick of his when he was agitated.
"Mon ami," he said, turning to me, "somebody stepped on that cup, grinding it to powder, and the reason they did so was either because it contained strychnine or—which is far more serious—because it did not contain strychnine!"
I made no reply. I was bewildered, but I knew that it was no good asking him to explain.
In a moment or two he roused himself, and went on with his investigations.
He picked up the bunch of keys from the floor, and twirling them round in his fingers finally selected one, very bright and shining, which he tried in the lock of the purple despatch-case.
It fitted, and he opened the box, but after a moment's hesitation, closed and relocked it, and slipped the bunch of keys, as well as the key that had originally stood in the lock, into his own pocket.
"I have no authority to go through these papers. But it should be done—at once!"
He then made a very careful examination of the drawers of the wash-stand. Crossing the room to the left-hand window, a round stain, hardly visible on the dark brown carpet, seemed to interest him particularly.
He went down on his knees, examining it minutely—even going so far as to smell it.
Finally, he poured a few drops of the coco into a test tube, sealing it up carefully.
His next proceeding was to take out a little notebook.
"We have found in this room," he said, writing busily, "six points of interest.
Shall I enumerate them, or will you?"
"Oh, you," I replied hastily.
"Very well, then.
One, a coffee-cup that has been ground into powder; two, a despatch-case with a key in the lock; three, a stain on the floor."
"That may have been done some time ago," I interrupted.
"No, for it is still perceptibly damp and smells of coffee.
Four, a fragment of some dark green fabric—only a thread or two, but recognizable."
"Ah!" I cried. "That was what you sealed up in the envelope."
"Yes. It may turn out to be a piece of one of Mrs. Inglethorp's own dresses, and quite unimportant. We shall see.
Five, this!" With a dramatic gesture, he pointed to a large splash of candle grease on the floor by the writing-table. "It must have been done since yesterday, otherwise a good housemaid would have at once removed it with blotting-paper and a hot iron.
One of my best hats once—but that is not to the point."
"It was very likely done last night.
We were very agitated.
Or perhaps Mrs. Inglethorp herself dropped her candle."
"You brought only one candle into the room?"
"Yes. Lawrence Cavendish was carrying it. But he was very upset.
He seemed to see something over here"—I indicated the mantelpiece—"that absolutely paralysed him."
"That is interesting," said Poirot quickly. "Yes, it is suggestive"—his eye sweeping the whole length of the wall—"but it was not his candle that made this great patch, for you perceive that this is white grease; whereas Monsieur Lawrence's candle, which is still on the dressing-table, is pink.
On the other hand, Mrs. Inglethorp had no candlestick in the room, only a reading-lamp."
"Then," I said, "what do you deduce?"
To which my friend only made a rather irritating reply, urging me to use my own natural faculties.
"And the sixth point?" I asked. "I suppose it is the sample of coco."