“Right,” he said. “I’ll humour you so far, Charles, and I’ll bet you ten pounds to one that there’s nothing in it but honest-to-God gin and vermouth.”
“Done,” said Sir Charles. Then he added with a rueful smile: “You know, Tollie, you are partly responsible for my flights of fancy.”
“I?”
“Yes, with your talk of crime this morning.
You said this man, Hercule Poirot, was a kind of stormy petrel, that where he went crimes followed.
No sooner does he arrive than we have a suspiciously sudden death.
Of course my thoughts fly to murder at once.”
“I wonder,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.
“Yes,” said Charles Cartwright. “I’d thought of that.
What do you think, Tollie? Could we ask him what he thinks of it all?
Is it etiquette, I mean?”
“A nice point,” murmured Mr. Satterthwaite.
“I know medical etiquette, but I’m hanged if I know anything about the etiquette of detection.”
“You can’t ask a professional singer to sing,” murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. “Can one ask a professional detective to detect? Yes, a very nice point.”
“Just an opinion,” said Sir Charles.
There was a gentle tap on the door, and Hercule Poirot’s face appeared, peering in with an apologetic expression.
“Come in, man,” cried Sir Charles, springing up. “We were just talking of you.”
“I thought perhaps I might be intruding.”
“Not at all.
Have a drink.”
“I thank you, no.
I seldom drink the whisky.
A glass of sirop, now - ”
But sirop was not included in Sir Charles’s conception of drinkable fluids.
Having settled his guest in a chair, the actor went straight to the point.
“I’m not going to beat about the bush,” he said.
“We were just talking of you, M. Poirot, and - and - of what happened tonight.
Look here, do you think there’s anything wrong about it?”
Poirot’s eyebrows rose.
He said: “Wrong?
How do you mean that - wrong?”
Bartholomew Strange said, “My friend has got an idea into his head that old Babbington was murdered.
“And you do not think so - eh?”
“We’d like to know what you think.”
Poirot said thoughtfully: “He was taken ill, of course, very suddenly - very suddenly indeed.”
“Just so.”
Mr. Satterthwaite explained the theory of suicide and his own suggestion of having a cocktail glass analysed.
Poirot nodded approval.
“That, at any rate, can do no harm.
As a judge of human nature, it seems to me unlikely in the extreme that anyone would wish to do away with a charming and harmless old gentleman.
Still less does the solution of suicide appeal to me.
However, the cocktail glass will tell us one way or another.”
“And the result of the analysis, you think, will be - what?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“Me? I can only guess. You ask me to guess what will be the result of the analysis?” “Yes - ?”
“Then I guess that they will find only the remains of a very excellent dry Martini.” (He bowed to Sir Charles.) “To poison a man in a cocktail, one of many handed round on a tray - well, it would be a technique very - very - difficult.
And if that charming old clergyman wanted to commit suicide, I do not think he would do it at a party.
That would show a very decided lack of consideration for others, and Mr. Babbington struck me as a very considerate person. He paused. That, since you ask me, is my opinion.”
There was a moment’s silence.
Then Sir Charles gave a deep sigh. He opened one of the windows and looked out.