After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [89]
Morton smiled.
“But that doesn’t often happen to you?”
“No. Though I will admit—yes, I am forced to admit—that it has happened to me.”
“I must say I’m glad to hear it! To be always right must be sometimes monotonous.”
“I do not find it so,” Poirot assured him.
Inspector Morton laughed.
“And you’re asking me to hold off with my questioning?”
“No, no, not at all. Proceed as you had planned to do. I suppose you were not actually contemplating an arrest?”
Morton shook his head.
“Much too flimsy for that. We’d have to get a decision from the Public Prosecutor first—and we’re a long way from that. No, just statements from certain parties of their movements on the day in question—in one case with a caution, perhaps.”
“I see. Mrs. Banks?”
“Smart, aren’t you? Yes. She was there that day. Her car was parked in that quarry.”
“She was not seen actually driving the car?”
“No.”
The Inspector added, “It’s bad you know, that she’s never said a word about being down there that day. She’s got to explain that satisfactorily.”
“She is quite skilful at explanations,” said Poirot drily.
“Yes. Clever young lady. Perhaps a thought too clever.”
“It is never wise to be too clever. That is how murderers get caught. Has anything more come up about George Crossfield?”
“Nothing definite. He’s a very ordinary type. There are a lot of young men like him going about the country in trains and buses or on bicycles. People find it hard to remember when a week or so has gone by if it was Wednesday or Thursday when they were at a certain place or noticed a certain person.”
He paused and went on: “We’ve had one piece of rather curious information—from the Mother Superior of some convent or other. Two of her nuns had been out collecting from door to door. It seems that they went to Mrs. Lansquenet’s cottage on the day before she was murdered, but couldn’t make anyone hear when they knocked and rang. That’s natural enough—she was up North at the Abernethie funeral and Gilchrist had been given the day off and had gone on an excursion to Bournemouth. The point is that they say there was someone in the cottage. They say they heard sighs and groans. I’ve queried whether it wasn’t a day later but the Mother Superior is quite definite that that couldn’t be so. It’s all entered up in some book. Was there someone searching for something in the cottage that day, who seized the opportunity of both the women being away? And did that somebody not find what he or she was looking for and come back the next day? I don’t set much store on the sighs and still less on the groans. Even nuns are suggestible and a cottage where murder has occurred positively asks for groans. The point is, was there someone in the cottage who shouldn’t have been there? And if so, who was it? All the Abernethie crowd were at the funeral.”
Poirot asked a seemingly irrelevant question:
“These nuns who were collecting in that district, did they return at all at a later date to try again?”
“As a matter of fact they did come again—about a week later. Actually on the day of the inquest, I believe.”
“That fits,” said Hercule Poirot. “That fits very well.”
Inspector Morton looked at him.
“Why this interest in nuns?”
“They have been forced on my attention whether I will or no. It will not have escaped your attention, Inspector, that the visit of the nuns was the same day that poisoned wedding cake found its way into that cottage.”
“You don’t think— Surely that’s a ridiculous idea?”
“My ideas are never ridiculous,” said Hercule Poirot severely. “And now, mon cher, I must leave you to your questions and to the inquiries into the attack on Mrs. Abernethie. I myself must go in search of the late Richard Abernethie’s niece.”
“Now be careful what you go saying to Mrs. Banks.”
“I do not mean Mrs. Banks. I mean Richard Abernethie’s other niece.”
II
Poirot found Rosamund sitting on a bench overlooking a little stream that cascaded down in a waterfall and then flowed through rhododendron thickets. She was