Black Coffee - Agatha Christie [30]
Interested to hear Richard Amory’s reply to this, Hastings moved closer to the two men. In answer to Dr Graham, Richard declared, ‘I know nothing about him. I’d never met him, or even heard of him, until yesterday.’
‘But he is a friend of your wife?’ asked the doctor.
‘Apparently he is.’
‘Does she know him intimately?’
‘Oh, no, he is a mere acquaintance, I gather.’
Graham made a little clicking sound with his tongue, and shook his head. ‘You’ve not allowed him to leave the house, I hope?’ he asked.
‘No, no,’ Richard assured him. ‘I pointed out to him last night that, until this matter was cleared up – the business of the formula being stolen, I mean – it would be best for him to remain here at the house. In fact, I sent down to the inn where he had a room, and had his things brought up here.’
‘Didn’t he make any protest at all?’ Graham asked in some surprise.
‘Oh, no, in fact he agreed quite eagerly.’
‘H’m,’ was Graham’s only response to this. Then, looking about him, he asked, ‘Well now, what about this room?’
Poirot approached the two men. ‘The doors were locked last night by Tredwell, the butler,’ he assured Dr Graham, ‘and the keys were given to me. Everything is exactly as it was, except that we have moved the chairs, as you see.’
Dr Graham looked at the coffee cup on the table. Pointing to it, he asked, ‘Is that the cup?’ He went across to the table, picked up the cup and sniffed at it. ‘Richard,’ he asked, ‘is this the cup your father drank from? I’d better take it. It will have to be analysed.’ Carrying the cup over to the coffee table, he opened his bag.
Richard sprang to his feet. ‘Surely you don’t think –’ he began, but then broke off.
‘It seems highly unlikely,’ Graham told him, ‘that the poison could have been administered at dinner. The most likely explanation is that the hyoscine was added to Sir Claud’s coffee.’
‘I – I –’ Richard tried to utter as he rose and took a step towards the doctor, but then broke off with a despairing gesture, and left the room abruptly through the french windows into the garden.
Dr Graham took a small cardboard box of cotton wool from his bag, and carefully packed the cup in it, talking to Poirot as he did so. ‘A nasty business,’ he confided. ‘I’m not at all surprised that Richard Amory is upset. The newspapers will make the most of this Italian doctor’s friendship with his wife. And mud tends to stick, Monsieur Poirot. Mud tends to stick. Poor lady! She was probably wholly innocent. The man obviously made her acquaintance in some plausible way. They’re astonishingly clever, these foreigners. Of course, I suppose I shouldn’t be talking this way, as though the thing were a foregone conclusion, but what else is one to imagine?’
‘You think it leaps to the eye, yes?’ Poirot asked him, exchanging glances with Hastings.
‘Well, after all,’ Dr Graham explained, ‘Sir Claud’s invention was valuable. This foreigner comes along, of whom nobody knows anything. An Italian. Sir Claud is mysteriously poisoned –’
‘Ah, yes! The Borgias,’ exclaimed Poirot.
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked the doctor.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
Dr Graham picked up his bag and prepared to leave, holding out his hand to Poirot. ‘Well, I’d best be off.’
‘Goodbye – for the present, Monsieur le docteur,’ said Poirot as they shook hands.
At the door, Graham paused and looked back. ‘Goodbye, Monsieur Poirot. You will see that nobody disturbs anything in this room until the police arrive, won’t you? That’s extremely important.’
‘Most certainly, I shall make myself responsible for it,’ Poirot assured him.
As Graham left, closing the door behind him, Hastings observed dryly, ‘You know, Poirot, I shouldn’t like to be ill in this house. For one thing, there appears to be a poisoner at loose in the place – and, for another, I’m not at all sure I trust that young doctor.’
Poirot gave Hastings a quizzical look. ‘Let us hope that we will not be in this house long enough to become ill,’ he said, moving to the fireplace and pressing the bell. ‘And now, my dear Hastings, to work,’