Poirot's Early Cases - Agatha Christie [68]
Next I called upon the doctor who had attended M. Déroulard. With him I had a difficult task. He entrenched himself prettily behind a wall of learned phraseology, but I fancied that he was not quite as sure about the case as he would like to be.
‘There have been many curious occurrences of the kind,’ he observed, when I had managed to disarm him somewhat. ‘A sudden fit of anger, a violent emotion—after a heavy dinner, c’est entendu—then, with an access of rage, the blood flies to the head, and pst!—there you are!’
‘But M. Déroulard had had no violent emotion.’
‘No? I made sure that he had been having a stormy altercation with M. de Saint Alard.’
‘Why should he?’
‘C’est évident!’ The doctor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Was not M. de Saint Alard a Catholic of the most fanatical? Their friendship was being ruined by this question of church and state. Not a day passed without discussions. To M. de Saint Alard, Déroulard appeared almost as Antichrist.’
This was unexpected, and gave me food for thought.
‘One more question, Doctor: would it be possible to introduce a fatal dose of poison into a chocolate?’
‘It would be possible, I suppose,’ said the doctor slowly. ‘Pure prussic acid would meet the case if there were no chance of evaporation, and a tiny globule of anything might be swallowed unnoticed—but it does not seem a very likely supposition. A chocolate full of morphine or strychnine—’ He made a wry face. ‘You comprehend, M. Poirot—one bite would be enough! The unwary one would not stand upon ceremony.’
‘Thank you, M. le Docteur.’
I withdrew. Next I made inquiries of the chemists, especially those in the neighbourhood of the Avenue Louise. It is good to be of the police. I got the information I wanted without any trouble. Only in one case could I hear of any poison having been supplied to the house in question. This was some eye drops of atropine sulphate for Madame Déroulard. Atropine is a potent poison, and for the moment I was elated, but the symptoms of atropine poisoning are closely allied to those of ptomaine, and bear no resemblance to those I was studying. Besides, the prescription was an old one. Madame Déroulard had suffered from cataracts in both eyes for many years.
I was turning away discouraged when the chemist’s voice called me back.
‘Un moment, M. Poirot. I remember, the girl who brought that prescription, she said something about having to go on to the English chemist. You might try there.’
I did. Once more enforcing my official status, I got the information I wanted. On the day before M. Déroulard’s death they had made up a prescription for Mr John Wilson. Not that there was any making up about it. They were simply little tablets of trinitrine. I asked if I might see some. He showed me them, and my heart beat faster—for the tiny tablets were of chocolate.
‘Is it a poison?’ I asked.
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Can you describe to me its effect?’
‘It lowers the blood-pressure. It is given for some forms of heart trouble—angina pectoris for instance. It relieves the arterial tension. In arteriosclerosis—’
I interrupted him. ‘Ma foi! This rigmarole says nothing to me. Does it cause the face to flush?’
‘Certainly it does.’
‘And supposing I ate ten—twenty of your little tablets, what then?’
‘I should not advise you to attempt it,’ he replied drily.
‘And yet you say it is not poison?’
‘There are many things not called poison which can kill a man,’ he replied as before.
I left the shop elated. At last, things had begun to march!
I now knew that John Wilson had the means for the crime—but what about the motive? He had come to Belgium on business, and had asked M. Déroulard, whom he knew slightly, to put him up. There was apparently no way in which Déroulard’s death could benefit him. Moreover, I discovered by inquiries in England that he had suffered for some years from that painful form of heart disease known as angina. Therefore he had