The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [20]
Beatrice King was a short rather sly-looking girl with adenoids. She presented an appearance of stolid stupidity but her eyes were more intelligent than her manner would have led one to expect. It seemed, however, that there was nothing to be got out of Beatrice King. She repeated:
“I don’t know nothing about anything . . . It’s not for me to say what went on up there . . . I don’t know what you mean by overhearing a conversation betwen the Doctor and Miss Moncrieffe. I’m not one to go listening to doors, and you’ve no right to say I did. I don’t know nothing.”
Poirot said:
“Have you ever heard of poisoning by arsenic?”
A flicker of quick furtive interest came into the girl’s sullen face.
She said:
“So that’s what it was in the medicine bottle?”
“What medicine bottle?”
Beatrice said:
“One of the bottles of medicine what that Miss Moncrieffe made up for the Missus. Nurse was all upset—I could see that. Tasted it, she did, and smelt it, and then poured it away down the sink and filled up the bottle with plain water from the tap. It was white medicine like water, anyway. And once, when Miss Moncrieffe took up a pot of tea to the Missus, Nurse brought it down again and made it fresh—said it hadn’t been made with boiling water but that was just my eye, that was! I thought it was just the sort of fussing way nurses have at the time—but I dunno—it may have been more than that.”
Poirot nodded. He said:
“Did you like Miss Moncrieffe, Beatrice?”
“I didn’t mind her . . . A bit standoffish. Of course, I always knew as she was sweet on the doctor. You’d only to see the way she looked at him.”
Again Poirot nodded his head. He went back to the inn.
There he gave certain instructions to George.
VI
Dr. Alan Garcia, the Home Office Analyst, rubbed his hands and twinkled at Hercule Poirot. He said:
“Well, this suits you, M. Poirot, I suppose? The man who’s always right.”
Poirot said:
“You are too kind.”
“What put you on to it? Gossip?”
“As you say—Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.”
The following day Poirot once more took a train to Market Loughborough.
Market Loughborough was buzzing like a beehive. It had buzzed mildly ever since the exhumation proceedings.
Now that the findings of the autopsy had leaked out, excitement had reached fever heat.
Poirot had been at the inn for about an hour and had just finished a hearty lunch of steak and kidney pudding washed down by beer when word was brought to him that a lady was waiting to see him.
It was Nurse Harrison. Her face was white and haggard.
She came straight to Poirot.
“Is this true? Is this really true, M. Poirot?”
He put her gently into a chair.
“Yes. More than sufficient arsenic to cause death has been found.”
Nurse Harrison cried:
“I never thought—I never for one moment thought—” and burst into tears.
Poirot said gently:
“The truth had to come out, you know.”
She sobbed.
“Will they hang him?”
Poirot said:
“A lot has to be proved still. Opportunity—access to poison—the vehicle in which it was administered.”
“But supposing, M. Poirot, that he had nothing to do with it—nothing at all.”
“In that case,” Poirot shrugged his shoulders, “he will be acquitted.”
Nurse Harrison said slowly:
“There is something—something that, I suppose, I ought to have told you before—but I didn’t think that there was really anything in it. It was just queer.”
“I knew there was something,” said Poirot. “You had better tell it to me now.”
“It isn’t much. It’s just that one day when I went down to the dispensary for something, Jean Moncrieffe was doing something rather—odd.”
“Yes?”
“It sounds so silly. It’s only that she was filling up her powder compact—a pink enamel one—”
“Yes?”
“But she wasn’t filling it up with powder—with face powder, I mean. She was tipping something into it from one of the bottles out of the poison cupboard. When she saw