“It is possible,” said Hercule Poirot, “that they do.”
“Nice mind you’ve got, Poirot, I must say. All this police work saps your ideals.”
Hercule Poirot smiled.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “it would be interesting to make a table of accidental deaths over the age of sixty... But tell me, my friend, of your own affairs. How does the world go with you?”
“Mess!” said Mr. Bonnington. “That’s what’s the matter with the world nowadays. Too much mess. And too much fine language. The fine language helps to conceal the mess. Like a highly flavored sauce concealing the fact that the fish underneath it is none of the best! Give me an honest fillet of sole and no messy sauce over it.”
It was given him at that moment by Molly and he grunted approval.
“You know just what I like, my girl,” he said.
“Well, you come here pretty regular. So I ought to know.”
Hercule Poirot said: “Do people then always like the same things? Do not they like a change sometimes?”
“Not gentlemen, sir. Ladies like variety — gentlemen always like the same things.”
“What did I tell you?” grunted Bonnington. “Women are fundamentally unsound about food!”
He looked around the restaurant.
“The world’s a funny place. See that odd-looking old fellow with a beard in the corner? Molly’ll tell you he’s always here Tuesday and Thursday nights. Yet nobody here knows his name or where he lives or what his business is. It’s rather odd.”
When the waitress brought the portions of turkey he said: “I see you’ve still got Old Father Time over there?”
“That’s right, sir. Tuesdays and Thursdays, his days are. Not but what he came in here on a Monday last week! It quite upset me! I felt I’d got my dates wrong and that it must be Tuesday without my knowing it! But he came in the next night as well — so the Monday was just a kind of extra, so to speak.”
“An interesting deviation from habit,” murmured Poirot. “I wonder what the reason was.”
“Well, sir, if you ask me, I think he’d had some kind of upset or worry.”
“Why did you think that? His manner?”
“No, sir — not his manner exactly. He was very quiet as he always is. Never says much except ‘Good evening’ when he come and goes. No, it was his order.”
“His order?”
“I dare say you gentlemen will laugh at me.” Molly flushed. “But when a gentleman has been here for ten years, you get to know his likes and dislikes. He never could bear suet pudding or blackberries and I’ve never known him to take thick soup — but on that Monday night he ordered thick tomato soup, beefsteak and kidney pudding and blackberry tart! Seemed as though he just didn’t notice what he ordered!”
“Do you know,” said Poirot, “I find that extraordinarily interesting.”
Molly looked gratified and departed.
“Well, Poirot,” said Henry Bonnington with a chuckle. “Let’s have a few deductions in your best manner.”
“I would prefer to hear yours first.”
“Want me to be Watson, eh? Well, old fellow went to a doctor and the doctor changed his diet.”
“To thick tomato soup, steak and kidney pudding and blackberry tart? I cannot imagine any doctor doing that.”
“Doctors will put you onto anything.”
“That is the only solution that occurs to you?”
Henry Bonnington said: “Well, seriously, I suppose there’s only one explanation possible. Our unknown friend was in the grip of some powerful mental emotion. He was so perturbed by it that he literally did not notice what he was ordering or eating.”
He paused a minute, and then said: “You’ll be telling me next that you know just what was on his mind. You’ll say perhaps that he was making up his mind to commit a murder.”
He laughed at his own suggestion.
Hercule Poirot did not laugh.
He has admitted that at that moment he was seriously worried. He claims that he ought then to have had some inkling of what was to occur.
His friends assure him that such an idea is quite fantastic.
It was some three weeks later that Hercule Poirot and Bonnington met again — this time in the subway.
They nodded to each other, swaying about, hanging onto adjacent straps. Then at Piccadilly Circus there was a general exodus and they found seats right at the forward end of the car — a peaceful spot since nobody passed in or out that way.
“By the way,” said Mr. Bonnington. “Do you remember that old boy we noticed at the Gallant Endeavour? I shouldn’t wonder if he’d hopped it to a better world. He’s not been there for a whole week. Molly’s quite upset.”
Hercule Poirot’s eyes flashed.
“Indeed?” he said. “Indeed?”
Bonnington said: “D’you remember I suggested he’d been to a doctor and been put on a diet? Diet’s nonsense of course — but I shouldn’t wonder if he had consulted a doctor about his health and what the doctor said gave him a bit of a jolt. That would account for him ordering things off the menu without noticing what he was doing. Quite likely the jolt he got hurried him out of the world sooner than he would have gone otherwise. Doctors ought to be careful what they tell a chap.”
“They usually are,” said Poirot.
“This is my station,” said Mr. Bonnington. “Bye-bye. Don’t suppose we shall ever know now who the old boy was — not even his name. Funny world!”
He hurried out of the carriage.
Hercule Poirot, sitting frowning, looked as though he did not think it was such a funny world.
He went home and gave certain instructions to his faithful valet, Georges, and presently was running his finger down a list of names. It was a record of deaths within a certain area.
Poirot’s finger stopped.
“Henry Gascoigne. 69. I might try him first.”
Later in the day, Hercule Poirot was sitting in Dr. MacAndrew’s surgery just off the King’s Road. Mac Andrew was a tall, red-haired Scotsman with an intelligent face.
“Gascoigne?” he said. “Yes, that’s right. Eccentric old bird. Lived alone in one of those derelict old houses. I hadn’t attended him before, but I’d seen him about and I knew who he was. It was the dairy people got the wind up first. The milk bottles began to pile up outside. In the end the people next door sent word to the police and they broke the door in and found him. He’d pitched down the stairs and broken his neck. Had on an old dressing gown with a ragged cord — might easily have tripped himself up with it.”
“I see,” said Hercule Poirot. “It was quite simple — an accident.”
“That’s right.”
“Had he any relations?”
“There’s a nephew. Used to come along and see his uncle about once a month. Ramsey, his name is, Dr. George Ramsey. Lives at Wimbledon.”
“How long had Mr. Gascoigne been dead when you saw him?”
“Ah!” said Dr. Mac Andrew. “This is where we get official. Not less than forty-eight hours and not more than seventy-two hours. He was found on the morning of the 6th. Actually, we got closer than that. He had a letter in the pocket of his dressing gown — written on the 3rd — posted in Wimbledon that afternoon — would have been delivered somewhere around 9:20 P.M. That puts the time of death at after 9:20 on the evening of the 3rd. That agrees with the contents of the stomach and the processes of digestion. He had had a meal about two hours before death. I examined him on the morning of the 6th and his condition was quite consistent with death having occurred sixty hours previously — around 10 P.M. on the 3rd.”
“It all seems very consistent. Tell me, when was he last seen alive?”