Yours very truly,
AMELIA BARROWBY
Poirot read the letter through twice. Again his eyebrows rose slightly. Then he placed it on one side and proceeded to the next envelope in the pile.
At ten o'clock precisely he entered the room where Miss Lemon, his confidential secretary, sat awaiting her instructions for the day.
Miss Lemon was forty-eight and of unprepossessing appearance.
Her general effect was that of a lot of bones flung together at random. She had a passion for order almost equalling that of Poirot himself; and though capable of thinking, she never thought unless told to do so.
Poirot handed her the morning correspondence. 'Have the goodness, mademoiselle, to write refusals couched in correct terms to all of these.'
Miss Lemon ran an eye over the various letters, scribbling in turn a hieroglyphic on each of them. These marks were legible to her alone and were in a code of her own: 'Soft soap'; 'slap in the face'; 'purr purr'; 'curt'; and so on. Having done this, she nodded and looked up for further instructions.
Poirot handed her Amelia Barrowby's letter. She extracted it from its double envelope, read it through and looked up inquiringly.
'Yes, M. Poirot?' Her pencil hovered - ready - over her short-hand pad.
'What is your opinion of that letter, Miss Lemon?'
With a slight frown Miss Lemon put down the pencil and read through the letter again.
The contents of a letter meant nothing to Miss Lemon except from the point of view of composing an adequate reply. Very occasionally her employer appealed to her human, as opposed to her official, capacities. It slightly annoyed Miss Lemon when he did so - she was very nearly the perfect machine, completely and gloriously uninterested in all human affairs. Her real passion in life was the perfection of a filing system beside which all other filing systems should sink into oblivion. She dreamed of such a system at night. Nevertheless, Miss Lemon was perfectly capable of intelligence on purely human matters, as Hercule Poirot well knew.
'Well?' he demanded.
'Old lady,' said Miss Lemon. 'Got the wind up pretty badly.' 'Ah! The wind rises in her, you think?' Miss Lemon, who considered that Poirot had been long enough in Great Britain to understand its slang terms, did not reply. She took a brief look at the double envelope.
'Very hush-hush,' she said. 'And tells you nothing at all.' 'Yes,' said Hercule Poirot. 'I observed that.' Miss Lemon's hand hung once more hopefully over the shorthand pad. This time Hercule Poirot responded.
'Tell her I will do myself the honour to call upon her at any time she suggests, unless she prefers to consult me here. Do not type the letter - write it by hand.' 'Yes, M. Poirot.' Poirot produced more correspondence. 'These are bills.' Miss Lemon's efficient hands sorted them quickly. 'I'll pay all but these two.' 'Why those two? There is no error in them.' 'They are firms you've only just begun to deal with. It looks bad to pay too promptly when you've just opened an account looks as though you were working up to get some credit later on.' 'Ahl' murmured Poirot. 'I bow to your superior knowledge of the British tradesman.' 'There' nothing much I don't know about them,' said Mis: Lemon grimly.
The letter to Miss Amelia Barrowby was duly written and sen but no reply was forthcoming. Perhaps, thought Hercule Poin the old lady had unravelled her mystery herself. Yet he felt a sha of surprise that in that case she should not have written a courteouo word to say that his services were no longer required.
It was five days later when Miss Lemon, after receiving her morning's instructions, said, 'That Miss Barrowby we wrote to no wonder there's been no answer. She's dead.' Hercule Poirot said very softly, 'Ah - dead.' It sounded not so much like a question as an answer.
Opening her handbag, Miss Lemon produced a newspaper cutting. 'I saw it in the tube and tore it out.' Just registering in his mind approval of the fact that, though Miss Lemon used the word 'tore', she had neatly cut the entry out with scissors, Poirot read the announcement taken from the Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Morning Post: 'On March 26th suddenly- at Rosebank, Charman's Green, Amelia Jane Barrowby, in her seventy-third year. No flowers, by request.' Poirot read it over. He murmured under his breath, 'Suddenly'.
Then he said briskly, 'If you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss Lemon?' The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system, took down in rapid and correct shorthand:
Dear Miss Barrowby, I have received no reply from you, but as I shall be in the neighbourhood of Charman's Green on Friday, I will call upon you on that day and discuss more fully the matter mentioned to me in your letter.
Yours, etc.
'Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at once, it should get to Charman's Green tonight.' On the following morning a letter in a black-edged envelope arrived by the second post:
Dear Sir, In reply to your letter my aunt, Miss Barrowby, passed away on the twenty-sixth, so the matter you speak of is no longer of importance.
Yours truly, MARY DELAFONTAINR
Poirot smiled to himself. 'No longer of importance… Ah that is what we shall see. En avant - to Charman's Green.' Rosebank was a house that seemed likely to live up to its name, which is more than can be said for most houses of its class and character.
Hercule Poirot paused as he walked up the path to the front door and looked approvingly at the neatly planned beds on either side of him. Rose trees that promised a good harvest later in the year, and at present daffodils, early tulips, blue hyacinths - the last bed was partly edged with shells.
Poirot murmured to himself, 'How does it go, the English rhyme the children sing?
Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.
'Not a row, perhaps,' he considered, 'but here is at least one pretty maid to make the little rhyme come right.' The front door had opened and a neat little maid in cap and apron was looking somewhat dubiously at the spectacle of a heavily moustached foreign gentleman talking aloud to himself in the front garden. She was, as Poirot had noted, a very pretty little maid, with round blue eyes and rosy cheeks.
Poirot raised his hat with courtesy and addressed her: 'Pardon, but does a Miss Amelia Barrowby live here?' The little maid gasped and her eyes grew rounder. 'Oh, sir, didn't you know? She's dead. Ever so sudden it was. Tuesday night.' She hesitated, divided between two strong instincts: the first, distrust of a foreigner; the second, the pleasurable enjoyment of her class in dwelling on the subject of illness and death.
'You amaze me,' said Hercule Poirot, not very truthfully. 'I had an appointment with the lady for today. However, I can perhaps see the other lady who lives here.' The little maid seemed slightly doubtful. 'The mistress? Well, you could see her, perhaps, but I don't know whether she'll b eeing anyone or not.'
'She will see me,' said Poirot, and handed her a card.
The authority of his tone had its effect. The rosy-cheeked maid fell back and ushered Poirot into a sitting-room on the right of the hall. Then, card in hand, she departed to summon her mistress.