Brussels sprouts so enormous, so hard, that the English like so much. The potatoes boiled and either hard or falling to pieces. The vegetables that taste of water, water, and again water. The complete absence of the salt and pepper in any dish –’ he paused expressively.
‘It sounds terrible,’ I said.
‘I do not complain,’ said Poirot, and proceeded to do so. ‘And there is also the modernization, so called. The bathrooms, the taps everywhere and what comes out of them? Lukewarm water, mon ami, at most hours of the day. And the towels, so thin, so meagre!’
‘There is something to be said for the old days,’ I said thoughtfully. I remembered the clouds of steam which had gushed from the hot tap of the one bathroom Styles had originally possessed, one of those bathrooms in which an immense bath with mahogany sides had reposed proudly in the middle of the bathroom floor. Remembered, too, the immense bath towels, and the frequent shining brass cans of boiling hot water that stood in one’s old-fashioned basin.
‘But one must not complain,’ said Poirot again. ‘I am content to suffer – for a good cause.’
A sudden thought struck me.
‘I say, Poirot, you’re not – er – hard up, are you? I know the war hit investments very badly –’
Poirot reassured me quickly.
‘No, no, my friend. I am in most comfortable circumstances. Indeed, I am rich. It is not the economy that brings me here.’
‘Then that’s all right,’ I said. I went on: ‘I think I can understand your feeling. As one gets on, one tends more and more to revert to the old days. One tries to recapture old emotions. I find it painful to be here, in a way, and yet it brings back to me a hundred old thoughts and emotions that I’d quite forgotten I ever felt. I dare say you feel the same.’
‘Not in the least. I do not feel like that at all.’
‘They were good days,’ I said sadly.
‘You may speak for yourself, Hastings. For me, my arrival at Styles St Mary was a sad and painful time. I was a refugee, wounded, exiled from home and country, existing by charity in a foreign land. No, it was not gay. I did not know then that England would come to be my home and that I should find happiness here.’
‘I had forgotten that,’ I admitted.
‘Precisely. You attribute always to others the sentiments that you yourself experience. Hastings was happy – everybody was happy!’
‘No, no,’ I protested, laughing.
‘And in any case it is not true,’ continued Poirot. ‘You look back, you say, the tears rising in your eyes, “Oh, the happy days. Then I was young.” But indeed, my friend, you were not so happy as you think. You had recently been severely wounded, you were fretting at being no longer fit for active service, you had just been depressed beyond words by your sojourn in a dreary convalescent home and, as far as I remember, you proceeded to complicate matters by falling in love with two women at the same time.’
I laughed and flushed.
‘What a memory you have, Poirot.’
‘Ta ta ta – I remember now the melancholy sigh you heaved as you murmured fatuities about two lovely women.’
‘Do you remember what you said? You said, “And neither of them for you! But courage, mon ami. We may hunt together again and then perhaps –”’
I stopped. For Poirot and I had gone hunting again to France and it was there that I had met the one woman . . .
Gently my friend patted my arm.
‘I know, Hastings, I know. The wound is still fresh. But do not dwell on it, do not look back. Instead look forward.’
I made a gesture of disgust.
‘Look forward? What is there to look forward to?’
‘Eh bien, my friend, there is work to be done.’
‘Work? Where?’
‘Here.’
I stared at him.
‘Just now,’ said Poirot, ‘you asked me why I had come here. You may not have observed that I gave you no answer. I will give the answer now. I am here to hunt down a murderer.’
I stared at him with even more astonishment. For a moment I thought he was rambling.
‘You really mean that?’
‘But certainly I mean it. For what other reason did I urge you to join me? My limbs, they are no longer active, but my brain, as I told you, is unimpaired. My rule, remember, has been always the same – sit back and think. That I still can do – in fact it is the only thing possible for me. For the more active side of the campaign I shall have with me my invaluable Hastings.’
‘You really mean it?’ I gasped.
‘Of course I mean it. You and I, Hastings, are going hunting once again.’
It took some minutes to grasp that Poirot was really in earnest.
Fantastic though his statement sounded, I had no reason to doubt his judgement.
With a slight smile he said, ‘At last you are convinced. At first you imagined, did you not, that I had the softening of the brain?’
‘No, no,’ I said hastily. ‘Only this seems such an unlikely place.’
‘Ah, you think so?’
‘Of course I haven’t seen all the people yet –’
‘Whom have you seen?’
‘Just the Luttrells, and a man called Norton, seems an inoffensive chap, and Boyd Carrington – I must say I took the greatest fancy to him.’
Poirot nodded. ‘Well, Hastings, I will tell you this, when you have seen the rest of the household, my statement will seem to you just as improbable as it is now.’
‘Who else is there?’
‘The Franklins – Doctor and Mrs, the hospital nurse who attends to Mrs Franklin, your daughter Judith. Then there is a man called Allerton, something of a lady-killer, and a Miss Cole, a woman in her thirties. They are all, let me tell you, very nice people.’
‘And one of them is a murderer?’
‘And one of them is a murderer.’
‘But why – how – why should you think –?’
I found it hard to frame my questions, they tumbled over each other.
‘Calm yourself, Hastings. Let us begin from the beginning. Reach me, I pray you, that small box from the bureau. Bien. And now the key – so –’
Unlocking the despatch case, he took from it a mass of typescript and newspaper
