‘It is rather a blow to me,’ said Thora ruefully. ‘I had no idea Lady Clarke disliked me so much. In fact, I always thought she was rather fond of me.’ She made a wry face. ‘One lives and learns.’

She rose.

‘That is all I came to say. Goodbye.’

I accompanied her downstairs.

‘I call that very sporting of her,’ I said as I returned to the room. ‘She has courage, that girl.’

‘And calculation.’

‘What do you mean—calculation?’

‘I mean that she has the power of looking ahead.’

I looked at him doubtfully.

‘She really is a lovely girl,’ I said.

‘And wears very lovely clothes. That crêpemarocain and the silver fox collar—dernier cri.’

‘You’re a man milliner, Poirot. I never notice what people have on.’

‘You should join a nudist colony.’

As I was about to make an indignant rejoinder, he said, with a sudden change of subject:

‘Do you know, Hastings, I cannot rid my mind of the impression that already, in our conversations this afternoon, something was said that was significant. It is odd—I cannot pin down exactly what it was…Just an impression that passed through my mind…That reminds me of something I have already heard or seen or noted…’

‘Something at Churston?’

‘No—not at Churston…Before that…No matter, presently it will come to me…’

He looked at me (perhaps I had not been attending very closely), laughed and began once more to hum.

‘She is an angel, is she not? From Eden, by way of Sweden…’

‘Poirot,’ I said. ‘Go to the devil!’

Chapter 20

Lady Clarke

There was an air of deep and settled melancholy over Combeside when we saw it again for the second time. This may, perhaps, have been partly due to the weather—it was a moist September day with a hint of autumn in the air, and partly, no doubt, it was the semi-shut-up state of the house. The downstairs rooms were closed and shuttered, and the small room into which we were shown smelt damp and airless.

A capable-looking hospital nurse came to us there pulling down her starched cuffs.

‘M. Poirot?’ she said briskly. ‘I am Nurse Capstick. I got Mr Clarke’s letter saying you were coming.’

Poirot inquired after Lady Clarke’s health.

‘Not at all bad really, all things considered.’

‘All things considered,’ I presumed, meant considering she was under sentence of death.

‘One can’t hope for much improvement, of course, but some new treatment has made things a little easier for her. Dr Logan is quite pleased with her condition.’

‘But it is true, is it not, that she can never recover?’

‘Oh, we never actually say that,’ said Nurse Capstick, a little shocked by this plain speaking.

‘I suppose her husband’s death was a terrible shock to her?’

‘Well, M. Poirot, if you understand what I mean, it wasn’t as much of a shock as it would have been to anyone in full possession of her health and faculties. Things are dimmed for Lady Clarke in her condition.’