"N'est-ce pas? I tell you, Hastings, it goes against reason. It offends my little gray cells. Let us go into his bedroom--ah, yes; there is the smear of blood on the

THE BIG POUR 33

lintel and just a trace of footmarks--the bloodstained.

Robert Grant's footmarks, and his only, near the body

--Robert Grant the only man who went near the house.

Yes, it must be so."

"What about the old woman?" I said suddenly. "She was in the house alone after Grant had gone for the

milk. She might have killed him and then gone out. Her

feet would leave no prints if she hadn't been outside."

"Very good, Hastings. I wondered whether that hypothesis would occur to you. I had already thought of

it and rejected it. Betsy Andrews is a local woman, well known hereabouts. She can have no connection with the

Big Four; and, besides, old Whalley was a powerful

fellow, by all accounts. This is a man's work--not a

woman's."

"I suppose the Big Four couldn't have had some

diabolical contrivance concealed in the ceiling--something which descended automatically and cut the old

man's throat and was afterwards drawn up again?"

"Like Jacob's ladder? I know, Hastings, that you

have an imagination of the most fertile--but I implore

of you to keep it within bounds."

I subsided, abashed. Poirot continued to wander

about, poking into rooms and cupboards with a profoundly dissatisfied expression on his face. Suddenly he

uttered an excited yelp, reminiscent of a Pomeranian

dog. I rushed to join him. He was standing in the larder in a dramatic attitude. In his hand he was brandishing a leg of mutton!

"My dear Poirot!" I cried. "What is the matter?

Have you suddenly gone mad?"

"Regard, I pray you, this mutton. But regard it

closely!"

I regarded it as closely as I could, but could see

34 Agatha Christie

nothing unusual about it. It seemed to me a very ordinary leg of mutton. I said as much. Poirot threw me a

withering glance.

"But do you not see this--and this--and this--" He illustrated each "this" with a jab at the unoffending joint, dislodging small icicles as he did so.

Poirot had just accused me of being imaginative, but

I now felt that he was far more wildly so than I had ever been. Did he seriously think these slivers of ice were

crystals of a deadly poison? That was the only construction I could put upon his extraordinary agitation.

"It's frozen meat," I explained gently. "Imported, you know. New Zealand."

He stared at me for a moment or two and then broke

into a strange laugh.

"How marvellous is my friend Hastings! He knows

everything--but everything! How do they say--Inquire

Within Upon Everything. That is my friend Hastings." He flung down the leg of mutton onto its dish again

and left the larder. Then he looked through the window.

"Here comes our friend the Inspector. It is well. I have seen all I want to see here." He drummed on the table absent-mindedly, as though absorbed in calculation, and then asked suddenly, "What is the day of the