I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I heard that you’d just come back from the Hall?”
“Yes, we have.”
The young man moistened his dry lips. His face was working curiously.
“It’s all over the village about old Mrs. Inglethorp dying so suddenly. They do say—” he lowered his voice cautiously—“that it’s poison?”
Poirot’s face remained quite impassive.
“Only the doctors can tell us that, Mr. Mace.”
“Yes, exactly—of course–-” The young man hesitated, and then his agitation was too much for him.
Annie was a fine, strapping girl, and was evidently labouring under intense excitement, mingled with a certain ghoulish enjoyment of the tragedy.
Poirot came to the point at once, with a business-like briskness.
“I sent for you, Annie, because I thought you might be able to tell me something about