I was relieved.
“Oh, Lawrence! No, I don’t think so. He’s always a nervous chap.”
“His suggestion that his mother might have been poisoned accidentally by means of the tonic she was taking, that did not strike you as strange—hein?”
“No, I can’t say it did. The doctors ridiculed it of course. But it was quite a natural suggestion for a layman to make.”
“But Monsieur Lawrence is not a layman. You told me yourself that he had started by studying medicine, and that he had taken his degree.”
“Yes,
“There is a later will.” It was Poirot who spoke.
“What?” John and the lawyer looked at him startled.
“Or, rather,” pursued my friend imperturbably, “there was one.”
“What do you mean—there was one? Where is it now?”
“Burnt!”
“Burnt?”
“Yes. See here.” He took out the charred fragment we had found