“N—o—I am sure I didn’t.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that you left the unmistakable impress of your finger-prints on it?”
The bullying manner was highly efficacious with a nervous disposition.
“I—I suppose I must have taken up the bottle.”
“I suppose so too! Did you abstract any of the contents of the bottle?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then why did you take it up?”
“I once studied to be a doctor. Such things naturally interest me.”
“Ah! So poisons ‘naturally interest’ you, do they? Still,
there is Mrs. Cavendish,” continued Poirot. “That’s another who is not telling all she knows! What do you make of her attitude?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. It seems inconceivable that she should be shielding Alfred Inglethorp. Yet that is what it looks like.”
Poirot nodded reflectively.
“Yes,