‘Mr Poirot? This way, sir.’
He led the way along the hall and threw open a door half-way along it on the right.
‘Mr Hercule Poirot,’ he announced.
The room contained a number of people in evening dress, and as Poirot walked in his quick eyes perceived at once that his appearance was not expected. The eyes of all present rested on him in unfeigned surprise.
Then a tall woman, whose dark hair was threaded with grey, made an uncertain advance towards him.
Poirot bowed over her hand.
‘My apologies, madame,’ he said. ‘I fear that my train was late.’
‘Not at all,’ said Lady Chevenix-Gore vaguely. Her eyes still stared at him in a puzzled fashion. ‘Not at all, Mr – er – I didn’t quite hear –’
‘Hercule Poirot.’
He said the name clearly and distinctly.
Somewhere behind him he heard a sudden sharp intake of breath.
At the same time he realized that clearly his host could not be in the room. He murmured gently:
‘You knew I was coming, madame?’
‘Oh – oh, yes …’ Her manner was not convincing. ‘I think – I mean I suppose so, but I am so terribly impractical, M. Poirot. I forget everything.’ Her tone held a melancholy pleasure in the fact. ‘I am told things. I appear to take them in – but they just pass through my brain and are gone! Vanished! As though they had never been.’
Then, with a slight air of performing a duty long overdue, she glanced round her vaguely and murmured:
‘I expect you know everybody.’
Though this was patently not the case, the phrase was clearly a well-worn formula by means of which Lady Chevenix-Gore spared herself the trouble of introduction and the strain of remembering people’s right names.
Making a supreme effort to meet the difficulties of this particular case, she added:
‘My daughter – Ruth.’
The girl who stood before him was also tall and dark, but she was of a very different type. Instead of the flattish, indeterminate features of Lady Chevenix-Gore, she had a well-chiselled nose, slightly aquiline, and a clear, sharp line of jaw. Her black hair swept back from her face into a mass of little tight curls. Her colouring was of carnation clearness and brilliance, and owed little to make-up. She was, so Hercule Poirot thought, one of the loveliest girls he had seen.
He recognized, too, that she had brains as well as beauty, and guessed at certain qualities of pride and temper. Her voice, when she spoke, came with a slight drawl that struck him as deliberately put on.
‘How exciting,’ she said, ‘to entertain M. Hercule Poirot! The old man arranged a little surprise for us, I suppose.’
‘So you did not know I was coming, mademoiselle?’ he said quickly.
‘I hadn’t an idea of it. As it is, I must postpone getting my autograph book until after dinner.’
The notes of a gong sounded from the hall, then the butler opened the door and announced:
‘Dinner is served.’
And then, almost before the last word, ‘served’, had been uttered, something very curious happened. The pontificial domestic figure became, just for one moment, a highly-astonished human being …
The metamorphosis was so quick and the mask of the well-trained servant was back again so soon, that anyone who had not happened to be looking would not have noticed the change. Poirot, however, had happened to be looking. He wondered.
The butler hesitated in the doorway. Though his face was again correctly expressionless, an air of tension hung about his figure.
Lady Chevenix-Gore said uncertainly:
‘Oh, dear – this is most extraordinary. Really, I – one hardly knows what to do.’
Ruth said to Poirot:
‘This singular consternation, M. Poirot, is occasioned by the fact that my father, for the first time for at least twenty years, is late for dinner.’
‘It is most extraordinary –’ wailed Lady Chevenix-Gore. ‘Gervase never –’
An elderly man of upright soldierly carriage came to her side. He laughed genially.
‘Good old Gervase! Late at last! Upon my word, we’ll rag him over this. Elusive collar-stud, d’you think? Or is Gervase immune from our common weaknesses?’
Lady Chevenix-Gore said in a low, puzzled voice:
‘But Gervase is never late.’
It was almost ludicrous, the consternation caused by this simple contretemps. And yet, to Hercule Poirot, it was not ludicrous … Behind the consternation he felt uneasiness – perhaps even apprehension. And he, too, found it strange that Gervase Chevenix-Gore should not appear to greet the guest he had summoned in such a mysterious manner.
In the meantime, it was clear that nobody knew quite what to do. An unprecedented situation had arisen with which nobody knew how to deal.
Lady Chevenix-Gore at last took the initiative, if initiative it can be called. Certainly her manner was vague in the extreme.
‘Snell,’ she said, ‘is your master –?’
She did not finish the sentence, merely looked at the butler expectantly.
Snell, who was clearly used to his mistress’s methods of seeking information, replied promptly to the unspecified question:
‘Sir Gervase came downstairs at five minutes to eight, m’lady, and went straight to the study.’
‘Oh, I see –’ Her mouth remained open, her eyes seemed far away. ‘You don’t think – I mean – he heard the gong?’
‘I think he must have done so, m’lady, the gong being immediately outside the study door. I did not, of course, know that Sir Gervase was still in the study, otherwise I should have announced to him that dinner was ready. Shall I do so now, m’lady?’
Lady Chevenix-Gore seized on the suggestion with manifest relief.
‘Oh, thank you, Snell. Yes, please do. Yes, certainly.’
She said, as the butler left the room:
‘Snell is such a treasure. I rely on him absolutely. I really don’t know what I should do without Snell.’
Somebody murmured a sympathetic assent, but nobody spoke. Hercule Poirot, watching that room full of people with suddenly sharpened attention, had an idea that one and all were in a state of tension. His eyes ran quickly over them, tabulating them roughly. Two elderly men, the soldierly one who had spoken just now, and a thin, spare, grey-haired man with closely pinched legal lips. Two youngish men – very different in type from each other. One with a moustache and an air of modest arrogance, he guessed to be possibly Sir Gervase’s nephew, the one in the Blues. The other, with sleek brushed-back hair and a rather obvious style of good looks, he put down as of a definitely inferior social class. There was a small middle-aged woman with pince-nez and intelligent eyes, and there was a girl with flaming red hair.
Snell appeared at the door. His manner was perfect, but once again the veneer of the impersonal butler showed signs of the perturbed human being beneath the surface.
‘Excuse me, m’lady, the study door is locked.’
‘Locked?’
It was a man’s voice – young, alert, with a ring of excitement in it. It was the good-looking young man with