“It must have been someone else,” I said, feeling a pinch of alarm. A commotion in the middle of the night did not bode well.
“No. I know the voice of my friend Catchpool.” Poirot frowned. “It was you.”
“I tell you, it was not.”
“You are certain? You did not knock at my door? You did not call out in alarm that the sea was inside the house and had reached the floor below ours?”
I smiled. “It sounds to me as if you had a very vivid nightmare.” I pointed to the gap between the curtains and said, “The sea, for the time being, still knows its place. I shall prove it to you when the sun starts to rise. What time is it?”
“Twenty minutes after four o’clock.” Poirot shook his head. “It is most strange to think that I could have been dreaming. I was certain that I had been awake the whole night.”
“Well, that’s not true. I heard you snoring.”
“Non. That was not me. When was this?”
“When I came up to bed. I was going to knock on your door—”
“What time was it?”
“A little after a quarter to ten.”
“I was not asleep then,” said Poirot. “And I too heard the snoring. It came from Arnold Laurier’s bedroom, which is below mine. I found it most reassuring, once I had satisfied myself that it was Monsieur Laurier who was the source of the terrible rumbling sound—though it kept me awake for some time. There is too much noise in this house, Catchpool. Snoring, the ceaseless agitation of the ocean—I do not care for it.”
“Shall I try to find us rooms somewhere else?” I asked.
Poirot looked tempted for a second, but was soon shaking his head. “Not yet.”
“You said you were not worried about the erosion of the cliff when I asked you before. If you are having nightmares about it, isn’t that a good enough reason to—?”
“Hercule Poirot does not worry about forces of nature. They cannot be changed or reasoned with. It is people who cause me to feel alarmed, Catchpool. If I am having peculiar dreams, if I am unsettled, then that is because of the behavior of human beings. Here at Frellingsloe House, there is the strong flavor of danger. Do you not smell it?”
“You’re mixing up your senses,” I told him. “If it were a flavor, I would taste it, not...”
Seeing the impatience in his eyes, I stopped myself andsaid, “The main danger, as I see it, is that you and I will be trapped here for the whole of the Christmas holiday. If we cannot set off back to London in the next day or so, I might be banging on your door in the middle of the night shouting about that.”
I nodded at the envelope he was holding. “What’s that letter?”
He looked down at it as if noticing it for the first time. “Someone pushed it under my door. I thought it was you, but... It is addressed to ‘Monsieur Poirot and Inspector Catchpool.’”
“Are you going to open it?”
He proceeded to do so, then sat down at the desk to read it. I could see that it was not short. There were at least two pages, covered with untidy handwriting.
“Well?” I said, when I thought I had waited patiently for long enough.
“It is from Arnold Laurier. In it, he describes the two leads he spoke of—the ones the police are not taking seriously.”
“Why has he put them in a letter? I assumed he would have told you about them after I left the two of you alone earlier.”
“He did not have the chance. Seconds after you went in pursuit of Vivienne Laurier, I became dizzy and excused myself. Our long journey and my hunger got the better of me. I needed to lie down.”
“Dizzy?” I did not like the sound of that. “Poirot, are you all right? You do not look entirely well, you know.”
“Do not fuss, Catchpool. I am merely tired. In a moment I shall return to my room and sleep for one or two more hours. That will suffice. And then tomorrow I must find somewhere that can provide me with edible food, or I am in danger of starving to death. It would be a grave error to rely upon Enid Surtees for sustenance.”
“So Arnold wrote us a letter about his two leads, did he?” I mused. “I wonder when he did that. Vivienne thought he had fallen asleep before dinner. She said that was the only reason he would have missed the meal.”
“In his letter, he explains what happened,” said Poirot.
