It was, I had to admit, a good point.
I heard a banging noise and turned. “Poirot?”
I did not see him at first. He was not where I expected him to be. Then I looked down and saw him lying on the floor. I gasped. He had collapsed. His face had turned a horrifying shade of pale blue and his eyes bulged. “Poison, Catchpool,” he whispered.
I cried out for help and started, at the same time, to run.
21 December 1931
Chapter 23
At St. Walstan’s
At eleven minutes to three the following morning, Hercule Poirot opened his eyes. “Thank the heavens,” I murmured, rising to my feet. My bones ached from having sat for hours in an upright chair with a very thin seat cushion. I assumed it was the best that Ward 7 of St. Walstan’s Hospital had to offer, even if one had a private room, as Poirot did.
“I told you he was going to be all right,” said Nurse Olga Woodruff, who had spent most of the night sitting beside me at my friend’s bedside, assuring me that there was every reason to be optimistic. At regular intervals, she had reminded me of the various pieces of good news: his pulse rate, his vital signs, the ruling out of appendicitis, the accuracy of the facts he was able to recite during a brief lucid period. I would not have been entirely surprised to discover that Nurse Olga had somehow willed Poirot’s recovery into being with sheer determination; she looked more than equal to such a project.
She was young and vibrant, and both her face and herfigure looked as if they had been designed to advertise robust cheerfulness against the will of the observer: plump pink cheeks, bright blue eyes with long lashes, a wide smile with big white teeth in a perfectly straight row, a tiny waist with huge curves both above and below it. Her hair was the sort of orange one did not often see: carrot-colored. She had been the principal person attending to Poirot—and, I will admit, to my perhaps excessive exhibitions of distress—since we had arrived by ambulance yesterday.
Poirot had spent almost all of that time either asleep or unconscious; it was not always clear which. I had wondered several times if Nurse Olga was telling me the full story. Each time she had encouraged me to try to get some sleep in my hard, upright chair, I had resisted vigorously, believing against all common sense that if I kept my own eyes open, it would cause Poirot’s to open. Finally, it had worked.
“Catchpool?” said my friend in a cracked voice. “Where are we? What time is it?”
I told him.
“Was I poisoned? These past hours, I have felt worse than ever before in my life. I was not certain that I would see you again,mon cher.”
“Well, thankfully, here we both are,” I said.
“It is most likely that you ate something disagreeable to your digestive system, Monsieur Poirot,” said Nurse Olga. “If youwerepoisoned, it was by someone who knew nothing about how to kill a person.”
“Non,” said Poirot. “I was poisoned. Though the food I am compelled to eat at Frellingsloe House is undoubtedlydisagreeable, I do not believe it would have been sufficient, on its own, to cause my sickness.” He groaned. Beneath the bedsheets, his body twisted. “As you see, it afflicts me still,” he said. “My throat is as dry as the desert. Also, there is a ringing sound in my ears, like a bell. Every few seconds, a spasm tears through my stomach, so painful I cannot remain still—like a knife gouging the flesh inside me. I am sorry to say that the little grey cells of Poirot are affected too. I am not able to think as clearly as is required—which suits Stanley Niven’s murderer very well indeed.Bien sûr, I was poisoned. It would be better for this killer if Hercule Poirot were to disappear from the scene!”
“Nonsense,” said Nurse Olga. “All of the symptoms you describe can be caused by quite ordinary ailments of the stomach—a virus, perhaps, or some bad meat. You have been staying at Frellingsloe House, have you not? There is no one there who would want to poison you, that’s for sure. According to my future husband...” She raised her left hand and waggled her ring finger, which had no ring on it. “Oh!” she laughed. “Of course, I take it off when I’m at work. Never mind. What was I saying? Oh yes: according to Robert, they were all leaping about with excitement at the prospect of your arrival.”
“Robert?” I said aloud. She surely could not mean...
“Yes, Dr. Robert Osgood.” Nurse Olga smiled. “My fiancé.”
Immediately, something rose to the surface of my mind. I had given no thought to it at the time, beyond noting that it was an unusual remark to make: Osgood, beside the Christmas tree in Arnold Laurier’s study, had said tome of Felix Rawcliffe, disapprovingly: “He must be your age, or even younger.” Prior to that, he had been talking about the curate in relation to Vivienne Laurier—but what significance was there in the relative ages of Rawcliffe and Vivienne? Had Osgood intended to imply there was a romantic connection between the two of them? And why had he asked me if Vivienne had mentioned Rawcliffe in our conversation of the night before?
Might Osgood and the curatebothbe in love with Vivienne Laurier? Was that why both had taken rooms at Frellingsloe House? It seemed unlikely that a young curate like Rawcliffe would fall for a woman of around twice his own age.
When she had first invited me for Christmas in Norfolk, Mother had told me, as if it were an undisputed fact, that the doctor was in love with Frellingsloe House’s matriarch. Perhaps, for once, she was right. If so, then maybe Nurse Olga knew she was not Robert Osgood’s first choice.
I then recalled something I had written in my notes immediately before Poirot fell ill: according to Poirot’s account, Osgood had initially told Inspector Mackle that Olga Woodruff was not present in the corridor of Ward 6 at twenty past two on the day Stanley Niven was killed. Later, he had amended his account and said it was possible she had been there, but he had not noticed her.
Of course, Olga Woodruff had shed buckets of tears when Inspector Mackle had told her that her fiancé had no recollection of her being there. Could she really matter so little to him that he failed to see her even when she wasright in front of him? I could well imagine the unhappiness this thought would have provoked in the poor young woman. And her crying jag made even more sense if she knew, or suspected, that Osgood was in love with Vivienne Laurier, whom he definitely had not failed to notice on Ward 6’s corridor at the same time.
The crown notebook I had found in Frellingsloe House’s library suggested that perhaps Olga Woodruff would be one of the Lauriers’ guests for Christmas. I imagined the possible tension around the table and resolved once more to do everything in my power to ensure Poirot and I were back in London by Christmas Day.
Nurse Olga’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Robert and I are due to be married at the start of May next year.” She smiled brightly.
“Many congratulations,” I said, trying not to make my pity for her too obvious.
“Please, no more words,” said Poirot. “I must close my eyes again. It is too noisy to sleep properly here at night: people rushing past my door with fast, heavy footsteps like galloping horses, voices of other patients and doctors.”
“You’re quite right. You need rest,” said Nurse Olga. “Don’t worry, Inspector Catchpool is leaving now.”
