Dr. Roberts rose.
“Anything more?”
Poirot shook his head.
“Well, goodnight, then. Goodnight, Mrs. Oliver. You ought to get some copy out of this. Better than your untraceable poisons, eh?”
Dr. Roberts left the room, his bearing springy once more. Mrs. Oliver said bitterly as the door closed behind him:
“Copy! Copy indeed! People are so unintelligent. I could invent a better murder any day than anything real. I’m never at a loss for a plot. And the people who read my books like untraceable poisons!”
Five
SECOND MURDERER?
Mrs. Lorrimer came into the dining room like a gentlewoman. She looked a little pale, but composed.
“I’m sorry to have to bother you,” Superintendent Battle began.
“You must do your duty, of course,” said Mrs. Lorrimer quietly. “It is, I agree, an unpleasant position in which to be placed, but there is no good shirking it. I quite realize that one of the four people in that room must be guilty. Naturally, I can’t expect you to take my word that I am not the person.”
She accepted the chair that Colonel Race offered her and sat down opposite the superintendent. Her intelligent grey eyes met his. She waited attentively.
“You knew Mr. Shaitana well?” began the superintendent.
“Not very well. I have known him over a period of some years, but never intimately.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At a hotel in Egypt—the Winter Palace at Luxor, I think.”
“What did you think of him?”
Mrs. Lorrimer shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“I thought him—I may as well say so—rather a charlatan.”
“You had—excuse me for asking—no motive for wishing him out of the way?”
Mrs. Lorrimer looked slightly amused.
“Really, Superintendent Battle, do you think I should admit it if I had?”
“You might,” said Battle. “A really intelligent person might know that a thing was bound to come out.”
Mrs. Lorrimer inclined her head thoughtfully.
“There is that, of course. No, Superintendent Battle, I had no motive for wishing Mr. Shaitana out of the way. It is really a matter of indifference to me whether he is alive or dead. I thought him a poseur, and rather theatrical, and sometimes he irritated me. That is—or rather was—my attitude towards him.”
“That is that, then. Now, Mrs. Lorrimer, can you tell me anything about your three companions?”
“I’m afraid not. Major Despard and Miss Meredith I met for the first time tonight. Both of them seem charming people. Dr. Roberts I know slightly. He’s a very popular doctor, I believe.”
“He is not your own doctor?”
“Oh, no.”
“Now, Mrs. Lorrimer, can you tell me how often you got up from your seat tonight, and will you also describe the movements of the other three?”