“I’m afraid so.”
“Had you ever actually met Madame Doyle before?”
“No, Tim had met her. And I’d heard a good deal about her—through a cousin of ours, Joanna Southwood, but I’d never spoken to her till we met at Assuan.”
“I have one other question, Madame, if you will pardon me for asking.”
Mrs. Allerton murmured with a faint smile, “I should love to be asked an indiscreet question.”
“It is this. Did you, or your family, ever suffer any financial loss through the operations of Madame Doyle’s father, Melhuish Ridgeway?”
Mrs. Allerton looked thoroughly astonished.
“Oh, no! The family finances have never suffered except by dwindling…you know, everything paying less interest than it used to. There’s never been anything melodramatic about our poverty. My husband left very little money, but what he left I still have, though it doesn’t yield as much as it used to yield.”
“I thank you, Madame. Perhaps you will ask your son to come to us.”
Tim said lightly, when his mother came: “Ordeal over? My turn now! What sort of things did they ask you?”
“Only whether I heard anything last night,” said Mrs. Allerton. “And unluckily I didn’t hear anything at all. I can’t think why not. After all, Linnet’s cabin is only one away from mine. I should think I’d have been bound to hear the shot. Go along, Tim; they’re waiting for you.”
To Tim Allerton Poirot repeated his previous questions.
Tim answered: “I went to bed early, half-past ten or so. I read for a bit. Put out my light just after eleven.”
“Did you hear anything after that?”
“Heard a man’s voice saying good night, I think, not far away.”
“That was me saying good night to Mrs. Doyle,” said Race.
“Yes. After that I went to sleep. Then, later, I heard a kind of hullabaloo going on, somebody calling Fanthorp, I remember.”
“Mademoiselle Robson when she ran out from the observation saloon.”
“Yes, I suppose that was it. And then a lot of different voices. And then somebody running along the deck. And then a splash. And then I heard old Bessner booming out something about ‘Careful now’ and ‘Not too quick.’”
“You heard a splash.”
“Well, something of that kind.”
“You are sure it was not a shot you heard?”
“Yes, I suppose it might have been…I did hear a cork pop. Perhaps that was the shot. I may have imagined the splash from connecting the idea of the cork with liquid pouring into a glass…I know my foggy idea was that there was some kind of party on, and I wished they’d all go to bed and shut up.”
“Anything more after that?”
Tim shrugged his shoulders. “After that—oblivion.”
“You heard nothing more?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Allerton.”
Tim got up and left the cabin.
Sixteen