Ruth Chevenix-Gore came into the room like a queen. Her colour was vivid, her head held high. But her eyes, like the eyes of Susan Cardwell, were watchful. She wore the same frock she had had on when Poirot arrived. It was a pale shade of apricot. On her shoulder was pinned a deep, salmon-pink rose. It had been fresh and blooming an hour earlier, now it drooped.
“Well?” said Ruth.
“I’m extremely sorry to bother you,” began Major Riddle.
She interrupted him.
“Of course you have to bother me. You have to bother everyone. I can save you time, though. I haven’t the faintest idea why the Old Man killed himself. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t a bit like him.”
“Did you notice anything amiss in his manner today? Was he depressed, or unduly excited—was there anything at all abnormal?”
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t noticing—”
“When did you see him last?”
“Teatime.”
Poirot spoke:
“You did not go to the study—later?”
“No. The last I saw of him was in this room. Sitting there.”
She indicated a chair.
“I see. Do you know this pencil, mademoiselle?”
“It’s Colonel Bury’s.”
“Have you seen it lately?”
“I don’t really remember.”
“Do you know anything of a—disagreement between Sir Gervase and Colonel Bury?”
“Over the Paragon Rubber Company, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I should think so. The Old Man was rabid about it!”
“He considered, perhaps, that he had been swindled?”
Ruth shrugged her shoulders.
“He didn’t understand the first thing about finance.”
Poirot said:
“May I ask you a question, mademoiselle—a somewhat impertinent question?”
“Certainly, if you like.”
“It is this—are you sorry that your—father is dead?”
She stared at him.
“Of course I’m sorry. I don’t indulge in sob stuff. But I shall miss him . . . I was fond of the Old Man. That’s what we called him, Hugo and I, always. The ‘Old Man’—you know—something of the primitive—anthropoid-ape-original-Patriarch-of-the-tribe