that, though Miss Lemon used the word "tore,"
she had neatly cut the entry out with scissors,
Poirot read the announcement taken from the
Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Morning
Post: "On March 26th--suddenly--at Rosebank,
Charman's Green, Amelia Jane Barrowby, in her
58
Agatha Christie
seventy-third year. No flowers, by request."
Poirot read it over. He murmured under his
breath, "Suddenly." Then he said briskly, "If
you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss
Lemon?"
The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind
dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system,
took down in rapid and correct shorthand:
Dear Miss Barrowby: I have received no
reply from you, but as I shall be in the neigh-borhood
of Charman's Green on Friday, I
will call upon you on that day and discuss
more fully the matter you mentioned to me in
your letter.
Yours, etc.
"Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at
once, it should get to Charman's Green tonight."
On the following morning a letter in a black-edged
envelope arrived by the second post:
Dear Sir: In reply to your letter my aunt,
Miss Barrowby, passed away on the twenty-sixth,
so the matter you speak of is no longer