He strode out of the room and banged the door.
Superintendent Sugden threw his head back and laughed.
He said:
‘We’ve got them going properly! Now we’ll see!’
Johnson said frowning:
‘Extraordinary business! Looks fishy. We must get a further statement out of her.’
Sugden said easily:
‘Oh! She’ll be back in a minute or two. When she’s decided what to say. Eh, Mr Poirot?’
Poirot, who had been sitting in a dream, gave a start.
‘Pardon!’
‘I said she’ll be back.’
‘Probably—yes, possibly—oh, yes!’
Sugden said, staring at him:
‘What’s the matter, Mr Poirot? Seen a ghost?’
Poirot said slowly:
‘You know—I am not sure that I have not done just exactly that.’
Colonel Johnson said impatiently:
‘Well, Sugden, anything else?’
Sugden said:
‘I’ve been trying to check up on the order in which everyone arrived on the scene of the murder. It’s quite clear what must have happened. After the murder when the victim’s dying cry had given the alarm, the murderer slipped out, locked the door with pliers, or something of that kind, and a moment or two later became one of the people hurrying to the scene of the crime. Unfortunately it’s not easy to check exactly whom everyone has seen because people’s memories aren’t very accurate on a point like that. Tressilian says he saw Harry and Alfred Lee cross the hall from the dining-room and race upstairs. That lets them out, but we don’t suspect them anyway. As far as I can make out, Miss Estravados got there late—one of the last. The general idea seems to be that Farr, Mrs George, and Mrs David were the first. Each of those three says one of the others was just ahead of them. That’s what’s so difficult, you can’t distinguish between a deliberate lie and a genuine haziness of recollection. Everybody ran there—that’s agreed, but in what order they ran isn’t so easy to get at.’
Poirot said slowly:
‘You think that important?’
Sugden said:
‘It’s the time element. The time, remember, was incredibly short.’
Poirot said:
‘I agree with you that the time element is very important in this case.’
Sugden went on:
‘What makes it more difficult is that there are two staircases. There’s the main one in the hall here about equidistant from the dining-room and the drawing-room doors. Then there’s one the other end of the house. Stephen Farr came up by the latter. Miss Estravados came along the upper landing from that end of the house (her room is right the other end). The others say they went up by this one.’
Poirot said:
‘It is a confusion, yes.’