“It is certainly difficult to see who else could have done it. Unless of course, she did it herself.”
“What do you mean, did it herself? Do you mean that Mary committed suicide? I never heard such nonsense!”
Hercule Poirot said:
“One can never tell. The heart of a young girl, it is very sensitive, very tender.” He paused. “It would have been possible, I suppose? She could have slipped something into her tea without your noticing her?”
“Slipped it into her cup, you mean?”
“Yes. You weren’t watching her all the time.”
“I wasn’t watching her—no. Yes, I suppose she could have done that… But it’s all nonsense! What would she want to do a thing like that for?”
Hercule Poirot shook his head with a resumption of his former manner.
“A young girl’s heart…as I say, so sensitive. An unhappy love affair, perhaps—”
Nurse Hopkins gave a snort.
“Girls don’t kill themselves for love affairs—not unless they’re in the family way—and Mary wasn’t that, let me tell you!” She glared at him belligerently.
“And she was not in love?”
“Not she. Quite fancy free. Keen on her job and enjoying her life.”
“But she must have had admirers, since she was such an attractive girl.”
Nurse Hopkins said:
“She wasn’t one of these girls who are all S.A. and IT. She was a quiet girl!”
“But there were young men, no doubt, in the village who admired her.”
“There was Ted Bigland, of course,” said Nurse Hopkins.
Poirot extracted various details as to Ted Bigland.
“Very gone on Mary, he was,” said Nurse Hopkins. “But, as I told her, she was a cut above him.”
Poirot said:
“He must have been angry when she would not have anything to do with him?”
“He was sore about it, yes,” admitted Nurse Hopkins. “Blamed me for it, too.”
“He thought it was your fault?”
“That’s what he said. I’d a perfect right to advise the girl. After all, I know something of the world. I didn’t want the girl to throw herself away.”
Poirot said gently:
“What made you take so much interest in the girl?”
“Well, I don’t know…” Nurse Hopkins hesitated. She looked shy and a little ashamed of herself. “There was something—well—romantic about Mary.”
Poirot murmured:
“About her, perhaps, but not about her circumstances. She was the lodge keeper’s daughter, wasn’t she?”