“It’s the funny little fellow he is—and his eyes green like any cat’s, and with all that Dr. Lord saying he’s the clever one!”
Hercule Poirot said:
“It is a pleasure to meet someone so full of health and vitality. Your patients, I am sure, must all recover.”
Nurse O’Brien said:
“I’m not one for pulling a long face, and not many of my patients die on me, I’m thankful to say.”
Poirot said:
“Of course, in Mrs. Welman’s case, it was a merciful release.”
“Ah! It was that, the poor dear.” Her eyes were shrewd as she looked at Poirot and asked:
“Is it about that you want to talk to me? I was after hearing that they’re digging her up.”
Poirot said:
“You yourself had no suspicion at the time?”
“Not the least in the world, though indeed I might have had, with the face Dr. Lord had on him that morning, and him sending me here, there and everywhere for things he didn’t need! But he signed the certificate, for all that.”
Poirot began, “He had his reasons—” but she took the words out of his mouth.
“Indeed and he was right. It does a doctor no good to think things and offend the family, and then if he’s wrong it’s the end of him, and no one would be wishing to call him in any more. A doctor’s got to be sure!”
Poirot said:
“There is a suggestion that Mrs. Welman might have committed suicide.”
“She? And her lying there helpless? Just lift one hand, that was all she could do!”
“Someone might have helped her?”
“Ah! I see now what you’re meaning. Miss Carlisle, or Mr. Welman, or maybe Mary Gerrard?”
“It would be possible, would it not?”
Nurse O’Brien shook her head. She said:
“They’d not dare—any of them!”
Poirot said slowly:
“Perhaps not.”
Then he said:
“When was it Nurse Hopkins missed the tube of morphine?”
“It was that very morning. ‘I’m sure I had it here,’ she said. Very sure she was at first; but you know how it is, after a while your mind gets confused, and in the end she made sure she’d left it at home.”
Poirot murmured:
“And even then you had no suspicion?”
“Not the least in the world! Sure, it never entered my head for a moment that things weren’t as they should be. And even now ’tis only a suspicion they have.”