facts neatly, and with method. At ten minutes past two exactly, our quarry enters the lift. Five minutes later we speak to the lift man, and having heard what he says, we also go up to the third floor. At, say, nineteen minutes past two we enter the suite of Mrs. Van Snyder. And now, what significant fact strikes us?”
There was a pause, no significant fact striking either of them.
“There wasn’t such a thing as a trunk in the room, was there?” asked Albert, his eyes lighting suddenly.
“ Mon ami ,” said Tommy. “You do not understand the psychology of an American woman who has just returned from Paris. There were, I should say, about nineteen trunks in the room.”
“What I meantersay is, a trunk’s a handy thing if you’ve got a dead body about you want to get rid of—not that she is dead, for a minute.”
“We searched the only two that were big enough to contain a body. What is the next fact in chronological order?”
“You’ve missed one out—when the Missus and the bloke dressed up as a Hospital Nurse passed the waiter in the passage.”
“It must have been just before we came up in the lift,” said Tommy. “They must have had a narrow escape of meeting us face to face. Pretty quick work, that. I—”
He stopped.
“What is it, sir?”
“Be silent, mon ami . I have the kind of little idea—colossal, stupendous—that always comes sooner or later to Hercule Poirot.