the Chinaman spoke in intelligible pidgin English. No, the message was genuine. Tell me again all that you heard?”
“First of all he made a reference to Handel’s Largo , and then he said something that sounded like ‘ carrozza ’—that’s a carriage, isn’t it?”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, just at the end he murmured something like ‘Cara’ somebody or other—some woman’s name. Zia, I think. But I don’t suppose that that had any bearing on the rest of it.”
“You would not suppose so, Hastings. Cara Zia is very important, very important indeed.”
“I don’t see—”
“My dear friend, you never see—and anyway the English know no geography.”
“Geography?” I cried. “What has geography got to do with it?”
“I dare say M. Thomas Cook would be more to the point.”
As usual, Poirot refused to say anything more—a most irritating trick of his. But I noticed that his manner became extremely cheerful, as though he had scored some point or other.
The days went on, pleasant if a trifle monotonous. There were plenty of books in the villa, and delightful rambles all around, but I chafed sometimes at the forced inactivity of our life, and marvelled at Poirot’s state of placid content. Nothing occurred to ruffle our quiet existence, and it was not until the end of June, well within the limit that Poirot had given them, that we had our news of the Big Four.