Sad Cypress

“A new life… That is what Elinor Carlisle is beginning now—and it is you who have given her that life.”

“No.”

“Yes. It was your determination, your arrogant insistence that compelled me to do as you asked. Admit now, it is to you she turns in gratitude, is it not?”

Peter Lord said slowly:

“Yes, she’s very grateful—now… She asked me to go and see her—often.”

“Yes, she needs you.”

Peter Lord said violently:

“Not as she needs—him!”

Hercule Poirot shook his head.

“She never needed Roderick Welman. She loved him, yes, unhappily—even desperately.”

ad him to say that he saw your car in the road; and then you give a start and pretend that it was not your car. And you look hard at me to make sure that I realize that someone, a stranger, must have been there that morning.”

“I was a damned fool,” said Peter Lord.

“What were you doing at Hunterbury that morning?”

Peter Lord blushed.

“It was just sheer idiocy… I—I’d heard she was down. I went up to the house on the chance of seeing her. I didn’t mean to speak to her. I—I just wanted to—well—see her. From the path in the shrubbery I saw her in the pantry cutting bread and butter—”

“Charlotte and the poet Werther. Continue, my friend.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to tell. I just slipped into the bushes and stayed there watching her till she went away.”

Poirot said gently:

“Did you fall in love with Elinor Carlisle the first time you saw her?”

There was a long silence.

“I suppose so.”

Then Peter Lord said:

“Oh, well, I suppose she and Roderick Welman will live happy ever afterwards.”

She had, I fancy, already planned the method of the crime, with the use of the apomorphine to secure her own alibi. She may have meant to get Elinor and Mary to her cottage, but when Elinor came down to the Lodge and asked them both to come up and have sandwiches she realized at once that a perfect opportunity had arisen. The circumstances were such that Elinor was practically certain to be convicted