www.freeclassicebooks.com

I wondered how I could have been so unobservant as to overlook this. Here

was a clue worth having. Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and

tasted it gingerly. He made a grimace.

"Coco--with--I think--rum in it."

He passed on to the debris on the floor, where the table by the bed had been

overturned. A reading-lamp, some books, matches, a bunch of keys, and the

crushed fragments of a coffee-cup lay scattered about.

Ah, this is curious," said Poirot.

I must confess that I see nothing particularly curious about it."

You do not? Observe the lamp--the chimney is broken in two places; they

lie there as they fell. But see, the coffee-cup is absolutely smashed to

powder."

Well," I said wearily, "I suppose some one must have stepped on it."

Exactly," said Poirot, in an odd voice. "Some one stepped on it."

He rose from his knees, and walked slowly across to the mantelpiece, where

he stood abstractedly fingering the ornaments, and straightening them--a

trick of his when he was agitated.

"Mon ami," he said, turning to me, "somebody stepped on that cup, grinding

it to powder, and the reason they did so was either because it contained

strychnine or--which is far more serious--because it did not contain

strychnine!"

I made no reply. I was bewildered, but I knew that it was no good asking

him to explain. In a moment or two he roused himself, and went on with his

investigations. He picked up the bunch of keys from the floor, and twirling

them round in his fingers finally selected one, very bright and shining,

which he tried in the lock of the purple despatch-case. It fitted, and he

opened the box, but after a moment's hesitation, closed and relocked it, and

slipped the bunch of keys, as well as the key that had originally stood in the

lock, into his own pocket.

"I have no authority to go through these papers. But it should be done--at

once!"

The Mysterious Affair at Styles