The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

ployer appealed to her human, as opposed to her official, capacities. It slightly annoyed Miss Lemon when he did so--she was very nearly the perfect machine, completely and gloriously unin-terested in all human affairs. Her real passion in life was the perfection of a filing system beside which all other filing systems should sink into oblivion. She dreamed of such a system at night. Nevertheless, Miss Lemon was perfectly capable of intelligence on purely human matters, as Her-cule Poirot well knew.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Old lady," said Miss Lemon. "Got the wind up pretty badly."

"Ah! The wind rises in her, you think9.''

Miss Lemon, who considered that Poirot had

· been long enough in Great Britain to understand its slang terms, did not reply. She took a brief look at the double envelope.

"Very hush-hush," she said. "And tells you nothing at all."

"Yes," said Hercule Poirot. "I observed that." Miss Lemon's hand hung once more hopefully over the shorthand pad. This time Hercule Poirot responded.

"Tell her I will do myself the honor to call upon her at any time she suggests, unless she prefers to consult me here. Do not type the letter--write it by hand."

"Yes, M. Poirot."

Poirot produced more correspondence. "These are bills."

Miss Lemon's efficient hands sorted them quickly. "I'll pay all but these two."

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

"Why those two? There is no error in them." "They are firms you've only just begun to deal

with. It looks bad to pay too promptly when you've just opened an account--looks as though you were working up to get some credit later on."

"Ah!" murmured Poirot. "I bow to your su-perior knowledge of the British tradesman."

"There's nothing much I don't know about them," said Miss Lemon grimly.

The letter to Miss Amelia Barrowby was duly written and sent, but no reply Was forthcoming. Perhaps, thought Hercule Poirot, the old lady had

unraveled her mystery herself. Yet he felt.a shade of surprise that in that case she should not have

written a courteous word to say that his services were no longer required.

It was five days later when Miss Lemon, after receiving her morning's instructions, said, "That Miss Barrowby we wrote to--no wonder there's been no answer. She's dead."

Hercule Poirot said very softly, "Ah--dead." It sounded not so much like a question as an answer.

Opening her handbag, Miss Lemon produced a newspaper cutting. "I saw it in the tube and tore it out."

Just registering in his mind approval of the fact that, though Miss Lemon used the word "tore," she had neatly cut the entry out with scissors, Poirot read the announcement taken from the Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Morning Post: "On March 26th--suddenly--at Rosebank, Charman's Green, Amelia Jane Barrowby, in her 58

Agatha Christie

seventy-third year. No flowers, by request."

Poirot read it over. He murmured under his breath, "Suddenly." Then he said briskly, "If you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss Lemon?"

The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system, took down in rapid and correct shorthand:

Dear Miss Barrowby: I have received no reply from you, but as I shall be in the neigh-borhood of Charman's Green on Friday, I will call upon you on that day and discuss more fully the matter you mentioned to me in your letter.

Yours, etc.

"Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at once, it should get to Charman's Green tonight."

On the following morning a letter in a black-edged envelope arrived by the second post:

Dear Sir: In reply to your letter my aunt, Miss Barrowby, passed away on the twenty-sixth, so the matter you speak of is no longer of importance.

Yours truly,

MARY DELAFONTAINE.

Poirot smiled to himself. "No longer of im-portance .... Ah--that is what we shall see. En avant--to Charman's Green."

Rosebank was a house that seemed likely to live up to its name, which is more than can be said for

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? 59

most houses of its class and character. Hercule Poirot paused as he walked up the path to the front door and looked approvingly at the neatly planned beds on either side of him. Rose trees that promised a good harvest later in the year, and at present daffodils, early tulips, blue hyacinths--the last bed was partly edged with shells. Poirot murmured to himself, "How does it go, the English rhyme the children sing?

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle-shells, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.

"Not a row, perhaps," he considered, "but here is at least one pretty maid to make the little rhyme come right." The front door had opened and a neat little maid in cap and apron was looking somewhat

dubiously at the spectacle of a heavily mustached foreign gentleman talking aloud to himself in the