Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie Page B

sometimes - Hastings - they can be helped to happen!”
    He paused a minute, then went on:
    “I think the dog's ball left so fortuitously at the top of the stairs gave our murderer an idea. Miss Arundell was in the habit of coming out of her room in the night and wandering about - her eyesight was not good; it was quite within the bounds of probability that she might stumble over it and fall headlong down those stairs. But a careful murderer does not leave things to chance. A thread stretched across the top of the stairs would be a much better way. It would send her pitching head foremost. Then, when the household came rushing out - there, plain to see, is the cause of the accident - Bob's ball.”
    “How horrible!” I cried.
    Poirot said gravely:
    "Yes, it was horrible... It was also unsuccessful... Miss Arundell was very little hurt, though she might easily have broken her neck. Very disappointing for our unknown friend! But Miss Arundell was a sharp-witted old lady. Everyone told her she had slipped on the ball, and there the ball was as evidence, but she herself, recalling the happening, felt that the accident had arisen differently. She had not slipped on the ball. And in addition she remembered something else. She remembered hearing Bob barking for admission at five o'clock the next morning.
    “This, I admit, is something in the way of guess-work, but I believe I am right. Miss Arundell had put away Bob's ball herself the evening before in its drawer. After that he went out and did not return. In that case it was not Bob who put that ball on the top of the stairs.”
    “That is pure guess-work, Poirot,” I objected.
    He demurred.
    “Not quite, my friend. There are the significant words uttered by Miss Arundell when she was delirious - something about Bob's ball and a 'picture ajar.' You see the point, do you not?”
    “Not in the least.”
    “Curious. I know your language well enough to realize that one does not talk of a picture being ajar. A door is ajar. A picture is awry.”
    “Or simply crooked.”
    “Or simply crooked, as you say. So I realized at once that Ellen has mistaken the meaning of the words she heard. It is not ajar - but a or the jar that was meant. Now in the drawing-room there is a rather noticeable china jar. There is, I have already observed, a picture of a dog on it. With the remembrance of these delirious ravings in my mind I go up and examine it more closely. I find that it deals with the subject of a dog who has been out all night. You see the trend of the feverish woman's thoughts? Bob was like the dog in the picture on the jar - out all night - so it was not he who left the ball on the stairs.”
    I cried out, feeling some admiration in spite of myself.
    “You're an ingenious devil, Poirot! How you think of these things beats me!”
    “I do not 'think of them.' They are there - plain - for any one to see. Eh bien, you realize the position? Miss Arundell, lying in bed after her fall, becomes suspicious. That suspicion she feels is perhaps fanciful and absurd, but there it is. 'Since the incident of the Dog's Ball I have been increasingly uneasy.' And so - and so she writes to me, and by a piece of bad luck her letter does not reach me until over two months have gone by. Tell me, does her letter not fit in perfectly with these facts?”
    “Yes,” I admitted. “It does.”
    Poirot went on:
    "There is another point worthy of consideration.
    Miss Lawson was exceedingly anxious that the fact of Bob's being out all night should not get to Miss Arundell's ears."
    “You think that she -”
    “I think that the fact should be noted very carefully.”
    I turned the thing over in my mind for a minute or two.
    “Well,” I said at last with a sigh, “it's all very interesting - as a mental exercise, that is. And I take off my hat to you. It's been a masterful piece of reconstruction. It's almost a pity really that the old lady has died.”
    “A pity - yes. She wrote to me that some one