Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/79



N the salon I found the examining magistrate busily interrogating the old gardener Auguste. Poirot and the commissary, who were both present, greeted me respectively with a smile and a polite bow. I slipped quictly into a seat. M. Hautet was painstaking and meticulous in the extreme, but did not succeed in eliciting anything of importance.

The gardening-gloves Auguste admitted to be his. He wore them when handling a certain species of primula plant which was poisonous to some people. He could not say when he had worn them last. Certainly he had not missed them. Where were they kept? Sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. The spade was usually to be found in the small tool shed. Was it locked? Of course it was locked. Where was the key kept? Parbleu, it was in the door of course! There was nothing of value to steal. Who would have expected a party of bandits, of assassins? Such things did not happen in Madame la Vicomtesse’s time. M. Hautet signifying that he had finished with him, the old man withdrew, grumbling to the last. Remembering Poirot’s unaccountable insistence on the footprints in the flower beds, I scrutinized him narrowly as he gave his evidence. Either he had nothing to do with the crime or he was a consummate actor. Suddenly, just as he was going out of the door, an idea struck me.