“Lawyers.”
“Thank you, Captain Black. Perhaps you could spare me a few minutes in about half an hour’s time?”
“Certainly.” The young soldier looked at him curiously and wiped his brow as he got up.
“And now, Hastings,” said Poirot, smiling at me as the door closed behind him. “You see it all, do you not?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Does that list of words tell you nothing?”
I scrutinized it, but was forced to shake my head.
“I will assist you. To begin with, Black answered well within the normal time limit, with no pauses, so we can take it that he himself has no guilty knowledge to conceal. ‘Day’ to ‘Night’ and ‘Place’ to ‘Name’ are normal associations. I began work with ‘Bernard’ which might have suggested the local doctor had he come across him at all. Evidently he had not. After our recent conversation, he gave ‘Dinner’ to my ‘Tuesday,’ but ‘Journey’ and ‘Country’ were answered by ‘Ship’ and ‘Uganda,’ showing clearly that it was his journey abroad that was important to him and not the one which brought him down here. ‘Story’ recalls to him one of the ‘Lion’ stories he told at dinner. I proceed to ‘Rook Rifle’ and he answered with the totally unexpected word ‘Farm.’ When I say ‘Shot,’ he answers at once ‘Suicide.’ The association seems clear. A man he knows committed suicide with a rook rifle on a farm somewhere. Remember, too, that his mind is still on the stories he told at dinner, and I think you will agree that I shall not be far from the truth if I recall Captain Black and ask him to repeat the particular suicide story which he told at the dinner-table on Tuesday evening.”
Black was straightforward enough over the matter.
“Yes, I did tell them that story now that I come to think of it. Chap shot himself on a farm out there. Did it with a rook rifle through the roof of the mouth, bullet lodged in the brain. Doctors were no end puzzled over it—there was nothing to show except a little blood on the lips. But what——”