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Poirot nodded.
He asked:
“But why was her face battered in? It is not nice, that.”
“I’ll say it isn’t nice! As to why—well, one can only guess. Sheer vindictiveness, perhaps. Or it may have been with the idea of concealing the woman’s identity.”
“But it did not conceal her identity.”
“No, because not only had we got a pretty good description of what Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was wearing when she disappeared, but her handbag had been stuffed into the fur box too and inside the handbag there was actually an old letter addressed to her at her hotel in Russell Square.”
Poirot sat up. He said:
“But that—that does not make the common sense!”
“It certainly doesn’t. I suppose it was a slip.”
“Yes—perhaps—a slip. But—”
He got up.
“You have been over the flat?”
“Pretty well. There’s nothing illuminating.”
“I should like to see Mrs. Chapman’s bedroom.”
“Come along then.”
The bedroom showed no signs of a hasty departure. It was neat and tidy. The bed had not been slept in, but was turned down ready for the night. There was a thick coating of dust everywhere.
Japp said:
“No finger-prints, so far as we can see. There are some on the kitchen things, but I expect they’ll turn out to be the maid’s.”
“That means that the whole place was dusted very carefully after the murder?”
“Yes.”
Poirot’s eyes swept slowly round the room. Like the sitting room it was furnished in the modern style—and furnished, so he thought, by someone with a moderate income. The articles in it were expensive but not ultra expensive. They were showy but not first-class. The colour scheme was rose pink. He looked into the built-in wardrobe and handled the clothes—smart clothes but again not of first-class quality. His eyes fell to the shoes—they were largely of the sandal variety popular at the moment, some had exaggerated cork soles. He balanced one in his hand, registered the fact that Mrs. Chapman had taken a 5 in shoes and put it down again. In another cupboard he found a pile of furs, shoved in a heap.
Japp said:
“Came out of the fur chest.”
Poirot nodded.
He was handling a grey squirrel coat. He remarked appreciatively: “First-class skins.”
He went into the bathroom.
There was a lavish display of cosmetics. Poirot looked at them with interest. Powder, rouge, vanishing cream, skin food, two bottles of hair application.
Japp said:
“Not one of our natural platinum blondes, I gather.”
Poirot murmured:
