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There was a second coat hanging next to Miss Lemon’s in the hallway.
This gave Poirot some pause. It was not rare for Miss Lemon to let clients wait in the flat if Poirot chanced to be out when they arrived, but at present, Poirot was supposed to still be in Edinburgh, dealing with General Adair’s murder. Indeed, his return had only been the result of an urgent call from the minister of foreign affairs, which had sent him on the next train home without notice to anyone, even Miss Lemon.
The coat was not expensive, but well-made nonetheless, and would have been fashionable twenty years ago. It had been well taken care of since then, but the passing years still showed.
Poirot frowned and stepped into Miss Lemon’s office, which turned out to be occupied by a stranger: a tall woman clad in a woollen promenade suit, with short-cropped grey-speckled hair and a rosy round face. There was an ordinary, sensible strength to the figure, accentuated by her calloused hands that were currently sorting through some files, placing them in piles that were – Poirot noted with some displeasure – nowhere near as tidy as Miss Lemon’s.
”Oh, hello!” she said upon seeing him, in an accent that strived for received pronunciation without quite getting there. The laugh-lines around her eyes deepened as she gave him a smile that mollified his displeasure, if not his puzzlement. ”You must be mister Poirot. I’m Felicity’s friend Ivy. Ivy Beadle.”
The way she said his name was almost exactly like Miss Lemon did it, and nowhere near as bad an attempt as he had grown used to.
”Good afternoon, Miss Beadle,” he said, quite certain about the title, despite her age. ”Is Miss Lemon somehow indisposed?”
”No, no, she’s just making a cuppa!” She hastily stood up and straightened her skirt. ”I’ll go get her, shall I?”
She hurried past him into the kitchen, and a moment later, Miss Lemon appeared, looking more flustered than Poirot would have thought her capable of.
”Oh, M. Poirot! I didn’t expect you back so soon! I mean… I do apologize. I should have asked before I let my friend in.”
He waved that away. ”Quand le chat n’est pas là…. I have no objections. On the contrary, I am charmed to make Miss Beadle’s acquaintance. Although, I must admit that it surprises me to see that the files are now in her hands?”
Miss Beadle held up both hands in a sign of innocence. ”Nothing sensitive, all solved cases.”
”I am teaching Ivy the basics of a proper filing system,” Miss Lemon said.
”I have an ironmonger’s shop,” Miss Beadle filled in. ”Inherited it from my father along with the records, which,” she flashed Miss Lemon a boyish grin, ”apparently are not up to Felicity’s exacting standards.”
”They’re a disgrace,” Miss Lemon said sternly, ”and if I can bring some sort of order to the chaos, the households of London will be much better off for it. Now, how do you sort...”
The sound of the kettle boiling interrupted her, and she ducked out of the room, returning a moment later with two cups of tea and a tisane of chamomile. Having given the latter to Poirot, she handed over one of the teacups to her friend with the question: ”Double-barrelled names?”
”Sorted under the second name, unless hyphenated,” Miss Beadle said promptly, then gave Poirot a long, evaluating look. ”I’m not certain, though, how Radclyffe Hall would be sorted.”
”As an author, under H, should such a person ever appear in these files.” There was an ice-cold warning in Miss Lemon’s voice.
It was a warning that would never be necessary, as far as Poirot was concerned, and he suspected Miss Beadle knew it. As shibboleths went, this name-dropping was so clumsy as to be careless, but she seemed to have made her measure of him just as he had of her, and he answered in all honesty. ”Should Miss Radclyffe Hall ever require my assistance, I would of course be happy to provide it.”
Miss Lemon’s expression softened somewhat, and she plucked a piece of lint off Miss Beadle’s sleeve, her hand lingering for a moment on the arm. It could barely even be called a caress, yet this was a tenderness beyond what Poirot had ever before seen from her.
Miss Beadle smiled back at Miss Lemon, eyes wide and warm, and for a second, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then Miss Lemon shook it off. ”M. Poirot, what brings you back so soon? Have you solved the Edinburgh case already?”
”Alas, no. I had a call concerning a most delicate matter that required my particular skillset. But such discussions can wait until after tea.”
At that, Miss Beadle made a small ”oh!” sound and drank up the rest of her tea. ”Done, gone!” she said. ”Mister Poirot, so nice to meet you. Felicity, I will see you tonight. Goodbye!”
Poirot remained where he was as Miss Lemon followed Miss Beadle out, and whatever was murmured between them in the hallway, he could not quite hear. Only when the door closed did he step into the hallway.
Miss Lemon’s cheeks were flushed, and she let out an almost inaudible sigh. ”Thank you, for being so understanding.”
”If not I, then who?” he said mildly. ”I am pleased to have met your friend. She seems very nice.”
”She is.”
”And yet, in other ways… not at all like you.”
”No.” Miss Lemon looked pensive as she automatically re-sorted the files Miss Beadle had left behind, creating a much tidier pile in the process. ”For some reason, I seem to like that better.”
”Sometimes other people bring us things we cannot find in ourselves.” Poirot’s thoughts lingered on a pair of bright blue eyes, and on the owner of those eyes, a man whose steadfast honesty and trust always remained the same, never made cynical or even wiser by the criminal cases he encountered. An open heart and an open face – too open, sometimes, to be given the truth.
”I was never quite certain about you,” Miss Lemon said quietly.
Poirot smiled. The truth was, there was rarely anything to be certain of. The times of certainty, of finding home in another person, had been few and far between, with Arthur the brightest shining star on that night sky. For the most part, his mind occupied far more of his time than his body, and he quite liked it that way. And yet, those rare carnal pleasures were just as important, and it was a great relief that Miss Lemon, too, shared this secret. It was, in a sense, a different kind of home.
”Then we have both learned something about the other today,” he said, ”and I believe we are better off for it.”