The Third-Floor Flat: A Hercule Poirot Short Story

‘Isn’t there a sort of thingummybob?’ said Donovan. ‘A thing the tradesmen send up chops and brussels sprouts in?’

‘The service lift,’ said Pat. ‘Oh yes, but it’s only a sort of wire-basket thing. Oh wait – I know. What about the coal lift?’

‘Now that,’ said Donovan, ‘is an idea.’

Mildred made a discouraging suggestion. ‘It’ll be bolted,’ she said. ‘In Pat’s kitchen, I mean, on the inside.’

But the idea was instantly negatived.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Donovan.

‘Not in Pat’s kitchen,’ said Jimmy. ‘Pat never locks and bolts things.’

‘I don’t think it’s bolted,’ said Pat. ‘I took the dustbin off this morning, and I’m sure I never bolted it afterwards, and I don’t think I’ve been near it since.’

‘Well,’ said Donovan, ‘that fact’s going to be very useful to us tonight, but, all the same, young Pat, let me point out to you that these slack habits are leaving you at the mercy of burglars – non-feline – every night.’

Pat disregarded these admonitions.

‘Come on,’ she cried, and began racing down the four flights of stairs. The others followed her. Pat led them through a dark recess, apparently full to overflowing of perambulators, and through another door into the well of the flats, and guided them to the right lift. There was, at the moment, a dustbin on it. Donovan lifted it off and stepped gingerly on to the platform in its place. He wrinkled up his nose.

‘A little noìsome,’ he remarked. ‘But what of that? Do I go alone on this venture or is anyone coming with me?’

‘I’ll come, too,’ said Jimmy.

He stepped on by Donovan’s side.

‘I suppose the lift will bear me,’ he added doubtfully.

‘You can’t weigh much more than a ton of coal,’ said Pat, who had never been particularly strong on her weights-and-measures table.

‘And, anyway, we shall soon find out,’ said Donovan cheerfully, as he hauled on the rope.

With a grinding noise they disappeared from sight.

‘This thing makes an awful noise,’ remarked Jimmy, as they passed up through blackness. ‘What will the people in the other flats think?’

‘Ghosts or burglars, I expect,’ said Donovan. ‘Hauling this rope is quite heavy work. The porter of Friars Mansions does more work than I ever suspected. I say, Jimmy, old son, are you counting the floors?’

‘Oh, Lord! No. I forgot about it.’

‘Well, I have, which is just as well. That’s the third we’re passing now. The next is ours.’

‘And now, I suppose,’ grumbled Jimmy, ‘we shall find that Pat did bolt the door after all.’

But these fears were unfounded. The wooden door swung back at a touch, and Donovan and Jimmy stepped out into the inky blackness of Pat’s kitchen.

‘We ought to have a torch for this wild night work,’ exclaimed Donovan. ‘If I know Pat, everything’s on the floor, and we shall smash endless crockery before I can get to the light switch. Don’t move about, Jimmy, till I get the light on.’

He felt his way cautiously over the floor, uttering one fervent ‘Damn!’ as a corner of the kitchen table took him unawares in the ribs. He reached the switch, and in another moment another ‘Damn!’ floated out of the darkness.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jimmy.

‘Light won’t come on. Dud bulb, I suppose. Wait a minute. I’ll turn the sitting-room light on.’

The sitting-room was the door immediately across the passage. Jimmy heard Donovan go out of the door, and presently fresh muffled curses reached him. He himself edged his way cautiously across the kitchen.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. Rooms get bewitched at night, I believe. Everything seems to be in a different place. Chairs and tables where you least expected them. Oh, hell! Here’s another!’

But at this moment Jimmy fortunately connected with the electric-light switch and pressed it down. In another minute two young men were looking at each other in silent horror.

This room was not Pat’s sitting-room. They were in the wrong flat.

To begin with, the room was about ten times more crowded than Pat’s, which explained Donovan’s pathetic bewilderment at repeatedly cannoning into chairs and tables. There was a large round table in the centre of the room covered with a baize cloth, and there was an aspidistra in the window. It was, in fact, the kind of room whose owner, the young men felt sure, would be difficult to explain to. With silent horror they gazed down at the table, on which lay a little pile of letters.