Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories

YELLOW IRIS

Hercule Poirot stretched his feet towards the electric heater by the wall. The precise design made by the parallel glowing bars was pleasing to his orderly mind. "The coal heaters were clumsy and disorderly. They never had this delicious symmetry..." The phone rang. Poirot got up and consulted his watch. It was almost half past eleven. Who would phone him at this hour? But it could be a wrong number. "Or maybe," he murmured to himself with a dreamy smile, "they have found a millionaire, owner of a newspaper chain, murdered in his library with a rare orchid crushed in his left hand and the page of a cooking book attached by a dagger to his chest..." Smiling at the pleasing conceit, he lifted the receiver. Immediately a voice spoke - a soft husky woman's voice with a kind of desperate urgency about it. "Is that M. Hercule Poirot? Is that M. Hercule Poirot?" "Hercule Poirot speaks." "M. Poirot - can you come at once - at once - I'm in danger - in great danger - I know it -" Poirot said sharply, "Who are you? Where are you speaking from?" The voice came more faintly but with an even greater urgency. "At once... it's life or death... The Jardin des Cygnes... at once... table with yellow irises..." There was a pause - a queer kind of gasp - the line went dead. Hercule Poirot hung up. His face was puzzled. He murmured between his teeth: "There is something here very curious…"