(Of course Miss Lemon would manage to do just that almost impossible thing.) I managed to get her fixed up in a very nice little flat at quite a reasonable rent-” The sisters of women like Miss Lemon married men in Singapore, so that the Miss Lemons of this world could devote themselves with machinelike efficiency to their employers’ affairs (and of course to the invention of filing systems in their moments of relaxation). That was what places like Singapore were for. It seemed to him appropriate that Miss Lemon’s sister should have spent most of her life in Singapore. Her husband was in the rubber business there.” Practically all her life has been spent in Singapore. “Yes,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her to you. “Your sister?” Hercule Poirot repeated, therefore, with an incredulous note in his voice. It was well known that the whole of Miss Lemon’s heart and mind was given, when she was not on duty, to the perfection of a new filing system which was to be patented and bear her name. Miss Lemon, somehow, was so completely machine made-a precision instrument so to speak-that to think of her having affections, or anxieties, or family worries, seemed quite ludicrous. Or, for that matter, having a father, mother, or even grandparents.

Poirot had never conceived of Miss Lemon’s having a sister. It’s because of my sister.”Īnother shock. For the first time in his life, Poirot saw her blush a deep ugly unbecoming flush that dyed her face right up to the roots of her strong grizzled hair. This was one of the things that could not happen-but it had happened! He was not annoyed, he was merely bewildered. Hercule Poirot held out the offending document. Now that crumpets were baked square as well as round, he had nothing about which to complain.Īnd yet, this morning, Miss Lemon had made three mistakes in typing a perfectly simple letter, and moreover, had not even noticed those mistakes. With George, his perfect manservant, and Miss Lemon, his perfect secretary, order and method ruled supreme in his life. Order and method had been Hercule Poirot’s watchwords from many years ago. She ran Hercule Poirot’s life for him, so that it, too, functioned like a machine. She knew everything, she coped with everything.

For all practical purposes, that is to say, she was not a woman at all.

She was never ill, never tired, never upset, never inaccurate. For Miss Lemon, that hideous and efficient woman, never made mistakes. “There are three mistakes in this letter.”

Hickory dickory dock agatha