[…] men often swallow falsities for truths, dubiosities for certainties, sensibilities for possibilities, and things impossible as possibilities themselves.

So it came about that at three o'clock of that same afternoon, Rhoda Dawes and Anne Meredith sat primly on their chairs in Poirot's neat room and sipped blackberry sirop (which they disliked very much but were too polite to refuse) from old-fashioned glasses.

a coat edged with fur

...in a moment of regrettable cuteness, forgetting that I would not always be a wittle-bitty baby...