“Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence Corps.”

Dr. Sheppard introduces his sister Caroline through her ability to gather information. This sets Caroline up to be the primary vehicle for the intuitive side of the gossip motif.

“But you can figure to yourself, monsieur, that a man may work towards a certain object, may labour and toil to attain a certain kind of leisure and occupation, and then find that, after all, he yearns for the old busy days, and the old occupations that he thought himself so glad to leave?”

Hercule Poirot, a retired detective, has achieved the goal of cultivating marrows and moving at a leisurely pace. However, in his leisure, he is finding that he misses the work he used to do, and the marrows symbolize this longing.

“No, not that alone—though he is unusually good-looking for an Englishman—what your lady novelists would call a Greek God. No, there was something about that young man that I did not understand.”

When Poirot first notices Paton, it is not because of his good looks but rather because he did not understand something about him. This establishes Poirot as a curious man who seeks to understand everyone and everything.