Hercule Poirot's Early Cases Part 23

It was at this minute that Colonel Clapperton, who had not been at dinner, came in and sat down next to General Forbes. He looked like a man bewildered by sorrow - not at all like a man conscious of great relief. Either he was a very good actor or else he had been genuinely fond of his disagreeable wife.

'M. Hercule Poirot,' said the Captain and stepped down. Poirot took his place. He looked comically serf-important as he beamed on his audience.

'Messieurs, mesdames,' he began. 'It is most kind of you to be so indulgent as to listen to me. M. le Cataine has told you that I have had a certain experience in these matters. I have, it is true, a littie idea of my own about how to get to the bottom of this particular case.' He made a sign and a steward pushed forward and pa.s.sed on to him a bulky, shapeless object wrapped in a sheet.

'What I am about to do may surprise you a little,' Poirot warned them. 'It may occur to you that I am eccentric, perhaps mad.

Nevertheless I a.s.sure you that behind my madness there is - as you English say - a method.'

His eyes met those of Miss Henderson for just a minute. He began unwrapping the bulky object.

'I have here, mesdeurs and mesdames, an important witness to the truth of who killed Mrs Clapperton.' With a deft hand he whisked away the last enveloping cloth, and the object it concealed was revealed - an almost life-sized wooden doll, dressed in a velvet suit and lace collar.

'Now, Arthur,' said Poirot and his voice changed subtly - it was no longer foreign - it had instead a confident English, a slightly c.o.c.kney inflection. 'Can you tell me - I repeat - can you tell me - anything at all about the death of Mrs Clapperton?'

The doll's neck oscillated a little, its wooden lower jaw dropped and wavered and a shrill high-pitched woman's voice spoke: 'What is it, John? The door's locked. I don't want to be disturbed by the stewards...' There was a cry - an overturned chair - a man stood swaying, his hand to his throat - trying to speak - trying... Then suddenly, his figure seemed to crumple up. He pitched headlong.

It was Colonel Clapperton.

Poirot and the ship's doctor rose from their knees by the prostrate figure.

'All over, I'm afraid. Heart,' said the doctor briefly.

Poirot nodded. 'The shock of having his trick seen through,' he said.

He turned to General Forbes. 'It was you, General, who gave me a valuable hint with your mention of the music hall stage. I puzzle - I think - and then it comes to me. Supposing that before the war Clapperton was a ventriloquist. In that case, it would be perfectly possible for three people to hear Mrs Clapperton speak from inside her cabin when she was already dead...' Ellie Henderson was beside him. Her eyes were dark and full of pain. 'Did you know his heart was weak?' she asked.

'I guessed it... Mrs Clapperton talked of her own heart being affected, but she struck me as the type of woman who likes to be thought ill. Then I picked up a torn prescription with a very strong dose of digitalin in it. Digitalin is a heart medicine but it couldn't be Mrs Clapperton's because digitalin dilates the pupils of the eyes. I had never noticed such a phenomenon with her but when I looked at his eyes I saw the signs at once.' Ellie murmured: 'So you thought - it might end - this way?' 'The best way, don't you think, mademoiselle?' he said gently.

He saw the tears rise in her eys. She said: 'You've known. You've known all along... That I cared... But he didn't do it for me... It was those girls - youth - it made him feel his slavery. He wanted to be free before it was too late... Yes, I'm sure that's how it was .. When did you guess - that it was he?' 'His self-control was too perfect,' said Poirot simply. 'No matter how galling his wife's conduct, it never seemed to touch him.

That meant either that he was so used to it that it no longer stung him, or else - eh b/eh - I decided on the latter alternative... And I was right...

'And then there was his insistence on his conjuring ability - the evening before the crime he pretended to give himself away. But a man like Clapperton doesn't give himself away. There must be a reason. So long as people thought he had been a conjuror they weren't likely to think of his having been a ventriloquist.'

'And the voice we heard - Mrs Clapperton's voice?'

'One of the stewardesses had a voice not unlike hers. I induced her to hide behind the stage and taught her the words to say.' 'It was a trick - a cruel trick,' cried out Ellie.

'I do not approve of murder,' said-Hercule Poirot.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?.

Hercule Poirot arranged his letters in a neat pile in front of him.

He picked up the topmost letter, studied the address for a moment, then neatly slit the back of the envelope with a little paperknife that he kept on the breakfast table for that express purpose and extracted the contents. Inside was yet another envelope, carefully sealed with purple wax and marked 'Private and Confidential'.

Hercule Poirot's eyebrows rose a little on his egg-shaped head.

He murmured, 'Patience! Nous allons arriver!' and once more brought the little paper-knife into play. This time the envelope yielded a letter - written in a rather shaky and spiky handwriting.

Several words were heavily underlined.

Hercule Poirot unfolded it and read. The letter was headed once again 'Private and Confidential'. On the right-hand side was the address - Rosebank, Charman's Green, Bucks - and the date-March twenty-first.

Dear M. Poirot, I have been recommended to you by an old and valued friend of mine who knows the worry and distress I have been in lately. Not that this friend knows the actual circ.u.mstances those I have kept entirely to myself- the matter being strictly private. My friend a.s.sures me that you are discretion itself and that there will be no fear of my being involved in a police matter which, if my suspicions should prove correct, I should very much dislike. But it is of course possible that I am entirely mistaken. I do not feel myself clear-headed enough nowadays suffering as I do from insomnia and the result of a severe illness last winter - to investigate things for myself. I have neither the means nor the ability. On the other hand, I must reiterate once more that this is a very delicate family matter and that for many reasons I may want the whole thing hushed up. If I am once a.s.sured of the facts, I can deal with the matter myself and should prefer to do so. I hope that I have made myself clear on this point. If you will undertake this investigation, perhaps you will let me know to the above address?

Yours very truly, AMELIA BARROWBY.

Poirot read the letter through twice. Again his eyebrows rose slightly. Then he placed it on one side and proceeded to the next envelope in the pile.

At ten o'clock precisely he entered the room where Miss Lemon, his confidential secretary, sat awaiting her instructions for the day.

Miss Lemon was forty-eight and of unprepossessing appearance.

Her general effect was that of a lot of bones flung together at random. She had a pa.s.sion for order almost equalling that of Poirot himself; and though capable of thinking, she never thought unless told to do so.

Poirot handed her the morning correspondence. 'Have the goodness, mademoiselle, to write refusals couched in correct terms to all of these.'

Miss Lemon ran an eye over the various letters, scribbling in turn a hieroglyphic on each of them. These marks were legible to her alone and were in a code of her own: 'Soft soap'; 'slap in the face'; 'purr purr'; 'curt'; and so on. Having done this, she nodded and looked up for further instructions.

Poirot handed her Amelia Barrowby's letter. She extracted it from its double envelope, read it through and looked up inquiringly.

'Yes, M. Poirot?' Her pencil hovered - ready - over her short-hand pad.

'What is your opinion of that letter, Miss Lemon?'

With a slight frown Miss Lemon put down the pencil and read through the letter again.

The contents of a letter meant nothing to Miss Lemon except from the point of view of composing an adequate reply. Very occasionally her employer appealed to her human, as opposed to her official, capacities. It slightly annoyed Miss Lemon when he did so - she was very nearly the perfect machine, completely and gloriously uninterested in all human affairs. Her real pa.s.sion in life was the perfection of a filing system beside which all other filing systems should sink into oblivion. She dreamed of such a system at night. Nevertheless, Miss Lemon was perfectly capable of intelligence on purely human matters, as Hercule Poirot well knew.

'Well?' he demanded.

'Old lady,' said Miss Lemon. 'Got the wind up pretty badly.' 'Ah! The wind rises in her, you think?' Miss Lemon, who considered that Poirot had been long enough in Great Britain to understand its slang terms, did not reply. She took a brief look at the double envelope.

'Very hush-hush,' she said. 'And tells you nothing at all.' 'Yes,' said Hercule Poirot. 'I observed that.' Miss Lemon's hand hung once more hopefully over the shorthand pad. This time Hercule Poirot responded.

'Tell her I will do myself the honour to call upon her at any time she suggests, unless she prefers to consult me here. Do not type the letter - write it by hand.' 'Yes, M. Poirot.' Poirot produced more correspondence. 'These are bills.' Miss Lemon's efficient hands sorted them quickly. 'I'll pay all but these two.' 'Why those two? There is no error in them.' 'They are firms you've only just begun to deal with. It looks bad to pay too promptly when you've just opened an account looks as though you were working up to get some credit later on.' 'Ahl' murmured Poirot. 'I bow to your superior knowledge of the British tradesman.' 'There' nothing much I don't know about them,' said Mis: Lemon grimly.

The letter to Miss Amelia Barrowby was duly written and sen but no reply was forthcoming. Perhaps, thought Hercule Poin the old lady had unravelled her mystery herself. Yet he felt a sha of surprise that in that case she should not have written a courteouo word to say that his services were no longer required.

It was five days later when Miss Lemon, after receiving her morning's instructions, said, 'That Miss Barrowby we wrote to no wonder there's been no answer. She's dead.' Hercule Poirot said very softly, 'Ah - dead.' It sounded not so much like a question as an answer.

Opening her handbag, Miss Lemon produced a newspaper cutting. 'I saw it in the tube and tore it out.' Just registering in his mind approval of the fact that, though Miss Lemon used the word 'tore', she had neatly cut the entry out with scissors, Poirot read the announcement taken from the Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Morning Post: 'On March 26th suddenly- at Rosebank, Charman's Green, Amelia Jane Barrowby, in her seventy-third year. No flowers, by request.' Poirot read it over. He murmured under his breath, 'Suddenly'.

Then he said briskly, 'If you will be so obliging as to take a letter, Miss Lemon?' The pencil hovered. Miss Lemon, her mind dwelling on the intricacies of the filing system, took down in rapid and correct shorthand: Dear Miss Barrowby, I have received no reply from you, but as I shall be in the neighbourhood of Charman's Green on Friday, I will call upon you on that day and discuss more fully the matter mentioned to me in your letter.

Yours, etc.

'Type this letter, please; and if it is posted at once, it should get to Charman's Green tonight.' On the following morning a letter in a black-edged envelope arrived by the second post: Dear Sir, In reply to your letter my aunt, Miss Barrowby, pa.s.sed away on the twenty-sixth, so the matter you speak of is no longer of importance.

Yours truly, MARY DELAFONTAINR Poirot smiled to himself. 'No longer of importance... Ah that is what we shall see. En avant - to Charman's Green.' Rosebank was a house that seemed likely to live up to its name, which is more than can be said for most houses of its cla.s.s and character.

Hercule Poirot paused as he walked up the path to the front door and looked approvingly at the neatly planned beds on either side of him. Rose trees that promised a good harvest later in the year, and at present daffodils, early tulips, blue hyacinths - the last bed was partly edged with sh.e.l.ls.

Poirot murmured to himself, 'How does it go, the English rhyme the children sing?

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?

With c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.

'Not a row, perhaps,' he considered, 'but here is at least one pretty maid to make the little rhyme come right.' The front door had opened and a neat little maid in cap and ap.r.o.n was looking somewhat dubiously at the spectacle of a heavily moustached foreign gentleman talking aloud to himself in the front garden. She was, as Poirot had noted, a very pretty little maid, with round blue eyes and rosy cheeks.

Poirot raised his hat with courtesy and addressed her: 'Pardon, but does a Miss Amelia Barrowby live here?' The little maid gasped and her eyes grew rounder. 'Oh, sir, didn't you know? She's dead. Ever so sudden it was. Tuesday night.' She hesitated, divided between two strong instincts: the first, distrust of a foreigner; the second, the pleasurable enjoyment of her cla.s.s in dwelling on the subject of illness and death.

'You amaze me,' said Hercule Poirot, not very truthfully. 'I had an appointment with the lady for today. However, I can perhaps see the other lady who lives here.' The little maid seemed slightly doubtful. 'The mistress? Well, you could see her, perhaps, but I don't know whether she'll b eeing anyone or not.'

'She will see me,' said Poirot, and handed her a card.

The authority of his tone had its effect. The rosy-cheeked maid fell back and ushered Poirot into a sitting-room on the right of the hall. Then, card in hand, she departed to summon her mistress.

Hercule Poirot looked round him. The room was a perfectly conventional, drawing-room - oatmeal-coloured paper with a frieze round the top, indeterminate cretonnes, rose-coloured cushions and curtains, a good many china knick-knacks and ornaments. There was nothing in the room that stood out, that announced a definite personality.

Suddenly Poirot, who was very sensitive, felt eyes watching him. He wheeled round. A girl was standing in the entrance of the french window - a small, sallow girl, with very black hair and suspicious eyes.

She came in, and as Poirot made a little bow she burst out abruptly, 'Why have you come?'

Poirot did not reply. He merely raised his eyebrows.

'You are not a lawyer - no?' Her English was good, but not for a minute would anyone have taken her to be English.

'Why should I be a lawyer, mademoiselle?'

The girl stared at him sul.nly. 'I thought you might be. I thought you had come perha? ;o say that she did not know what she was doing. I have heard of such things - the not due influence; that is what they call it, no? But that is not right. She wanted me to have the money, and I shall have it. If it is needful I shall have a lawyer of my own. The money is mine. She wrote it down so, and so it shall be.' She looked ugly, her chin thrust out, her eyes gleaming.

The door opened and a tail woman entered and said, 'Katrina'.

The girl shrank, flushed, muttered something and went out through the window.

Poirot turned to face the newcomer who had so effectually dealt with the situation by uttering a single word. There had been authority in her voice, and contempt and a shade of well-bred irony. He realized at once that this was the owner of the house, Mary Delafontaine.

'M. Poirot? I wrote to you. You cannot have received my letter.'

'Alas, I have been away from London.' 'Oh, I see; that explains it. I must introduce myself. My name is Delafontaine. This is my husband. Miss Barrowby was my aunt.' Mr Delafontaine had entered so quietly that his arrival had pa.s.sed unnoticed. He was a tall man with grizzled hair and an indeterminate manner. He had a nervous way of fingering his chin. He looked often towards his wife, and it was plain that he expected her to take the lead in any conversation.

'I much regret that I intrude in the midst of your bereavement,' said Hercule Poirot.

'I quite realize that it is not your fault,' said Mrs Delafontaine.

'My aunt died or Tuesday evening. It was quite unexpected.' 'Most unexpected,' said Mr Delafontaine. 'Great blow.' His eyes watched the window where the foreign girl had disappeared.

'I apologize,' said Hercule Poirot. 'And I withdraw.' He moved a step towards the door.

'Half a sec,' said Mr Delafontaine. 'You - er - had an appointment with Aunt Amelia, you say?' 'Parfa(tement.' 'Perhaps you will tell us about it,' said his wife. 'If there i. anything we can do - ' 'It was of a private nature,' said Poirot. 'I am a detective,' he added simply.

Mr Delafontaine knocked over a little china figure he was handling. His wife looked puzzled.

'A detective? And you had an appointment with Auntie? But how extraordinary? She stared at him. 'Can't you tell us a little more, M. Poirot? It - it seems quite fantastic.' Poirot was silent for a moment. He chose his words with care.

'It is difficult for..me, madame, to know what to do.' 'Look here,' said Mr Delafontaine. '8he didn't mention Russians, did she?' 'Russians?' 'Yes, you know - Bolshies, Reds, all that sort of thing.' 'Don't be absurd, Henry,' said his wife.

Mr Delafontaine collapsed. 'Sorry - sorry - I just wondered.' Mary Delafontaine looked frankly at Poirot. Her eyes were very blue - the colour of forget-me-nots. 'If you can tell us anything, M. Poirot, I should be glad if you would do so. I can a.s.sure you that I have a - a reason for asking.'

Mr Delafontaine looked alarmed. 'Be careful, old girl - you know there may be nothing in it.'

Again his wife quelled him with a glance. 'Well, M. Poirot?' Slowly, gravely, Hercule Poirot shook his head. He shook it with visible regret, but he shook it. 'At present, madame,' he said, 'I fear I must say nothing.'

He bowed, picked up his hat and moved to the door. Mary Delafontaine came with him into the hall. On the doorstep he paused and looked at her.

'You are fond of your garden, I think, madame?' 'I? Yes, I spend a lot of time gardening.' 'Je ous fait roes compliments.'

He bowed once more and strode down to the gate. As he pa.s.sed out of it and turned to the right he glanced back and registered two impressions - a sallow face watching him from a first-floor window, and a man of erect and soldierly carriage pacing up and down on the opposite side of the street.

Hercule Poirot nodded to himself. 'Definitivement,' he said.

'There is a mouse in this hole! What move must the cat make now?'

His decision took him to the nearest post office. Here he put through a couple of telephone calls. The result seemed to be satisfactory. He bent his steps to Charman's Green police station, where he inquired for Inspector Sims.

Inspector Sims was a big, burly man with a hearty manner.

'M. Poirot?' he inquired. 'I thought so. I've just this minute had a telephone call through from the chief constable about you. tie aid you'd be dropping in. Come into my office.'

The door shut, the inspector waved Poirot to one chair, settled himself in another, and turned a gaze of acute inquiry upon his visitor.

'You're very quick on to the mark, M. Poirot. Come to see us about this Rosebank case almost before we know it is a case. What put you on to it?'

Poirot drew out the letter he had received and handed it to the inspector. The latter read it with some interest.