“I did not know it, no.”
Alec Legge gave a short laugh.
“I’m glad there’s something you don’t know. Yes, she’s had enough of married life. Going to link up her life with that tame architect.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Poirot.
“I don’t see why you should be sorry.”
“I am sorry,” said Poirot, clearing off two books and a shirt and sitting down on the corner of the sofa, “because I do not think she will be as happy with him as she would be with you.”
“She hasn’t been particularly happy with me this last six months.”
“Six months is not a lifetime,” said Poirot, “it is a very short space out of what might be a long happy married life.”
“Talking rather like a parson, aren’t you?”
“Possibly. May I say, Mr. Legge, that if your wife has not been happy with you it is probably more your fault than hers.”
“She certainly thinks so. Everything’s my fault, I suppose.”
“Not everything, but some things.”
“Oh, blame everything on me. I might as well drown myself in the damn’ river and have done with it.”
Poirot looked at him thoughtfully.
“I am glad to observe,” he remarked, “that you are now more perturbed with your own troubles than with those of the world.”
“The world can go hang,” said Mr. Legge. He added bitterly, “I seem to have made the most complete fool of myself all along the line.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “I would say that you have been more unfortunate than reprehensible in your conduct.”
Alec Legge stared at him.
“Who hired you to sleuth me?” he demanded. “Was it Sally?”
“Why should you think that?”
“Well, nothing’s happened officially. So I concluded that you must have come down after me on a private job.”
“You are in error,” replied Poirot. “I have not at any time been sleuthing you. When I came down here I had no idea that you existed.”
“Then how do you know whether I’ve been unfortunate or made a fool of myself or what?”
“From the result of observation and reflection,” said Poirot. “Shall I make a little guess and will you tell me if I am right?”
“You can make as many little guesses as you like,” said Alec Legge. “But don’t expect me to play.”
“I think,” said Poirot, “that some years ago you had an interest and sympathy for a certain political party. Like many other young men of a scientific bent. In your profession such sympathies and tendencies are naturally regarded with suspicion. I do not think you were ever seriously compromised, but I do think that pressure was brought upon you to consolidate your position in a way you did not want to consolidate it. You tried to withdraw and you were faced with a threat. You were given a rendezvous with someone. I doubt if I shall ever know that young man’s name. He will be for me always the young man in a turtle shirt.”
Alec Legge gave a sudden explosion of laughter.
“I suppose that shirt was a bit of a joke. I wasn’t seeing things very funny at the time.”
Hercule Poirot continued.
“What with worry over the fate of the world, and the worry over your own predicament, you became, if I may say so, a man almost impossible for any woman to live with happily. You did not confide in your wife. That was unfortunate for you, as I should say that your wife was a woman of loyalty, and that if she had realized how unhappy and desperate you were, she would have been wholeheartedly on your side. Instead of that she merely began to compare you, unfavourably, with a former friend of hers, Michael Weyman.”
He rose.
“I should advise you, Mr. Legge, to complete your packing as soon as possible, to follow your wife to London, to ask her to forgive you and to tell her all that you have been through.”
“So that’s what you advise,” said Alec Legge. “And what the hell business is it of yours?”
“None,” said Hercule Poirot. He withdrew towards the door. “But I am always right.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Alec Legge burst into a wild peal of laughter.
“Do you know,” he said, “I think I’ll take your advice. Divorce is damned expensive. Anyway, if you’ve got hold of the woman you want, and are then not able to keep her, it’s a bit humiliating, don’t you think? I shall go up to her flat in Chelsea, and if I find Michael there I shall take hold of him by that hand-knitted pansy tie he wears and throttle the life out of him. I’d enjoy that. Yes, I’d enjoy it a good deal.”
His face suddenly lit up with a most attractive smile.
“Sorry for my filthy temper,” he said, “and thanks a lot.”
He clapped Poirot on the shoulder. With the force of the blow Poirot staggered and all but fell.
Mr. Legge’s friendship was certainly more painful than his animosity.
“And now,” said Poirot, leaving Mill Cottage on painful feet and looking up at the darkening sky, “where do I go?”
Nineteen
The chief constable and Inspector Bland looked up with keen curiosity as Hercule Poirot was ushered in. The chief constable was not in the best of tempers. Only Bland’s quiet persistence had caused him to cancel his dinner appointment for that evening.
“I know, Bland, I know,” he said fretfully. “Maybe he was a little Belgian wizard in his day—but surely, man, his day’s over. He’s what age?”
Bland slid tactfully over the answer to this question which, in any case, he did not know. Poirot himself was always reticent on the subject of his age.
“The point is, sir, he was there—on the spot. And we’re not getting anywhere any other way. Up against a blank wall, that’s where we are.”
The chief constable blew his nose irritably.
“I know. I know. Makes me begin to believe in Mrs. Masterton’s homicidal pervert. I’d even use bloodhounds, if there were anywhere to use them.”
“Bloodhounds can’t follow a scent over water.”
“Yes. I know what you’ve always thought, Bland. And I’m inclined to agree with you. But there’s absolutely no motive, you know. Not an iota of motive.”
“The motive may be out in the islands.”
“Meaning that Hattie Stubbs knew something about de Sousa out there? I suppose that’s reasonably possible, given her mentality. She was simple, everyone agrees on that. She might blurt out what she knew to anyone at any time. Is that the way you see it?”
“Something like that.”
“If so, he waited a long time before crossing the sea and doing something about it.”
“Well, sir, it’s possible he didn’t know what exactly had become of her. His own story was that he’d seen a piece in some society periodical about Nasse House, and its beautiful châtelaine. (Which I have always thought myself,” added Bland parenthetically, “to be a silver thing with chains, and bits and pieces hung on it that people’s grandmothers used to clip on their waistbands—and a good idea, too. Wouldn’t be all these silly women forever leaving their handbags around.) Seems, though, that in women’s jargon châtelaine means mistress of a house. As I say, that’s history and maybe it’s true enough, and he didn’t know where she was or who she’d married until then.”
“But once he did know, he came across posthaste in a yacht in order to murder her? It’s far-fetched, Bland, very far-fetched.”
“But it could be, sir.”
“And what on earth could the woman know?”
“Remember what she said to her husband. ‘He kills people.’”
“Murder remembered? From the time she was fifteen? And presumably only her word for it? Surely he’d be able to laugh that off?”
“We don’t know the facts,” said Bland stubbornly. “You know yourself, sir, how once one knows who did a thing, one can look for evidence and find it.”
“H’m. We’ve made inquiries about de Sousa—discreetly—through the usual channels—an
d got nowhere.”
“That’s just why, sir, this funny old Belgian boy might have stumbled on something. He was in the house—that’s the important thing. Lady Stubbs talked to him. Some of the random things she said may have come together in his mind and made sense. However that may be, he’s been down in Nassecombe most of today.”
“And he rang you up to ask what kind of a yacht Etienne de Sousa had?”
“When he rang up the first time, yes. The second time was to ask me to arrange this meeting.”
“Well,” the chief constable looked at his watch, “if he doesn’t come within five minutes….”
But it was at that very moment that Hercule Poirot was shown in.
His appearance was not as immaculate as usual. His moustache was limp, affected by the damp Devon air, his patent-leather shoes were heavily coated with mud, he limped, and his hair was ruffled.
“Well, so here you are, M. Poirot.” The chief constable shook hands. “We’re all keyed up, on our toes, waiting to hear what you have to tell us.”
The words were faintly ironic, but Hercule Poirot, however damp physically, was in no mood to be damped mentally.
“I cannot imagine,” he said, “how it was I did not see the truth before.”
The chief constable received this rather coldly.
“Are we to understand that you do see the truth now?”
“Yes, there are details—but the outline is clear.”
“We want more than an outline,” said the chief constable dryly. “We want evidence. Have you got evidence, M. Poirot?”
“I can tell you where to find the evidence.”
Inspector Bland spoke. “Such as?”
Poirot turned to him and asked a question.
“Etienne de Sousa has, I suppose, left the country?”
“Two weeks ago.” Bland added bitterly, “It won’t be easy to get him back.”
“He might be persuaded.”
“Persuaded? There’s not sufficient evidence to warrant an extradition order, then?”
“It is not a question of an extradition order. If the facts are put to him—”
“But what facts, M. Poirot?” The chief constable spoke with some irritation. “What are these facts you talk about so glibly?”
“The fact that Etienne de Sousa came here in a lavishly appointed luxury yacht showing that his family is rich, the fact that old Merdell was Marlene Tucker’s grandfather (which I did not know until today), the fact that Lady Stubbs was fond of wearing the coolie type of hat, the fact that Mrs. Oliver, in spite of an unbridled and unreliable imagination, is, unrealized by herself, a very shrewd judge of character, the fact that Marlene Tucker had lipsticks and bottles of perfume hidden at the back of her bureau drawer, the fact that Miss Brewis maintains that it was Lady Stubbs who asked her to take a refreshment tray down to Marlene at the boathouse.”
“Facts?” The chief constable stared. “You call those facts? But there’s nothing new there.”
“You prefer evidence—definite evidence—such as—Lady Stubbs’ body?”
Now it was Bland who stared.
“You have found Lady Stubbs’ body?”
“Not actually found it—but I know where it is hidden. You shall go to the spot, and when you have found it, then—then you will have evidence—all the evidence you need. For only one person could have hidden it there.”
“And who’s that?”
Hercule Poirot smiled—the contented smile of a cat who has lapped up a saucer of cream.
“The person it so often is,” he said softly; “the husband. Sir George Stubbs killed his wife.”
“But that’s impossible, M. Poirot. We know it’s impossible.”
“Oh, no,” said Poirot, “it is not impossible at all! Listen, and I will tell you.”
Twenty
Hercule Poirot paused a moment at the big wrought iron gates. He looked ahead of him along the curving drive. The last of the golden-brown leaves fluttered down from the trees. The cyclamen were over.
Poirot sighed. He turned aside and rapped gently on the door of the little white pilastered lodge.
After a few moments’ delay he heard footsteps inside, those slow hesitant footsteps. The door was opened by Mrs. Folliat. He was not startled this time to see how old and frail she looked.
She said, “M. Poirot? You again?”
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
He followed her in.
She offered him tea which he refused. Then she asked in a quiet voice:
“Why have you come?”
“I think you can guess, Madame.”
Her answer was oblique.
“I am very tired,” she said.
“I know.” He went on, “There have now been three deaths, Hattie Stubbs, Marlene Tucker, old Merdell.”
She said sharply:
“Merdell? That was an accident. He fell from the quay. He was very old, half-blind, and he’d been drinking in the pub.”
“It was not an accident. Merdell knew too much.”
“What did he know?”
“He recognized a face, or a way of walking, or a voice—something like that. I talked to him the day I first came down here. He told me then all about the Folliat family—about your father-in-law and your husband, and your sons who were killed in the war. Only—they were not both killed, were they? Your son Henry went down with his ship, but your second son, James, was not killed. He deserted. He was reported at first, perhaps, Missing believed killed, and later you told everyone that he was killed. It was nobody’s business to disbelieve that statement. Why should they?”
Poirot paused and then went on:
“Do not imagine I have no sympathy for you, Madame. Life has been hard for you, I know. You can have had no real illusions about your younger son, but he was your son, and you loved him. You did all you could to give him a new life. You had the charge of a young girl, a subnormal but very rich girl. Oh yes, she was rich. You gave out that her parents had lost all their money, that she was poor, and that you had advised her to marry a rich man many years older than herself. Why should anybody disbelieve your story? Again, it was nobody’s business. Her parents and near relatives had been killed. A firm of French lawyers in Paris acted as instructed by lawyers in San Miguel. On her marriage, she assumed control of her own fortune. She was, as you have told me, docile, affectionate, suggestible. Everything her husband asked her to sign, she signed. Securities were probably changed and re-sold many times, but in the end the desired financial result was reached. Sir George Stubbs, the new personality assumed by your son, became a rich man and his wife became a pauper. It is no legal offence to call yourself ‘sir’ unless it is done to obtain money under false pretences. A title creates confidence—it suggests, if not birth, then certainly riches. So the rich Sir George Stubbs, older and changed in appearance and having grown a beard, bought Nasse House and came to live where he belonged, though he had not been there since he was a boy. There was nobody left after the devastation of war who was likely to have recognized him. But old Merdell did. He kept the knowledge to himself, but when he said to me slyly that there would always be Folliats at Nasse House, that was his own private joke.
“So all had turned out well, or so you thought. Your plan, I fully believe, stopped there. Your son had wealth, his ancestral home, and though his wife was subnormal she was a beautiful and docile girl, and you hoped he would be kind to her and that she would be happy.”
Mrs. Folliat said in a low voice:
“That’s how I thought it would be—I would look after Hattie and care for her. I never dreamed—”
“You never dreamed—and your son carefully did not tell you, that at the time of the marriage he was already married. Oh, yes—we have searched the records for what we knew must exist. Your son had married a girl in Trieste, a girl of the underground criminal world with whom he concealed himself after his desertion. She had no mind to be parted from him, nor for that matte
r had he any intention of being parted from her. He accepted the marriage with Hattie as a means to wealth, but in his own mind he knew from the beginning what he intended to do.”
“No, no, I do not believe that! I cannot believe it…It was that woman—that wicked creature.”
Poirot went on inexorably:
“He meant murder. Hattie had no relations, few friends. Immediately on their return to England, he brought her here. The servants hardly saw her that first evening, and the woman they saw the next morning was not Hattie, but his Italian wife made up as Hattie and behaving roughly much as Hattie behaved. And there again it might have ended. The false Hattie would have lived out her life as the real Hattie though doubtless her mental powers would have unexpectedly improved owing to what would vaguely be called ‘new treatment.’ The secretary, Miss Brewis, already realized that there was very little wrong with Lady Stubbs’ mental processes.
“But then a totally unforeseen thing happened. A cousin of Hattie’s wrote that he was coming to England on a yachting trip, and although that cousin had not seen her for many years, he would not be likely to be deceived by an impostor.
“It is odd,” said Poirot, breaking off his narrative, “that though the thought did cross my mind that de Sousa might not be de Sousa, it never occurred to me that the truth lay the other way round—that is to say, that Hattie was not Hattie.”
He went on:
“There might have been several different ways of meeting that situation. Lady Stubbs could have avoided a meeting with a plea of illness, but if de Sousa remained long in England she could hardly have continued to avoid meeting him. And there was already another complication. Old Merdell, garrulous in his old age, used to chatter to his granddaughter. She was probably the only person who bothered to listen to him, and even she dismissed most of what he said because she thought him ‘batty.’ Nevertheless, some of the things he said about having seen ‘a woman’s body in the woods,’ and ‘Sir George Stubbs being really Mr. James’ made sufficient impression on her to make her hint about them tentatively to Sir George. In doing so, of course, she signed her own death warrant. Sir George and his wife could take no chances of stories like that getting around. I imagine that he handed her out small sums of hush money, and proceeded to make his plans.