Poirot shook his head in a slightly dissatisfied manner. For a moment or two he remained lost in thought, then he went to the desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a little pile of invitation cards.
His face brightened.
“A la bonne heure! Exactly my affair! He will certainly be there.”
II
A duchess greeted M. Hercule Poirot in fulsome tones.
“So you could manage to come after all, M. Poirot! Why, that’s splendid.”
“The pleasure is mine, madame,” murmured Poirot, bowing.
He escaped from several important and splendid beings—a famous diplomat, an equally famous actress and a well-known sporting peer—and found at last the person he had come to seek, that invariably “also present” guest, Mr. Satterthwaite.
Mr. Satterthwaite twittered amiably.
“The dear duchess—I always enjoy her parties . . . Such a personality, if you know what I mean. I saw a lot of her in Corsica some years ago. . . .”
Mr. Satterthwaite’s conversation was apt to be unduly burdened by mentions of his titled acquaintances. It is possible that he may sometimes have found pleasure in the company of Messrs. Jones, Brown or Robinson, but, if so, he did not mention the fact. And yet, to describe Mr. Satterthwaite as a mere snob and leave it at that would have been to do him an injustice. He was a keen observer of human nature, and if it is true that the looker-on knows most of the game, Mr. Satterthwaite knew a good deal.
“You know, my dear fellow, it is really ages since I saw you. I always feel myself privileged to have seen you work at close quarters in the Crow’s Nest business. I feel since then that I am in the know, so to speak. I saw Lady Mary only last week, by the way. A charming creature—potpourri and lavender!”
After passing lightly on one or two scandals of the moment—the indiscretions of an earl’s daughter, and the lamentable conduct of a viscount—Poirot succeeded in introducing the name of Gervase Chevenix-Gore.
Mr. Satterthwaite responded immediately.
“Ah, now, there is a character, if you like! The Last of the Baronets—that’s his nickname.”
“Pardon, I do not quite comprehend.”
Mr. Satterthwaite unbent indulgently to the lower comprehension of a foreigner.
“It’s a joke, you know—a joke. Naturally, he’s not really the last baronet in England—but he does represent the end of an era. The Bold Bad Baronet—the mad harum-scarum baronet so popular in the novels of the last century—the kind of fellow who laid impossible wagers and won ’em.”
He went on to expound what he meant in more detail. In younger years, Gervase Chevenix-Gore had sailed round the world in a windjammer. He had been on an expedition to the Pole. He had challenged a racing peer to a duel. For a wager he had ridden his favourite mare up the staircase of a ducal house. He had once leapt from a box to the stage and carried off a well-known actress in the middle of her rôle.
The anecdotes of him were innumerable.
“It’s an old family,” went on Mr. Satterthwaite. “Sir Guy de Chevenix went on the first crusade. Now, alas, the line looks like it’s coming to an end. Old Gervase is the last Chevenix-Gore.”
“The estate, it is impoverished?”
“Not a bit of it. Gervase is fabulously wealthy. Owns valuable house property—coalfields—and in addition he staked out a claim to some mine in Peru or somewhere in South America, when he was a young man, which has yielded him a fortune. An amazing man. Always lucky in everything he’s undertaken.”
“He is now an elderly man, of course?”
“Yes, poor old Gervase.” Mr. Satterthwaite sighed, shook his head. “Most people would describe him to you as mad as a hatter. It’s true, in a way. He is mad—not in the sense of being certifiable or having delusions—but mad in the sense of being abnormal. He’s always been a man of great originality of character.”
“And originality becomes eccentricity as the years go by?” suggested Poirot.
“Very true. That’s exactly what’s happened to poor old Gervase.”
“He has perhaps, a swollen idea of his own importance?”
“Absolutely. I should imagine that, in Gervase’s mind, the world has always been divided into two parts—there are the Chevenix-Gores, and the other people!”
“An exaggerated sense of family!”
“Yes. The Chevenix-Gores are all arrogant as the devil—a law unto themselves. Gervase, being the last of them, has got it badly. He is—well, really, you know, to hear him talk, you might imagine him to be—er, the Almighty!”
Poirot nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully.
“Yes, I imagined that. I have had, you see, a letter from him. It was an unusual letter. It did not demand. It summoned!”
“A royal command,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, tittering a little.
“Precisely. It did not seem to occur to this Sir Gervase that I, Hercule Poirot, am a man of importance, a man of infinite affairs! That it was extremely unlikely that I should be able to fling everything aside and come hastening like an obedient dog—like a mere nobody, gratified to receive a commission!”
Mr. Satterthwaite bit his lip in an effort to suppress a smile. It may have occurred to him that where egoism was concerned, there was not much to choose between Hercule Poirot and Gervase Chevenix-Gore.
He murmured:
“Of course, if the cause of the summons was urgent—?”
“It was not!” Poirot’s hands rose in the air in an emphatic gesture. “I was to hold myself at his disposition, that was all, in case he should require me! Enfin, je vous demande!”
Again the hands rose eloquently, expressing better than words could do M. Hercule Poirot’s sense of utter outrage.
“I take it,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, “that you refused?”
“I have not yet had the opportunity,” said Poirot slowly.
“But you will refuse?”
A new expression passed over the little man’s face. His brow furrowed itself perplexedly.
He said:
“How can I express myself? To refuse—yes, that was my first instinct. But I do not know . . . One has, sometimes, a feeling. Faintly, I seem to smell the fish. . . .”
Mr. Satterthwaite received this last statement without any sign of amusement.
“Oh?” he said. “That is interesting. . . .”
“It seems to me,” went on Hercule Poirot, “that a man such as you have described might be very vulnerable—”
“Vulnerable?” queried Mr. Satterthwaite. For the moment he was surprised. The word was not one that he would naturally have associated with Gervase Chevenix-Gore. But he was a man of perception, quick in observation. He said slowly:
“I think I see what you mean.”
“Such a one is encased, is he not, in an armour—such an armour! The armour of the crusaders was nothing to it—an armour of arrogance, of pride, of complete self-esteem. This armour, it is in some ways a protection, the arrows, the everyday arrows of life glance off it. But there is this danger; Sometimes a man in armour might not even know he was being attacked. He will be slow to see, slow to hear—slower still to feel.”
He paused, then asked with a change of manner:
“Of what does the family of this Sir Gervase consist?”
“There’s Vanda—his wife. She was an Arbuthnot—very handsome girl. She’s still quite a handsome woman. Frightfully vague, though. Devoted to Gervase. She’s got a leaning towards the occult, I believe. Wears amulets and scarabs and gives out that she’s the reincarnation of an Egyptian Queen . . . Then there’s Ruth—she’s their adopted daughter. They’ve no children of their own. Very attractive girl in the modern style. That’s all the family. Except, of course, for Hugo Trent. He’s Gervase’s nephew. Pamela Chevenix-Gore married Reggie Trent and Hugo was their only child. He’s an orphan. He can’t inherit the title, of course, but I imagine he’ll come in for most of Gervase’s money in the end. Good-looking lad, he’s in the Blues.”
br /> Poirot nodded his head thoughtfully. Then he asked:
“It is a grief to Sir Gervase, yes, that he has no son to inherit his name?”
“I should imagine that it cuts pretty deep.”
“The family name, it is a passion with him?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Satterthwaite was silent a moment or two. He was very intrigued. Finally he ventured:
“You see a definite reason for going down to Hamborough Close?”
Slowly, Poirot shook his head.
“No,” he said. “As far as I can see, there is no reason at all. But, all the same, I fancy I shall go.”
III
Hercule Poirot sat in the corner of a first-class carriage speeding through the English countryside.
Meditatively he took from his pocket a neatly folded telegram, which he opened and reread:
Take four-thirty from St. Pancras instruct guard have express stopped at Whimperley.
Chevenix-Gore.
He folded up the telegram again and put it back in his pocket.
The guard on the train had been obsequious. The gentleman was going to Hamborough Close? Oh, yes, Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore’s guests always had the express stopped at Whimperley. “A special kind of prerogative, I think it is, sir.”
Since then the guard had paid two visits to the carriage—the first in order to assure the traveller that everything would be done to keep the carriage for himself, the second to announce that the express was running ten minutes late.
The train was due to arrive at 7:50, but it was exactly two minutes past eight when Hercule Poirot descended on to the platform of the little country station and pressed the expected half crown into the attentive guard’s hand.
There was a whistle from the engine, and the Northern Express began to move once more. A tall chauffeur in dark green uniform stepped up to Poirot.
“Mr. Poirot? For Hamborough Close?”
He picked up the detective’s neat valise and led the way out of the station. A big Rolls was waiting. The chauffeur held the door open for Poirot to get in, arranged a sumptuous fur rug over his knees, and they drove off.
After some ten minutes of cross-country driving, round sharp corners and down country lanes, the car turned in at a wide gateway flanked with huge stone griffons.
They drove through a park and up to the house. The door of it was opened as they drew up, and a butler of imposing proportions showed himself upon the front step.
“Mr. Poirot? This way, sir.”
He led the way along the hall and threw open a door halfway along it on the right.
“Mr. Hercule Poirot,” he announced.
The room contained a number of people in evening dress, and as Poirot walked in his quick eyes perceived at once that his appearance was not expected. The eyes of all present rested on him in unfeigned surprise.
Then a tall woman, whose dark hair was threaded with grey, made an uncertain advance towards him.
Poirot bowed over her hand.
“My apologies, madame,” he said. “I fear that my train was late.”
“Not at all,” said Lady Chevenix-Gore vaguely. Her eyes still stared at him in a puzzled fashion. “Not at all, Mr.—er—I didn’t quite hear—”
“Hercule Poirot.”
He said the name clearly and distinctly.
Somewhere behind him he heard a sudden sharp intake of breath.
At the same time he realized that clearly his host could not be in the room. He murmured gently:
“You knew I was coming, madame?”
“Oh—oh, yes . . .” Her manner was not convincing. “I think—I mean I suppose so, but I am so terribly impractical, M. Poirot. I forget everything.” Her tone held a melancholy pleasure in the fact. “I am told things. I appear to take them in—but they just pass through my brain and are gone! Vanished! As though they had never been.”
Then, with a slight air of performing a duty long overdue, she glanced round her vaguely and murmured:
“I expect you know everybody.”
Though this was patently not the case, the phrase was clearly a well-worn formula by means of which Lady Chevenix-Gore spared herself the trouble of introduction and the strain of remembering people’s right names.
Making a supreme effort to meet the difficulties of this particular case, she added:
“My daughter—Ruth.”
The girl who stood before him was also tall and dark, but she was of a very different type. Instead of the flattish, indeterminate features of Lady Chevenix-Gore, she had a well-chiselled nose, slightly aquiline, and a clear, sharp line of jaw. Her black hair swept back from her face into a mass of little tight curls. Her colouring was of carnation clearness and brilliance, and owed little to makeup. She was, so Hercule Poirot thought, one of the loveliest girls he had seen.
He recognized, too, that she had brains as well as beauty, and guessed at certain qualities of pride and temper. Her voice, when she spoke, came with a slight drawl that struck him as deliberately put on.
“How exciting,” she said, “to entertain M. Hercule Poirot! The old man arranged a little surprise for us, I suppose.”
“So you did not know I was coming, mademoiselle?” he said quickly.
“I hadn’t an idea of it. As it is, I must postpone getting my autograph book until after dinner.”
The notes of a gong sounded from the hall, then the butler opened the door and announced:
“Dinner is served.”
And then, almost before the last word, “served,” had been uttered, something very curious happened. The pontificial domestic figure became, just for one moment, a highly astonished human being. . . .
The metamorphosis was so quick and the mask of the well-trained servant was back again so soon, that anyone who had not happened to be looking would not have noticed the change. Poirot, however, had happened to be looking. He wondered.
The butler hesitated in the doorway. Though his face was again correctly expressionless, an air of tension hung about his figure.
Lady Chevenix-Gore said uncertainly:
“Oh, dear—this is most extraordinary. Really, I—one hardly knows what to do.”
Ruth said to Poirot:
“This singular consternation, M. Poirot, is occasioned by the fact that my father, for the first time for at least twenty years, is late for dinner.”
“It is most extraordinary—” wailed Lady Chevenix-Gore. “Gervase never—”
An elderly man of upright soldierly carriage came to her side. He laughed genially.
“Good old Gervase! Late at last! Upon my word, we’ll rag him over this. Elusive collar stud, d’you think? Or is Gervase immune from our common weaknesses?”
Lady Chevenix-Gore said in a low, puzzled voice:
“But Gervase is never late.”
It was almost ludicrous, the consternation caused by this simple contretemps. And yet, to Hercule Poirot, it was not ludicrous . . . Behind the consternation he felt uneasiness—perhaps even apprehension. And he, too, found it strange that Gervase Chevenix-Gore should not appear to greet the guest he had summoned in such a mysterious manner.
In the meantime, it was clear that nobody knew quite what to do. An unprecedented situation had arisen with which nobody knew how to deal.
Lady Chevenix-Gore at last took the initiative, if initiative it can be called. Certainly her manner was vague in the extreme.
“Snell,” she said, “is your master—?”
She did not finish the sentence, merely looked at the butler expectantly.
Snell, who was clearly used to his mistress’s methods of seeking information, replied promptly to the unspecified question:
“Sir Gervase came downstairs at five minutes to eight, m’lady, and went straight to the study.”
“Oh, I see—” Her mouth remained open, her eyes seemed far away. “You don’t think—I mean—he heard the gong?”
“I think he must have done so, m’lady, the gong being immediate
ly outside the study door. I did not, of course, know that Sir Gervase was still in the study, otherwise I should have announced to him that dinner was ready. Shall I do so now, m’lady?”
Lady Chevenix-Gore seized on the suggestion with manifest relief.
“Oh, thank you, Snell. Yes, please do. Yes, certainly.”
She said, as the butler left the room:
“Snell is such a treasure. I rely on him absolutely. I really don’t know what I should do without Snell.”
Somebody murmured a sympathetic assent, but nobody spoke. Hercule Poirot, watching that room full of people with suddenly sharpened attention, had an idea that one and all were in a state of tension. His eyes ran quickly over them, tabulating them roughly. Two elderly men, the soldierly one who had spoken just now, and a thin, spare, grey-haired man with closely pinched legal lips. Two youngish men—very different in type from each other. One with a moustache and an air of modest arrogance, he guessed to be possibly Sir Gervase’s nephew, the one in the Blues. The other, with sleek brushed-back hair and a rather obvious style of good looks, he put down as of a definitely inferior social class. There was a small middle-aged woman with pince-nez and intelligent eyes, and there was a girl with flaming red hair.
Snell appeared at the door. His manner was perfect, but once again the veneer of the impersonal butler showed signs of the perturbed human being beneath the surface.
“Excuse me, m’lady, the study door is locked.”
“Locked?”
It was a man’s voice—young, alert, with a ring of excitement in it. It was the good-looking young man with the slicked-back hair who had spoken. He went on, hurrying forward:
“Shall I go and see—?”
But very quietly Hercule Poirot took command. He did it so naturally that no one thought it odd that this stranger, who had just arrived, should suddenly assume charge of the situation.
“Come,” he said. “Let us go to the study.”
He continued, speaking to Snell:
“Lead the way, if you please.”
Snell obeyed. Poirot followed close behind him, and, like a flock of sheep, everyone else followed.
Snell led the way through the big hall, past the great branching curve of the staircase, past an enormous grandfather clock and a recess in which stood a gong, along a narrow passage which ended in a door.