“That would give me great pleasure. It might help you, for instance, if I could lay my hand on a friend of the girl Katrina.”
“I thought you said she hadn’t got any friends?” said Inspector Sims, surprised.
“I was wrong,” said Hercule Poirot. “She has one.”
Before the inspector could ask a further question, Poirot had rung off.
With a serious face he wandered into the room where Miss Lemon sat at her typewriter. She raised her hands from the keys at her employer’s approach and looked at him inquiringly.
“I want you,” said Poirot, “to figure to yourself a little history.”
Miss Lemon dropped her hands into her lap in a resigned manner. She enjoyed typing, paying bills, filing papers and entering up engagements. To be asked to imagine herself in hypothetical situations bored her very much, but she accepted it as a disagreeable part of a duty.
“You are a Russian girl,” began Poirot.
“Yes,” said Miss Lemon, looking intensely British.
“You are alone and friendless in this country. You have reasons for not wishing to return to Russia. You are employed as a kind of drudge, nurse-attendant and companion to an old lady. You are meek and uncomplaining.”
“Yes,” said Miss Lemon obediently, but entirely failing to see herself being meek to any old lady under the sun.
“The old lady takes a fancy to you. She decides to leave her money to you. She tells you so.” Poirot paused.
Miss Lemon said “Yes” again.
“And then the old lady finds out something; perhaps it is a matter of money—she may find that you have not been honest with her. Or it might be more grave still—a medicine that tasted different, some food that disagreed. Anyway, she begins to suspect you of something and she writes to a very famous detective—enfin, to the most famous detective—me! I am to call upon her shortly. And then, as you say, the dripping will be in the fire. The great thing is to act quickly. And so—before the great detective arrives—the old lady is dead. And the money comes to you . . . Tell me, does that seem to you reasonable?”
“Quite reasonable,” said Miss Lemon. “Quite reasonable for a Russian, that is. Personally, I should never take a post as a companion. I like my duties clearly defined. And of course I should not dream of murdering anyone.”
Poirot sighed. “How I miss my friend Hastings. He had such imagination. Such a romantic mind! It is true that he always imagined wrong—but that in itself was a guide.”
Miss Lemon was silent. She looked longingly at the typewritten sheet in front of her.
“So it seems to you reasonable,” mused Poirot.
“Doesn’t it to you?”
“I am almost afraid it does,” sighed Poirot.
The telephone rang and Miss Lemon went out of the room to answer it. She came back to say “It’s Inspector Sims again.” Poirot hurried to the instrument. “ ’Allo, ’allo. What is that you say?”
Sims repeated his statement. “We’ve found a packet of strychnine in the girl’s bedroom—tucked underneath the mattress. The sergeant’s just come in with the news. That about clinches it, I think.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “I think that clinches it.” His voice had changed. It rang with sudden confidence.
When he had rung off, he sat down at his writing table and arranged the objects on it in a mechanical manner. He murmured to himself, “There was something wrong. I felt it—no, not felt. It must have been something I saw. En avant, the little grey cells. Ponder—reflect. Was everything logical and in order? The girl—her anxiety about the money: Mme. Delafontaine; her husband—his suggestion of Russians—imbecile, but he is an imbecile; the room; the garden—ah! Yes, the garden.”
He sat up very stiff. The green light shone in his eyes. He sprang up and went into the adjoining room.
“Miss Lemon, will you have the kindness to leave what you are doing and make an investigation for me?”
“An investigation, M. Poirot? I’m afraid I’m not very good—”
Poirot interrupted her. “You said one day that you knew all about tradesmen.”
“Certainly I do,” said Miss Lemon with confidence.
“Then the matter is simple. You are to go to Charman’s Green and you are to discover a fishmonger.”
“A fishmonger?” asked Miss Lemon, surprised.
“Precisely. The fishmonger who supplied Rosebank with fish. When you have found him you will ask him a certain question.”
He handed her a slip of paper. Miss Lemon took it, noted its contents without interest, then nodded and slipped the lid on her typewriter.
“We will go to Charman’s Green together,” said Poirot. “You go to the fishmonger and I to the police station. It will take us but half an hour from Baker Street.”
On arrival at his destination, he was greeted by the surprised Inspector Sims. “Well, this is quick work, M. Poirot. I was talking to you on the phone only an hour ago.”
“I have a request to make to you; that you allow me to see this girl Katrina—what is her name?”
“Katrina Rieger. Well, I don’t suppose there’s any objection to that.”
The girl Katrina looked even more sallow and sullen than ever.
Poirot spoke to her very gently. “Mademoiselle, I want you to believe that I am not your enemy. I want you to tell me the truth.”
Her eyes snapped defiantly. “I have told the truth. To everyone I have told the truth! If the old lady was poisoned, it was not I who poisoned her. It is all a mistake. You wish to prevent me having the money.” Her voice was rasping. She looked, he thought, like a miserable little cornered rat.
“Did no one handle it but you?”
“I have said so, have I not? They were made up at the chemist’s that afternoon. I brought them back with me in my bag—that was just before supper. I opened the box and gave Miss Barrowby one with a glass of water.”
“No one touched them but you?”
“No.” A cornered rat—with courage!
“And Miss Barrowby had for supper only what we have been told. The soup, the fish pie, the tart?”
“Yes.” A hopeless “yes”—dark, smouldering eyes that saw no light anywhere.
Poirot patted her shoulder. “Be of good courage, mademoiselle. There may yet be freedom—yes, and money—a life of ease.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
As she went out Sims said to him, “I didn’t quite get what you said through the telephone—something about the girl having a friend.”
“She has one. Me!” said Hercule Poirot, and had left the police station before the inspector could pull his wits together.
IV
At the Green Cat tearooms, Miss Lemon did not keep her employer waiting. She went straight to the point.
“The man’s name is Rudge, in the High Street, and you were quite right. A dozen and a half exactly. I’ve made a note of what he said.” She handed it to him.
“Arrr.” It was a deep, rich sound like a purr of a cat.
V
Hercule Poirot betook himself to Rosebank. As he stood in the front garden, the sun setting behind him, Mary Delafontaine came out to him.
“M. Poirot?” Her voice sounded surprised. “You have come back?”
“Yes, I have come back.” He paused and then said, “When I first came here, madame, the children’s nursery rhyme came into my head:
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells, and silver bells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
“Only they are not cockle shells, are they, madame? They are oyster shells.” His hand pointed.
He heard her catch her breath and then stay very still. Her eyes asked a question.
He nodded. “Mais, oui,” I know! The maid left the dinner ready—she will swear and Katrina will swear that that is all you had. Only you and your husband know that you brought back a dozen and a half oysters—a littl
e treat pour la bonne tante. So easy to put the strychnine in an oyster. It is swallowed—comme ça! But there remain the shells—they must not go in the bucket. The maid would see them. And so you thought of making an edging of them to a bed. But there were not enough—the edging is not complete. The effect is bad—it spoils the symmetry of the otherwise charming garden. Those few oyster shells struck an alien note—they displeased my eye on my first visit.”
Mary Delafontaine said, “I suppose you guessed from the letter. I knew she had written—but I didn’t know how much she’d said.”
Poirot answered evasively, “I knew at least that it was a family matter. If it had been a question of Katrina there would have been no point in hushing things up. I understand that you or your husband handled Miss Barrowby’s securities to your own profit, and that she found out—”
Mary Delafontaine nodded. “We’ve done it for years—a little here and there. I never realized she was sharp enough to find out. And then I learned she had sent for a detective; and I found out, too, that she was leaving her money to Katrina—that miserable little creature!”
“And so the strychnine was put in Katrina’s bedroom? I comprehend. You save yourself and your husband from what I may discover, and you saddle an innocent child with murder. Had you no pity, madame?”
Mary Delafontaine shrugged her shoulders—her blue forget-me-not eyes looked into Poirot’s. He remembered the perfection of her acting the first day he had come and the bungling attempts of her husband. A woman above the average—but inhuman.
She said, “Pity? For that miserable intriguing little rat?” Her contempt rang out.
Hercule Poirot said slowly, “I think, madame, that you have cared in your life for two things only. One is your husband.”
He saw her lips tremble.
“And the other—is your garden.”
He looked round him. His glance seemed to apologize to the flowers for that which he had done and was about to do.
Thirty-three
PROBLEM AT SEA
“Problem at Sea” was first published in the USA in This Week, January 12, 1936, then as “Poirot and the Crime in Cabin 66” in The Strand, February 1936.
Colonel Clapperton!” said General Forbes.
He said it with an effect midway between a snort and a sniff.
Miss Ellie Henderson leaned forward, a strand of her soft grey hair blowing across her face. Her eyes, dark and snapping, gleamed with a wicked pleasure.
“Such a soldierly-looking man!” she said with malicious intent, and smoothed back the lock of hair to await the result.
“Soldierly!” exploded General Forbes. He tugged at his military moustache and his face became bright red.
“In the Guards, wasn’t he?” murmured Miss Henderson, completing her work.
“Guards? Guards? Pack of nonsense. Fellow was on the music hall stage! Fact! Joined up and was out in France counting tins of plum and apple. Huns dropped a stray bomb and he went home with a flesh wound in the arm. Somehow or other got into Lady Carrington’s hospital.”
“So that’s how they met.”
“Fact! Fellow played the wounded hero. Lady Carrington had no sense and oceans of money. Old Carrington had been in munitions. She’d been a widow only six months. This fellow snaps her up in no time. She wangled him a job at the War Office. Colonel Clapperton! Pah!” he snorted.
“And before the war he was on the music hall stage,” mused Miss Henderson, trying to reconcile the distinguished grey-haired Colonel Clapperton with a red-nosed comedian singing mirth-provoking songs.
“Fact!” said General Forbes. “Heard it from old Bassington-ffrench. And he heard it from old Badger Cotterill who’d got it from Snooks Parker.”
Miss Henderson nodded brightly. “That does seem to settle it!” she said.
A fleeting smile showed for a minute on the face of a small man sitting near them. Miss Henderson noticed the smile. She was observant. It had shown appreciation of the irony underlying her last remark—irony which the General never for a moment suspected.
The General himself did not notice the smile. He glanced at his watch, rose and remarked: “Exercise. Got to keep oneself fit on a boat,” and passed out through the open door on to the deck.
Miss Henderson glanced at the man who had smiled. It was a well-bred glance indicating that she was ready to enter into conversation with a fellow traveller.
“He is energetic—yes?” said the little man.
“He goes round the deck forty-eight times exactly,” said Miss Henderson. “What an old gossip! And they say we are the scandal-loving sex.”
“What an impoliteness!”
“Frenchmen are always polite,” said Miss Henderson—there was the nuance of a question in her voice.
The little man responded promptly. “Belgian, mademoiselle.”
“Oh! Belgian.”
“Hercule Poirot. At your service.”
The name aroused some memory. Surely she had heard it before—? “Are you enjoying this trip, M. Poirot?”
“Frankly, no. It was an imbecility to allow myself to be persuaded to come. I detest la mer. Never does it remain tranquil—no, not for a little minute.”
“Well, you admit it’s quite calm now.”
M. Poirot admitted this grudgingly. “A ce moment, yes. That is why I revive. I once more interest myself in what passes around me—your very adept handling of the General Forbes, for instance.”
“You mean—” Miss Henderson paused.
Hercule Poirot bowed. “Your methods of extracting the scandalous matter. Admirable!”
Miss Henderson laughed in an unashamed manner. “That touch about the Guards? I knew that would bring the old boy up spluttering and gasping.” She leaned forward confidentially. “I admit I like scandal—the more ill-natured, the better!”
Poirot looked thoughtfully at her—her slim well-preserved figure, her keen dark eyes, her grey hair; a woman of forty-five who was content to look her age.
Ellie said abruptly: “I have it! Aren’t you the great detective?”
Poirot bowed. “You are too amiable, mademoiselle.” But he made no disclaimer.
“How thrilling,” said Miss Henderson. “Are you ‘hot on the trail’ as they say in books? Have we a criminal secretly in our midst? Or am I being indiscreet?”
“Not at all. Not at all. It pains me to disappoint your expectations, but I am simply here, like everyone else, to amuse myself.”
He said it in such a gloomy voice that Miss Henderson laughed.
“Oh! Well, you will be able to get ashore tomorrow at Alexandria. You have been to Egypt before?”
“Never, mademoiselle.”
Miss Henderson rose somewhat abruptly.
“I think I shall join the General on his constitutional,” she announced.
Poirot sprang politely to his feet.
She gave him a little nod and passed on to the deck.
A faint puzzled look showed for a moment in Poirot’s eyes, then, a little smile creasing his lips, he rose, put his head through the door and glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man.
Poirot’s smile deepened. He drew himself back into the smoking room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell. For the moment he had the smoking room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long.
It did not. Mrs. Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed.
She said: “John—? Oh! Good morning, M. Poirot—have you seen John?”
“He’s on the starboard deck, madame. Shall I—?”
She arrested him with a gesture. “I’ll sit here a minute.” She sat down in a regal fashion in the chair opposite him. From the distance sh
e had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine years, but a possible fifty-five. Her eyes were a hard pale blue with tiny pupils.
“I was sorry not to have seen you at dinner last night,” she said. “It was just a shade choppy, of course—”
“Précisément,” said Poirot with feeling.
“Luckily, I am an excellent sailor,” said Mrs. Clapperton. “I say luckily, because, with my weak heart, seasickness would probably be the death of me.”
“You have the weak heart, madame?”
“Yes, I have to be most careful. I must not overtire myself! All the specialists say so!” Mrs. Clapperton had embarked on the—to her—ever fascinating topic of her health. “John, poor darling, wears himself out trying to prevent me from doing too much. I live so intensely, if you know what I mean, M. Poirot?”
“Yes, yes.”
“He always says to me: ‘Try to be more of a vegetable, Adeline.’ But I can’t. Life was meant to be lived, I feel. As a matter of fact I wore myself out as a girl in the war. My hospital—you’ve heard of my hospital? Of course I had nurses and matrons and all that—but I actually ran it.” She sighed.
“Your vitality is marvellous, dear lady,” said Poirot, with the slightly mechanical air of one responding to his cue.
Mrs. Clapperton gave a girlish laugh.
“Everyone tells me how young I am! It’s absurd. I never try to pretend I’m a day less than forty-three,” she continued with slightly mendacious candour, “but a lot of people find it hard to believe. ‘You’re so alive, Adeline,’ they say to me. But really, M. Poirot, what would one be if one wasn’t alive?”
“Dead,” said Poirot.
Mrs. Clapperton frowned. The reply was not to her liking. The man, she decided, was trying to be funny. She got up and said coldly: “I must find John.”
As she stepped through the door she dropped her handbag. It opened and the contents flew far and wide. Poirot rushed gallantly to the rescue. It was some few minutes before the lipsticks, vanity boxes, cigarette case and lighter and other odds and ends were collected. Mrs. Clapperton thanked him politely, then she swept down the deck and said, “John—”