“M. Hercule Poirot,” said the Captain and stepped down. Poirot took his place. He looked comically self-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 Capitaine has told you that I have had a certain experience in these matters. I have, it is true, a little 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 passed 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 assure 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, messieurs 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 Cockney 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 have 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 eyes. 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 bien—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.
Thirty-four
TRIANGLE AT RHODES
“Triangle at Rhodes” was first published in the USA in This Week, February 2, 1936, then as “Poirot and the Triangle at Rhodes” in The Strand, May 1936.
Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.
Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood beside her.
On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.
“I’m so patchy still,” she murmured regretfully. “M. Poirot—would you mind? Just below the right shoulder blade—I can’t reach to rub it in properly.”
M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.
“I was right about that woman—the one in the Chanel model—it is Valentine Dacres—Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.”
“Honeymooners?” murmured Sarah in a stifled voice.
Miss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner.
“Oh, no—her clothes aren’t new enough. You can always tell brides! Don’t you think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?”
“Not just looking, darling,” said Sarah sweetly. “You ask a lot of questions, too.”
“I haven’t even spoken to the Golds yet,” said Miss Lyall with dignity. “And anyway I don’t see why one shouldn’t be interested in one’s fellow creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?”
This time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply.
Without taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied:
“Ça depend.”
Pamela was shocked.
“Oh, M. Poirot! I don’t think anything’s so interesting—so incalculable as a human being!”
“Incalculable? That, no.”
“Oh, but they are. Just as you think you’ve got them beautifully taped—they do something completely unexpected.”
Hercule Poirot shook his head.
“No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caractère. It is in the end monotonous.”
“I don’t agree with you at all!” said Miss Pamela Lyall.
She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.
“As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them—what they’re like—what relations they are to each other—what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s—oh, it’s quite thrilling.”
“Hardly that,” said Hercule Poirot. “Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,” he added thoughtfully, “has infinitely more variety.”
>
Sarah turned her head sideways and asked:
“You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?”
“Précisément,” said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.
“What’s that you’re drawing?” asked Pamela curiously.
“A triangle,” said Poirot.
But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.
“Here are the Chantrys,” she said.
A woman was coming down the beach—a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing dress.
Pamela sighed.
“Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?”
But Poirot was looking at her face—the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.
He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things—for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time—a commander in the navy.
He it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark—with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him.
She said:
“Tony darling—my cigarette case . . .”
He had it ready for her—lighted her cigarette—helped her to slip the straps of the white bathing dress from her shoulders. She lay, arms outstretched in the sun. He sat by her like some wild beast that guards its prey.
Pamela said, her voice just lowered sufficiently:
“You know they interest me frightfully . . . He’s such a brute! So silent and—sort of glowering. I suppose a woman of her kind likes that. It must be like controlling a tiger! I wonder how long it will last. She gets tired of them very soon, I believe—especially nowadays. All the same, if she tried to get rid of him, I think he might be dangerous.”
Another couple came down the beach—rather shyly. They were the newcomers of the night before. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Gold as Miss Lyall knew from her inspection of the hotel visitors’ book. She knew, too, for such were the Italian regulations—their Christian names and their ages as set down from their passports.
Mr. Douglas Cameron Gold was thirty-one and Mrs. Marjorie Emma Gold was thirty-five.
Miss Lyall’s hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. She, therefore, noting the slight hesitancy and shyness of Mrs. Gold’s advance, called out:
“Good morning, isn’t it a lovely day?”
Mrs. Gold was a small woman—rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked. Her husband, on the other hand, was extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid.
Mrs. Gold looked gratefully at Pamela and sat down near her.
“What a lovely shade of brown you are. I feel terribly underdone!”
“One has to take a frightful lot of trouble to brown evenly,” sighed Miss Lyall.
She paused a minute and then went on:
“You’ve only just arrived, haven’t you?”
“Yes. Last night. We came on the Vapo d’Italia boat.”
“Have you ever been to Rhodes before?”
“No. It is lovely, isn’t it?”
Her husband said:
“Pity it’s such a long way to come.”
“Yes, if it were only nearer England—”
In a muffled voice Sarah said:
“Yes, but then it would be awful. Rows and rows of people laid out like fish on a slab. Bodies everywhere!”
“That’s true, of course,” said Douglas Gold. “It’s a nuisance the Italian exchange is so absolutely ruinous at present.”
“It does make a difference, doesn’t it?”
The conversation was running on strictly stereotyped lines. It could hardly have been called brilliant.
A little way along the beach, Valentine Chantry stirred and sat up. With one hand she held her bathing dress in position across her breast.
She yawned, a wide yet delicate cat-like yawn. She glanced casually down the beach. Her eyes slanted past Marjorie Gold—and stayed thoughtfully on the crisp, golden head of Douglas Gold.
She moved her shoulders sinuously.She spoke and her voice was raised a little higher than it need have been.
“Tony darling—isn’t it divine—this sun? I simply must have been a sun worshipper once—don’t you think so?”
Her husband grunted something in reply that failed to reach the others. Valentine Chantry went on in that high, drawling voice.
“Just pull that towel a little flatter, will you, darling?”
She took infinite pains in the resettling of her beautiful body. Douglas Gold was looking now. His eyes were frankly interested.
Mrs. Gold chirped happily in a subdued key to Miss Lyall.
“What a beautiful woman!”
Pamela, as delighted to give as to receive information, replied in a lower voice:
“That’s Valentine Chantry—you know, who used to be Valentine Dacres—she is rather marvellous, isn’t she? He’s simply crazy about her—won’t let her out of his sight!”
Mrs. Gold looked once more along the beach. Then she said:
“The sea really is lovely—so blue. I think we ought to go in now, don’t you, Douglas?”
He was still watching Valentine Chantry and took a minute or two to answer. Then he said, rather absently:
“Go in? Oh, yes, rather, in a minute.”
Marjorie Gold got up and strolled down to the water’s edge.
Valentine Chantry rolled over a little on one side. Her eyes looked along at Douglas Gold. Her scarlet mouth curved faintly into a smile.
The neck of Mr. Douglas Gold became slightly red.
Valentine Chantry said:
“Tony darling—would you mind? I want a little pot of face cream—it’s up on the dressing table. I meant to bring it down. Do get it for me—there’s an angel.”
The commander rose obediently. He stalked off into the hotel.
Marjorie Gold plunged into the sea, calling out:
“It’s lovely, Douglas—so warm. Do come.”
Pamela Lyall said to him:
“Aren’t you going in?”
He answered vaguely:
“Oh! I like to get well hotted up first.”
Valentine Chantry stirred. Her head was lifted for a moment as though to recall her husband—but he was just passing inside the wall of the hotel garden.
“I like my dip the last thing,” explained Mr. Gold.
Mrs. Chantry sat up again. She picked up a flask of sunbathing oil. She had some difficulty with it—the screw top seemed to resist her efforts.
She spoke loudly and petulantly.
“Oh, dear—I can’t get this thing undone!”
She looked towards the other group—
“I wonder—”
Always gallant, Poirot rose to his feet, but Douglas Gold had the advantage of youth and suppleness. He was by her side in a moment.
“Can I do it for you?”
r /> “Oh, thank you—” It was the sweet, empty drawl again.
“You are kind. I’m such a fool at undoing things—I always seem to screw them the wrong way. Oh! you’ve done it! Thank you ever so much—”
Hercule Poirot smiled to himself.
He got up and wandered along the beach in the opposite direction. He did not go very far but his progress was leisurely. As he was on his way back, Mrs. Gold came out of the sea and joined him. She had been swimming. Her face, under a singularly unbecoming bathing cap, was radiant.
She said breathlessly, “I do love the sea. And it’s so warm and lovely here.”
She was, he perceived, an enthusiastic bather.
She said, “Douglas and I are simply mad on bathing. He can stay in for hours.”
And at that Hercule Poirot’s eyes slid over her shoulder to the spot on the beach where that enthusiastic bather, Mr. Douglas Gold, was sitting talking to Valentine Chantry.
His wife said:
“I can’t think why he doesn’t come. . . .”
Her voice held a kind of childish bewilderment.
Poirot’s eyes rested thoughtfully on Valentine Chantry. He thought that other women in their time had made that same remark.
Beside him, he heard Mrs. Gold draw in her breath sharply.
She said—and her voice was cold:
“She’s supposed to be very attractive, I believe. But Douglas doesn’t like that type of woman.”
Hercule Poirot did not reply.
Mrs. Gold plunged into the sea again.
She swam away from the shore with slow, steady strokes. You could see that she loved the water.
Poirot retraced his steps to the group on the beach.
It had been augmented by the arrival of old General Barnes, a veteran who was usually in the company of the young. He was sitting now between Pamela and Sarah, and he and Pamela were engaged in dishing up various scandals with appropriate embellishments.
Commander Chantry had returned from his errand. He and Douglas Gold were sitting on either side of Valentine.