“So that’s what you were getting at!” Japp sighed. “Always have to get at things in such a tortuous way.”
“Your Sherlock Holmes did the same. He drew attention, remember, to the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime—and the answer to that was there was no curious incident. The dog did nothing in the nighttime. To proceed:
“The next thing that attracted my attention was a wristwatch worn by the dead woman.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing particular about it, but it was worn on the right wrist. Now in my experience it is more usual for a watch to be worn on the left wrist.”
Japp shrugged his shoulders. Before he could speak, Poirot hurried on:
“But as you say, there is nothing very definite about that. Some people prefer to wear one on the right hand. And now I come to something really interesting—I come, my friends, to the writing bureau.”
“Yes, I guessed that,” said Japp.
“That was really very odd—very remarkable! For two reasons. The first reason was that something was missing from that writing table.”
Jane Plenderleith spoke.
“What was missing?”
Poirot turned to her.
“A sheet of blotting paper, mademoiselle. The blotting book had on top a clean, untouched piece of blotting paper.”
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
“Really, M. Poirot. People do occasionally tear off a very much used sheet!”
“Yes, but what do they do with it? Throw it into the wastepaper basket, do they not? But it was not in the wastepaper basket. I looked.”
Jane Plenderleith seemed impatient.
“Because it had probably been already thrown away the day before. The sheet was clean because Barbara hadn’t written any letters that day.”
“That could hardly be the case, mademoiselle. For Mrs. Allen was seen going to the postbox that evening. Therefore she must have been writing letters. She could not write downstairs—there were no writing materials. She would be hardly likely to go to your room to write. So, then, what had happened to the sheet of paper on which she had blotted her letters? It is true that people sometimes throw things in the fire instead of the wastepaper basket, but there was only a gas fire in the room. And the fire downstairs had not been alight the previous day, since you told me it was all laid ready when you put a match to it.”
He paused.
“A curious little problem. I looked everywhere, in the wastepaper baskets, in the dustbin, but I could not find a sheet of used blotting paper—and that seemed to me very important. It looked as though someone had deliberately taken that sheet of blotting paper away. Why? Because there was writing on it that could easily have been read by holding it up to a mirror.
“But there was a second curious point about the writing table. Perhaps, Japp, you remember roughly the arrangement of it? Blotter and inkstand in the centre, pen tray to the left, calendar and quill pen to the right. Eh bien? You do not see? The quill pen, remember, I examined, it was for show only—it had not been used. Ah! still you do not see? I will say it again. Blotter in the centre, pen tray to the left—to the left, Japp. But is it not usual to find a pen tray on the right, convenient to the right hand?
“Ah, now it comes to you, does it not? The pen tray on the left—the wristwatch on the right wrist—the blotting paper removed—and something else brought into the room—the ashtray with the cigarette ends!
“That room was fresh and pure smelling, Japp, a room in which the window had been open, not closed all night . . . And I made myself a picture.”
He spun round and faced Jane.
“A picture of you, mademoiselle, driving up in your taxi, paying it off, running up the stairs, calling perhaps, ‘Barbara’—and you open the door and you find your friend there lying dead with the pistol clasped in her hand—the left hand, naturally, since she is left-handed and therefore, too, the bullet has entered on the left side of the head. There is a note there addressed to you. It tells you what it is that has driven her to take her own life. It was, I fancy, a very moving letter . . . A young, gentle, unhappy woman driven by blackmail to take her life. . . .
“I think that, almost at once, the idea flashed into your head. This was a certain man’s doing. Let him be punished—fully and adequately punished! You take the pistol, wipe it and place it in the right hand. You take the note and you tear off the top sheet of the blotting paper on which the note has been blotted. You go down, light the fire and put them both on the flames. Then you carry up the ashtray—to further the illusion that two people sat there talking—and you also take up a fragment of enamel cuff link that is on the floor. That is a lucky find and you expect it to clinch matters. Then you close the window and lock the door. There must be no suspicion that you have tampered with the room. The police must see it exactly as it is—so you do not seek help in the mews but ring up the police straightaway.
“And so it goes on. You play your chosen rôle with judgment and coolness. You refuse at first to say anything but cleverly you suggest doubts of suicide. Later you are quite ready to set us on the trail of Major Eustace. . . .
“Yes, mademoiselle, it was clever—a very clever murder—for that is what it is. The attempted murder of Major Eustace.”
Jane Plenderleith sprang to her feet.
“It wasn’t murder—it was justice. That man hounded poor Barbara to her death! She was so sweet and helpless. You see, poor kid, she got involved with a man in India when she first went out. She was only seventeen and he was a married man years older than her. Then she had a baby. She could have put it in a home but she wouldn’t hear of that. She went off to some out of the way spot and came back calling herself Mrs. Allen. Later the child died. She came back here and she fell in love with Charles—that pompous, stuffed owl; she adored him—and he took her adoration very complacently. If he had been a different kind of man I’d have advised her to tell him everything. But as it was, I urged her to hold her tongue. After all, nobody knew anything about that business except me.
“And then that devil Eustace turned up! You know the rest. He began to bleed her systematically, but it wasn’t till that last evening that she realised that she was exposing Charles too, to the risk of scandal. Once married to Charles, Eustace had got her where he wanted her—married to a rich man with a horror of any scandal! When Eustace had gone with the money she had got for him she sat thinking it over. Then she came up and wrote a letter to me. She said she loved Charles and couldn’t live without him, but that for his own sake she mustn’t marry him. She was taking the best way out, she said.”
Jane flung her head back.
“Do you wonder I did what I did? And you stand there calling it murder!”
“Because it is murder,” Poirot’s voice was stern. “Murder can sometimes seem justified, but it is murder all the same. You are truthful and clear-minded—face the truth, mademoiselle! Your friend died, in the last resort, because she had not the courage to live. We may sympathize with her. We may pity her. But the fact remains—the act was hers—not another.”
He paused.
“And you? That man is now in prison, he will serve a long sentence for other matters. Do you really wish, of your own volition, to destroy the life—the life, mind—of any human being?”
She stared at him. Her eyes darkened. Suddenly she muttered:
“No. You’re right. I don’t.”
Then, turning on her heel, she went swiftly from the room. The outer door banged. . . .
XIV
Japp gave a long—a very prolonged—whistle.
“Well, I’m damned!” he said.
Poirot sat down and smiled at him amiably. It was quite a long time before the silence was broken. Then Japp said:
“Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to look like murder!”
“Yes, and very cleverly done, too. Nothing overemphasized.”
Japp said suddenly:
“But the attaché cas
e? Where did that come in?”
“But, my dear, my very dear friend, I have already told you that it did not come in.”
“Then why—”
“The golf clubs. The golf clubs, Japp. They were the golf clubs of a left-handed person. Jane Plenderleith kept her clubs at Wentworth. Those were Barbara Allen’s clubs. No wonder the girl got, as you say, the wind up when we opened that cupboard. Her whole plan might have been ruined. But she is quick, she realized that she had, for one short moment, given herself away. She saw that we saw. So she does the best thing she can think of on the spur of the moment. She tries to focus our attention on the wrong object. She says of the attaché case ‘That’s mine. I—it came back with me this morning. So there can’t be anything there.’ And, as she hoped, away you go on the false trail. For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attaché case as a—what is it—kippered herring?”
“Red herring. Do you mean that her real object was—?”
“Consider, my friend. Where is the best place to get rid of a bag of golf clubs? One cannot burn them or put them in a dustbin. If one leaves them somewhere they may be returned to you. Miss Plenderleith took them to a golf course. She leaves them in the clubhouse while she gets a couple of irons from her own bag, and then she goes round without a caddy. Doubtless at judicious intervals she breaks a club in half and throws it into some deep undergrowth, and ends by throwing the empty bag away. If anyone should find a broken golf club here and there it will not create surprise. People have been known to break and throw away all their clubs in a mood of intense exasperation over the game! It is, in fact, that kind of game!
“But since she realizes that her actions may still be a matter of interest, she throws that useful red herring—the attaché case—in a somewhat spectacular manner into the lake—and that, my friend, is the truth of ‘The Mystery of the Attaché Case.’ ”
Japp looked at his friend for some moments in silence. Then he rose, clapped him on the shoulder, and burst out laughing.
“Not so bad for an old dog! Upon my word, you take the cake! Come out and have a spot of lunch?”
“With pleasure, my friend, but we will not have the cake. Indeed, an Omelette aux Champignons, Blanquette de Veau, Petits pois à la Francaise, and—to follow—a Baba au Rhum.”
“Lead me to it,” said Japp.
Thirty-six
YELLOW IRIS
“Yellow Iris” was first published in The Strand, July 1937.
Hercule Poirot stretched out his feet towards the electric radiator set in the wall. Its neat arrangement of red hot bars pleased his orderly mind.
“A coal fire,” he mused to himself, “was always shapeless and haphazard! Never did it achieve the symmetry.”
The telephone bell rang. Poirot rose, glancing at his watch as he did so. The time was close on half past eleven. He wondered who was ringing him up at this hour. It might, of course, be a wrong number.
“And it might,” he murmured to himself with a whimsical smile, “be a millionaire newspaper proprietor, found dead in the library of his country house, with a spotted orchid clasped in his left hand and a page torn from a cookbook pinned to his breast.”
Smiling at the pleasing conceit, he lifted the receiver.
Immediately a voice spoke—a soft husky woman’s voice with a kind of desperate urgency about it.
“Is that M. Hercule Poirot? Is that M. Hercule Poirot?”
“Hercule Poirot speaks.”
“M. Poirot—can you come at once—at once—I’m in danger—in great danger—I know it . . .”
Poirot said sharply:
“Who are you? Where are you speaking from?”
The voice came more faintly but with an even greater urgency.
“At once . . . it’s life or death . . . the Jardin des Cygnes . . . at once . . . table with yellow irises . . .”
There was a pause—a queer kind of gasp—the line went dead.
Hercule Poirot hung up. His face was puzzled. He murmured between his teeth:
“There is something here very curious.”
In the doorway of the Jardin des Cygnes, fat Luigi hurried forward.
“Buona sera, M. Poirot. You desire a table—yes?”
“No, no, my good Luigi. I seek here for some friends. I will look round—perhaps they are not here yet. Ah, let me see, that table there in the corner with the yellow irises—a little question by the way, if it is not indiscreet. On all the other tables there are tulips—pink tulips—why on that one table do you have yellow irises?”
Luigi shrugged his expressive shoulders.
“A command, Monsieur! A special order! Without doubt, the favourite flowers of one of the ladies. That table it is the table of Mr. Barton Russell—an American—immensely rich.”
“Aha, one must study the whims of the ladies, must one not, Luigi?”
“Monsieur has said it,” said Luigi.
“I see at that table an acquaintance of mine. I must go and speak to him.”
Poirot skirted his way delicately round the dancing floor on which couples were revolving. The table in question was set for six, but it had at the moment only one occupant, a young man who was thoughtfully, and it seemed pessimistically, drinking champagne.
He was not at all the person that Poirot had expected to see. It seemed impossible to associate the idea of danger or melodrama with any party of which Tony Chapell was a member.
Poirot paused delicately by the table.
“Ah, it is, is it not, my friend Anthony Chapell?”
“By all that’s wonderful—Poirot, the police hound!” cried the young man. “Not Anthony, my dear fellow—Tony to friends!”
He drew out a chair.
“Come, sit with me. Let us discourse of crime! Let us go further and drink to crime.” He poured champagne into an empty glass. “But what are you doing in this haunt of song and dance and merriment, my dear Poirot? We have no bodies here, positively not a single body to offer you.”
Poirot sipped the champagne.
“You seem very gay, mon cher?”
“Gay? I am steeped in misery—wallowing in gloom. Tell me, you hear this tune they are playing. You recognize it?”
Poirot hazarded cautiously:
“Something perhaps to do with your baby having left you?”
“Not a bad guess,” said the young man. “But wrong for once. ‘There’s nothing like love for making you miserable!’ That’s what it’s called.”
“Aha?”
“My favourite tune,” said Tony Chapell mournfully. “And my favourite restaurant and my favourite band—and my favourite girl’s here and she’s dancing it with somebody else.”
“Hence the melancholy?” said Poirot.
“Exactly. Pauline and I, you see, have had what the vulgar call words. That is to say, she’s had ninety-five words to five of mine out of every hundred. My five are: ‘But, darling—I can explain.’—Then she starts in on her ninety-five again and we get no further. I think,” added Tony sadly, “that I shall poison myself.”
“Pauline?” murmured Poirot.
“Pauline Weatherby. Barton Russell’s young sister-in-law. Young, lovely, disgustingly rich. Tonight Barton Russell gives a party. You know him? Big Business, clean-shaven American—full of pep and personality. His wife was Pauline’s sister.”
“And who else is there at this party?”
“You’ll meet ’em in a minute when the music stops. There’s Lola Valdez—you know, the South American dancer in the new show at the Metropole, and there’s Stephen Carter. D’you know Carter—he’s in the diplomatic service. Very hush-hush. Known as silent Stephen. Sort of man who says, ‘I am not a liberty to state, etc, etc.’ Hullo, here they come.”
Poirot rose. He was introduced to Barton Russell, to Stephen Carter, to Señora Lola Valdez, a dark and luscious creature, and to Pauline Weatherby, very young, very fair, with eyes like cornflowers.
Barton Russell said:
“What, is this the great M. Hercule Poirot? I am indeed pleased to meet you, sir. Won’t you sit down and join us? That is, unless—”
Tony Chapell broke in.
“He’s got an appointment with a body, I believe, or is it an absconding financier, or the Rajah of Borrioboolagah’s great ruby?”
“Ah, my friend, do you think I am never off duty? Can I not, for once, seek only to amuse myself?”
“Perhaps you’ve got an appointment with Carter here. The latest from the UN International situation now acute. The stolen plans must be found or war will be declared tomorrow!”
Pauline Weatherby said cuttingly:
“Must you be so completely idiotic, Tony?”
“Sorry, Pauline.”
Tony Chapell relapsed into crestfallen silence.
“How severe you are, Mademoiselle.”
“I hate people who play the fool all the time!”
“I must be careful, I see. I must converse only of serious matters.”
“Oh, no, M. Poirot. I didn’t mean you.”
She turned a smiling face to him and asked:
“Are you really a kind of Sherlock Holmes and do wonderful deductions?”
“Ah, the deductions—they are not so easy in real life. But shall I try? Now then, I deduce—that yellow irises are your favourite flowers?”
“Quite wrong, M. Poirot. Lilies of the valley or roses.”
Poirot sighed.
“A failure. I will try once more. This evening, not very long ago, you telephoned to someone.”
Pauline laughed and clapped her hands.
“Quite right.”
“It was not long after you arrived here?”
“Right again. I telephoned the minute I got inside the doors.”
“Ah—that is not so good. You telephoned before you came to this table?”
“Yes.”
“Decidedly very bad.”
“Oh, no, I think it was very clever of you. How did you know I had telephoned?”
“That, Mademoiselle, is the great detective’s secret. And the person to whom you telephoned—does the name begin with a P—or perhaps with an H?”