“I’m not going to mince matters,” said Van Aldin savagely. “No one knows what my poor girl has had to put up with. Derek Kettering wasn’t alone. He had a lady with him.”
“Ah?”
“Mirelle—the dancer.”
M. Carrège and the Commissary looked at each other and nodded as though confirming some previous conversation. M. Carrège leaned back in his chair, joined his hands, and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
“Ah!” he murmured again. “One wondered.” He coughed. “One has heard rumours.”
“The lady,” said M. Caux, “is very notorious.”
“And also,” murmured Poirot softly, “very expensive.”
Van Aldin had gone very red in the face. He leant forward and hit the table a bang with his fist.
“See here,” he cried, “my son-in-law is a damned scoundrel!”
He glared at them, looking from one face to another.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he went on. “Good looks and a charming, easy manner. It took me in once upon a time. I suppose he pretended to be brokenhearted when you broke the news to him—that is, if he didn’t know it already.”
“Oh, it came as a surprise to him. He was overwhelmed.”
“Darned young hypocrite,” said Van Aldin. “Simulated great grief, I suppose?”
“N—no,” said the Commissary cautiously. “I would not quite say that—eh, M. Carrège?”
The Magistrate brought the tips of his fingers together, and half-closed his eyes.
“Shock, bewilderment, horror—these things, yes,” he declared judicially. “Great sorrow—no—I should not say that.”
Hercule Poirot spoke once more.
“Permit me to ask, M. Van Aldin, does M. Kettering benefit by the death of his wife?”
“He benefits to the tune of a couple of millions,” said Van Aldin.
“Dollars?”
“Pounds. I settled that sum on Ruth absolutely on her marriage. She made no will and leaves no children, so the money will go to her husband.”
“Whom she was on the point of divorcing,” murmured Poirot. “Ah, yes—précisément.”
The Commissary turned and looked sharply at him.
“Do you mean—?” he began.
“I mean nothing,” said Poirot. “I arrange the facts, that is all.”
Van Aldin stared at him with awakening interest.
The little man rose to his feet.
“I do not think I can be of any further service to you, M. le Juge,” he said politely, bowing to M. Carrège. “You will keep me informed of the course of events? It will be a kindness.”
“But certainly—most certainly.”
Van Aldin rose also.
“You don’t want me any more at present?”
“No, Monsieur; we have all the information we need for the moment.”
“Then I will walk a little way with M. Poirot. That is, if he does not object?”
“Enchanted, Monsieur,” said the little man, with a bow.
Van Aldin lighted a large cigar, having first offered one to Poirot, who declined it and lit one of his own tiny cigarettes. A man of great strength of character, Van Aldin already appeared to be his everyday, normal self once more. After strolling along for a minute or two in silence, the millionaire spoke:
“I take it, M. Poirot, that you no longer exercise your profession?”
“That is so, Monsieur. I enjoy the world.”
“Yet you are assisting the police in this affair?”
“Monsieur, if a doctor walks along the street and an accident happens, does he say, ‘I have retired from my profession, I will continue my walk,’ when there is someone bleeding to death at his feet? If I had been already in Nice, and the police had sent to me and asked me to assist them, I should have refused. But this affair, the good God thrust it upon me.”
“You were on the spot,” said Van Aldin thoughtfully. “You examined the compartment, did you not?”
Poirot nodded.
“Doubtless you found things that were, shall we say, suggestive to you?”
“Perhaps,” said Poirot.
“I hope you see what I am leading up to?” said Van Aldin. “It seems to me that the case against this Comte de la Roche is perfectly clear, but I am not a fool. I have been watching you for this last hour or so, and I realize that for some reason of your own you don’t agree with that theory?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“I may be wrong.”
“So we come to the favour I want to ask you. Will you act in this matter for me?”
“For you, personally?”
“That was my meaning.”
Poirot was silent for a moment or two. Then he said:
“You realize what you are asking?”
“I guess so,” said Van Aldin.
“Very well,” said Poirot. “I accept. But in that case, I must have frank answers to my questions.”
“Why, certainly. That is understood.”
Poirot’s manner changed. He became suddenly brusque and businesslike.
“This question of a divorce,” he said. “It was you who advised your daughter to bring the suit?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About ten days ago. I had had a letter from her complaining of her husband’s behaviour, and I put it to her very strongly that divorce was the only remedy.”
“In what way did she complain of his behaviour?”
“He was being seen about with a very notorious lady—the one we have been speaking of—Mirelle.”
“The dancer. Ah-ha! And Madame Kettering objected? Was she very devoted to her husband?”
“I would not say that,” said Van Aldin, hesitating a little.
“It was not her heart that suffered, it was her pride—is that what you would say?”
“Yes, I suppose you might put it like that.”
“I gather that the marriage has not been a happy one from the beginning?”
“Derek Kettering is rotten to the core,” said Van Aldin. “He is incapable of making any woman happy.”
“He is, as you say in England, a bad lot. That is right, is it not?”
Van Aldin nodded.
“Très bien! You advise Madame to seek a divorce, she agrees; you consult your solicitors. When does M. Kettering get news of what is in the wind?”
“I sent for him myself, and explained the course of action I proposed to take.”
“And what did he say?” murmured Poirot softly.
Van Aldin’s face darkened at the remembrance.
“He was infernally impudent.”
“Excuse the question, Monsieur, but did he refer to the Comte de la Roche?”
“Not by name,” growled the other unwillingly, “but he showed himself cognizant of the affair.”
“What, if I may ask, was Mr. Kettering’s financial position at the time?”
“How do you suppose I should know that?” asked Van Aldin, after a very brief hesitation.
“It seemed likely to me that you would inform yourself on that point.”
“Well—you are quite right, I did. I discovered that Kettering was on the rocks.”
“And now he has inherited two million pounds! La vie—it is a strange thing, is it not?”
Van Aldin looked at him sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“I moralize,” said Poirot, “I reflect, I speak the philosophy. But to return to where we were. Surely M. Kettering did not propose to allow himself to be divorced without making a fight for it?”
Van Aldin did not answer for a minute or two, then he said:
“I don’t exactly know what his intentions were.”
“Did you hold any further communications with him?”
Again a slight pause, then Van Aldin said:
“No.”
Poirot stopped dead, took off his hat, and held out his hand.
“I must wish you good-day, Monsieur. I can do nothing
for you.”
“What are you getting at?” demanded Van Aldin angrily.
“If you do not tell me the truth, I can do nothing.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. You may rest assured, M. Van Aldin, that I know how to be discreet.”
“Very well, then,” said the millionaire. “I’ll admit that I was not speaking the truth just now. I did have further communication with my son-in-law.”
“Yes?”
“To be exact, I sent my secretary, Major Knighton, to see him, with instructions to offer him the sum of one hundred thousand pounds in cash if the divorce went through undefended.”
“A pretty sum of money,” said Poirot appreciatively: “and the answer of Monsieur your son-in-law?”
“He sent back word that I could go to hell,” replied the millionaire succinctly.
“Ah!” said Poirot.
He betrayed no emotion of any kind. At the moment he was engaged in methodically recording facts.
“Monsieur Kettering has told the police that he neither saw nor spoke to his wife on the journey from England. Are you inclined to believe that statement, Monsieur?”
“Yes, I am,” said Van Aldin. “He would take particular pains to keep out of her way, I should say.”
“Why?”
“Because he had got that woman with him.”
“Mirelle?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know that fact?”
“A man of mine, whom I had put on to watch him, reported to me that they both left by that train.”
“I see,” said Poirot. “In that case, as you said before, he would not be likely to attempt to hold any communication with Madame Kettering.”
The little man fell silent for some time. Van Aldin did not interrupt his meditation.
Seventeen
AN ARISTOCRATIC GENTLEMAN
“You have been to the Riviera before, Georges?” said Poirot to his valet the following morning.
George was an intensely English, rather wooden-faced individual.
“Yes, sir. I was here two years ago when I was in the service of Lord Edward Frampton.”
“And today,” murmured his master, “you are here with Hercule Poirot. How one mounts in the world!”
The valet made no reply to this observation. After a suitable pause he asked:
“The brown lounge suit, sir? The wind is somewhat chilly today.”
“There is a grease spot on the waistcoat,” objected Poirot. “A morceau of filet de sole à la Jeanette alighted there when I was lunching at the Ritz last Tuesday.”
“There is no spot there now, sir,” said George reproachfully. “I have removed it.”
“Très bien!” said Poirot. “I am pleased with you, Georges.”
“Thank you, sir.”
There was a pause, and then Poirot murmured dreamily:
“Supposing, my good Georges, that you had been born in the same social sphere as your late master, Lord Edward Frampton—that, penniless yourself, you had married an extremely wealthy wife, but that wife proposed to divorce you, with excellent reasons, what would you do about it?”
“I should endeavour, sir,” replied George, “to make her change her mind.”
“By peaceful or by forcible methods?”
George looked shocked.
“You will excuse me, sir,” he said, “but a gentleman of the aristocracy would not behave like a Whitechapel coster. He would not do anything low.”
“Would he not, Georges? I wonder now. Well, perhaps you are right.”
There was a knock on the door. George went to it and opened it a discreet inch or two. A low murmured colloquy went on, and then the valet returned to Poirot.
“A note, sir.”
Poirot took it. It was from M. Caux, the Commissary of Police.
“We are about to interrogate the Comte de la Roche. The Juge d’Instruction begs that you will be present.”
“Quickly, my suit, Georges! I must hasten myself.”
A quarter of an hour later, spick and span in his brown suit, Poirot entered the Examining Magistrate’s room. M. Caux was already there, and both he and M. Carrège greeted Poirot with polite empressement.
“The affair is somewhat discouraging,” murmured M. Caux.
“It appears that the Comte arrived in Nice the day before the murder.”
“If that is true, it will settle your affair nicely for you,” responded Poirot.
M. Carrège cleared his throat.
“We must not accept this alibi without very cautious inquiry,” he declared. He struck the bell upon the table with his hand.
In another minute a tall dark man, exquisitely dressed, with a somewhat haughty cast of countenance, entered the room. So very aristocratic-looking was the Count, that it would have seemed sheer heresy even to whisper that his father had been an obscure corn chandler in Nantes—which, as a matter of fact, was the case. Looking at him, one would have been prepared to swear that innumerable ancestors of his must have perished by the guillotine in the French Revolution.
“I am here, gentlemen,” said the Count haughtily. “May I ask why you wish to see me?”
“Pray be seated, Monsieur le Comte,” said the Examining Magistrate politely. “It is the affair of the death of Madame Kettering that we are investigating.”
“The death of Madame Kettering? I do not understand.”
“You were—ahem!—acquainted with the lady, I believe, Monsieur le Comte?”
“Certainly I was acquainted with her. What has that to do with the matter?”
Sticking an eyeglass in his eye, he looked coldly round the room, his glance resting longest on Poirot, who was gazing at him with a kind of simple, innocent admiration which was most pleasing to the Count’s vanity. M. Carrège leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat.
“You do not perhaps know, Monsieur le Comte”—he paused—“that Madame Kettering was murdered?”
“Murdered? Mon Dieu, how terrible!”
The surprise and the sorrow were excellently done—so well done, indeed, as to seem wholly natural.
“Madame Kettering was strangled between Paris and Lyons,” continued M. Carrège, “and her jewels were stolen.”
“It is iniquitous!” cried the Count warmly; “the police should do something about these train bandits. Nowadays no one is safe.”
“In Madame’s handbag,” continued the Judge, “we found a letter to her from you. She had, it seemed, arranged to meet you?”
The Count shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
“Of what use are concealments,” he said frankly. “We are all men of the world. Privately and between ourselves, I admit the affair.”
“You met her in Paris and travelled down with her, I believe?” said M. Carrège.
“That was the original arrangement, but by Madame’s wish it was changed. I was to meet her at Hyères.”
“You did not meet her on the train at Gare de Lyon on the evening of the 14th?”
“On the contrary, I arrived in Nice on the morning of that day, so what you suggest is impossible.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said M. Carrège. “As a matter of form, you would perhaps give me an account of your movements during the evening and night of the 14th.”
The Count reflected for a minute.
“I dined in Monte Carlo at the Café de Paris. Afterwards I went to the Le Sporting. I won a few thousand francs,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I returned home at perhaps one o’clock.”
“Pardon me, Monsieur, but how did you return home?”
“In my own two-seater car.”
“No one was with you?”
“No one.”
“You could produce witnesses in support of this statement?”
“Doubtless many of my friends saw me there that evening. I dined alone.”
“Your servant admitted you on your return to your villa?”
“I
let myself in with my own latchkey.”
“Ah!” murmured the Magistrate.
Again he struck the bell on the table with his hand. The door opened, and a messenger appeared.
“Bring in the maid, Mason,” said M. Carrège.
“Very good, Monsieur le Juge.”
Ada Mason was brought in.
“Will you be so good, Mademoiselle, as to look at this gentleman. To the best of your ability was it he who entered your mistress’s compartment in Paris?”
The woman looked long and searchingly at the Count, who was, Poirot fancied, rather uneasy under this scrutiny.
“I could not say, sir, I am sure,” said Mason at last. “It might be and again it might not. Seeing as how I only saw his back, it’s hard to say. I rather think it was the gentleman.”
“But you are not sure?”
“No-o,” said Mason unwillingly; “n-no, I am not sure.”
“You have seen this gentleman before in Curzon Street?”
Mason shook her head.
“I should not be likely to see any visitors that come to Curzon Street,” she explained, “unless they were staying in the house.”
“Very well, that will do,” said the Examining Magistrate sharply.
Evidently he was disappointed.
“One moment,” said Poirot. “There is a question I would like to put to Mademoiselle, if I may?”
“Certainly, M. Poirot—certainly, by all means.”
Poirot addressed himself to the maid.
“What happened to the tickets?”
“The tickets, sir?”
“Yes; the tickets from London to Nice. Did you or your mistress have them?”
“The mistress had her own Pullman ticket, sir; the others were in my charge.”
“What happened to them?”
“I gave them to the conductor on the French train, sir; he said it was usual. I hope I did right, sir?”
“Oh, quite right, quite right. A mere matter of detail.”
Both M. Caux and the Examining Magistrate looked at him curiously. Mason stood uncertainly for a minute or two, and then the magistrate gave her a brief nod of dismissal, and she went out. Poirot scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it across to M. Carrège. The latter read it and his brow cleared.
“Well, gentlemen,” demanded the Count haughtily, “am I to be detained further?”
“Assuredly not, assuredly not,” M. Carrège hastened to say, with a great deal of amiability. “Everything is now cleared up as regards your own position in this affair. Naturally, in view of Madame’s letter, we were bound to question you.”