“This is a serious matter, Mademoiselle,” said the detective. “You realize how serious?”
“Certainly I do.”
“That is well,” said Poirot. “Then you understand, Mademoiselle, that no time must be lost. You will, perhaps, accompany us immediately to the office of the Examining Magistrate.”
Mirelle was taken aback. She hesitated, but, as Poirot had foreseen, she had no loophole for escape.
“Ver well,” she muttered, “I will fetch a coat.”
Left alone together, Poirot and Knighton exchanged glances.
“It is necessary to act while—how do you say it?—the iron is hot,” murmured Poirot. “She is temperamental; in an hour’s time, maybe, she will repent, and she will wish to draw back. We must prevent that at all costs.”
Mirelle reappeared, wrapped in a sand-coloured velvet wrap trimmed with leopard skin. She looked not altogether unlike a leopardess, tawny and dangerous. Her eyes still flashed with anger and determination.
They found M. Caux and the Examining Magistrate together. A few brief introductory words from Poirot, and Mademoiselle Mirelle was courteously entreated to tell her tale. This she did in much the same words as she had done to Knighton and Poirot, though with far more soberness of manner.
“This is an extraordinary story, Mademoiselle,” said M. Carrège slowly. He leant back in his chair, adjusted his pince-nez, and looked keenly and searchingly at the dancer through them.
“You wish us to believe M. Kettering actually boasted of the crime to you beforehand?”
“Yes, yes. She was too healthy, he said. If she were to die it must be an accident—he would arrange it all.”
“You are aware, Mademoiselle,” said M. Carrège sternly, “that you are making yourself out to be an accessory before the fact?”
“Me? But not the least in the world, Monsieur. Not for a moment did I take that statement seriously. Ah no indeed! I know men, Monsieur; they say many wild things. It would be an odd state of affairs if one were to take all they said au pied de la lettre.”
The Examining Magistrate raised his eyebrows.
“We are to take it, then, that you regarded M. Kettering’s threats as mere idle words? May I ask, Mademoiselle, what made you throw up your engagements in London and come out to the Riviera?”
Mirelle looked at him with melting black eyes.
“I wished to be with the man I loved,” she said simply. “Was it so unnatural?”
Poirot interpolated a question gently.
“Was it, then, at M. Kettering’s wish that you accompanied him to Nice?”
Mirelle seemed to find a little difficulty in answering this. She hesitated perceptibly before she spoke. When she did, it was with a haughty indifference of manner.
“In such matters I please myself, Monsieur,” she said.
That the answer was not an answer at all was noted by all three men. They said nothing.
“When were you first convinced that M. Kettering had murdered his wife?”
“As I tell you, Monsieur, I saw M. Kettering come out of his wife’s compartment just before the train drew in to Lyons. There was a look on his face—ah! at the moment I could not understand it—a look haunted and terrible. I shall never forget it.”
Her voice rose shrilly, and she flung out her arms in an extravagant gesture.
“Quite so,” said M. Carrège.
“Afterwards, when I found that Madame Kettering was dead when the train left Lyons, then—then I knew!”
“And still—you did not go to the police, Mademoiselle,” said the Commissary mildly.
Mirelle glanced at him superbly; she was clearly enjoying herself in the rôle she was playing.
“Shall I betray my lover?” she asked. “Ah no; do not ask a woman to do that.”
“Yet now—” hinted M. Caux.
“Now it is different. He has betrayed me! Shall I suffer that in silence? . . .”
The Examining Magistrate checked her.
“Quite so, quite so,” he murmured soothingly. “And now, Mademoiselle, perhaps you will read over the statement of what you have told us, see that it is correct, and sign it.”
Mirelle wasted no time on the document.
“Yes, yes,” she said, “it is correct.” She rose to her feet. “You require me no longer, Messieurs?”
“At present, no, Mademoiselle.”
“And Dereek will be arrested?”
“At once, Mademoiselle.”
Mirelle laughed cruelly and drew her fur draperies closer about her.
“He should have thought of this before he insulted me,” she cried.
“There is one little matter”—Poirot coughed apologetically—“just a matter of detail.”
“Yes?”
“What makes you think that Madame Kettering was dead when the train left Lyons?”
Mirelle stared.
“But she was dead.”
“Was she?”
“Yes, of course. I—”
She came to an abrupt stop. Poirot was regarding her intently, and he saw the wary look that came into her eyes.
“I have been told so. Everybody says so.”
“Oh,” said Poirot, “I was not aware that the fact had been mentioned outside the Examining Magistrate’s office.”
Mirelle appeared somewhat discomposed.
“One hears those things,” she said vaguely; “they get about. Somebody told me. I can’t remember who it was.”
She moved to the door. M. Caux sprang forward to open it for her, and as he did so, Poirot’s voice rose gently once more.
“And the jewels? Pardon, Mademoiselle. Can you tell me anything about those?”
“The jewels? What jewels?”
“The rubies of Catherine the Great. Since you hear so much, you must have heard of them.”
“I know nothing about any jewels,” said Mirelle sharply.
She went out, closing the door behind her. M. Caux came back to his chair; the Examining Magistrate sighed.
“What a fury!” he said, “but diablement chic. I wonder if she is telling the truth? I think so.”
“There is some truth in her story, certainly,” said Poirot. “We have confirmation of it from Miss Grey. She was looking down the corridor a short time before the train reached Lyons, and she saw M. Kettering go into his wife’s compartment.”
“The case against him seems quite clear,” said the Commissary, sighing: “it is a thousand pities,” he murmured.
“How do you mean?” asked Poirot.
“It has been the ambition of my life to lay the Comte de la Roche by the heels. This time, ma foi, I thought we had got him. This other—it is not nearly so satisfactory.”
M. Carrège rubbed his nose.
“If anything goes wrong,” he observed cautiously, “it will be most awkward. M. Kettering is of the aristocracy. It will get into the newspapers. If we have made a mistake—” He shrugged his shoulders forebodingly.
“The jewels now,” said the Commissary, “what do you think he has done with them?”
“He took them for a plant, of course,” said M. Carrège; “they must have been a great inconvenience to him and very awkward to dispose of.”
Poirot smiled.
“I have an idea of my own about the jewels. Tell me, Messieurs, what do you know of a man called the Marquis?”
The Commissary leant forward excitedly.
“The Marquis,” he said, “the Marquis? Do you think he is mixed up in this affair, M. Poirot?”
“I ask you what you know of him.”
The Commissary made an expressive grimace.
“Not as much as we should like to,” he observed ruefully. “He works behind the scenes, you understand. He has underlings who do his dirty work for him. But he is someone high up. That we are sure of. He does not come from the criminal classes.”
“A Frenchman?”
“Y-es. At least we believe so. But we are not sure. He has worked in France
, in England, in America. There was a series of robberies in Switzerland last autumn which were laid at his door. By all accounts he is a grand seigneur, speaking French and English with equal perfection, and his origin is a mystery.”
Poirot nodded and rose to take his departure.
“Can you tell us nothing more, M. Poirot?” urged the Commissary.
“At present, no,” said Poirot, “but I may have news awaiting me at my hotel.”
M. Carrège looked uncomfortable. “If the Marquis is concerned in this—” he began, and then stopped.
“It upsets our ideas,” complained M. Caux.
“It does not upset mine,” said Poirot. “On the contrary, I think it agrees with them very well. Au revoir, Messieurs; if news of any importance comes to me I will communicate it to you immediately.”
He walked back to his hotel with a grave face. In his absence, a telegram had come for him. Taking a paper cutter from his pocket, he slit it open. It was a long telegram, and he read it over twice before slowly putting it in his pocket. Upstairs, George was awaiting his master.
“I am fatigued, Georges, much fatigued. Will you order for me a small pot of chocolate?”
The chocolate was duly ordered and brought, and George set it at the little table at his master’s elbow. As he was preparing to retire, Poirot spoke:
“I believe, Georges, that you have a good knowledge of the English aristocracy?” murmured Poirot.
George smiled apologetically.
“I think that I might say that I have, sir,” he replied.
“I suppose that it is your opinion, Georges, that criminals are invariably drawn from the lower orders?”
“Not always, sir. There was great trouble with one of the Duke of Devize’s younger sons. He left Eton under a cloud, and after that he caused great anxiety on several occasions. The police would not accept the view that it was kleptomania. A very clever young gentleman, sir, but vicious through and through, if you take my meaning. His Grace shipped him to Australia, and I hear he was convicted out there under another name. Very odd, sir, but there it is. The young gentleman, I need hardly say, was not in want financially.”
Poirot nodded his head slowly.
“Love of excitement,” he murmured, “and a little kink in the brain somewhere. I wonder now—”
He drew out the telegram from his pocket and read it again.
“Then there was Lady Mary Fox’s daughter,” continued the valet in a mood of reminiscence. “Swindled tradespeople something shocking, she did. Very worrying to the best families, if I may say so, and there are many other queer cases I could mention.”
“You have a wide experience, Georges,” murmured Poirot. “I often wonder having lived so exclusively with titled families that you demean yourself by coming as a valet to me. I put it down to love of excitement on your part.”
“Not exactly, sir,” said George. “I happened to see in Society Snippets that you had been received at Buckingham Palace. That was just when I was looking for a new situation. His Majesty, so it said, had been most gracious and friendly and thought very highly of your abilities.”
“Ah,” said Poirot, “one always likes to know the reason for things.”
He remained in thought for a few moments and then said:
“You rang up Mademoiselle Papopolous?”
“Yes, sir; she and her father will be pleased to dine with you tonight.”
“Ah,” said Poirot thoughtfully. He drank off his chocolate, set the cup and saucer neatly in the middle of the tray, and spoke gently, more to himself than to the valet.
“The squirrel, my good Georges, collects nuts. He stores them up in the autumn so that they may be of advantage to him later. To make a success of humanity, Georges, we must profit by the lessons of those below us in the animal kingdom. I have always done so. I have been the cat, watching the mouse hole. I have been the good dog following up the scent, and not taking my nose from the trail. And also, my good Georges, I have been the squirrel. I have stored away the little fact here, the little fact there. I go now to my store and I take out one particular nut, a nut that I stored away—let me see, seventeen years ago. You follow me, Georges?”
“I should hardly have thought, sir,” said George, “that nuts would have kept so long as that, though I know one can do wonders with preserving bottles.”
Poirot looked at him and smiled.
Twenty-eight
POIROT PLAYS THE SQUIRREL
Poirot started to keep his dinner appointment with a margin of three-quarters of an hour to spare. He had an object in this. The car took him, not straight to Monte Carlo, but to Lady Tamplin’s house at Cap Martin, where he asked for Miss Grey. The ladies were dressing and Poirot was shown into a small salon to wait, and here, after a lapse of three or four minutes, Lenox Tamplin came to him.
“Katherine is not quite ready yet,” she said. “Can I give her a message, or would you rather wait until she comes down?”
Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He was a minute or two in replying, as though something of great weight hung upon his decision. Apparently the answer to such a simple question mattered.
“No,” he said at last, “No, I do not think it is necessary that I should wait to see Mademoiselle Katherine. I think perhaps, that it is better that I should not. These things are sometimes difficult.”
Lenox waited politely, her eyebrows slightly raised.
“I have a piece of news,” continued Poirot. “You will, perhaps, tell your friend. M. Kettering was arrested tonight for the murder of his wife.”
“You want me to tell Katherine that?” asked Lenox. She breathed rather hard, as though she had been running; her face, Poirot thought, looked white and strained—rather noticeably so.
“If you please, Mademoiselle.”
“Why?” said Lenox. “Do you think Katherine will be upset? Do you think she cares?”
“I don’t know, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot. “See, I admit it frankly. As a rule I know everything, but in this case, I—well, I do not. You, perhaps, know better than I do.”
“Yes,” said Lenox, “I know—but I am not going to tell you all the same.”
She paused for a minute or two, her dark brows drawn together in a frown.
“You believe he did it?” she said abruptly.
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“The police say so.”
“Ah,” said Lenox, “hedging, are you? So there is something to hedge about.”
Again she was silent, frowning. Poirot said gently:
“You have known Derek Kettering a long time, have you not?”
“Off and on ever since I was a kid,” said Lenox gruffly. Poirot nodded his head several times without speaking.
With one of her brusque movements Lenox drew forward a chair and sat down on it, her elbows on the table and her face supported by her hands. Sitting thus, she looked directly across the table at Poirot.
“What have they got to go on?” she demanded. “Motive, I suppose. Probably came into money at her death.”
“He came into two million.”
“And if she had not died he would have been ruined?”
“Yes.”
“But there must have been more than that,” persisted Lenox. “He travelled by the same train, I know, but—that would not be enough to go on by itself.”
“A cigarette case with the letter ‘K’ on it which did not belong to Mrs. Kettering was found in her carriage, and he was seen by two people entering and leaving the compartment just before the train got into Lyons.”
“What two people?”
“Your friend Miss Grey was one of them. The other was Mademoiselle Mirelle, the dancer.”
“And he, Derek, what has he got to say about it?” demanded Lenox sharply.
“He denies having entered his wife’s compartment at all,” said Poirot.
“Fool!” said Lenox crisply, frowning. “Just before Lyons, you say? Does nobody know when—when she di
ed?”
“The doctors’ evidence necessarily cannot be very definite,” said Poirot; “they are inclined to think that death was unlikely to have occurred after leaving Lyons. And we know this much, that a few moments after leaving Lyons Mrs. Kettering was dead.”
“How do you know that?”
Poirot was smiling rather oddly to himself.
“Someone else went into her compartment and found her dead.”
“And they did not rouse the train?”
“No.”
“Why was that?”
“Doubtless they had their reasons.”
Lenox looked at him sharply.
“Do you know the reason?”
“I think so—yes.”
Lenox sat still turning things over in her mind. Poirot watched her in silence. At last she looked up. A soft colour had come into her cheeks and her eyes were shining.
“You think someone on the train must have killed her, but that need not be so at all. What is to stop anyone swinging themselves on to the train when it stopped at Lyons? They could go straight to her compartment, strangle her, and take the rubies and drop off the train again without anyone being the wiser. She may have been actually killed while the train was in Lyons station. Then she would have been alive when Derek went in, and dead when the other person found her.”
Poirot leant back in his chair. He drew a deep breath. He looked across at the girl and nodded his head three times, then he heaved a sigh.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “what you have said there is very just—very true. I was struggling in the darkness, and you have shown me a light. There was a point that puzzled me and you have made it plain.”
He got up.
“And Derek?” said Lenox.
“Who knows?” said Poirot, with a shrug of his shoulders. “But I will tell you this, Mademoiselle. I am not satisfied; no, I, Hercule Poirot, am not yet satisfied. It may be that this very night I shall learn something more. At least, I go to try.”
“You are meeting someone?”
“Yes.”
“Someone who knows something?”
“Someone who might know something. In these matters one must leave no stone unturned. Au revoir, Mademoiselle.”
Lenox accompanied him to the door.