He looked round.
“Yes, yes, the pince-nez, the telephone call, the short woman who called for the gold box in Paris. Ellis, of course, Jane Wilkinson’s maid. I followed every step of it—the candles—the dim light—Mrs. Van Dusen—everything. I knew!”
Thirty
THE STORY
He looked round at us.
“Come, my friends,” he said gently. “Let me tell you the real story of what happened that night.
“Carlotta Adams leaves her flat at seven o’clock. From there she takes a taxi and goes to the Piccadilly Palace.”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“To the Piccadilly Palace. Earlier in the day she has taken a room there as Mrs. Van Dusen. She wears a pair of strong glasses which, as we all know, alters the appearance very much. As I say, she books a room, saying that she is going by the night boat train to Liverpool and that her luggage has gone on. At eight thirty Lady Edgware arrives and asks for her. She is shown up to her room. There they change clothes. Dressed in a fair wig, a white taffeta dress and ermine wrap, Carlotta Adams and not Jane Wilkinson leaves the hotel and drives to Chiswick. Yes, yes, it is perfectly possible. I have been to the house in the evening. The dinner table is lit only with candles, the lamps are dim, no one there knows Jane Wilkinson very well. There is the golden hair, the well-known husky voice and manner. Oh! it was quite easy. And if it had not been successful—if someone had spotted the fake—well, that was all arranged for, too. Lady Edgware, wearing a dark wig, Carlotta’s clothes and the pince-nez, pays her bill, has her suitcase put on a taxi and drives to Euston. She removes the dark wig in the lavatory, she puts her suitcase in the cloak room. Before going to Regent Gate she rings up Chiswick and asks to speak to Lady Edgware. This has been arranged between them. If all has gone well and Carlotta has not been spotted, she is to answer simply—‘That’s right.’ I need hardly say Miss Adams was ignorant of the real reason for the telephone call. Having heard the words, Lady Edgware goes ahead. She goes to Regent Gate, asks for Lord Edgware, proclaims her individuality, and goes into the library. And commits the first murder. Of course she did not know that Miss Carroll was watching her from above. As far as she is aware it will be the butler’s word (and he has never seen her, remember—and also she wears a hat which shields her from his gaze) against the word of twelve well-known and distinguished people.
“She leaves the house, returns to Euston, changes from fair to dark again and picks up her suitcase. She has now to put in time till Carlotta Adams returns from Chiswick. They have agreed as to the approximate time. She goes to the Corner House, occasionally glancing at her watch, for the time passes slowly. Then she prepares for the second murder. She puts the small gold box she has ordered from Paris in Carlotta Adams’ bag which, of course, she is carrying. Perhaps it is then she finds the letter. Perhaps it was earlier. Anyway, as soon as she sees the address, she scents danger. She opens it—her suspicions are justified.
“Perhaps her first impulse is to destroy the letter altogether. But she soon sees a better way. By removing one page of the letter it reads like an accusation of Ronald Marsh—a man who had a powerful motive for the crime. Even if Ronald has an alibi, it will still read as an accusation of a man so long as she tears off the s of ‘she.’ So that is what she does. Then replaces it in the envelope and the envelope back in the bag.
“Then, the time having come, she walks in the direction of the Savoy Hotel. As soon as she sees the car pass, with (presumably) herself inside, she quickens her pace, enters at the same time and goes straight up the stairs. She is inconspicuously dressed in black. It is unlikely that anyone will notice her.
“Upstairs she goes to her room. Carlotta Adams has just reached it. The maid has been told to go to bed—a perfectly usual proceeding. They again change clothes and then, I fancy, Lady Edgware suggests a little drink—to celebrate. In that drink is the veronal. She congratulates her victim, says she will send her the cheque tomorrow. Carlotta Adams goes home. She is very sleepy—tries to ring up a friend—possibly M. Martin or Captain Marsh, for both have Victoria numbers—but gives it up. She is too tried. The veronal is beginning to work. She goes to bed—and she never wakes again. The second crime has been carried through successfully.
“Now for the third crime. It is at a luncheon party. Sir Montagu Corner makes a reference to a conversation he had with Lady Edgware on the night of the murder. That is easy. But Nemesis comes upon her later. There is a mention of the ‘judgement of Paris’ and she takes Paris to be the only Paris she knows—the Paris of fashion and frills!
“But opposite her is sitting a young man who was at the dinner at Chiswick—a young man who heard the Lady Edgware of that night discussing Homer and Greek civilization generally. Carlotta Adams was a cultured well-read girl. He cannot understand. He stares. And suddenly it comes to him. This is not the same woman. He is terribly upset. He is not sure of himself. He must have advice. He thinks of me. He speaks to Hastings.
“But the lady overheard him. She is quick enough and shrewd enough to realize that in some way or other she has given herself away. She heard Hastings say that I will not be in till five. At twenty to five she goes to Ross’s maisonette. He opens the door, is very surprised to see her, but it does not occur to him to be afraid. A strong able-bodied young man is not afraid of a woman. He goes with her into the dining room. She pours out some story to him. Perhaps she goes on her knees and flings her arms around his neck. And then, swift and sure, she strikes—as before. Perhaps he gives a choked cry—no more. He, too, is silenced.”
There was a silence. Then Japp spoke hoarsely.
“You mean—she did it all the time?”
Poirot bowed his head.
“But why, if he was willing to give her a divorce?”
“Because the Duke of Merton is a pillar of the Anglo-Catholics. Because he would not dream of marrying a woman whose husband was alive. He is a young man of fanatical principles. As a widow, she was pretty certain to be able to marry him. Doubtless she had tentatively suggested divorce, but he had not risen to the bait.”
“Then why send you to Lord Edgware?”
“Ah! parbleu!” Poirot, from having been very correct and English, suddenly relapsed into his natural self. “To pull the cotton-wool over my eyes! To make me a witness to the fact that there was not motive for the murder! Yes, she dared to make me, Hercule Poirot, her cat’s-paw! Ma foi, she succeeded, too! Oh, that strange brain, childlike and cunning. She can act! How well she acted surprise at being told of the letter her husband had written her which she swore she had never received. Did she feel the slightest pang of remorse for any of her three crimes? I can swear she did not.”
“I told you what she was like,” cried Bryan Martin. “I told you. I knew she was going to kill him. I felt it. And I was afraid that somehow she’d get away with it. She’s clever—devilish clever in a kind of half-wit way. And I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to hang for it.”
His face was scarlet. His voice came thickly.
“Now, now,” said Jenny Driver.
She spoke exactly as I have heard nursemaids speak to a small child in the park.
“And the gold box with the initial D, and Paris November inside?” said Japp.
“She ordered that by letter and sent Ellis, her maid, to fetch it. Naturally Ellis just called for a parcel which she paid for. She had no idea what was inside. Also, Lady Edgware borrowed a pair of Ellis’s pince-nez to help in the Van Dusen impersonation. She forgot about them and left them in Carlotta Adams’ handbag—her one mistake.
“Oh! it came to me—it all came to me as I stood in the middle of the road. It was not polite what the bus driver said to me, but it was worth it. Ellis! Ellis’s pince-nez. Ellis calling for the box in Paris. Ellis and therefore Jane Wilkinson. Very possibly she borrowed something else from Ellis besides des pince-nez.”
“What?”
“A corn knife….”
I sh
ivered.
There was a momentary silence.
Then Japp said with a strange reliance in the answer.
“M. Poirot. Is this true?”
“It is true, mon ami.”
Then Bryan Martin spoke, and his words were, I thought, very typical of him.
“But look here,” he said peevishly. “What about me? Why bring me here today? Why nearly frighten me to death?”
Poirot looked at him coldly.
“To punish you, Monsieur, for being impertinent! How dare you try and make the games with Hercule Poirot?”
And then Jenny Driver laughed. She laughed and laughed.
“Serve you right, Bryan,” she said at last.
She turned to Poirot.
“I’m glad as I can be that it wasn’t Ronnie Marsh,” she said. “I’ve always liked him. And I’m glad, glad, glad that Carlotta’s death won’t go unpunished! As for Bryan here, well I’ll tell you something, M. Poirot. I’m going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He’s going to marry and stick to me.”
Poirot looked at her—looked at her determined chin—and at her flaming hair.
“It is very possible, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that that may be so. I said that you had sufficient nerve for anything. Even to marry a film ‘star.’”
Thirty-one
A HUMAN DOCUMENT
A day or two after that I was suddenly recalled to the Argentine. So it happened that I never saw Jane Wilkinson again and only read in the paper of her trial and condemnation. Unexpectedly, at least unexpectedly to me, she went completely to pieces when charged with the truth. So long as she was able to be proud of her cleverness and act her part she made no mistakes, but once her self-confidence failed her, owing to someone having found her out, she was as incapable as a child would be of keeping up a deception. Cross-examined, she went completely to pieces.
So, as I said before, that luncheon party was the last time I saw Jane Wilkinson. But when I think of her, I always see her the same way—standing in her room at the Savoy trying on expensive black clothes with a serious absorbed face. I am convinced that that was no pose. She was being completely natural. Her plan had succeeded and therefore she had no further qualms and doubts. Neither do I think that she ever suffered one pang of remorse for the three crimes she had committed.
I reproduce here a document which she had directed was to be sent to Poirot after her death. It is, I think, typical of that very lovely and completely conscienceless lady.
Dear M. Poirot, I have been thinking things over and I feel that I should like to write this for you. I know that you sometimes publish reports of your cases. I don’t really think that you’ve ever published a document by the person themselves. I feel, too, that I would like everyone to know just exactly how I did it all. I still think it was all very well-planned. If it hadn’t been for you everything would have been quite all right. I’ve felt rather bitter about that, but I suppose you couldn’t help it. I’m sure, if I send you this, you’ll give it plenty of prominence. You will, won’t you? I should like to be remembered. And I do think I am really a unique person. Everybody here seems to think so.
It began in America when I got to know Merton. I saw at once that if only I were a widow he would marry me. Unfortunately, he has got a queer sort of prejudice against divorce. I tried to overcome it but it was no good, and I had to be careful, because he was a very kinky sort of person.
I soon realized that my husband simply had got to die, but I didn’t know how to set about it. You can imagine things like that ever so much better in the States. I thought and I thought—but I couldn’t see how to arrange it. And then, suddenly, I saw Carlotta Adams do her imitation of me and at once I began to see a way. With her help I could get an alibi. That same evening I saw you, and it suddenly struck me that it would be a good idea to send you to my husband to ask him for a divorce. At the same time I would go about talking of killing my husband, because I’ve always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. I’ve often done it over contracts. And it’s also a good thing to seem stupider than you are. At my second meeting with Carlotta Adams I broached the idea. I said it was a bet, and she fell for it at once. She was to pretend to be me at some party and if she got away with it she was to have ten thousand dollars. She was very enthusiastic and several of the ideas were hers—about changing clothes and all that. You see, we couldn’t do it here because of Ellis and we couldn’t do it at her place because of her maid. She, of course, didn’t see why we couldn’t. It was a little awkward. I just said “No.” She thought me a little stupid about it, but she gave in and we thought of the hotel plan. I took a pair of Ellis’s pince-nez.
Of course I realized quite soon that she would have to be got out of the way too. It was a pity, but after all, those imitations of hers really were very impertinent. If mine hadn’t happened to suit me I’d have been angry about it. I had some veronal myself, though I hardly ever take it, so that was quite easy. And then I had quite a brainwave. You see, it would be so much better if it could seem that she was in the habit of taking it. I ordered a box—the duplicate of one I’d been given and I had her initials put on it and an inscription inside. I thought if I put some odd initial and Paris, November, inside it, it would make it all much more difficult. I wrote for the box from the Ritz when I was in there lunching one day. And I sent Ellis over to fetch it. She didn’t know what it was, of course.
Everything went off quite well on the night. I took one of Ellis’s corn knives, while she was over in Paris, because it was nice and sharp. She never noticed because I put it back afterwards. It was a doctor in San Francisco who showed me just where to stick it in. He’d been talking about lumbar and cistern punctures, and he said one had to be very careful, otherwise one went through the cistertia magna and into the medulla oblongata where all the vital nerve centres are, and that that would cause immediate death. I made him show me the exact place several times. I thought it might perhaps come in useful one day. I told him I wanted to use the idea in a film.
It was very dishonourable of Carlotta Adams to write to her sister. She’d promised me to tell nobody. I do think it was clever of me to see what a good thing it would be to tear off that one page and leave he instead of she. I thought of that all by myself. I think I’m more proud of that than anything else. Everyone always says I haven’t got brains—but I think it needed real brains to think of that.
I’d thought things over very carefully and I did exactly what I’d planned when the Scotland Yard man came. I rather enjoyed that part of it. I had thought, perhaps, that he’d really arrest me. I felt quite safe, because they’d have to believe all those people at the dinner and I didn’t see how they could find out about me and Carlotta changing clothes.
After that I felt so happy and contented. My luck had held and I really felt everything was going to go right. The old Duchess was beastly to me, but Merton was sweet. He wanted to marry me as soon as possible and hadn’t the least suspicion.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as I was those few weeks. My husband’s nephew being arrested made me feel just as safe as anything. And I was more proud of myself than ever for having thought of tearing that page out of Carlotta Adams’ letter.
The Donald Ross business was just sheer bad luck. I’m not quite sure now just how it was he spotted me. Something about Paris being a person and not a place. Even now I don’t know who Paris was—and I think it’s a silly name for a man anyway.
It’s curious how, when luck starts going against you, it keeps on going. I had to do something about Donald Ross quickly, and that did go all right. It mightn’t have, because I hadn’t time to be clever or think of making an alibi. I did think I was safe after that.
Of course Ellis told me you had sent for her and questioned her, but I gathered it was all something to do with Bryan Marti
n. I couldn’t think what you were driving at. You didn’t ask her whether she had called for the parcel in Paris. I suppose you thought if she repeated that to me I should smell a rat. As it was, it came as a complete surprise. I couldn’t believe it. It was just uncanny the way you seemed to know everything I’d done.
I just felt it was no good. You can’t fight against luck. It was bad luck, wasn’t it? I wonder if you are ever sorry for what you did. After all, I only wanted to be happy in my own way. And if it hadn’t been for me you would never have had anything to do with the case. I never thought you’d be so horribly clever. You didn’t look clever.
It’s funny, but I haven’t lost my looks a bit. In spite of all that dreadful trial and the horrid things that man on the other side said to me, and the way he battered me with questions.
I look much paler and thinner, but it suits me somehow. They all say I’m wonderfully brave. They don’t hang you in public anymore, do they? I think that’s a pity.
I’m sure there’s never been a murderess like me before.
I suppose I must say good-bye now. It’s very queer. I don’t seem to realize things a bit. I’m going to see the chaplain tomorrow.
Yours forgivingly (because I must forgive my enemies, mustn’t I?).
Jane Wilkinson.
P.S. Do you think they will put me in Madame Tussauds?
* * *
The
Agatha Christie
Collection
THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES
Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express