Henrietta said slowly:
“So you think I killed John?”
“When Dr. Christow was dying, he said: ‘Henrietta.’”
“And you think that that was an accusation? It was not.”
“What was it then?”
Henrietta stretched out her foot and traced a pattern with the toe. She said in a low voice:
“Aren’t you forgetting—what I told you not very long ago? I mean—the terms we were on?”
“Ah, yes—he was your lover—and so, as he is dying, he says: ‘Henrietta.’ That is very touching.”
She turned blazing eyes upon him.
“Must you sneer?”
“I am not sneering. But I do not like being lied to—and that, I think, is what you are trying to do.”
Henrietta said quietly:
“I have told you that I am not very truthful—but when John said: ‘Henrietta’ he was not accusing me of having murdered him. Can’t you understand that people of my kind, who make things, are quite incapable of taking life? I don’t kill people, M. Poirot. I couldn’t kill anyone. That’s the plain stark truth. You suspect me simply because my name was murmured by a dying man who hardly knew what he was saying.”
“Dr. Christow knew perfectly what he was saying. His voice was as alive and conscious as that of a doctor doing a vital operation who says sharply and urgently: ‘Nurse, the forceps, please.’”
“But—” She seemed at a loss, taken aback. Hercule Poirot went on rapidly:
“And it is not just on account of what Dr. Christow said when he was dying. I do not believe for one moment that you are capable of premeditated murder—that, no. But you might have fired that shot in a sudden moment of fierce resentment—and if so—if so, Mademoiselle, you have the creative imagination and ability to cover your tracks.”
Henrietta got up. She stood for a moment, pale and shaken, looking at him. She said with a sudden, rueful smile:
“And I thought you liked me.”
Hercule Poirot sighed. He said sadly:
“That is what is so unfortunate for me. I do.”
Nineteen
I
When Henrietta had left him, Poirot sat on until he saw below him Inspector Grange walk past the pool with a resolute, easy stride and take the path on past the pavilion.
The inspector was walking in a purposeful way.
He must be going, therefore, either to Resthaven or to Dovecotes. Poirot wondered which.
He got up and retraced his steps along the way he had come. If Inspector Grange was coming to see him, he was interested to hear what the inspector had to say.
But when he got back to Resthaven there was no sign of a visitor. Poirot looked thoughtfully up the lane in the direction of Dovecotes. Veronica Cray had not, he knew, gone back to London.
He found his curiosity rising about Veronica Cray. The pale, shining fox furs, the heaped boxes of matches, that sudden imperfectly explained invasion on the Saturday night, and finally Henrietta Savernake’s revelations about John Christow and Veronica.
It was, he thought, an interesting pattern. Yes, that was how he saw it: a pattern.
A design of intermingled emotions and the clash of personalities. A strange involved design, with dark threads of hate and desire running through it.
Had Gerda Christow shot her husband? Or was it not quite so simple as that?
He thought of his conversation with Henrietta and decided that it was not so simple.
Henrietta had jumped to the conclusion that he suspected her of the murder, but actually he had not gone nearly as far as that in his mind. No further indeed than the belief that Henrietta knew something. Knew something or was concealing something—which?
He shook his head, dissatisfied.
The scene by the pool. A set scene. A stage scene.
Staged by whom? Staged for whom?
The answer to the second question was, he strongly suspected, Hercule Poirot. He had thought so at the time. But he had thought then that it was an impertinence—a joke.
It was still an impertinence—but not a joke.
And the answer to the first question?
He shook his head. He did not know. He had not the least idea.
But he half-closed his eyes and conjured them up—all of them—seeing them clearly in his mind’s eye. Sir Henry, upright, responsible, trusted administrator of Empire. Lady Angkatell, shadowy, elusive, unexpectedly and bewilderingly charming, with that deadly power of inconsequent suggestion. Henrietta Savernake, who had loved John Christow better than she loved herself. The gentle and negative Edward Angkatell. The dark, positive girl called Midge Hardcastle. The dazed, bewildered face of Gerda Christow clasping a revolver in her hand. The offended adolescent personality of David Angkatell.
There they all were, caught and held in the meshes of the law. Bound together for a little while in the relentless aftermath of sudden and violent death. Each of them had their own tragedy and meaning, their own story.
And somewhere in that interplay of characters and emotions lay the truth.
To Hercule Poirot there was only one thing more fascinating than the study of human beings, and that was the pursuit of truth.
He meant to know the truth of John Christow’s death.
II
“But of course, Inspector,” said Veronica. “I’m only too anxious to help you.”
“Thank you, Miss Cray.”
Veronica Cray was not, somehow, at all what the inspector had imagined.
He had been prepared for glamour, for artificiality, even possibly for heroics. He would not have been at all surprised if she had put on an act of some kind.
In fact, she was, he shrewdly suspected, putting on an act. But it was not the kind of act he had expected.
There was no overdone feminine charm—glamour was not stressed.
Instead he felt that he was sitting opposite to an exceedingly good-looking and expensively dressed woman who was also a good businesswoman. Veronica Cray, he thought, was no fool.
“We just want a clear statement, Miss Cray. You came over to The Hollow on Saturday evening?”
“Yes, I’d run out of matches. One forgets how important these things are in the country.”
“You went all the way to The Hollow? Why not to your next-door neighbour, M. Poirot?”
She smiled—a superb, confident camera smile.
“I didn’t know who my next-door neighbour was—otherwise I should have. I just thought he was some little foreigner and I thought, you know, he might become a bore—living so near.”
“Yes,” thought Grange, “quite plausible.” She’d worked that one out ready for the occasion.
“You got your matches,” he said. “And you recognized an old friend in Dr. Christow, I understand?”
She nodded.
“Poor John. Yes, I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years.”
“Really?” There was polite disbelief in the inspector’s tone.
“Really.” Her tone was firmly assertive.
“You were pleased to see him?”
“Very pleased. It’s always delightful, don’t you think, Inspector, to come across an old friend?”
“It can be on some occasions.”
Veronica Cray went on without waiting for further questioning:
“John saw me home. You’ll want to know if he said anything that could have a bearing on the tragedy, and I’ve been thinking over our conversation very carefully—but really there wasn’t a pointer of any kind.”
“What did you talk about, Miss Cray?”
“Old days. ‘Do you remember this, that and the other?’” She smiled pensively. “We had known each other in the South of France. John had really changed very little—older, of course, and more assured. I gather he was quite well-known in his profession. He didn’t talk about his personal life at all. I just got the impression that his married life wasn’t perhaps frightfully happy—but it was only the vaguest impression. I suppose his wife
, poor thing, was one of those dim, jealous women—probably always making a fuss about his better-looking lady patients.”
“No,” said Grange. “She doesn’t really seem to have been that way.”
Veronica said quickly:
“You mean—it was all underneath? Yes—yes, I can see that that would be far more dangerous.”
“I see you think Mrs. Christow shot him, Miss Cray?”
“I oughtn’t to have said that. One mustn’t comment—is that it—before a trial? I’m extremely sorry, Inspector. It was just that my maid told me she’d been found actually standing over the body with the revolver still in her hand. You know how in these quiet country places everything gets so exaggerated and servants do pass things on.”
“Servants can be very useful sometimes, Miss Cray.”
“Yes, I suppose you get a lot of your information that way?”
Grange went on stolidly:
“It’s a question, of course, of who had a motive—”
He paused. Veronica said with a faint, rueful smile:
“And a wife is always the first suspect? How cynical! But there’s usually what’s called ‘the other woman.’ I suppose she might be considered to have a motive too?”
“You think there was another woman in Dr. Christow’s life?”
“Well—yes, I did rather imagine there might be. One just gets an impression, you know.”
“Impressions can be very helpful sometimes,” said Grange.
“I rather imagined—from what he said—that that sculptress woman was, well, a very close friend. But I expect you know all about that already?”
“We have to look into all these things, of course.”
Inspector Grange’s voice was strictly noncommittal, but he saw, without appearing to see, a quick, spiteful flash of satisfaction in those large blue eyes.
He said, making the question very official:
“Dr. Christow saw you home, you say. What time was it when you said good night to him?”
“Do you know, I really can’t remember! We talked for some time, I do know that. It must have been quite late.”
“He came in?”
“Yes, I gave him a drink.”
“I see. I imagined your conversation might have taken place in the—er—pavilion by the swimming pool.”
He saw her eyelids flicker. There was hardly a moment’s hesitation before she said:
“You really are a detective, aren’t you? Yes, we sat there and smoked and talked for some time. How did you know?”
Her face bore the pleased, eager expression of a child asking to be shown a clever trick.
“You left your furs behind there, Miss Cray.” He added just without emphasis: “And the matches.”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Dr. Christow returned to The Hollow at 3 a.m.,” announced the inspector, again without emphasis.
“Was it really as late as that?” Veronica sounded quite amazed.
“Yes, it was, Miss Cray.”
“Of course, we had so much to talk over—not having seen each other for so many years.”
“Are you sure it was quite so long since you had seen Dr. Christow?”
“I’ve just told you I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years.”
“Are you quite sure you’re not making a mistake? I’ve got the impression you might have been seeing quite a lot of him.”
“What on earth makes you think that?”
“Well, this note for one thing.” Inspector Grange took out a letter from his pocket, glanced down at it, cleared his throat and read:
Please come over this morning. I must see you.
Veronica.
“Ye-es.” She smiled. “It is a little peremptory, perhaps. I’m afraid Hollywood makes one—well, rather arrogant.”
“Dr. Christow came over to your house the following morning in answer to that summons. You had a quarrel. Would you care to tell me, Miss Cray, what that quarrel was about?”
The inspector had unmasked his batteries. He was quick to seize the flash of anger, the ill-tempered tightening of the lips. She snapped out:
“We didn’t quarrel.”
“Oh, yes, you did, Miss Cray. Your last words were: ‘I think I hate you more than I believed I could hate anyone.’”
She was silent now. He could feel her thinking—thinking quickly and warily. Some women might have rushed into speech. But Veronica Cray was too clever for that.
She shrugged her shoulders and said lightly:
“I see. More servants’ tales. My little maid has rather a lively imagination. There are different ways of saying things, you know. I can assure you that I wasn’t being melodramatic. It was really a mildly flirtatious remark. We had been sparring together.”
“The words were not intended to be taken seriously?”
“Certainly not. And I can assure you, Inspector, that it was fifteen years since I had last seen John Christow. You can verify that for yourself.”
She was poised again, detached, sure of herself.
Grange did not argue or pursue the subject. He got up.
“That’s all for the moment, Miss Cray,” he said pleasantly.
He went out of Dovecotes and down the lane, and turned in at the gate of Resthaven.
III
Hercule Poirot stared at the inspector in the utmost surprise. He repeated incredulously:
“The revolver that Gerda Christow was holding and which was subsequently dropped into the pool was not the revolver that fired the fatal shot? But that is extraordinary.”
“Exactly, M. Poirot. Put bluntly, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Poirot murmured softly:
“No, it does not make sense. But all the same, Inspector, it has got to make sense, eh?”
The inspector sighed heavily: “That’s just it, M. Poirot. We’ve got to find some way that it does make sense—but at the moment I can’t see it. The truth is that we shan’t get much further until we’ve found the gun that was used. It came from Sir Henry’s collection all right—at least, there’s one missing—and that means that the whole thing is still tied up with The Hollow.”
“Yes,” murmured Poirot. “It is still tied up with The Hollow.”
“It seemed a simple, straightforward business,” went on the inspector. “Well, it isn’t so simple or so straightforward.”
“No,” said Poirot, “it is not simple.”
“We’ve got to admit the possibility that the thing was a frame-up—that’s to say that it was all set to implicate Gerda Christow. But if that was so, why not leave the right revolver lying by the body for her to pick up?”
“She might not have picked it up.”
“That’s true, but even if she didn’t, so long as nobody else’s fingerprints were on the gun—that’s to say if it was wiped after use—she would probably have been suspected all right. And that’s what the murderer wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?”
Grange stared.
“Well, if you’d done a murder, you’d want to plant it good and quick on someone else, wouldn’t you? That would be a murderer’s normal reaction.”
“Ye-es,” said Poirot. “But then perhaps we have here a rather unusual type of murderer. It is possible that that is the solution of our problem.”
“What is the solution?”
Poirot said thoughtfully:
“An unusual type of murderer.”
Inspector Grange stared at him curiously. He said:
“But then—what was the murderer’s idea? What was he or she getting at?”
Poirot spread out his hands with a sigh.
“I have no idea—I have no idea at all. But it seems to me—dimly—”
“Yes?”
“That the murderer is someone who wanted to kill John Christow but who did not want to implicate Gerda Christow.”
“H’h! Actually, we suspected her right away.”
“Ah, yes, but it was only a matter of time before
the facts about the gun came to light, and that was bound to give a new angle. In the interval the murderer has had time—” Poirot came to a full stop.
“Time to do what?”
“Ah, mom ami, there you have me. Again I have to say I do not know.”
Inspector Grange took a turn or two up and down the room. Then he stopped and came to a stand in front of Poirot.
“I’ve come to you this afternoon, M. Poirot, for two reasons. One is because I know—it’s pretty well known in the Force—that you’re a man of wide experience who’s done some very tricky work on this type of problem. That’s reason number one. But there’s another reason. You were there. You were an eyewitness. You saw what happened.”
Poirot nodded.
“Yes, I saw what happened—but the eyes, Inspector Grange, are very unreliable witnesses.”
“What do you mean, M. Poirot?”
“The eyes see, sometimes, what they are meant to see.”
“You think that it was planned out beforehand?”
“I suspect it. It was exactly, you understand, like a stage scene. What I saw was clear enough. A man who had just been shot and the woman who had shot him holding in her hand the gun she had just used. That is what I saw, and already we know that in one particular the picture is wrong. That gun had not been used to shoot John Christow.”
“Hm!” The inspector pulled his drooping moustache firmly downwards. “What you are getting at is that some of the other particulars of the picture may be wrong too?”
Poirot nodded. He said:
“There were three other people present—three people who had apparently just arrived on the scene. But that may not be true either. The pool is surrounded by a thick grove of young chestnuts. From the pool five paths lead away, one to the house, one up to the woods, one up to the flower walk, one down from the pool to the farm and one to the lane here.
“Of those three people, each one came along a different path, Edward Angkatell from the woods above, Lady Angkatell up from the farm, and Henrietta Savernake from the flower border above the house. Those three arrived upon the scene of the crime almost simultaneously, and a few minutes after Gerda Christow.
“But one of those three, Inspector, could have been at the pool before Gerda Christow arrived, could have shot John Christow, and could have retreated up or down one of the paths and then, turning around, could have arrived at the same time as the others.”