Morton smiled.
“But that doesn’t often happen to you?”
“No. Though I will admit—yes, I am forced to admit—that it has happened to me.”
“I must say I’m glad to hear it! To be always right must be sometimes monotonous.”
“I do not find it so,” Poirot assured him.
Inspector Morton laughed.
“And you’re asking me to hold off with my questioning?”
“No, no, not at all. Proceed as you had planned to do. I suppose you were not actually contemplating an arrest?”
Morton shook his head.
“Much too flimsy for that. We’d have to get a decision from the Public Prosecutor first—and we’re a long way from that. No, just statements from certain parties of their movements on the day in question—in one case with a caution, perhaps.”
“I see. Mrs. Banks?”
“Smart, aren’t you? Yes. She was there that day. Her car was parked in that quarry.”
“She was not seen actually driving the car?”
“No.”
The Inspector added, “It’s bad you know, that she’s never said a word about being down there that day. She’s got to explain that satisfactorily.”
“She is quite skilful at explanations,” said Poirot drily.
“Yes. Clever young lady. Perhaps a thought too clever.”
“It is never wise to be too clever. That is how murderers get caught. Has anything more come up about George Crossfield?”
“Nothing definite. He’s a very ordinary type. There are a lot of young men like him going about the country in trains and buses or on bicycles. People find it hard to remember when a week or so has gone by if it was Wednesday or Thursday when they were at a certain place or noticed a certain person.”
He paused and went on: “We’ve had one piece of rather curious information—from the Mother Superior of some convent or other. Two of her nuns had been out collecting from door to door. It seems that they went to Mrs. Lansquenet’s cottage on the day before she was murdered, but couldn’t make anyone hear when they knocked and rang. That’s natural enough—she was up North at the Abernethie funeral and Gilchrist had been given the day off and had gone on an excursion to Bournemouth. The point is that they say there was someone in the cottage. They say they heard sighs and groans. I’ve queried whether it wasn’t a day later but the Mother Superior is quite definite that that couldn’t be so. It’s all entered up in some book. Was there someone searching for something in the cottage that day, who seized the opportunity of both the women being away? And did that somebody not find what he or she was looking for and come back the next day? I don’t set much store on the sighs and still less on the groans. Even nuns are suggestible and a cottage where murder has occurred positively asks for groans. The point is, was there someone in the cottage who shouldn’t have been there? And if so, who was it? All the Abernethie crowd were at the funeral.”
Poirot asked a seemingly irrelevant question:
“These nuns who were collecting in that district, did they return at all at a later date to try again?”
“As a matter of fact they did come again—about a week later. Actually on the day of the inquest, I believe.”
“That fits,” said Hercule Poirot. “That fits very well.”
Inspector Morton looked at him.
“Why this interest in nuns?”
“They have been forced on my attention whether I will or no. It will not have escaped your attention, Inspector, that the visit of the nuns was the same day that poisoned wedding cake found its way into that cottage.”
“You don’t think— Surely that’s a ridiculous idea?”
“My ideas are never ridiculous,” said Hercule Poirot severely. “And now, mon cher, I must leave you to your questions and to the inquiries into the attack on Mrs. Abernethie. I myself must go in search of the late Richard Abernethie’s niece.”
“Now be careful what you go saying to Mrs. Banks.”
“I do not mean Mrs. Banks. I mean Richard Abernethie’s other niece.”
II
Poirot found Rosamund sitting on a bench overlooking a little stream that cascaded down in a waterfall and then flowed through rhododendron thickets. She was staring into the water.
“I do not, I trust, disturb an Ophelia,” said Poirot as he took his seat beside her. “You are, perhaps, studying the role?”
“I’ve never played in Shakespeare,” said Rosamund. “Except once in Rep. I was Jessica in The Merchant. A lousy part.”
“Yet not without pathos. ‘I am never merry when I hear sweet music.’ What a load she carried, poor Jessica, the daughter of the hated and despised Jew. What doubts of herself she must have had when she brought with her her father’s ducats when she ran away to her lover. Jessica with gold was one thing—Jessica without gold might have been another.”
Rosamund turned her head to look at him.
“I thought you’d gone,” she said with a touch of reproach. She glanced down at her wristwatch. “It’s past twelve o’clock.”
“I have missed my train,” said Poirot.
“Why?”
“You think I missed it for a reason?”
“I suppose so. You’re rather precise, aren’t you? If you wanted to catch a train, I should think you’d catch it.”
“Your judgement is admirable. Do you know, Madame, I have been sitting in the little summerhouse hoping that you would, perhaps, pay me a visit there?”
Rosamund stared at him.
“Why should I? You more or less said good-bye to us all in the library.”
“Quite so. And there was nothing—you wanted to say to me?”
“No.” Rosamund shook her head. “I had a lot I wanted to think about. Important things.”
“I see.”
“I don’t often do much thinking,” said Rosamund. “It seems a waste of time. But this is important. I think one ought to plan one’s life just as one wants it to be.”
“And that is what you are doing?”
“Well, yes… I was trying to make a decision about something.”
“About your husband?”
“In a way.”
Poirot waited a moment, then he said:
“Inspector Morton has just arrived here.” He anticipated Rosamund’s question by going on: “He is the police officer in charge of the inquiries about Mrs. Lansquenet’s death. He has come here to get statements from you all about what you were doing on the day she was murdered.”
“I see. Alibis,” said Rosamund cheerfully.
Her beautiful face relaxed into an impish glee.
“That will be hell for Michael,” she said. “He thinks I don’t really know he went off to be with that woman that day.”
“How did you know?”
“It was obvious from the way he said he was going to lunch with Oscar. So frightfully casually, you know, and his nose twitching just a tiny bit like it always does when he tells lies.”
“How devoutly thankful I am I am not married to you, Madame!”
“And then, of course, I made sure by ringing up Oscar,” continued Rosamund. “Men always tell such silly lies.”
“He is not, I fear, a very faithful husband?” Poirot hazarded.
Rosamund, however, did not reject the statement.
“No.”
“But you do not mind?”
“Well, it’s rather fun in a way,” said Rosamund. “I mean having a husband that all the other women want to snatch away from you. I should hate to be married to a man that nobody wanted—like poor Susan. Really Greg is so completely wet!”
Poirot was studying her.
“And suppose someone did succeed—in snatching your husband away from you?”
“They won’t,” said Rosamund. “Not now,” she added.
“You mean—”
“Not now that there’s Uncle Richard’s money. Michael falls for these creatures in a way—that Sorrel Dainton woman nearly got her
hooks into him—wanted him for keeps—but with Michael the show will always come first. He can launch out now in a big way—put his own shows on. Do some production as well as acting. He’s ambitious, you know, and he really is good. Not like me. I adore acting—but I’m ham, though I look nice. No, I’m not worried about Michael anymore. Because it’s my money, you see.”
Her eyes met Poirot’s calmly. He thought how strange it was that both Richard Abernethie’s nieces should have fallen deeply in love with men who were incapable of returning that love. And yet Rosamund was unusually beautiful and Susan was attractive and full of sex appeal. Susan needed and clung to the illusion that Gregory loved her. Rosamund, clear-sighted, had no illusions at all, but knew what she wanted.
“The point is,” said Rosamund, “that I’ve got to make a big decision—about the future. Michael doesn’t know yet.” Her face curved into a smile. “He found out that I wasn’t shopping that day and he’s madly suspicious about Regent’s Park.”
“What is this about Regent’s Park?” Poirot looked puzzled.
“I went there, you see, after Harley Street. Just to walk about and think. Naturally Michael thinks that if I went there at all, I went to meet some man!”
Rosamund smiled beatifically and added:
“He didn’t like that at all!”
“But why should you not go to Regent’s Park?” asked Poirot.
“Just to walk there, you mean?”
“Yes. Have you never done it before?”
“Never. Why should I? What is there to go to Regent’s Park for?”
Poirot looked at her and said:
“For you—nothing.”
He added:
“I think, Madame, that you must cede the green malachite table to your cousin Susan.”
Rosamund’s eyes opened very wide.
“Why should I? I want it.”
“I know. I know. But you—you will keep your husband. And the poor Susan, she will lose hers.”
“Lose him? Do you mean Greg’s going off with someone? I wouldn’t have believed it of him. He looks so wet.”
“Infidelity is not the only way of losing a husband, Madame.”
“You don’t mean—?” Rosamund stared at him. “You’re not thinking that Greg poisoned Uncle Richard and killed Aunt Cora and conked Aunt Helen on the head? That’s ridiculous. Even I know better than that.”
“Who did, then?”
“George, of course. George is a wrong un, you know, he’s mixed up in some sort of currency swindle—I heard about it from some friends of mine who were in Monte. I expect Uncle Richard got to know about it and was just going to cut him out of his will.”
Rosamund added complacently:
“I’ve always known it was George.”
Twenty-four
I
The telegram came about six o’clock that evening.
As specially requested it was delivered by hand, not telephoned, and Hercule Poirot, who had been hovering for some time in the neighbourhood of the front door, was at hand to receive it from Lanscombe as the latter took it from the telegraph boy.
He tore it open with somewhat less than his usual precision. It consisted of three words and a signature.
Poirot gave vent to an enormous sigh of relief.
Then he took a pound note from his pocket and handed it to the dumbfounded boy.
“There are moments,” he said to Lanscombe, “when economy should be abandoned.”
“Very possibly, sir,” said Lanscombe politely.
“Where is Inspector Morton?” asked Poirot.
“One of the police gentlemen,” Lanscombe spoke with distaste—and indicated subtly that such things as names for police officers were impossible to remember—“has left. The other is, I believe, in the study.”
“Splendid,” said Poirot. “I join him immediately.”
He once more clapped Lanscombe on the shoulder and said:
“Courage, we are on the point of arriving!”
Lanscombe looked slightly bewildered since departures, and not arrivals, had been in his mind.
He said:
“You do not, then, propose to leave by the nine thirty train after all, sir?”
“Do not lose hope,” Poirot told him.
Poirot moved away, then wheeling round, he asked:
“I wonder, can you remember what were the first words Mrs. Lansquenet said to you when she arrived here on the day of your master’s funeral?”
“I remember very well, sir,” said Lanscombe, his face lighting up. “Miss Cora—I beg pardon, Mrs. Lansquenet—I always think of her as Miss Cora, somehow—”
“Very naturally.”
“She said to me: ‘Hallo, Lanscombe. It’s a long time since you used to bring us out meringues to the huts.’ All the children used to have a hut of their own—down by the fence in the Park. In summer, when there was going to be a dinner party, I used to take the young ladies and gentlemen—the younger ones, you understand, sir—some meringues. Miss Cora, sir, was always very fond of her food.”
Poirot nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “that was as I thought. Yes, it was very typical, that.”
He went into the study to find Inspector Morton and without a word handed him the telegram.
Morton read it blankly.
“I don’t understand a word of this.”
“The time has come to tell you all.”
Inspector Morton grinned.
“You sound like a young lady in a Victorian melodrama. But it’s about time you came across with something. I can’t hold out on this setup much longer. That Banks fellow is still insisting that he poisoned Richard Abernethie and boasting that we can’t find out how. What beats me is why there’s always somebody who comes forward when there’s a murder and yells out that they did it! What do they think there is in it for them? I’ve never been able to fathom that.”
“In this case, probably shelter from the difficulties of being responsible for oneself—in other words— Forsdyke Sanatorium.”
“More likely to be Broadmoor.”
“That might be equally satisfactory.”
“Did he do it, Poirot? The Gilchrist woman came out with the story she’d already told you and it would fit with what Richard Abernethie said about his niece. If her husband did it, it would involve her. Somehow, you know, I can’t visualize that girl committing a lot of crimes. But there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to try and cover him.”
“I will tell you all—”
“Yes, yes, tell me all! And for the Lord’s sake hurry up and do it!”
II
This time it was in the big drawing room that Hercule Poirot assembled his audience.
There was amusement rather than tension in the faces that were turned towards him. Menace had materialized in the shape of Inspector Morton and Superintendent Parwell. With the police in charge, questioning, asking for statements, Hercule Poirot, private detective, had receded into something closely resembling a joke.
Timothy was not far from voicing the general feeling when he remarked in an audible sotto voce to his wife:
“Damned little mountebank! Entwhistle must be gaga!—that’s all I can say.”
It looked as though Hercule Poirot would have to work hard to make his proper effect.
He began in a slightly pompous manner.
“For the second time, I announce my departure! This morning I announced it for the twelve o’clock train. This evening I announce it for the nine thirty—immediately, that is, after dinner. I go because there is nothing more here for me to do.”
“Could have told him that all along.” Timothy’s commentary was still in evidence. “Never was anything for him to do. The cheek of these fellows!”
“I came here originally to solve a riddle. The riddle is solved. Let me, first, go over the various points which were brought to my attention by the excellent Mr. Entwhistle.
“First, Mr. Richard Abernethie dies suddenly. Secondly, after
his funeral, his sister Cora Lansquenet says, ‘He was murdered, wasn’t he?’ Thirdly Mrs. Lansquenet is killed. The question is, are those three things part of a sequence? Let us observe what happens next? Miss Gilchrist, the dead woman’s companion, is taken ill after eating a piece of wedding cake which contains arsenic. That, then, is the next step in the sequence.
“Now, as I told you this morning, in the course of my inquiries I have come across nothing—nothing at all, to substantiate the belief that Mr. Abernethie was poisoned. Equally, I may say, I have found nothing to prove conclusively that he was not poisoned. But as we proceed, things become easier. Cora Lansquenet undoubtedly asked that sensational question at the funeral. Everyone agrees upon that. And undoubtedly, on the following day, Mrs. Lansquenet was murdered—a hatchet being the instrument employed. Now let us examine the fourth happening. The local post van driver is strongly of the belief—though he will not definitely swear to it—that he did not deliver that parcel of wedding cake in the usual way. And if that is so, then the parcel was left by hand and though we cannot exclude a ‘person unknown’—we must take particular notice of those people who were actually on the spot and in a position to put the parcel where it was subsequently found. Those were: Miss Gilchrist herself, of course; Susan Banks who came down that day for the inquest; Mr. Entwhistle (but yes, we must consider Mr. Entwhistle; he was present, remember, when Cora made her disquieting remark!) And there were two other people. An old gentleman who represented himself to be a Mr. Guthrie, an art critic, and a nun or nuns who called early that morning to collect a subscription.
“Now I decided that I would start on the assumption that the postal van driver’s recollection was correct. Therefore the little group of people under suspicion must be very carefully studied. Miss Gilchrist did not benefit in any way by Richard Abernethie’s death and in only a very minute degree by Mrs. Lansquenet’s—in actual fact the death of the latter put her out of employment and left her with the possibility of finding it difficult to get new employment. Also Miss Gilchrist was taken to hospital definitely suffering from arsenic poisoning.
“Susan Banks did benefit from Richard Abernethie’s death, and in a small degree from Mrs. Lansquenet’s—though here her motive must almost certainly have been security. She might have very good reason to believe that Miss Gilchrist had overheard a conversation between Cora Lansquenet and her brother which referred to her, and she might therefore decide that Miss Gilchrist must be eliminated. She herself, remember, refused to partake of the wedding cake and also suggested not calling in a doctor until the morning, when Miss Gilchrist was taken ill in the night.