Taken at the Flood

  “We’re very grateful to you, M. Poirot,” said Rowley. “By Jove, it really was quite like a conjuring trick.”

  Which was exactly what it had been, Poirot reflected! Asked a question to which you knew the answer, there was no difficulty whatsoever in performing a trick with the requisite frills. He quite appreciated that to the simple Rowley, the production of Major Porter out of the blue, so to speak, had been as breathtaking as any number of rabbits produced from the conjurer’s hat.

  “How you go about these things beats me,” said Rowley.

  Poirot did not enlighten him. He was, after all, only human. The conjurer does not tell his audience how the trick was done.

  “Anyway, Lynn and I are no end grateful,” Rowley went on.

  Lynn Marchmont, Poirot thought, was not looking particularly grateful. There were lines of strain round her eyes, her fingers had a nervous trick of twining and intertwining themselves.

  “It’s going to make a lot of difference to our future married life,” said Rowley.

  Lynn said sharply:

  “How do you know? There are all sorts of formalities and things, I’m sure.”

  “You are getting married, when?” asked Poirot politely.

  “June.”

  “And you have been engaged since when?”

  “Nearly six years,” said Rowley. “Lynn’s just come out of the Wrens.”

  “And is it forbidden to marry in the Wrens, yes?”

  Lynn said briefly:

  “I’ve been overseas.”

  Poirot noticed Rowley’s swift frown. He said shortly:

  “Come on, Lynn. We must get going. I expect M. Poirot wants to get back to town.”

  Poirot said smilingly:

  “But I’m not going back to town.”

  “What?”

  Rowley stopped dead, giving a queer wooden effect.

  “I am staying here, at the Stag, for a short while.”

  “But—but why?”

  “C’est un beau paysage,” Poirot said placidly.

  Rowley said uncertainly:

  “Yes, of course…But aren’t you—well, I mean, busy?”

  “I have made my economies,” said Poirot, smiling. “I do not need to occupy myself unduly. No, I can enjoy my leisure and spend my time where the fancy takes me. And my fancy inclines to Warmsley Vale.”

  He saw Lynn Marchmont raise her head and gaze at him intently. Rowley, he thought, was slightly annoyed.

  “I suppose you play golf?” he said. “There’s a much better hotel at Warmsley Heath. This is a very one-horse sort of place.”

  “My interests,” said Poirot, “lie entirely in Warmsley Vale.”

  Lynn said:

  “Come along, Rowley.”

  Half reluctantly, Rowley followed her. At the door, Lynn paused and then came swiftly back. She spoke to Poirot in a quiet low voice.

  “They arrested David Hunter after the inquest. Do you—do you think they were right?”

  “They had no alternative, Mademoiselle, after the verdict.”

  “I mean—do you think he did it?”

  “Do you?” said Poirot.

  But Rowley was back at her side. Her face hardened to a poker smoothness. She said:

  “Goodbye, M. Poirot. I—I hope we meet again.”

  “Now, I wonder,” said Poirot to himself.

  Presently, after arranging with Beatrice Lippincott about a room, he went out again. His steps led him to Dr. Lionel Cloade’s house.

  “Oh!” said Aunt Kathie, who opened the door, taking a step or two backwards. “M. Poirot!”

  “At your service, Madame.” Poirot bowed. “I came to pay my respects.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, I’m sure. Yes—well—I suppose you’d better come in. Sit down—I’ll move Madame Blavatsky—and perhaps a cup of tea—only the cake is terribly stale. I meant to go to Peacocks for some, they do have Swiss roll sometimes on a Wednesday—but an inquest puts one’s household routine out, don’t you think so?”

  Poirot said that he thought that was entirely understandable.

  He had fancied that Rowley Cloade was annoyed by the announcement of his stay in Warmsley Vale. Aunt Kathie’s manner, without any doubt, was far from welcoming. She was looking at him with something not far from dismay. She said, leaning forward and speaking in a hoarse conspiratorial whisper:

  “You won’t tell my husband, will you, that I came and consulted you about—well, about we know what?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “I mean—of course I’d no idea at the time—that Robert Underhay, poor man, so tragic—was actually in Warmsley Vale. That seems to me still a most extraordinary coincidence!”

  “It would have been simpler,” agreed Poirot, “if the Ouija board had directed you straight to the Stag.”

  Aunt Kathie cheered up a little at the mention of the Ouija board.

  “The way things come about in the spirit world seem quite incalculable,” she said. “But I do feel, M. Poirot, that there is a purpose in it all. Don’t you feel that in life? That there is always a purpose?”

  “Yes, indeed, Madame. Even that I should sit here, now, in your drawing room, there is a purpose in that.”

  “Oh, is there?” Mrs. Cloade looked rather taken aback. “Is there, really? Yes, I suppose so…You’re on your way back to London, of course?”

  “Not at present. I stay for a few days at the Stag.”

  “At the Stag? Oh—at the Stag! But that’s where—oh, M. Poirot, do you think you are wise?”

  “I have been guided to the Stag,” said Poirot solemnly.

  “Guided? What do you mean?”

  “Guided by you.”

  “Oh, but I never meant—I mean, I had no idea. It’s all so dreadful, don’t you think so?”

  Poirot shook his head sadly, and said:

  “I have been talking to Mr. Rowley Cloade and Miss Marchmont. They are getting married, I hear, quite soon?”

  Aunt Kathie was immediately diverted.

  “Dear Lynn, she is such a sweet girl—and so very good at figures. Now, I have no head for figures—no head at all. Having Lynn home is an absolute blessing. If I get in a terrible muddle she always straightens things out for me. Dear girl, I do hope she will be happy. Rowley, of course, is a splendid person, but possibly—well, a little dull. I mean dull to a girl who has seen as much of the world as Lynn has. Rowley, you see, has been here on his farm all through the war—oh, quite rightly, of course—I mean the Government wanted him to—that side of it is quite all right—not white feathers or things like that as they did in the Boer War—but what I mean is, it’s made him rather limited in his ideas.”

  “Six years’ engagement is a good test of affection.”

  “Oh, it is! But I think these girls, when they come home, they get rather restless—and if there is someone else about—someone, perhaps, who has led an adventurous life—”

  “Such as David Hunter?”

  “There isn’t anything between them,” Aunt Kathie said anxiously. “Nothing at all. I’m quite sure of that! It would have been dreadful if there had been, wouldn’t there, with his turning out a murderer? His own brother-in-law, too! Oh, no, M. Poirot, please don’t run away with the idea that there’s any kind of an understanding between Lynn and David. Really, they seemed to quarrel more than anything else every time they met. What I felt is that—oh, dear, I think that’s my husband coming. You will remember, won’t you, M. Poirot, not a word about our first meeting? My poor dear husband gets so annoyed if he thinks that—oh, Lionel dear, here is M. Poirot who so cleverly brought that Major Porter down to see the body.”

  Dr. Cloade looked tired and haggard. His eyes, pale blue, with pin-point pupils, wandered vaguely round the room.

  “How do you do, M. Poirot; on your way back to town?”

  “Mon Dieu, another who packs me back to London!” thought Poirot.

  Aloud he said patiently:

  “No, I remain at
the Stag for a day or so.”

  “The Stag?” Lionel Cloade frowned. “Oh? Police want to keep you here for a bit?”

  “No. It is my own choice.”

  “Indeed?” The doctor suddenly flashed a quick intelligent look. “So you’re not satisfied?”

  “Why should you think that, Dr. Cloade?”

  “Come, man, it’s true, isn’t it?” Twittering about tea, Mrs. Cloade left the room. The doctor went on: “You’ve a feeling, haven’t you, that something’s wrong?”

  Poirot was startled.

  “It is odd that you should say that. Do you, then, feel that yourself?”

  Cloade hesitated.

  “N-n-o. Hardly that…perhaps it’s just a feeling of unreality. In books the blackmailer gets slugged. Does he in real life? Apparently the answer is Yes. But it seems unnatural.”

  “Was there anything unsatisfactory about the medical aspect of the case? I ask unofficially, of course.”

  Dr. Cloade said thoughtfully:

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yes—there is something. I can see there is something.”

  When he wished, Poirot’s voice could assume an almost hypnotic quality. Dr. Cloade frowned a little, then he said hesitatingly:

  “I’ve no experience, of course, of police cases. And anyway medical evidence isn’t the hard-and-fast, cast-iron business that laymen or novelists seem to think. We’re fallible—medical science is fallible. What’s diagnosis? A guess, based on a very little knowledge, and some indefinite clues which point in more than one direction. I’m pretty sound, perhaps, at diagnosing measles because, at my time of life, I’ve seen hundreds of cases of measles and I know an extraordinary wide variation of signs and symptoms. You hardly ever get what a text book tells you is a ‘typical case’ of measles. But I’ve known some queer things in my time—I’ve seen a woman practically on the operating table ready for her appendix to be whipped out—and paratyphoid diagnosed just in time! I’ve seen a child with skin trouble pronounced as a case of serious vitamin deficiency by an earnest and conscientious young doctor—and the local vet, comes along and mentions to the mother that the cat the child is hugging has got ringworm and that the child has caught it!

  “Doctors, like every one else, are victims of the preconceived idea. Here’s a man, obviously murdered, lying with a bloodstained pair of fire tongs beside him. It would be nonsense to say he was hit with anything else, and yet, speaking out of complete inexperience of people with their heads smashed in, I’d have suspected something rather different—something not so smooth and round—something—oh, I don’t know, something with a more cutting edge—a brick, something like that.”

  “You did not say so at the inquest?”

  “No—because I don’t really know. Jenkins, the police surgeon, was satisfied, and he’s the fellow who counts. But there’s the preconceived idea—weapon lying beside the body. Could the wound have been inflicted with that? Yes, it could. But if you were shown the wound and asked what made it—well, I don’t know whether you’d say it, because it really doesn’t make sense—I mean if you had two fellows, one hitting him with a brick and one with the tongs—” The doctor stopped, shook his head in a dissatisfied way. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?” he said to Poirot.

  “Could he have fallen on some sharp object?”

  Dr. Cloade shook his head.

  “He was lying face down in the middle of the floor—on a good thick old-fashioned Axminster carpet.”

  He broke off as his wife entered the room.

  “Here’s Kathie with the catlap,” he remarked.

  Aunt Kathie was balancing a tray covered with crockery, half a loaf of bread and some depressing-looking jam in the bottom of a 2-lb. pot.

  “I think the kettle was boiling,” she remarked doubtfully as she raised the lid of the teapot and peered inside.

  Dr. Cloade snorted again and muttered: “Catlap,” with which explosive word he left the room.

  “Poor Lionel, his nerves are in a terrible state since the war. He worked much too hard. So many doctors away. He gave himself no rest. Out morning, noon, and night. I wonder he didn’t break down completely. Of course he looked forward to retiring as soon as peace came. That was all fixed up with Gordon. His hobby, you know, is botany with special reference to medicinal herbs in the Middle Ages. He’s writing a book on it. He was looking forward to a quiet life and doing the necessary research. But then, when Gordon died like that—well, you know what things are, M. Poirot, nowadays. Taxation and everything. He can’t afford to retire and it’s made him very bitter. And really it does seem unfair. Gordon’s dying like that, without a will—well, it really quite shook my faith. I mean, I really couldn’t see the purpose in that. It seemed, I couldn’t help feeling, a mistake.”

  She sighed, then cheered up a little.

  “But I get some lovely reassurances from the other side. ‘Courage and patience and a way will be found.’ And really, when that nice Major Porter stood up today and said in such a firm manly way that the poor murdered man was Robert Underhay—well, I saw that a way had been found! It’s wonderful, isn’t it, M. Poirot, how things do turn out for the best?”

  “Even murder,” said Hercule Poirot.

  Seven

  Poirot entered the Stag in a thoughtful mood, and shivering slightly for there was a sharp east wind. The hall was deserted. He pushed open the door of the lounge on the right. It smelt of stale smoke and the fire was nearly out. Poirot tiptoed along to the door at the end of the hall labelled “Residents Only.” Here there was a good fire, but in a large armchair, comfortably toasting her toes, was a monumental old lady who glared at Poirot with such ferocity that he beat an apologetic retreat.

  He stood for a moment in the hall looking from the glass-enclosed empty office to the door labelled in firm old-fashioned style COFFEE ROOM. By experience of country hotels Poirot knew well that the only time coffee was served there was somewhat grudgingly for breakfast and that even then a good deal of watery hot milk was its principal component. Small cups of a treacly and muddy liquid called Black Coffee were served not in the COFFEE ROOM but in the Lounge. The Windsor Soup, Vienna Steak and Potatoes, and Steamed Pudding which comprised Dinner would be obtainable in the COFFEE ROOM at seven sharp. Until then a deep peace brooded over the residential area of the Stag.

  Poirot went thoughtfully up the staircase. Instead of turning to the left where his own room, No. 11, was situated, he turned to the right and stopped before the door of No. 5. He looked round him. Silence and emptiness. He opened the door and went in.

  The police had done with the room. It had clearly been freshly cleaned and scrubbed. There was no carpet on the floor. Presumably the “old-fashioned Axminster” had gone to the cleaners. The blankets were folded on the bed in a neat pile.

  Closing the door behind him, Poirot wandered round the room. It was clean and strangely barren of human interest. Poirot took in its furnishings—a writing table, a chest of drawers of good old-fashioned mahogany, an upright wardrobe of the same (the one presumably that masked the door into No. 4), a large brass double bed, a basin with hot and cold water—tribute to modernity and the servant shortage—a large but rather uncomfortable armchair, two small chairs, an old-fashioned Victorian grate with a poker and a pierced shovel belonging to the same set as the fire tongs; a heavy marble mantelpiece and a solid marble fire curb with squared corners.

  It was at these last that Poirot bent and looked. Moistening his finger he rubbed it along the right-hand corner and then inspected the result. His finger was slightly black. He repeated the performance with another finger on the left-hand corner of the curb. This time his finger was quite clean.

  “Yes,” said Poirot thoughtfully to himself. “Yes.”

  He looked at the fitted washbasin. Then he strolled to the window. It looked out over some leads—the roof of a garage, he fancied, and then to a small back alley. An easy way to come and go unseen from room No. 5. But then it was e
qually easy to walk upstairs to No. 5 unseen. He had just done it himself.

  Quietly, Poirot withdrew, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. He went along to his own room. It was decidedly chilly. He went downstairs again, hesitated, and then, driven by the chill of the evening, boldly entered the Residents Only, drew up a second armchair to the fire and sat down.

  The monumental old lady was even more formidable seen close at hand. She had iron-grey hair, a flourishing moustache and, when presently she spoke, a deep and awe-inspiring voice.

  “This Lounge,” she said, “is Reserved for Persons staying in the hotel.”

  “I am staying in the hotel,” replied Hercule Poirot.

  The old lady meditated for a moment or two before returning to the attack. Then she said accusingly:

  “You’re a foreigner.”

  “Yes,” replied Hercule Poirot.

  “In my opinion,” said the old lady, “you should all Go Back.”

  “Go back where?” inquired Poirot.

  “To where you came from,” said the old lady firmly.

  She added as a kind of rider, sotto voce: “Foreigners!” and snorted.

  “That,” said Poirot mildly, “would be difficult.”

  “Nonsense,” said the old lady. “That’s what we fought the war for, isn’t it? So that people could go back to their proper places and stay there.”

  Poirot did not enter into a controversy. He had already learnt that every single individual had a different version of the theme, “What did we fight the war for?”

  A somewhat hostile silence reigned.

  “I don’t know what things are coming to,” said the old lady. “I really don’t. Every year I come and stay in this place. My husband died here sixteen years ago. He’s buried here. I come every year for a month.”

  “A pious pilgrimage,” said Poirot politely.

  “And every year things get worse and worse. No service! Food uneatable! Vienna steaks indeed! A steak’s either rump or fillet steak—not chopped-up horse!”