“She was different today,” said Mrs. Oliver slowly. “Did you notice? Quite different. Not—not scatty any longer.”
Poirot nodded.
“Not Ophelia—Iphigeneia.”
A sound of added commotion outside in the flat diverted the attention of both of them.
“Do you think—” Mrs. Oliver stopped. Poirot had gone to the window and was looking down to the courtyard far below. An ambulance was drawn up there.
“Are they going to take It away?” asked Mrs. Oliver in a shaky voice. And then added in a sudden rush of pity: “Poor Peacock.”
“He was hardly a likeable character,” said Poirot coldly.
“He was very decorative…And so young,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“That is sufficient for les femmes.” Poirot was opening the bedroom door a careful crack, as he peered out.
“Excuse me,” he said, “if I leave you for a moment.”
“Where are you going?” demanded Mrs. Oliver suspiciously.
“I understood that that was not a question considered delicate in this country,” said Poirot reproachfully.
“Oh, I beg your pardon.
“And that’s not the way to the loo,” she breathed sotto voce after him, as she too applied an eye to the crack of the door.
She went back to the window to observe what was going on below.
“Mr. Restarick has just driven up in a taxi,” she observed when Poirot slipped back quietly into the room a few minutes later, “and Claudia has come with him. Did you manage to get into Norma’s room, or wherever you really wanted to go?”
“Norma’s room is in the occupation of the police.”
“How annoying for you. What are you carrying in that kind of black folder thing you’ve got in your hand?”
Poirot in his turn asked a question.
“What have you got in that canvas bag with Persian horses on it?”
“My shopping bag? Only a couple of Avocado pears, as it happens.”
“Then if I may, I will entrust this folder to you. Do not be rough with it, or squeeze it, I beg.”
“What is it?”
“Something that I hoped to find—and that I have found—Ah, things begin to pass themselves—” He referred to increased sounds of activities.
Poirot’s words struck Mrs. Oliver as being much more exactly descriptive than English words would have been. Restarick, his voice loud and angry. Claudia coming in to telephone. A glimpse of a police stenographer on an excursion to the flat next door to take statements from Frances Cary and a mythical person called Miss Jacobs. A coming and going of ordered business, and a final departure of two men with cameras.
Then unexpectedly the sudden incursion into Claudia’s bedroom of a tall loosely-jointed young man with red hair.
Without taking any notice of Mrs. Oliver, he spoke to Poirot.
“What’s she done? Murder? Who is it? The boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“She admits it?”
“It would seem so.”
“Not good enough. Did she say so in definite words?”
“I have not heard her do so. I have had no chance of asking her anything myself.”
A policeman looked in.
“Dr. Stillingfleet?” he asked. “The police surgeon would like a word with you.”
Dr. Stillingfleet nodded and followed him out of the room.
“So that’s Dr. Stillingfleet,” said Mrs. Oliver. She considered for a moment or two. “Quite something, isn’t he?”
Twenty-three
Chief Inspector Neele drew a sheet of paper towards him, jotted one or two notes on it; and looked round at the other five people in the room. His voice was crisp and formal.
“Miss Jacobs?” he said. He looked towards the policeman who stood by the door. “Sergeant Conolly, I know, has taken her statement. But I’d like to ask her a few questions myself.”
Miss Jacobs was ushered into the room a few minutes later. Neele rose courteously to greet her.
“I am Chief Inspector Neele,” he said, shaking hands with her. “I am sorry to trouble you for a second time. But this time it is quite informal. I just want to get a clearer picture of exactly what you saw and heard. I’m afraid it may be painful—”
“Painful, no,” said Miss Jacobs, accepting the chair he offered her. “It was a shock, of course. But no emotions were involved.” She added: “You seem to have tidied up things.”
He presumed she was referring to the removal of the body.
Her eyes, both observant and critical, passed lightly over the assembled people, registering, for Poirot, frank astonishment (What on earth is this?), for Mrs. Oliver, mild curiosity; appraisement for the back of Dr. Stillingfleet’s red head, neighbourly recognition for Claudia to whom she vouchsafed a slight nod, and finally dawning sympathy for Andrew Restarick.
“You must be the girl’s father,” she said to him. “There’s not much point to condolences from a total stranger. They’re better left unsaid. It’s a sad world we live in nowadays—or so it seems to me. Girls study too hard in my opinion.”
Then she turned her face composedly towards Neele.
“Yes?”
“I would like you, Miss Jacobs, to tell me in your own words exactly what you saw and heard.”
“I expect it will vary from what I said before,” said Miss Jacobs unexpectedly. “Things do, you know. One tries to make one’s description as accurate as possible, and so one uses more words. I don’t think one is any more accurate; I think, unconsciously, one adds things that you think you may have seen or ought to have seen—or heard. But I will do my best.
“It started with screams. I was startled. I thought someone must have been hurt. So I was already coming to the door when someone began beating on it, and still screaming. I opened it and saw it was one of my next-door neighbours—the three girls who live in 67. I’m afraid I don’t know her name, though I know her by sight.”
“Frances Cary,” said Claudia.
“She was quite incoherent, and stammered out something about someone being dead—someone she knew—David Someone—I didn’t catch his last name. She was sobbing and shaking all over. I brought her in, gave her some brandy, and went to see for myself.”
Everyone felt that throughout life that would be what Miss Jacobs would invariably do.
“You know what I found. Need I describe it?”
“Just briefly, perhaps.”
“A young man, one of these modern young men—gaudy clothes and long hair. He was lying on the floor and he was clearly dead. His shirt was stiff with blood.”
Stillingfleet stirred. He turned his head and looked keenly at Miss Jacobs.
“Then I became aware that there was a girl in the room. She was holding a kitchen knife. She seemed quite calm and self-possessed—really, most peculiar.”
Stillingfleet said: “Did she say anything?”
“She said she had been into the bathroom to wash the blood off her hands—and then she said, ‘But you can’t wash things like that off, can you?’”
“Out, damnéd spot, in fact?”
“I cannot say that she reminded me particularly of Lady Macbeth. She was—how shall I put it?—perfectly composed. She laid the knife down on the table and sat down on a chair.”
“What else did she say?” asked Chief Inspector Neele, his eyes dropping to a scrawled note in front of him.
“Something about hate. That it wasn’t safe to hate anybody.”
“She said something about ‘poor David,’ didn’t she? Or so you told Sergeant Conolly. And that she wanted to be free of him.”
“I’d forgotten that. Yes. She said something about his making her come here—and something about Louise, too.”
“What did she say about Louise?” It was Poirot who asked, leaning forward sharply. Miss Jacobs looked at him doubtfully.
“Nothing, really, just mentioned the name. ‘Like Louise,’ she said, and then stopped. It was after she had said about it
s not being safe to hate people….”
“And then?”
“Then she told me, quite calmly, I had better ring up the police. Which I did. We just—sat there until they came…I did not think I ought to leave her. We did not say anything. She seemed absorbed in her thoughts, and I—well, frankly, I couldn’t think of anything to say.”
“You could see, couldn’t you, that she was mentally unstable?” said Andrew Restarick. “You could see that she didn’t know what she had done or why, poor child?”
He spoke pleadingly—hopefully.
“If it is a sign of mental instability to appear perfectly cool and collected after committing a murder, then I will agree with you.”
Miss Jacobs spoke in the voice of one who quite decidedly did not agree.
Stillingfleet said:
“Miss Jacobs, did she at any time admit that she had killed him?”
“Oh yes. I should have mentioned that before—It was the very first thing she did say. As though she was answering some question I had asked her. She said, ‘Yes. I’ve killed him.’ And then went on about having washed her hands.”
Restarick groaned and buried his face in his hands. Claudia put her hand on his arm.
Poirot said:
“Miss Jacobs, you say the girl put down the knife she was carrying on that table. It was quite near you? You saw it clearly? Did it appear to you that the knife also had been washed?”
Miss Jacobs looked hesitantly at Chief Inspector Neele. It was clear that she felt that Poirot struck an alien and unofficial note in this presumably official inquiry.
“Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer that?” said Neele.
“No—I don’t think the knife had been washed or wiped in any way. It was stained and discoloured with some thick sticky substance.”
“Ah.” Poirot leaned back in his chair.
“I should have thought you would have known all about the knife yourself,” said Miss Jacobs to Neele accusingly. “Didn’t your police examine it? It seems to me very lax if they didn’t.”
“Oh yes, the police examined it,” said Neele. “But we—er—always like to get corroboration.”
She darted him a shrewd glance.
“What you really mean, I suppose, is that you like to find out how accurate the observation of your witnesses is. How much they make up, or how much they actually see, or think they have seen.”
He smiled slightly as he said:
“I don’t think we need have doubts about you, Miss Jacobs. You will make an excellent witness.”
“I shan’t enjoy it. But it’s the kind of thing one has to go through with, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid so. Thank you, Miss Jacobs.” He looked round. “No one has any additional questions?”
Poirot indicated that he had. Miss Jacobs paused near the doorway, displeased.
“Yes?” she said.
“About this mention of someone called Louise. Did you know who it was the girl meant?”
“How should I know?”
“Isn’t it possible that she might have meant Mrs. Louise Charpentier? You knew Mrs. Charpentier, didn’t you?”
“I did not.”
“You knew that she recently threw herself out of a window in this block of flats?”
“I knew that, of course. I didn’t know her Christian name was Louise, and I was not personally acquainted with her.”
“Nor, perhaps, particularly wished to be?”
“I have not said so, since the woman is dead. But I will admit that that is quite true. She was a most undesirable tenant, and I and other residents have frequently complained to the management here.”
“Of what exactly?”
“To speak frankly, the woman drank. Her flat was actually on the top floor above mine and there were continual disorderly parties, with broken glass, furniture knocked over, singing and shouting, a lot of—er—coming and going.”
“She was, perhaps, a lonely woman,” suggested Poirot.
“That was hardly the impression she conveyed,” said Miss Jacobs acidly. “It was put forward at the inquest that she was depressed over the state of her health. Entirely her own imagination. She seems to have had nothing the matter with her.”
And having disposed of the late Mrs. Charpentier without sympathy, Miss Jacobs took her departure.
Poirot turned his attention to Andrew Restarick. He asked delicately:
“Am I correct in thinking, Mr. Restarick, that you were at one time well acquainted with Mrs. Charpentier?”
Restarick did not answer for a moment or two. Then he sighed deeply and transferred his gaze to Poirot.
“Yes. At one time, many years ago, I knew her very well indeed…Not, I may say, under the name of Charpentier. She was Louise Birell when I knew her.”
“You were—er—in love with her!”
“Yes, I was in love with her…Head over ears in love with her! I left my wife on her account. We went to South Africa. After barely a year the whole thing blew up. She returned to England. I never heard from her again. I never even knew what had become of her.”
“What about your daughter? Did she, also, know Louise Birell?”
“Not to remember her, surely. A child of five years old!”
“But did she know her?” Poirot persisted.
“Yes,” said Restarick slowly. “She knew Louise. That is to say, Louise came to our house. She used to play with the child.”
“So it is possible that the girl might remember her, even after a lapse of years?”
“I don’t know. I simply don’t know. I don’t know what she looked like; how much Louise might have changed. I never saw her again, as I told you.”
Poirot said gently, “But you heard from her, didn’t you, Mr. Restarick? I mean, you have heard from her since your return to England?”
Again there came that pause, and the deep unhappy sigh:
“Yes—I heard from her…” said Restarick. And then, with sudden curiosity, he asked: “How did you know that, M. Poirot?”
From his pocket, Poirot drew a neatly folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Restarick.
The latter looked at it with a faintly puzzled frown.
Dear Andy
I see from the papers you’re home again. We must meet and compare notes as to what we’ve both been doing all these years—
It broke off here—and started again.
Andy—Guess who this is from! Louise. Don’t dare to say you’ve forgotten me!—
Dear Andy,
As you will see by this letterhead, I’m living in the same block of flats as your secretary. What a small world it is! We must meet. Could you come for a drink Monday or Tuesday next week?
Andy darling, I must see you again…Nobody has ever mattered to me but you—you haven’t really forgotten me, either, have you?
“How did you get this?” asked Restarick of Poirot, tapping it curiously.
“From a friend of mine via a furniture van,” said Poirot, with a glance at Mrs. Oliver.
Restarick looked at her without favour.
“I couldn’t help it,” said Mrs. Oliver, interpreting his look correctly. “I suppose it was her furniture being moved out, and the men let go of a desk, and a drawer fell out and scattered a lot of things, and the wind blew this along the courtyard, so I picked it up and tried to give it back to them, but they were cross and didn’t want it, so I just put it in my coat pocket without thinking. And I never even looked at it until this afternoon when I was taking things out of pockets before sending the coat to the cleaners. So it really wasn’t my fault.”
She paused, slightly out of breath.
“Did she get her letter to you written in the end?” Poirot asked.
“Yes—she did—one of the more formal versions! I didn’t answer it. I thought it would be wiser not to do so.”
“You didn’t want to see her again?”
“She was the last person I wanted to see! She was a particularly dif
ficult woman—always had been. And I’d heard things about her—for one that she had become a heavy drinker. And well—other things.”
“Did you keep her letter to you?”
“No, I tore it up!”
Dr. Stillingfleet asked an abrupt question.
“Did your daughter ever speak about her to you?”
Restarick seemed unwilling to answer.
Dr. Stillingfleet urged him:
“It might be significant if she did, you know.”
“You doctors! Yes, she did mention her once.”
“What did she say exactly?”
“She said quite suddenly: ‘I saw Louise the other day, Father.’ I was startled. I said: ‘Where did you see her?’ And she said: ‘In the restaurant of our flats.’ I was a bit embarrassed. I said: ‘I never dreamed you’d remembered her.’ And she said: ‘I’ve never forgotten. Mother wouldn’t have let me forget, even if I wanted to.’”
“Yes,” said Dr. Stillingfleet. “Yes, that could certainly be significant.”
“And you, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, turning suddenly to Claudia. “Did Norma ever speak to you about Louise Carpenter?”
“Yes—it was after the suicide. She said something about her being a wicked woman. She said it in rather a childish way, if you know what I mean.”
“You were here in the flats yourself on the night—or more correctly the early morning when Mrs. Carpenter’s suicide occurred?”
“I was not here that night, no! I was away from home. I remember arriving back here the next day and hearing about it.”
She half turned to Restarick…“You remember? It was the twenty-third. I had gone to Liverpool.”