Slowly he rose to his feet and looked round. His face was stern.
“Gentlemen!” he said. “This door must be broken open immediately!”
Under his direction the two young men, who were both tall and powerfully built, attacked the door. It was no easy matter. The doors of Hamborough Close were solidly built.
At last, however, the lock gave, and the door swung inwards with a noise of splintering, rending wood.
And then, for a moment, everyone stood still, huddled in the doorway looking at the scene inside. The lights were on. Along the left-hand wall was a big writing table, a massive affair of solid mahogany. Sitting, not at the table, but sideways to it, so that his back was directly towards them, was a big man slouched down in a chair. His head and the upper part of his body hung down over the right side of the chair, and his right hand and arm hung limply down. Just below it on the carpet was a small, gleaming pistol. . . .
There was no need of speculation. The picture was clear. Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore had shot himself.
Three
For a moment or two the group in the doorway stood motionless, staring at the scene. Then Poirot strode forward.
At the same moment Hugo Trent said crisply:
“My God, the Old Man’s shot himself!”
And there was a long, shuddering moan from Lady Chevenix-Gore.
“Oh, Gervase—Gervase!”
Over his shoulder Poirot said sharply:
“Take Lady Chevenix-Gore away. She can do nothing here.”
The elderly soldierly man obeyed. He said:
“Come, Vanda. Come, my dear. You can do nothing. It’s all over. Ruth, come and look after your mother.”
But Ruth Chevenix-Gore had pressed into the room and stood close by Poirot’s side as he bent over the dreadful sprawled figure in the chair—the figure of a man of Herculean build with a Viking beard.
She said in a low, tense voice, curiously restrained and muffled:
“You’re quite sure he’s—dead?”
Poirot looked up.
The girl’s face was alive with some emotion—an emotion sternly checked and repressed—that he did not quite understand. It was not grief—it seemed more like a kind of half-fearful excitement.
The little woman in the pince-nez murmured:
“Your mother, my dear—don’t you think—?”
In a high, hysterical voice the girl with the red hair cried out:
“Then it wasn’t a car or a champagne cork! It was a shot we heard. . . .”
Poirot turned and faced them all.
“Somebody must communicate with the police—”
Ruth Chevenix-Gore cried out violently:
“No!”
The elderly man with the legal face said:
“Unavoidable, I am afraid. Will you see to that, Burrows? Hugo—”
Poirot said:
“You are Mr. Hugo Trent?” to the tall young man with the moustache. “It would be well, I think, if everyone except you and I were to leave this room.”
Again his authority was not questioned. The lawyer shepherded the others away. Poirot and Hugo Trent were left alone.
The latter said, staring:
“Look here—who are you? I mean, I haven’t the foggiest idea. What are you doing here?”
Poirot took a card case from his pocket and selected a card.
Hugo Trent said, staring at it:
“Private detective—eh? Of course, I’ve heard of you . . . But I still don’t see what you are doing here.”
“You did not know that your uncle—he was your uncle, was he not—?”
Hugo’s eyes dropped for a fleeting moment to the dead man.
“The Old Man? Yes, he was my uncle all right.”
“You did not know that he had sent for me?”
Hugo shook his head. He said slowly:
“I’d no idea of it.”
There was an emotion in his voice that was rather hard to classify. His face looked wooden and stupid—the kind of expression, Poirot thought, that made a useful mask in times of stress.
Poirot said quietly:
“We are in Westshire, are we not? I know your Chief Constable, Major Riddle, very well.”
Hugo said:
“Riddle lives about half a mile away. He’ll probably come over himself.”
“That,” said Poirot, “will be very convenient.”
He began prowling gently round the room. He twitched aside the window curtain and examined the french windows, trying them gently. They were closed.
On the wall behind the desk there hung a round mirror. The mirror was shivered. Poirot bent down and picked up a small object.
“What’s that?” asked Hugo Trent.
“The bullet.”
“It passed straight through his head and struck the mirror?”
“It seems so.”
Poirot replaced the bullet meticulously where he had found it. He came up to the desk. Some papers were arranged neatly stacked in heaps. On the blotting pad itself there was a loose sheet of paper with the word SORRY printed across it in large, shaky handwriting.
Hugo said: “He must have written that just before he—did it.”
Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
He looked again at the smashed mirror, then at the dead man. His brow creased itself a little as though in perplexity. He went over to the door, where it hung crookedly with its splintered lock. There was no key in the door, as he knew—otherwise he would not have been able to see through the keyhole. There was no sign of it on the floor. Poirot leaned over the dead man and ran his fingers over him.
“Yes,” he said. “The key is in his pocket.”
Hugo drew out a cigarette case and lighted a cigarette. He spoke rather hoarsely.
“It seems all quite clear,” he said. “My uncle shut himself up in here, scrawled that message on a piece of paper, and then shot himself.”
Poirot nodded meditatively. Hugo went on:
“But I don’t understand why he sent for you. What was it all about?”
“That is rather more difficult to explain. While we are waiting, Mr. Trent, for the authorities to take charge, perhaps you will tell me exactly who all the people are whom I saw tonight when I arrived?”
“Who they are?” Hugo spoke almost absently. “Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. Shall we sit down?” He indicated a settee in the farthest corner of the room from the body. He went on, speaking jerkily: “Well, there’s Vanda—my aunt, you know. And Ruth, my cousin. But you know them. Then the other girl is Susan Cardwell. She’s just staying here. And there’s Colonel Bury. He’s an old friend of the family. And Mr. Forbes. He’s an old friend, too, beside being the family lawyer and all that. Both the old boys had a passion for Vanda when she was young, and they still hang round in a faithful, devoted sort of way. Ridiculous, but rather touching. Then there’s Godfrey Burrows, the Old Man’s—I mean my uncle’s—secretary, and Miss Lingard, who’s here to help him write a history of the Chevenix-Gores. She mugs up historical stuff for writers. That’s the lot, I think.”
Poirot nodded. Then he said:
“And I understand you actually heard the shot that killed your uncle?”
“Yes, we did. Thought it was a champagne cork—at least, I did. Susan and Miss Lingard thought it was a car backfiring outside—the road runs quite near, you know.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, about ten past eight. Snell had just sounded the first gong.”
“And where were you when you heard it?”
“In the hall. We—we were laughing about it—arguing, you know, as to where the sound came from. I said it came from the dining room, and Susan said it came from the direction of the drawing room, and Miss Lingard said it sounded like upstairs, and Snell said it came from the road outside, only it came through the upstairs windows. And Susan said, “Any more theories?” And I laughed and said there was always murder! Seems pretty rotten to think of it now.”
His fa
ce twitched nervously.
“It did not occur to anyone that Sir Gervase might have shot himself?”
“No, of course not.”
“You have, in fact, no idea why he should have shot himself?”
Hugo said slowly:
“Oh, well, I shouldn’t say that—”
“You have an idea?”
“Yes—well—it’s difficult to explain. Naturally I didn’t expect him to commit suicide, but all the same I’m not frightfully surprised. The truth of it is that my uncle was as mad as a hatter, M. Poirot. Everyone knew that.”
“That strikes you as a sufficient explanation?”
“Well, people do shoot themselves when they’re a bit barmy.”
“An explanation of an admirable simplicity.”
Hugo stared.
Poirot got up again and wandered aimlessly round the room. It was comfortably furnished, mainly in a rather heavy Victorian style. There were massive bookcases, huge armchairs, and some upright chairs of genuine Chippendale. There were not many ornaments, but some bronzes on the mantelpiece attracted Poirot’s attention and apparently stirred his admiration. He picked them up one by one, carefully examining them before replacing them with care. From the one on the extreme left he detached something with a fingernail.
“What’s that?” asked Hugo without much interest.
“Nothing very much. A tiny sliver of looking glass.”
Hugo said:
“Funny the way that mirror was smashed by the shot. A broken mirror means bad luck. Poor old Gervase . . . I suppose his luck had held a bit too long.”
“Your uncle was a lucky man?”
Hugo gave a short laugh.
“Why, his luck was proverbial! Everything he touched turned to gold! If he backed an outsider, it romped home! If he invested in a doubtful mine, they struck a vein of ore at once! He’s had the most amazing escapes from the tightest of tight places. His life’s been saved by a kind of miracle more than once. He was rather a fine old boy, in his way, you know. He’d certainly ‘been places and seen things’—more than most of his generation.”
Poirot murmured in a conversational tone:
“You were attached to your uncle, Mr. Trent?”
Hugo Trent seemed a little startled by the question.
“Oh—er—yes, of course,” he said rather vaguely. “You know, he was a bit difficult at times. Frightful strain to live with, and all that. Fortunately I didn’t have to see much of him.”
“He was fond of you?”
“Not so that you’d notice it! As a matter of fact, he rather resented my existence, so to speak.”
“How was that, Mr. Trent?”
“Well, you see, he had no son of his own—and he was pretty sore about it. He was mad about family and all that sort of thing. I believe it cut him to the quick to know that when he died the Chevenix-Gores would cease to exist. They’ve been going ever since the Norman Conquest, you know. The Old Man was the last of them. I suppose it was rather rotten from his point of view.”
“You yourself do not share that sentiment?”
Hugo shrugged his shoulders.
“All that sort of thing seems to me rather out of date.”
“What will happen to the estate?”
“Don’t really know. I might get it. Or he may have left it to Ruth. Probably Vanda has it for her lifetime.”
“Your uncle did not definitely declare his intentions?”
“Well, he had his pet idea.”
“And what was that?”
“His idea was that Ruth and I should make a match of it.”
“That would doubtless have been very suitable.”
“Eminently suitable. But Ruth—well, Ruth has very decided views of her own about life. Mind you, she’s an extremely attractive young woman, and she knows it. She’s in no hurry to marry and settle down.”
Poirot leaned forward.
“But you yourself would have been willing, M. Trent?”
Hugo said in a bored tone of voice:
“I really can’t see it makes a ha’p’orth of difference who you marry nowadays. Divorce is so easy. If you’re not hitting it off, nothing is easier than to cut the tangle and start again.”
The door opened and Forbes entered with a tall, spruce-looking man.
The latter nodded to Trent.
“Hallo, Hugo. I’m extremely sorry about this. Very rough on all of you.”
Hercule Poirot came forward.
“How do you do, Major Riddle? You remember me?”
“Yes, indeed.” The chief constable shook hands. “So you’re down here?”
There was a meditative note in his voice. He glanced curiously at Hercule Poirot.
Four
“Well?” said Major Riddle.
It was twenty minutes later. The chief constable’s interrogative “Well?” was addressed to the police surgeon, a lank elderly man with grizzled hair.
The latter shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s been dead over half an hour—but not more than an hour. You don’t want technicalities, I know, so I’ll spare you them. The man was shot through the head, the pistol being held a few inches from the right temple. Bullet passed right through the brain and out again.”
“Perfectly compatible with suicide?”
“Oh, perfectly. The body then slumped down in the chair, and the pistol dropped from his hand.”
“You’ve got the bullet?”
“Yes.” The doctor held it up.
“Good,” said Major Riddle. “We’ll keep it for comparison with the pistol. Glad it’s a clear case and no difficulties.”
Hercule Poirot asked gently:
“You are sure there are no difficulties, Doctor?”
The doctor replied slowly:
“Well, I suppose you might call one thing a little odd. When he shot himself he must have been leaning slightly over to the right. Otherwise the bullet would have hit the wall below the mirror, instead of plumb in the middle.”
“An uncomfortable position in which to commit suicide,” said Poirot.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, well—comfort—if you’re going to end it all—” He left the sentence unfinished.
Major Riddle said:
“The body can be moved now?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve done with it until the P.-M.”
“What about you, Inspector?” Major Riddle spoke to a tall impassive-faced man in plain clothes.
“O.K., sir. We’ve got all we want. Only the deceased’s fingerprints on the pistol.”
“Then you can get on with it.”
The mortal remains of Gervase Chevenix-Gore were removed. The chief constable and Poirot were left together.
“Well,” said Riddle, “everything seems quite clear and aboveboard. Door locked, window fastened, key of door in dead man’s pocket. Everything according to Cocker—but for one circumstance.”
“And what is that, my friend?” inquired Poirot.
“You!” said Riddle bluntly. “What are you doing down here?”
By way of reply, Poirot handed to him the letter he had received from the dead man a week ago, and the telegram which had finally brought him there.
“Humph,” said the chief constable. “Interesting. We’ll have to get to the bottom of this. I should say it had a direct bearing upon his suicide.”
“I agree.”
“We must check up on who is in the house.”
“I can tell you their names. I have just been making inquiries of Mr. Trent.”
He repeated the list of names.
“Perhaps you, Major Riddle, know something about these people?”
“I know something of them, naturally. Lady Chevenix-Gore is quite as mad in her own way as old Sir Gervase. They were devoted to each other—and both quite mad. She’s the vaguest creature that ever lived, with an occasional uncanny shrewdness that strikes the nail on the head in the most surprising fashion. People laugh at her
a good deal. I think she knows it, but she doesn’t care. She’s absolutely no sense of humour.”
“Miss Chevenix-Gore is only their adopted daughter, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“A very handsome young lady.”
“She’s a devilishly attractive girl. Has played havoc with most of the young fellows round here. Leads them all on and then turns round and laughs at them. Good seat on a horse, and wonderful hands.”
“That, for the moment, does not concern us.”
“Er—no, perhaps not . . . Well, about the other people. I know old Bury, of course. He’s here most of the time. Almost a tame cat about the house. Kind of A.D.C. to Lady Chevenix-Gore. He’s a very old friend. They’ve known him all their lives. I think he and Sir Gervase were both interested in some company of which Bury was a director.”
“Oswald Forbes, do you know anything of him?”
“I rather believe I’ve met him once.”
“Miss Lingard?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Miss Susan Cardwell?”
“Rather a good-looking girl with red hair? I’ve seen her about with Ruth Chevenix-Gore the last few days.”
“Mr. Burrows?”
“Yes, I know him. Chevenix-Gore’s secretary. Between you and me, I don’t take to him much. He’s good-looking, and knows it. Not quite out of the top drawer.”
“Had he been with Sir Gervase long?”
“About two years, I fancy.”
“And there is no one else—?”
Poirot broke off.
A tall, fair-haired man in a lounge suit came hurrying in. He was out of breath and looked disturbed.
“Good evening, Major Riddle. I heard a rumour that Sir Gervase had shot himself, and I hurried up here. Snell tells me it’s true. It’s incredible! I can’t believe it!”
“It’s true enough, Lake. Let me introduce you. This is Captain Lake, Sir Gervase’s agent for the estate. M. Hercule Poirot, of whom you may have heard.”
Lake’s face lit up with what seemed a kind of delighted incredulity.