Suddenly Ruth Chevenix-Gore said:
“Wait!”
She got up and ran out of the room. She returned almost immediately with Captain Lake by her side.
“It’s got to come out,” she said rather breathlessly. “You might as well know now. John and I were married in London three weeks ago.”
Ten
Of the two of them, Captain Lake looked far the more embarrassed.
“This is a great surprise, Miss Chevenix-Gore—Mrs. Lake, I should say,” said Major Riddle. “Did no one know of this marriage of yours?”
“No, we kept it quite dark. John didn’t like that part of it much.”
Lake said, stammering a little:
“I—I know that it seems rather a rotten way to set about things. I ought to have gone straight to Sir Gervase—”
Ruth interrupted:
“And told him you wanted to marry his daughter, and have been kicked out on your head and he’d probably have disinherited me, raised hell generally in the house, and we could have told each other how beautifully we’d behaved! Believe me, my way was better! If a thing’s done, it’s done. There would still have been a row—but he’d have come round.”
Lake still looked unhappy. Poirot asked:
“When did you intend to break the news to Sir Gervase?”
Ruth answered:
“I was preparing the ground. He’d been rather suspicious about me and John, so I pretended to turn my attentions to Godfrey. Naturally, he was ready to go quite off the deep end about that. I figured it out that the news I was married to John would come almost as a relief!”
“Did anybody at all know of this marriage?”
“Yes, I told Vanda in the end. I wanted to get her on my side.”
“And you succeeded in doing so?”
“Yes. You see, she wasn’t very keen about my marrying Hugo—because he was a cousin, I think. She seemed to think the family was so batty already that we’d probably have completely batty children. That was probably rather absurd, because I’m only adopted, you know. I believe I’m some quite distant cousin’s child.”
“You are sure Sir Gervase had no suspicion of the truth?”
“Oh, no.”
Poirot said:
“Is that true, Captain Lake? In your interview with Sir
Gervase this afternoon, are you quite sure the matter was not mentioned?”
“No, sir. It was not.”
“Because, you see, Captain Lake, there is certain evidence to show that Sir Gervase was in a highly-excitable condition after the time he spent with you, and that he spoke once or twice of family dishonour.”
“The matter was not mentioned,” Lake repeated. His face had gone very white.
“Was that the last time you saw Sir Gervase?”
“Yes, I have already told you so.”
“Where were you at eight minutes past eight this evening?”
“Where was I? In my house. At the end of the village, about half a mile away.”
“You did not come up to Hamborough Close round about that time?”
“No.”
Poirot turned to the girl.
“Where were you, mademoiselle, when your father shot himself?”
“In the garden.”
“In the garden? You heard the shot?”
“Oh, yes. But I didn’t think about it particularly. I thought it was someone out shooting rabbits, although now I remember I did think it sounded quite close at hand.”
“You returned to the house—which way?”
“I came in through this window.”
Ruth indicated with a turn of her head the window behind her.
“Was anyone in here?”
“No. But Hugo and Susan and Miss Lingard came in from the hall almost immediately. They were talking about shooting and murders and things.”
“I see,” said Poirot. “Yes, I think I see now. . . .”
Major Riddle said rather doubtfully:
“Well—er—thank you. I think that’s all for the moment.”
Ruth and her husband turned and left the room.
“What the devil——” began Major Riddle, and ended rather hopelessly: “It gets more and more difficult to keep track of this business.”
Poirot nodded. He had picked up the little piece of earth that had fallen from Ruth’s shoe and was holding it thoughtfully in his hand.
“It is like the mirror smashed on the wall,” he said. “The dead man’s mirror. Every new fact we come across shows us some different angle of the dead man. He is reflected from every conceivable point of view. We shall have soon a complete picture. . . .”
He rose and put the little piece of earth tidily in the waste-paper basket.
“I will tell you one thing, my friend. The clue to the whole mystery is the mirror. Go into the study and look for yourself, if you do not believe me.”
Major Riddle, said decisively:
“If it’s murder, it’s up to you to prove it. If you ask me, I say it’s definitely suicide. Did you notice what the girl said about a former agent having swindled old Gervase? I bet Lake told that tale for his own purposes. He was probably helping himself a bit, Sir Gervase suspected it, and sent for you because he didn’t know how far things had gone between Lake and Ruth. Then this afternoon Lake told him they were married. That broke Gervase up. It was ‘too late’ now for anything to be done. He determined to get out of it all. In fact his brain, never very well-balanced at the best of times, gave way. In my opinion that’s what happened. What have you got to say against it?”
Poirot stood still in the middle of the room.
“What have I to say? This: I have nothing to say against your theory—but it does not go far enough. There are certain things it does not take into account.”
“Such as?”
“The discrepancies in Sir Gervase’s moods today, the finding of Colonel Bury’s pencil, the evidence of Miss Cardwell (which is very important), the evidence of Miss Lingard as to the order in which people came down to dinner, the position of Sir Gervase’s chair when he was found, the paper bag which had held oranges and, finally, the all-important clue of the broken mirror.”
Major Riddle stared.
“Are you going to tell me that that rigmarole makes sense?” he asked.
Hercule Poirot replied softly:
“I hope to make it do so—by tomorrow.”
Eleven
It was just after dawn when Hercule Poirot awoke on the following morning. He had been given a bedroom on the east side of the house.
Getting out of bed, he drew aside the window blind and satisfied himself that the sun had risen, and that it was a fine
morning.
He began to dress with his usual meticulous care. Having finished his toilet, he wrapped himself up in a thick overcoat and wound a muffler round his neck.
Then he tiptoed out of his room and through the silent house down to the drawing room. He opened the french windows noiselessly and passed out into the garden.
The sun was just showing now. The air was misty, with the mist of a fine morning. Hercule Poirot followed the terraced walk round the side of the house till he came to the windows of Sir Gervase’s study. Here he stopped and surveyed the scene.
Immediately outside the windows was a strip of grass that ran parallel with the house. In front of that was a wide herbaceous border. The michaelmas daisies still made a fine show. In front of the border was the flagged walk where Poirot was standing. A strip of grass ran from the grass walk behind the border to the terrace. Poirot examined it carefully, then shook his head. He turned his attention to the border on either side
of it.
Very slowly he nodded his head. In the right-hand bed, distinct in the soft mould, there were footprints.
As he stared down at them, frowning, a sound caught his ears and he lifted his head sharply.
Above him a window had been pushed up. He saw a red head of hair. Framed in an aureole of golden re
d he saw the intelligent face of Susan Cardwell.
“What on earth are you doing at this hour, M. Poirot? A spot of sleuthing?”
Poirot bowed with the utmost correctitude.
“Good morning, mademoiselle. Yes, it is as you say. You now behold a detective—a great detective, I may say—in the act of detecting!”
The remark was a little flamboyant. Susan put her head on one side.
“I must remember this in my memoirs,” she remarked. “Shall I come down and help?”
“I should be enchanted.”
“I thought you were a burglar at first. Which way did you get out?”
“Through the drawing room window.”
“Just a minute and I’ll be with you.”
She was as good as her word. To all appearances Poirot was exactly in the same position as when she had first seen him.
“You are awake very early, mademoiselle?”
“I haven’t been to sleep really properly. I was just getting that desperate feeling that one does get at five in the morning.”
“It’s not quite so early as that!”
“It feels like it! Now then, my super sleuth, what are we looking at?”
“But observe, mademoiselle, footprints.”
“So they are.”
“Four of them,” continued Poirot. “See, I will point them out to you. Two going towards the window, two coming from it.”
“Whose are they? The gardener’s?”
“Mademoiselle, mademoiselle! Those footmarks are made by the small dainty high-heeled shoes of a woman. See, convince yourself. Step, I beg of you, in the earth here beside them.”
Susan hesitated a minute, then placed a foot gingerly on to the mould in the place indicated by Poirot. She was wearing small high-heeled slippers of dark brown leather.
“You see, yours are nearly the same size. Nearly, but not quite. These others are made by a rather longer foot than yours. Perhaps Miss Chevenix-Gore’s—or Miss Lingard’s—or even Lady Chevenix-Gore’s.”
“Not Lady Chevenix-Gore—she’s got tiny feet. People did in those days—manage to have small feet, I mean. And Miss Lingard wears queer flat-heeled things.”
“Then they are the marks of Miss Chevenix-Gore. Ah, yes, I remember she mentioned having been out in the garden yesterday evening.”
He led the way back round the house.
“Are we still sleuthing?” asked Susan.
“But certainly. We will go now to Sir Gervase’s study.”
He led the way. Susan Cardwell followed him.
The door still hung in a melancholy fashion. Inside, the room was as it had been last night. Poirot pulled the curtains and admitted the daylight.
He stood looking out at the border a minute or two, then he said:
“You have not, I presume, mademoiselle, much acquaintance with burglars?”
Susan Cardwell shook her red head regretfully.
“I’m afraid not, M. Poirot.”
“The chief constable, he, too, has not had the advantages of a friendly relationship with them. His connection with the criminal clases has always been strictly official. With me that is not so. I had a very pleasant chat with a burglar once. He told me an interesting thing about french windows—a trick that could sometimes be employed if the fastening was sufficiently loose.”
He turned the handle of the left-hand window as he spoke, the middle shaft came up out of the hole in the ground, and Poirot was able to pull the two doors of the window towards him. Having opened them wide, he closed them again—closed them without turning the handle, so as not to send the shaft down into its socket. He let go of the handle, waited a moment, then struck a quick, jarring blow high up on the centre of the shaft. The jar of the blow sent the shaft down into the socket in the ground—the handle turned of its own accord.
“You see, mademoiselle?”
“I think I do.”
Susan had gone rather pale.
“The window is now closed. It is impossible to enter a room when the window is closed, but it is possible to leave a room, pull the doors to from outside, then hit it as I did, and the bolt goes down into the ground, turning the handle. The window then is firmly closed, and anyone looking at it would say it had been closed from the inside.”
“Is that”—Susan’s voice shook a little—“is that what happened last night?”
“I think so, yes, mademoiselle.”
Susan said violently:
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
Poirot did not answer. He walked over to the mantelpiece. He wheeled sharply round.
“Mademoiselle, I have need of you as a witness. I have already one witness, Mr. Trent. He saw me find this tiny sliver of looking glass last night. I spoke of it to him. I left it where it was for the police. I even told the chief constable that a valuable clue was the broken mirror. But he did not avail himself of my hint. Now you are a witness that I place this sliver of looking glass (to which, remember, I have already called Mr. Trent’s attention) into a little envelope—so.” He suited the action to the word. “And I write on it—so—and seal it up. You are a witness, mademoiselle?”
“Yes—but—but I don’t know what it means.”
Poirot walked over to the other side of the room. He stood in front of the desk and stared at the shattered mirror on the wall in front of him.
“I will tell you what it means, mademoiselle. If you had been standing here last night, looking into this mirror, you could have seen in it murder being committed. . . .”
Twelve
I
For once in her life Ruth Chevenix-Gore—now Ruth Lake—came down to breakfast in good time. Hercule Poirot was in the hall and drew her aside before she went into the dining room.
“I have a question to ask you, madame.”
“Yes?”
“You were in the garden last night. Did you at any time step in the flower bed outside Sir Gervase’s study window?”
Ruth stared at him.
“Yes, twice.”
“Ah! Twice. How twice?”
“The first time I was picking michaelmas daisies. That was about seven o’clock.”
“Was it not rather an odd time of day to pick flowers?”
“Yes, it was, as a matter of fact. I’d done the flowers yesterday morning, but Vanda said after tea that the flowers on the dinner table weren’t good enough. I had thought they would be all right, so I hadn’t done them fresh.”
“But your mother requested you to do them? Is that right?”
“Yes. So I went out just before seven. I took them from that part of the border because hardly anyone goes round there, and so it didn’t matter spoiling the effect.”
“Yes, yes, but the second time. You went there a second time, you said?”
“That was just before dinner. I had dropped a spot of brilliantine on my dress—just by the shoulder. I didn’t want to bother to change, and none of my artificial flowers went with the yellow of that dress. I remembered I’d seen a late rose when I was picking the michaelmas daisies, so I hurried out and got it and pinned it on my shoulder.”
Poirot nodded his head slowly.
“Yes, I remember that you wore a rose last night. What time was it, madame, when you picked that rose?”
“I don’t really know.”
“But it is essential, madame. Consider—reflect.”
Ruth frowned. She looked swiftly at Poirot and then away again.
“I can’t say exactly,” she said at last. “It must have been—oh, of course—it must have been about five minutes past eight. It was when I was on my way back round the house that I heard the gong go, and then that funny bang. I was hurrying because I thought it was the second gong and not the first.”
“Ah, so you thought that—and did you not try the study window when you stood there in the flowerbed?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. I thought it might be open, and it would be quicker to come in that way. But it was fastened.”
“So everything is explained. I congratulate you, madame.”
She stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“That you have an explanation for everything, for the mould on your shoes, for your footprints in the flower bed, for your fingerprints on the outside of the window. It is very convenient that.”
Before Ruth could answer, Miss Lingard came hurrying down the stairs. There was a queer purple flush on her cheeks, and she looked a little startled at seeing Poirot and Ruth standing together.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Is anything the matter?”
Ruth said angrily:
“I think M. Poirot has gone mad!”
She swept by them and into the dining room. Miss Lingard turned an astonished face on Poirot.
He shook his head.
“After breakfast,” he said. “I will explain. I should like everyone to assemble in Sir Gervase’s study at ten o’clock.”
He repeated this request on entering the dining room.
Susan Cardwell gave him a quick glance, then transferred her gaze to Ruth. When Hugo said:
“Eh? What’s the idea?” she gave him a sharp nudge in the side, and he shut up obediently.
When he had finished his breakfast, Poirot rose and walked to the door. He turned and drew out a large old-fashioned watch.
“It is five minutes to ten. In five minutes—in the study.”
II
Poirot looked round him. A circle of interested faces stared back at him. Everyone was there, he noted, with one exception, and at that very moment the exception swept into the room. Lady Chevenix-Gore came in with a soft, gliding step. She looked haggard and ill.
Poirot drew forward a big chair for her, and she sat down.
She looked up at the broken mirror, shivered, and pulled her chair a little way round.
“Gervase is still here,” she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. “Poor Gervase . . . He will soon be free now.”
Poirot cleared his throat and announced:
“I have asked you all to come here so that you may hear the true facts of Sir Gervase’s suicide.”
“It was Fate,” said Lady Chevenix-Gore. “Gervase was strong, but his Fate was stronger.”