Poirot looked again at his list.
“And what about Mr. David Baker? Have you looked him up for me?”
“Oh, he’s one of the usual mob. Riffraff—go about in gangs and break up nightclubs. Live on purple hearts—heroin—Coke—Girls go mad about them. He’s the kind they moan over saying his life has been so hard and he’s such a wonderful genius. His painting is not appreciated. Nothing but good old sex, if you ask me.”
Poirot consulted his list again.
“Do you know anything about Mr. Reece-Holland, MP?”
“Doing quite well, politically. Got the gift of the gab all right. One or two slightly peculiar transactions in the City, but he’s wriggled out of them quite neatly. I’d say he was a slippery one. He’s made quite a good deal of money off and on by rather doubtful means.”
Poirot came to his last point.
“What about Sir Roderick Horsefield?”
“Nice old boy but gaga. What a nose you have, Poirot, get it into everything, don’t you? Yes, there’s been a lot of trouble in the Special Branch. It’s this craze for memoirs. Nobody knows what indiscreet revelations are going to be made next. All the old boys, service and otherwise, are racing hard to bring out their own particular brand of what they remember of the indiscretions of others! Usually it doesn’t much matter, but sometimes—well, you know, Cabinets change their policies and you don’t want to afront someone’s susceptibilities or give the wrong publicity, so we have to try and muffle the old boys. Some of them are not too easy. But you’ll have to go to the Special Branch if you want to nose into any of that. I shouldn’t think there was much wrong. The trouble is they don’t destroy the papers they should. They keep the lot. However, I don’t think there is much in that, but we have evidence that a certain Power is nosing around.”
Poirot gave a deep sigh.
“Haven’t I helped?” asked the Chief Inspector.
“I am very glad to get the real lowdown from official quarters. But no, I don’t think there is much help in what you have told me.” He sighed and then said, “What would be your opinion if someone said to you casually that a woman—a young attractive woman—wore a wig?”
“Nothing in that,” said Chief Inspector Neele, and added, with a slight asperity, “my wife wears a wig when we’re travelling anytime. It saves a lot of trouble.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Hercule Poirot.
As the two men bade each other good-bye, the Chief Inspector asked:
“You got all the dope, I suppose, on that suicide case you were asking about in the flats? I had it sent round to you.”
“Yes, thank you. The official facts, at least. A bare record.”
“There was something you were talking about just now that brought it back to my mind. I’ll think of it in a moment. It was the usual, rather sad story. Gay woman, fond of men, enough money to live upon, no particular worries, drank too much and went down the hill. And then she gets what I call the health bug. You know, they’re convinced they have cancer or something in that line. They consult a doctor and he tells them they’re all right, and they go home and don’t believe him. If you ask me it’s usually because they find they’re no longer as attractive as they used to be to men. That’s what’s really depressing them. Yes, it happens all the time. They’re lonely, I suppose, poor devils. Mrs. Charpentier was just one of them. I don’t suppose that any—” he stopped. “Oh yes, of course, I remember. You were asking about one of our MPs, Reece-Holland. He’s a fairly gay one himself in a discreet way. Anyway, Louise Charpentier was his mistress at one time. That’s all.”
“Was it a serious liaison?”
“Oh I shouldn’t say so particularly. They went to some rather questionable clubs together and things like that. You know, we keep a discreet eye on things of that kind. But there was never anything in the Press about them. Nothing of that kind.”
“I see.”
“But it lasted for a certain time. They were seen together, off and on, for about six months, but I don’t think she was the only one and I don’t think he was the only one either. So you can’t make anything of that, can you?”
“I do not think so,” said Poirot.
“But all the same,” he said to himself as he went down the stairs, “all the same, it is a link. It explains the embarrassment of Mr. McFarlane. It is a link, a tiny link, a link between Emlyn Reece-Holland, MP, and Louise Charpentier.” It didn’t mean anything probably. Why should it? But yet—“I know too much,” said Poirot angrily to himself. “I know too much. I know a little about everything and everyone but I cannot get my pattern. Half these facts are irrelevant. I want a pattern. A pattern. My kingdom for a pattern,” he said aloud.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the lift boy, turning a startled head.
“It is nothing,” said Poirot.
Eighteen
Poirot paused at the doorway of the Wedderburn Gallery to inspect a picture which depicted three aggressive-looking cows with vastly elongated bodies overshadowed by a colossal and complicated design of windmills. The two seemed to have nothing to do with each other or the very curious purple colouring.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” said a soft purring voice.
A middle-aged man, who at first sight seemed to have shown a smile which exhibited an almost excessive number of beautiful white teeth, was at his elbow.
“Such freshness.”
He had large white plump hands which he waved as though he was using them in an arabesque.
“Clever exhibition. Closed last week. Claude Raphael show opened the day before yesterday. It’s going to do well. Very well indeed.”
“Ah,” said Poirot and was led through grey velvet curtains into a long room.
Poirot made a few cautious if doubtful remarks. The plump man took him in hand in a practised manner. Here was someone, he obviously felt, who must not be frightened away. He was a very experienced man in the art of salesmanship. You felt at once that you were welcome to be in his gallery all day if you liked without making a purchase. Sheerly, solely looking at these delightful pictures—though when you entered the gallery you might not have thought that they were delightful. But by the time you went out you were convinced that delightful was exactly the word to describe them. After receiving some useful artistic instruction, and making a few of the amateur’s stock remarks such as “I rather like that one,” Mr. Boscombe responded encouragingly by some such phrase as:
“Now that’s very interesting that you should say that. It shows, if I may say so, great perspicacity. Of course you know it isn’t the ordinary reaction. Most people prefer something—well, shall I say slightly obvious like that”—he pointed to a blue and green striped effect arranged in one corner of the canvas—“but this, yes, you’ve spotted the quality of the thing. I’d say myself—of course it’s only my personal opinion—that that’s one of Raphael’s masterpieces.”
Poirot and he looked together with both their heads on one side at an orange lopsided diamond with two human eyes depending from it by what looked like a spidery thread. Pleasant relations established and time obviously being infinite, Poirot remarked:
“I think a Miss Frances Cary works for you, does she not?”
“Ah yes. Frances. Clever girl that. Very artistic and very competent too. Just come back from Portugal where she’s been arranging an art show for us. Very successful. Quite a good artist herself, but not I should say really creative, if you understand me. She is better on the business side. I think she recognises that herself.”
“I understand that she is a good patron of the arts?”
“Oh yes. She’s interested in Les Jeunes. Encourages talent, persuaded me to give a show for a little group of young artists last spring. It was quite successful—the Press noticed it—all in a small way, you understand. Yes, she has her protégés.”
“I am, you understand, somewhat old-fashioned. Some of these young men—vraiment!” Poirot’s hands went up.
“Ah,” said
Mr. Boscombe indulgently, “you mustn’t go by their appearances. It’s just a fashion, you know. Beards and jeans or brocades and hair. Just a passing phase.”
“David someone,” said Poirot. “I forget his last name. Miss Cary seemed to think highly of him.”
“Sure you don’t mean Peter Cardiff? He’s her present protégé. Mind you, I’m not quite so sure about him as she is. He’s really not so much avant-garde as he is—well, positively reactionary. Quite—quite—Burne-Jones sometimes! Still, one never knows. You do get these reactions. She acts as his model occasionally.”
“David Baker—that was the name I was trying to remember,” said Poirot.
“He is not bad,” said Mr. Boscombe, without enthusiasm. “Not much originality, in my opinion. He was one of the group of artists I mentioned, but he didn’t make any particular impression. A good painter, mind, but not striking. Derivative!”
Poirot went home. Miss Lemon presented him with letters to sign, and departed with them duly signed. George served him with an omellette fines herbes garnished, as you might say, with a discreetly sympathetic manner. After lunch, as Poirot was setting himself in his square-backed armchair with his coffee at his elbow, the telephone rang.
“Mrs. Oliver, sir,” said George, lifting the telephone and placing it at his elbow.
Poirot picked up the receiver reluctantly. He did not want to talk to Mrs. Oliver. He felt that she would urge upon him something which he did not want to do.
“M. Poirot?”
“C’est moi.”
“Well, what are you doing? What have you done?”
“I am sitting in this chair,” said Poirot. “Thinking,” he added.
“Is that all?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“It is the important thing,” said Poirot. “Whether I shall have success in it or not I do not know.”
“But you must find that girl. She’s probably been kidnapped.”
“It would certainly seem so,” said Poirot. “And I have a letter here which came by the midday post from her father, urging me to come and see him and tell him what progress I have made.”
“Well, what progress have you made?”
“At the moment,” said Poirot reluctantly, “none.”
“Really, M. Poirot, you really must take a grip on yourself.”
“You, too!”
“What do you mean, me too?”
“Urging me on.”
“Why don’t you go down to that place in Chelsea, where I was hit on the head?”
“And get myself hit on the head also?”
“I simply don’t understand you,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I gave you a clue by finding the girl in the café. You said so.”
“I know, I know.”
“What about that woman who threw herself out of a window? Haven’t you got anything out of that?”
“I have made inquiries, yes.”
“Well?”
“Nothing. The woman is one of many. They are attractive when young, they have affairs, they are passionate, they have still more affairs, they get less attractive, they are unhappy and drink too much, they think they have cancer or some fatal disease and so at last in despair and loneliness they throw themselves out of a window!”
“You said her death was important—that it meant something.”
“It ought to have done.”
“Really!” At a loss for further comment, Mrs. Oliver rang off.
Poirot leant back in his armchair, as far as he could lean back since it was of an upright nature, waved to George to remove the coffee pot and also the telephone and proceeded to reflect upon what he did or did not know. To clarify his thoughts he spoke out loud. He recalled three philosophic questions.
“What do I know? What can I hope? What ought I to do?”
He was not sure that he got them in the right order or indeed if they were quite the right questions, but he reflected upon them.
“Perhaps I am too old,” said Hercule Poirot, at the bottom depths of despair. “What do I know?”
Upon reflection he thought that he knew too much! He laid that question aside for the moment.
“What can I hope?” Well, one could always hope. He could hope that those excellent brains of his, so much better than anybody else’s, would come up sooner or later with an answer to a problem which he felt uneasily that he did not really understand.
“What ought I to do?” Well, that was very definite. What he ought to do was to go and call upon Mr. Andrew Restarick who was obviously distraught about his daughter, and who would no doubt blame Poirot for not having by now delivered the daughter in person. Poirot could understand that, and sympathised with his point of view, but disliked having to present himself in such a very unfavourable light. The only other thing he could do was to telephone to a certain number and ask what developments there had been.
But before he did that, he would go back to the question he had laid aside.
“What do I know?”
He knew that the Wedderburn Gallery was under suspicion—so far it had kept on the right side of the law, but it would not hesitate at swindling ignorant millionaires by selling them dubious pictures.
He recalled Mr. Boscombe with his plump white hands and his plentiful teeth, and decided that he did not like him. He was the kind of man who was almost certainly up to dirty work, though he would no doubt protect himself remarkably well. That was a fact that might come into use because it might connect up with David Baker. Then there was David Baker himself, the Peacock. What did he know about him? He had met him, he had conversed with him, and he had formed certain opinions about him. He would do a crooked deal of any kind for money, he would marry a rich heiress for her money and not for love, he might perhaps be bought off. Yes, he probably could be bought off. Andrew Restarick certainly believed so and he was probably right. Unless—
He considered Andrew Restarick, thinking more of the picture on the wall hanging above him than of the man himself. He remembered the strong features, the jutting out chin, the air of resolution, of decision. Then he thought of Mrs. Andrew Restarick, deceased. The bitter lines of her mouth…Perhaps he would go down to Crosshedges again and look at that portrait, so as to see it more clearly because there might be a clue to Norma in that. Norma—no, he must not think of Norma yet. What else was there?
There was Mary Restarick whom the girl Sonia said must have a lover because she went up to London so often. He considered that point but he did not think that Sonia was right. He thought Mrs. Restarick was much more likely to go to London in order to look at possible properties to buy, luxury flats, houses in Mayfair, decorators, all the things that money in the metropolis could buy.
Money…It seemed to him that all the points that had been passing through his mind came to this in the end. Money. The importance of money. There was a great deal of money in this case. Somehow, in some way that was not obvious, money counted. Money played its part. So far there had been nothing to justify his belief that the tragic death of Mrs. Charpentier had been the work of Norma. No sign of evidence, no motive; yet it seemed to him that there was an undeniable link. The girl had said that she “might have committed a murder.” A death had taken place only a day or two previously. A death that had occurred in the building where she lived. Surely it would be too much of a coincidence that that death should not be connected in any way? He thought again of the mysterious illness which had affected Mary Restarick. An occurrence so simple as to be classic in its outline. A poison case where the poisoner was—must be—one of the household. Had Mary Restarick poisoned herself, had her husband tried to poison her, had the girl Sonia administered poison? Or had Norma been the culprit? Everything pointed, Hercule Poirot had to confess, to Norma as being the logical person.
“Tout de même,” said Poirot, “since I cannot find anything, et bien then the logic falls out of the window.”
He sighed, rose to his feet and told George to fetch him a taxi. He must keep his appointment with Andrew Restarick.
Nineteen
Claudia Reece-Holland was not in the office today. Instead, a middle-aged woman received Poirot. She said that Mr. Restarick was waiting for him and ushered him into Restarick’s room.
“Well?” Restarick hardly waited until he had come through the door. “Well, what about my daughter?”
Poirot spread out his hands.
“As yet—nothing.”
“But look here, man, there must be something—some clue. A girl can’t just disappear into thin air.”
“Girls have done it before now and will do it again.”
“Did you understand that no expense was to be spared, none whatever? I—I can’t go on like this.”
He seemed completely on edge by this time. He looked thinner and his red-rimmed eyes spoke of sleepless nights.
“I know what your anxiety must be, but I assure you that I have done everything possible to trace her. These things, alas, cannot be hurried.”
“She may have lost her memory or—or she may—I mean, she might be sick. Ill.”
Poirot thought he knew what the broken form of the sentence meant. Restarick had been about to say “she may perhaps be dead.”
He sat down on the other side of the desk and said:
“Believe me, I appreciate your anxiety and I have to say to you once again that the results would be a lot quicker if you consulted the police.”
“No!” The word broke out explosively.
“They have greater facilities, more lines of inquiry. I assure you it is not only a question of money. Money cannot give you the same result as a highly efficient organisation can do.”
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