Closed Casket

by Sophie Hannah

  “I am acquainted with Dr. Kimpton,” Poirot told him.

  “Mention me, did he? And Iris? That why you’re here?”

  “Dr. Kimpton said that there was a rumor about Iris’s death—that she did not fall in front of a train by accident.”

  “He weren’t no doctor in them days.”

  “About Iris’s death, Mr. Gillow?” said Poirot patiently.

  “Weren’t no accident. Murder, it was. That what Kimpton told you?”

  “He suggests that you might have pushed your wife in front of the train.”

  “Nah, not me.” Percy Gillow did not take offense at being suspected of murder, and continued to pack his nose with snuff. “Woman dressed as a man, it were. In disguise! I told them that—the police—but they took one look at me and decided not to listen. What could a feller like me tell ’em that was worth listening to?”

  “So you saw it happen? You saw this disguised person push your wife onto the tracks?” Poirot asked.

  “No, sir. What I saw was this. I saw Iris fall—that was the first thing. Bam! Nowt I could do! Seemed to jolt forward for no reason, she did. Train was racketing towards her. She was crushed.” Gillow shook his head and held up his snuffbox. “She gave me this. Not that day, mind. But I can’t look at it and not think of her. She had a good heart, Iris. Good brain too—not that she used it much, and never where men were concerned. I was always the same with the girls. We were peas in a pod, Iris and me. But she never could see that I was the one for her, even once we were married. She kept wanting better.”

  “I see. So you saw her fall and then . . . ?”

  “I looked away. Didn’t want to see what was in front of me, so I turned round and there he was—I suppose I should say ‘she.’ Hat, suit. Beard—red in the middle, gray around the outside. Reminded me of a pirate’s beard from a storybook. Not a bad disguise, but it didn’t fool me.”

  “A pirate’s beard. That is interesting,” Poirot murmured.

  “It fell off,” said Gillow.

  “What fell off?”

  “The beard. As I was looking, it fell clean off! Now, I’ve never had one meself but I know they don’t just drop off your chin. That’s when I knew for sure it was a woman in disguise, see. She hooked it—which to my mind was a clear sign of guilt. But you try making the police pay attention when you’ve had too much ale and you’ve no profession to speak of, and your wife’s just ended up under the wheels of a train!”

  Poirot nodded, though he found it difficult to imagine himself in a predicament of that particular sort.

  30

  More than Fond

  At Lillieoak, first thing the next morning, and bearing in mind Poirot’s instruction to talk and listen as much as I could, I went in search of Lady Playford. As it turned out, she was also looking for me, and claimed it as her victory when our paths crossed. “Edward! Found you at last! Did you speak to Poirot on the telephone last night? I don’t suppose he told you when we might expect him back at Lillieoak? It’s funny, I scarcely know the man, but he turns out to be one of those people who changes a place for the worse once he leaves it—don’t you find?”

  She wore a long kimono with an intricate pattern in pale blue, gold and orange. It was rather magnificent, but made me think only of The Mikado. Claudia had compared the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to Sophie Bourlet’s prospective marriage to Joseph Scotcher—which, as it turned out, need not have been short-lived because Scotcher had not been dying after all, but could no longer happen because he was now murdered.

  I told Lady Playford that I was at her disposal, and that Poirot would return as soon as he could.

  “He had better, or I shall enter his name in my little black book.” She took me by the arm and steered me through the hall. “It’s not a real book—only in my head. It’s what I call my list of those who have wronged me and are not to be forgiven! Oh, I keep a meticulous record. You would do well to ensure that your name is never added to the list, Edward.”

  “I shall make it my life’s work.”

  She laughed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the parlor.”

  I stopped walking and freed my arm from hers. “The parlor?”

  “Yes. That is where I thought we would have our talk.”

  “But . . .”

  “It is also where Joseph’s body was found?”

  “Yes.” It was one thing going in there with Randall Kimpton to look at the bloodstain—that could not have happened anywhere else, whereas Lady Playford and I could talk in any room at Lillieoak.

  “The stained carpet has been removed,” she said. “The gardaí gave their permission. I have Arthur Conree just where I want him. I told him that of course he would want to withhold his permission, and did I mention how wonderful he was at forbidding us all to breathe air, and how right he was to do so—and naturally he became as biddable as a little lamb. So, the carpet was dealt with yesterday. We will find no trace of murder in the parlor today, I promise you.”

  “I see.”

  She gave me a stern look. “It is a room in my home, Edward—one that gets more of the morning sun than any other at Lillieoak. I refuse to allow it to become a shrine to death. While I do not wish to sit in it this morning any more than you do, we must do it. Over and over again, until we no longer do so reluctantly.”

  “That is the wisest way to approach the matter,” I had to agree.

  “As it turns out, of course, Joseph was not even murdered there.”

  I followed her into the parlor, expecting to see bare floorboards, but another carpet had been laid in place of the old one: blue, green and white, with an elaborate pattern of birds in trees.

  “Sit, Edward.” Lady Playford pointed at the chair she had chosen for me. It was the furthest from the spot where Joseph Scotcher’s ruined head had lain; I was grateful for that. She arranged herself on the chaise longue opposite me.

  “There is much that you wish to ask me, and much I would like to tell you,” she said. “Shall I start? It’s only that, for so long, I have had a story—the most compelling story I have ever known—and I could not share it with anybody. Now that Joseph is dead and the inquest has made plain what I have known for a long time—that he was not ill, and certainly not dying—I can talk openly at last. There is nothing I must withhold. The relief is overwhelming!”

  “I can imagine,” I said dutifully.

  “I thought I might never be able to tell this story,” said Lady Playford. “I had resolved to protect Joseph’s good name, but now, with him dead—murdered—I am duty-bound to tell you everything. If I want to help catch his killer, I have no choice. Tell me something, Edward: how well do you recollect the conversation at dinner on the night that Joseph was killed?”

  “I think I recall most of it,” I said.

  “Good. Then you will remember that I offered an explanation for what must have seemed an extraordinary act on my part. Why should I disinherit my own children and leave everything to my secretary? I said to Joseph in front of you all—quite likely in these very words, for I had prepared my speech in advance—‘It is common knowledge among good doctors that the psychological can and often does have a profound influence over the physical.’ I said that I wanted to give Joseph something to live for—a vast fortune—in the hope that his unconscious mind would then work its magic and cure his bodily ailments. Do you recall all of this?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. I also said that I was no longer prepared to give Joseph’s doctors free rein, and that I intended to take him the very next day to see my doctor, who is the best of the best. That part is true—I have an excellent doctor. The rest, I am ashamed to say, was a lie. To be more precise: it was a probable lie. I did not know absolutely for certain. That was my dilemma, you see.”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I admitted.

  “Well, it was true that I was no longer willing to leave Joseph’s doctors to get on with it as they wished
—assuming his doctors were real and not a figment of his imagination. And I would definitely have taken him to see my own wonderful doctor the following morning if nothing had happened in the night to change things—but I had a feeling that something would.” Lady Playford flinched as she added, “Though, naturally, I had no idea that Joseph’s murder would happen. If I had suspected that somebody would kill him, I should never have done any of it—the new will, the announcement at dinner. For that error of judgment, I shall never forgive myself. It was unjustifiably conceited of me to imagine that I could foresee every possible consequence of my actions.”

  “Only Scotcher’s murderer is responsible for his death,” I told her.

  She smiled. “That is nonsense—but comforting nonsense, so I will do my best to make myself believe it.”

  I waited in silence for her to say more. Eventually she sighed, like a train emitting a large puff of steam, and said, “I did not believe that Joseph was dying. Oh, I probably did for a very short time after he told me—and I was distraught, truly distraught. I had grown fond of him very quickly. More than fond. Within days of his arrival at Lillieoak, I was offering profound prayers of thanks to the Lord for sending him my way. Did you have the chance to talk to him at all, Edward? Then you will know what it felt like: as if no one in the world had ever understood you so well as he did; as if no one had ever cared so much.”

  “He did seem unusually thoughtful and interested in others,” I said.

  “Yes, and insightful,” said Lady Playford. “Every time I spoke to him, it was as if he had a magic key that could open up my mind and reveal my own thoughts to me—wisdom I did not know I had. I should have objected most strenuously if anyone else had occupied my head in that way, but Joseph understood me so completely. No one else ever has. And he was so clever! And of course one always had such tremendous fun with him. He was the most stimulating company imaginable. When he expressed an opinion about a matter—and many of his opinions would have been too irregular for conventional tastes—I found myself agreeing with him absolutely. He always knew the right thing to say, and just how to say it.”

  She was not finished. “This will sound fanciful, Edward, but at times I almost believed that someone must have taken a piece of my soul and used it to create Joseph. After he arrived at Lillieoak, I could scarcely muster the will to speak to anybody else. They were all so dreary compared to him.”

  Lady Playford adjusted her position on the chaise longue so that she was sitting up straight. “I tell you all this only so that you will understand what comes next. When Joseph first told me that he was seriously ill with a kidney problem, I was surprised. I had noticed nothing untoward—he had been doing all that was required of him, and he did not look unwell. I was horrified to hear that he might not survive. Grief-stricken! There is no other way to describe it. The thought of losing him was unbearable.”

  She stopped for a moment and closed her eyes. What had been a thought was now a reality. The thing about realities, I reflected, was that one bore them because one had no choice.

  “Immediately, I hired the best nurse for him that I could find: Sophie. I tried to make him see my doctor, but he was adamant that he did not wish to do so. By the time he came to me with the news that his affliction was terminal Bright’s disease, and that he would not live much longer . . . Well, let us say that by then I was already suspicious. Even so, in spite of my doubts, I was moved by Joseph’s apparent lack of concern for himself. He seemed to care only about comforting me. He assured me that he was a fighter, that he was determined to stay with me for as long as possible. I thought, ‘How can this poor dying man be so selfless as to worry so much more about me than himself? He must be a saint!’ I suppose—and I am ashamed to admit it—I must have thought, in that moment, ‘How could I ever have doubted him? Pretending to be gravely ill is one thing, but surely no healthy person would claim to be dying, with no hope of a cure.’

  “Common sense introduced itself again soon afterwards, of course. I realized that Joseph could afford to be saintly and think primarily of the effect upon me, because he knew he had no health worries to speak of.”

  “When did you start to suspect that he was lying about his illness?” I asked.

  “I don’t think he was lying. If I tell a lie—and I do sometimes, if it suits me, like the time I told Edith Aldridge that I had sent her a thank-you letter and it must have gotten lost in the post. It was a lie, and I knew it. Joseph, I believe, did not know when he was lying—or not in the same way, at least. He somehow convinced himself that it was all true.”

  “You think he sincerely believed himself to be ill?”

  “No, not exactly. I simply mean . . . I think his lies were not so much a decision as a compulsion. There must have been something about the reality of his life or himself that was abhorrent to him, so he retreated into a fiction—one that he could bear. I am convinced that he did his best to make himself believe it so that he could live more effectively in accordance with it. Does any of this make any sense to you?”

  “Not an awful lot, no.”

  Lady Playford shook her head. “Nor to me. But I believe I knew Joseph better than anyone—the real Joseph, insofar as a man like him can be so described, since in many ways I think he felt no more real than any of the tales he told. Possibly you have never come across anybody like him, Edward. If you had, you might understand. I would swear that it was himself Joseph wished to deceive as much as anyone else. That is why I cannot judge him as harshly as I would otherwise. His motivation was a deep psychological need of some kind. I am keen to discuss it with Poirot, for I know psychology is one of his interests.”

  “When did you start to suspect that Scotcher was not at all sick?” I rephrased my original question.

  “I couldn’t tell you precisely, but between two and three weeks after he first told me of his illness. There was a doctor’s appointment he canceled for a rather trifling reason—that struck me as odd, given the supposedly perilous nature of his condition. He never seemed sickly at all. From my observation of his behavior, he appeared as healthy as Harry or Randall or any other young man. He was painfully thin—but then some people are, and there’s nothing to do about it. Many of them, you find, eat like horses. It’s their constitution. Then, on another occasion, Joseph went off to England to see a particular doctor whose expertise made it worth the journey, apparently. Well, that did not ring true at all! Why did he not need a doctor who was nearer and could see him more often? Why did no doctor ever come to the house?

  “Joseph could not be persuaded to tell me this eminent English chap’s name, and changed the subject whenever I asked. By sheer chance, Claudia was there at the same time—in Oxford to visit friends, and to indulge in her favorite activity of reminding Randall that she would never forgive him and never again give him houseroom; what nonsense that turned out to be!

  “The point is, Claudia saw Joseph at ten minutes after three o’clock on the day that he was supposed to be seeing the doctor. Instead, he was having tea with a woman with dark hair and one long eyebrow that went all the way across her face, Claudia said. Really, there is no need for such ugliness—these things can be easily attended to. She was a much older woman than Joseph. Oh, it was not an assignation or anything of that sort. Claudia saw them together through the window of the Randolph Hotel. The woman was eating a Chelsea bun.”

  “And you concluded from Scotcher’s meeting with this woman that . . . What did you conclude? What bearing did it have upon his illness?”

  “He had happened to mention the time of his doctor’s appointment: three o’clock. A mere ten minutes later, he was at the Randolph Hotel. Now, if you are about to say, ‘What if his doctor’s appointment was over and done with in five minutes and it only took him another five to walk to the hotel?’ then you underestimate me. The moment Claudia alerted me—the clerk at the Randolph was kind enough to allow her to use their telephone—I asked her to put the general manager on so that I could interro
gate him. He was soon able to tell me that a table for afternoon tea for two had been booked for three o’clock sharp by one Joseph Scotcher!”

  “I see. So when Claudia saw him with this woman, we can assume they had met at three and had already spent ten minutes together.”

  “Precisely. Of course, I might have wondered if Joseph had an eccentric doctor who insisted on meeting all his patients in fashionable hotels instead of at his surgery if Claudia had seen him at the Randolph with a man, but it was definitely a woman. Which means Joseph lied to me about the appointment.”

  “That is shocking,” I said. “Knowing how fond you were of him, to allow you to believe that you might soon lose him to a terrible illness . . . and then to go on to confirm that falsehood!”

  “It was shocking, but I was not shocked,” said Lady Playford. “My initial reaction, once I had got it firmly stamped upon my mind that it was most unlikely that Joseph was dying or even sick . . . well, I had several responses. One was joyful relief: I would not lose him! He would live!” Her eyes filled with tears. “It is unbearable to think now about how I felt then. I’m sorry.” She pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of her kimono and dabbed at her face.

  “There is no need to apologize,” I said.

  “That is kind of you, but I can’t abide public displays of emotion. I prefer to analyze it unemotionally. To that end . . . aside from joy and relief, I was also immensely puzzled by Joseph’s behavior. Why should a man who could make the whole world fall at his feet choose to conduct himself in such an extraordinary way? I was intrigued—and I was grateful to be so.”

  “Grateful?”

  “Does that sound strange to you? I am an only child. My parents were dull, quiet people. As a girl, if I wanted something interesting to happen, I had to invent it myself. So I turned my teddy bears into villains and my dolls into heroes and staged the most amazing dramas in my bedroom that no one else knew about. I have been inventing ever since—characters and dramas, mysteries and romances. As time went by and I got older, I met people who were far more interesting than my parents—but never any who were more interesting to me than the characters I made up myself. Until . . . ?”