She seemed to want me to complete her sentence. “Until you met Scotcher?” I said.
She nodded. “Joseph was more wonderfully baffling and bewildering than any mystery I could ever hope to invent. Oh, yes, I was grateful to him. And . . . well, there was something rather thrilling about it all. I joined in with the game! The peculiar thing was, Sophie did too. She fell in with the pretense of sickness because she had fallen in love with Joseph and did not wish to expose his fabrications. Like me, Sophie wanted to protect him. Think of the damage to his reputation if the truth had got out!”
“Many would think that Scotcher would have deserved every bit of that damage,” I said. I was one of the many. “Incidentally, Sophie Bourlet insists that she believed he was ill—that she still believes it. She accuses the police doctor of lying.”
Lady Playford said, “Sophie has not the courage to confess that she colluded in a pretense of such enormity. She knew her patient was a fraud within a week of arriving at Lillieoak, I’ll wager. Oh, she will never admit it. The truth offends her pride, so she insists it is otherwise. You must bear in mind, Edward, that the vast majority of people are disinclined to confront anything that is messy or peculiar. Most people are scared of most things—never forget that! It is really only writers and artists who can cope with the puzzling ambiguities—and those with an investigative inclination. I am sure Hercule Poirot would be fascinated by all of this.”
“Did Sophie Bourlet know that you knew the truth about Scotcher’s health?” I asked.
“I sincerely hope that she believed me to be fooled all the way along,” Lady Playford said. A mischievous smile appeared, then vanished just as quickly. “After all, why would I waste money on a live-in nurse for a man who is not sick?”
Why indeed? I did not ask for an explanation. Lady Playford thought she had already supplied one, and, although I fully believed her, her reasoning in this matter would never satisfy me. It was unpardonable insanity as far as I was concerned.
“Claudia guessed the truth, of course, and so did Randall. I feared it was only a matter of time before one of them blurted it out in a way that was designed to wound Joseph as much as possible. Subtly taunting him would not have satisfied Claudia forever, and her jibes were escalating. It was that fear that led me to put together my quite brilliant plan.”
Lady Playford’s face creased in distress. “Except it was not brilliant at all. I was a vain old fool, thinking I could control everything. If I had done and said nothing, Joseph would still be alive today.”
“What was the plan?” I asked her. “Or is it only what you have already told me, about taking Joseph to see your doctor?”
“Oh, no, there was a lot more to my plan than that. Much, much more.”
Apprehensive about what I would hear next, I asked her to tell me the rest.
31
Lady Playford’s Plan
“Catchpool—it is I, Hercule Poirot.”
“I would never have guessed, old chap. Particularly since you telephoned at precisely the same time yesterday. Let me guess—do you have a sirop in your hand?”
“I wish it were so. No, mon ami. I am in the hospital.”
I sat bolt upright. “Oh, dear—what has happened? Are you all right? Which hospital? In Oxford?”
“Oui. I am waiting to see a most eminent doctor—but do not worry, my friend. I am not here because of any injury to my person. I am here only to ask questions.”
“I see.” I chuckled in relief. “And this eminent fellow is a kidney specialist, I daresay.”
“He has no more interest in kidneys than in any other part of the human body.”
“Oh! Then he is not Scotcher’s doctor. If Scotcher even had one,” I added hastily. Sometimes the brain forgets what it has more recently discovered, and reverts to prior false knowledge of what turned out to be untrue.
“I am not here to talk about Joseph Scotcher but about a different matter altogether,” said Poirot. “Oh—hello, Doctor!”
“Has the chap arrived?”
“No, it is a different doctor that has come in now—please stay on the line, Catchpool.”
Less than five minutes into our conversation and I was losing track of all the doctors. I hoped I was right in thinking that so far there were three: Scotcher’s (who might or might not exist), the one Poirot was waiting to see, and the one who had just walked into whatever room Poirot was in.
I listened and waited.
“Indeed—thank you, Doctor,” Poirot was saying. “I asked the nurse to explain to you that I need to talk at length to my friend Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. It is a most private conversation, yes. Is there perhaps a different office you could use until . . . There is? Excellent. Merci mille fois.”
“Poirot, have you booted some poor chap out of an office that is rightfully his?”
“That is not important, Catchpool. I am eager to hear anything you might have to tell me.”
“Are you?” I sighed. This was going to be difficult. “Before I start, I have a question for you. Your hotel in Oxford—what is its name?”
“The Randolph.”
“How strange. I had a sort of feeling you would say that.”
“Why is it important?”
“The story I’m about to tell you features the Randolph Hotel.”
“Tell it to me,” Poirot urged.
I started to summarize all that Lady Playford had told me, then broke off in frustration. “But, Poirot, I strongly advise you to talk to her yourself. She has a way of telling a story that . . . well, she brings it all to life and makes it make a funny kind of sense. My account is flat and colorless in comparison.”
“Do not worry, mon ami. I will imagine how Lady Playford might have relayed the facts. My mind will add the color and the . . . bumps to eliminate the flatness.”
I put aside my reservations and continued. My voice was sounding rather hoarse by the time I said, “. . . and then I asked her if that was the extent of her plan: taking Scotcher to see her own doctor. And she told me it was not. What came next was . . . well, it was rather extraordinary.”
“Tell me,” said Poirot eagerly.
“Well, you see, Michael Gathercole turns out to have applied for the position of private secretary to Lady Playford. That is how he and Scotcher . . . Wait, let me think. I wonder if this is the best place to start.”
“Gathercole the lawyer? Applied to be the secretary of a novelist?”
As I gave Poirot the information he wanted, I felt as if I was translating from a foreign language. It was peculiar, but I would have found it easier to play the part of Lady Playford, as if on a stage, and recite the story as she had told it to me, than I did to retell it in my own words. I have decided, therefore, that any reader of this account should have the benefit of the best version. Poor Poirot had to make do with a rather more stilted version.
“I must bring Michael Gathercole into the story now,” Lady Playford told me. “He is my lawyer, and an excellent one too, but he was not always a partner at the best and most exclusive firm in London. It was I who asked Orville Rolfe to take Michael on and to take him seriously, and Orville—whose family firm, Rolfe and Sons, had handled my father’s affairs and my husband’s—did not let me down.
“I first met Michael when he wrote to apply for the position of private secretary that I had advertised. He was a solicitor’s clerk at the time, much too well qualified, and far brighter than his employment required him to be. Lacking in confidence as he was, he intended to remain as a clerk for the rest of his days. Then he saw my advertisement. He had so loved my books as a child, and he could not resist applying. I don’t mean to boast, but it was clear from his letter of application that my books were all that had got him through a quite dreadful childhood. So of course I invited him for an interview.
“Joseph Scotcher also applied for the same position. His letter was impeccably polite, but not as personal. Before I met them both, I was certain that I would choose Micha
el over Joseph, but I did not want to choose without meeting them, so I asked both men to come to Lillieoak for an interview. I’m afraid I kept them both waiting an unpardonably long time—and the one who is not to be forgiven for that is Hatton, confound him! He was determinedly refusing to tell me something that day, so much so that I grew rather anxious, imagining it might pertain to either Michael or Joseph—and if it had, I would of course have wanted to know it before I interviewed them.
“It turned out to be no more than a need to rearrange the tuning of all the clocks—or whatever it is that one does to clocks—that had been planned for the following day. Well, I had to gather myself for thirty minutes or so after that—oh, I was fit to strangle that wretched butler of mine! So . . . a needless delay, during which time Michael and Joseph sat outside my study and talked. At length. You will understand shortly why that matters.
“I saw Joseph first. Well, there are no words to describe how he impressed me. His every sentence was full of references to Shrimp’s adventures—he seemed to know my entire oeuvre by heart and in the most minute detail, and he had theories. It was as if he had delved into the depths of my creative essence and seen things there that I had not recognized myself.
“And so I chose Joseph. Anyone would have. You too, Edward. He was a sparkling, irresistible creature. It pained me that I had to allow him to leave the building; I wanted to keep him at my side from that moment on, but of course I had to show good form and think of the appearance of things. I had to let him go home, and I had to give Michael a fair hearing, having dragged him all the way to Clonakilty from London.
“I’m afraid I barely listened to Michael, barely noticed him. He was nervous, and did not make the best first impression. I was too busy, in my mind, rehearsing the letter that I would write to Joseph. Oh, I had chosen him before Michael entered the room, I am ashamed to admit. Michael is a lovely man and he deserved better from me. He is not dazzling, as Joseph was, but he is trustworthy. All right, I will say it: he is trustworthy as Joseph was not.
“I employed Joseph as my secretary, and awarded Michael a kind of consolation prize. I felt sorry for him, so I dropped a word or two in the ear of Orville Rolfe, as I said, and the result was more than satisfactory. I did not really think about Michael Gathercole again after that—until one day, some years later, I made a silly joke to Joseph that anybody who had read even one of my Shrimp books would have understood without difficulty. I don’t suppose, Edward . . . ? Oh, you have? Why on earth did you not say so? Never mind. Let us put my conclusion to the test. If I said to you ‘milk bottle top,’ would you know what I was talking about, apart from an actual milk bottle top? There you are, you see! Of course you would. In every single Shrimp book, she makes the milk bottle top joke. But Joseph, it was plain, had not the faintest idea what I was talking about, which I thought was odd, because I could have sworn he made that very joke to me when I interviewed him for the job.
“I was confused. To put him to the test, I made two or three more coded references to my work, and again he looked quite at a loss. At that moment, it became apparent to me that he had read none of my books, having claimed to have read them all, passed them on to his family, bought extra copies and pressed them upon strangers on the street, attempted to start a new religion using the Shrimp books as holy texts—I am exaggerating, but not as grotesquely as you might imagine.
“At the exact moment that the extent of Joseph’s dishonesty became clear to me—falsehoods about his relationship to my books as well as about his health—something else struck me too. A memory surfaced from the dimmest recesses of my brain. I had not imagined the ‘milk bottle top’ remark that had been made to me while I was interviewing possible secretaries. I had heard it, but not from Joseph—no, it came from Michael Gathercole. Unfortunately, I had been so taken with Joseph that I had attributed Michael’s remark to the wrong man. Very unfair of me. Of course, it was not deliberate. But I worried . . . and I wondered . . .
“The next day, I wrote to Michael and asked him to come and see me again. He did so. I fired questions at him. In Shrimp Seddon and the Painted Egg, what quality of character does Shrimp’s father say is the most important? In Shrimp Seddon and the Fireman’s Hat, what gives Mrs. Oransky’s scarf a peculiar smell? And so on. Michael got every single answer right. I then asked if he could recall any of what passed between him and Joseph as they waited together outside my study to be called in for their interviews. This embarrassed him, but I insisted he tell me. Lo and behold, out it all came, though more awkwardly and less eloquently than Joseph had presented the same insights—but they were Michael’s ideas, Michael’s theories. It was Michael who knew Shrimp’s adventures inside out. Joseph had simply repeated what the other applicant for the job had been kind enough to tell him while they waited together to be interviewed.
“I felt terrible. You are thinking that I ought to have fired Joseph on the spot, but I had no desire to do so—no, not even after this latest discovery. Once again, Edward, you fail to take into account the need to know. What is the point of life with no mystery to solve? And so I kept asking myself: who was this dazzling young man? Was his name Joseph Scotcher, or was he somebody else altogether? Why did he think his life would be easier if he invented everything and told the truth about nothing? I wanted to help him. Because, you see, one thing about Joseph was true: he spent his every waking moment thinking of ways to make me happy, and help me, and keep me entertained. It seemed to be his only concern. No, I would not give up on him.
“First, though, I had to make it up to Michael. I told him that thenceforth he was to be my lawyer. Another firm had been dealing with my affairs, but I was not especially attached to anybody there, and I was happy to make a change. On hearing this news, Orville Rolfe invited Michael to become his partner in a brand-new firm, and Gathercole and Rolfe came into being. My conscience in relation to Michael was satisfied. I also resolved to talk about my new ideas for Shrimp always with Michael and never with Joseph. That was how I dealt with the matter.
“How to help Joseph, meanwhile . . . That was much harder. I did not want to accuse him, expose his dishonesty, scare him away from Lillieoak. I wanted him to feel absolutely safe with me . . . which meant pretending to believe him. I agonized over how best to help him in a way that would allow him to save face, and came up with nothing sensible or practical, and so, in desperation . . . well, the new will idea was a last resort.
“Oh, I had no intention of permanently disinheriting Harry and Claudia. If all had gone as I had hoped, I would have made yet another will as soon as the Joseph situation was taken care of. My plan for my third and final will was to divide my estate into three equal parts. Harry would inherit one, Claudia another, and the third would be shared between Joseph and Michael Gathercole. Dorro would have grumbled terribly, the ungrateful baggage—a third of my estate should be more than enough for anybody, and it isn’t as if Harry and Dorro have children to think of!
“My will leaving everything to Joseph was designed so that it might work in two possible ways. If Joseph was truly sick, I hoped that news of a substantial inheritance might induce his unconscious mind to persuade his body to buck up and last a bit longer. And if he was not sick? Well . . . this is where it gets a little complicated. Don’t worry, Edward, I will explain it all clearly. That is the main criticism leveled at my Shrimp books, incidentally—that they are sometimes too convoluted. Stuff and nonsense! I mean, if my plots were simpler then people would guess, wouldn’t they? And you can’t have people guessing. I’m afraid I don’t write for dimwits and nor will I, ever. I write for those capable of rising to an intellectual challenge.
“I formulated my Joseph plot in exactly the way that I plan a book. Plotting is a skill like any other, and I regard myself as an expert after all these years of practice. I see you are agog to hear what I came up with. I will tell you . . .
“First, I would change my will and announce the change to everybody. Now, imagine Joseph—having put
about the fiction that he is soon to die of Bright’s disease—imagine him hearing this news. I say that I have left everything to him, and that the very next day I intend to take him to see my doctor. That would induce a state of panic in him, no? He cannot very well refuse me in the circumstances—I might change my mind about leaving everything to him, which I doubt he would wish to risk; the honest and the dishonest are equally keen on large amounts of money and land, I have found. And my doctor would of course take one look at him and say, ‘A fine, healthy specimen.’ The game would be up! I might send him away from Lillieoak in disgrace! Of course, I would do no such thing, but he was not to know that, was he? He believed his fibs had fooled me good and proper.
“With the visit to my doctor looming the very next day, Joseph had one night only—mere hours—to think of a way out of the pickle he had created for himself. As far as I could see, there were only two routes of escape for him. He could try to kill me, or he could throw himself upon my mercy and tell me everything. What? Of course I would have forgiven him! Wholly and completely. What? No, no little black book entry for Joseph! If he had only decided, finally, to be completely truthful with me, I believe I could have cured him—of whatever was wrong with his mind that made him feel the need to indulge in these fabrications.
“I notice you don’t ask if I would have forgiven him if he had crept into my bedroom with a length of piano wire and had a go at strangling me! I would have. Absolutely. We are all capable of acting unwisely when forced into a corner. If Joseph was desperate enough to resort to murder, prompted by my mischievous new will, then that was my fault. I was not, however, prepared to be murdered, so I asked Michael Gathercole to conceal himself behind my bedroom curtain that night, so that if Joseph were to creep in and try to smother me in my sleep, Michael would be there to stop him.
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