Closed Casket

by Sophie Hannah

  “Randall, why on earth have I not heard this story before?” asked Lady Playford.

  “Listen and you shall learn why,” Kimpton told her. “Between them, Scotcher and his fictitious doctor saw to it that I became extremely unpopular in Oxford. I do not like to be unpopular, and I cannot stand to be outwitted. That was what was happening, and for a very simple reason: people do not care to listen to those who thrust unpalatable scenarios in front of them; they prefer to hear only gilded pleasantries. No one wished to believe that kind, selfless Joseph Scotcher—whom they all worshipped, because he flattered them all so assiduously—would trick them in such a callous fashion, and so they did not believe it. Easy! ‘Nobody would do such a thing,’ they muttered, and they were stupid enough to be convinced by their own platitudes.

  “I soon saw that it would not be in my interests to continue with my campaign to reveal what I suspected to be the truth, and have it acknowledged,” Kimpton went on. “I am a man who makes decisions and sticks to them, Poirot. I resolved never again to attempt to convince anybody of Scotcher’s dishonesty. I had tried and failed to alert people to his true nature. So be it. Let Scotcher thrive or let him go hang, I thought, and with that I washed my hands of him. Athie, you asked why you have not heard my Scotcher stories. That is why. Not even to Claudia did I utter a word. Why, she saw the likely truth for herself, as soon as Scotcher announced at Lillieoak that he was in danger of losing his life to this terrible illness, and then, later, dying for certain. Anybody but a fool could see that he was not the invalid he claimed to be, and my dearest one is no fool.

  “She confided in me about her suspicions. Naturally, I admitted that I shared them, though I did not tell her the whole story at that point. I allowed her to believe that I was newly suspicious of Scotcher, as she was.

  “You, Athie, are every bit as sharp-eyed as your daughter. Day after day, there were no visible signs that Scotcher had any sort of illness—only his word for it. ‘I feel weak. I need to rest.’ Anyone can say such things! But did you boot him out into the street where he belonged?”

  “I did not,” Lady Playford said proudly.

  “No. Instead, you hired a nurse for him,” said Kimpton. “You altered your will for his sake. That is how strong a spell the man cast—on so many. Far from objecting to his lies, you became a willing participant in the game he was playing. Oh, you played with gusto! It was impressive to observe, and also rather sickening.”

  Kimpton turned to Poirot. “I allowed you to conclude that I suspected Percy Gillow of murdering Iris because if I had suggested it was Scotcher, I would have been back where I was all those years ago at Oxford—trying to convince people he was a bad lot. You would have said, ‘But, Kimpton, just because he lied about having a fatal illness, that does not make him a murderer.’ The prospect of having that conversation was too wearying, I am afraid, so I took the easy way out. I knew I would have no trouble persuading you that a ne’er-do-well like Percy Gillow might have killed his wife. I hoped you might take it upon yourself to investigate further and establish for certain whether Joseph Scotcher murdered Iris. If anyone can prove it, you can.”

  “I do not know if anybody can so many years later,” Poirot replied. “If it is definitive proof that you hope for—”

  “Definitive is the only sort worth having,” said Kimpton firmly. “Shall I tell you something? Before I gave up, I made a concerted effort to gather all I could in the way of evidence. I hired a chap like you, Poirot—a detective. Paid him to follow Scotcher for several weeks. During that time, Scotcher went nowhere near any member of the medical profession, though he was busy telling me that he had seen his doctor on this day and that. I could have shared this information with Scotcher’s and my mutual acquaintances, but do you know what they would have said? That I was the villain of the piece for arranging for my friend, or former friend, to be pursued by a sleuth. They would have suggested that the detective I hired might have given me incorrect information, or that Scotcher had perhaps not seen his doctor during that particular period, but that this did not mean he was not gravely ill. Which, of course, is quite true! It is unarguable! A chap might be at death’s door and still lie about seeing a doctor on this or that occasion. That was when I realized that I could spend hundreds of pounds, and hire all the private detectives in the world, and I would never have enough proof to convince anybody, or to know with absolute certainty myself.”

  “To return to your possible motives for killing Joseph Scotcher,” said Poirot. “It seems that we must add another two to the list: not only revenge for stealing Iris away from you, but also revenge for the murder of Iris, and for having beaten you. Scotcher’s lies had fooled everybody. Your attempts to disseminate the truth had met with a hostile reception.”

  “Wait,” said Kimpton. “No, sorry. I forbid you to add revenge for the murder of Iris to that list. Poirot, I fear you do not know me at all! I should not permit myself to murder anybody as revenge for something they might or might not have done, however strongly I suspected they were guilty. Might or might not is not good enough. It is never good enough. And in much the same way, I did not know that Scotcher had lied about his illness. I merely suspected it, as I keep trying to impress upon you.”

  Poirot nodded. “Very well. But there is no might or might not about the next motive on the list: Joseph Scotcher—this man that you so mistrusted and suspected, this fraud, this charlatan—refused to leave you alone. I have been, as I said before, to Oxford. I discovered that, like you, before you turned to medicine and before he came to work at Lillieoak for Lady Playford, Scotcher was a scholar of literature—of Shakespeare in particular. Was that the true reason that you abandoned your vocation and entered the field of medicine, Dr. Kimpton? Scotcher was determined to model himself on you, to take what was yours, to try to be you in any way that he could—so you decided to let him keep Shakespeare and, meanwhile, you would pursue something altogether different—a career into which you believed Scotcher would not dare to follow you. A healthy man claiming to be dying would surely not choose to go anywhere near the medical profession. Was that your reasoning?”

  “It absolutely was not,” said Kimpton. “But, I say, isn’t it splendid that you could make it fit together so neatly and sound so likely? No—I can safely say that when I plumped for a career in medicine, the idea of shaking off Scotcher did not enter into it at all.”

  “All the same, you must have wished to rid yourself of him,” said Poirot. “After Iris, meeting Claudia was a new start for you. Becoming acquainted with her family, the family you hoped one day to marry into . . . and then, who should arrive but Joseph Scotcher! Suddenly he is Lady Playford’s new secretary! It dawns on you then that no matter where you go and what you do, he will follow you. You will have to watch people fawn over him, and see them believing his lies! It will be like Oxford all over again. I would call that an excellent motive for murder, Dr. Kimpton.”

  “I should say so,” Kimpton agreed. “So that point goes to you, Poirot. Are you keeping score? How many motives do I have in total?”

  “The number does not matter. This is not a parlor game.”

  “I suppose not, but . . . well, I can’t help feeling guilty to have hogged all the attention for so long—especially considering I didn’t kill the blighter.”

  Lady Playford stood up at the back of the room. “It distresses me greatly to hear Joseph described as a fraud and a charlatan, Poirot,” she said. “And now we discover he wanted to be a Shakespeare scholar simply to be like Randall? Can you not see, all of you, that the poor man was desperately ill? Not physically, but in his mind! It is quite wrong to apply normal moral standards to a person with Joseph’s problems.”

  “How terribly convenient,” said Kimpton.

  “Allow me to move on from Dr. Kimpton,” said Poirot. “He had many compelling motives—more than anybody else in this room. But remember, he is also, now, a man of science, who has learned to apply the discipline, and the self-control.
A different man in his position might have succumbed to a vengeful passion and committed murder; Randall Kimpton did not—not when Iris Morphet first abandoned him in favor of Scotcher and not at any time since then. His pride would not permit him to lash out in that way. Never!”

  Kimpton laughed. “Poirot, I take back every insulting remark I have ever made about your methods. Long live psychology—that’s what I say!”

  “And so . . .” Poirot looked around the room. “We move on . . .”

  35

  Everyone Could Have but Nobody Did

  “There are three people here who had no reason to kill Joseph Scotcher: Mr. Hatton, Mrs. Brigid Marsh and Mr. Orville Rolfe. They can all be eliminated.”

  “A-limmy-what?” Brigid demanded. “Talk English, will you?”

  “I am saying, madame, that you did not kill Mr. Scotcher.”

  “And you think filling my ears with nonsense for hours on end only to tell me what I know fine well already is going to help make tonight’s dinner, do you? Instead of telling us what didn’t happen, tell us what did! All you’ve said so far, it’s . . . well, it’s like me ordering meat for a dozen meals I’ve no mind to cook!”

  “Brigid, do not speak to Monsieur Poirot like that,” said Lady Playford. There was a distracted air to her voice, as if her mind were elsewhere, and the reprimand was for form’s sake more than anything else.

  “Let me get back to me pea and ham soup, then!” came the irate reply. “Is it any wonder folk take things from my kitchen, when I’m not allowed in it all this time?” As she spoke, she glared directly at me, and rather piercingly too, as if she blamed me more than anyone else. I wondered, as I recalled the anecdote about her nephew and the stolen sweets . . . She had seemed angry with me then too. Was it possible that she suspected me of purloining one of her kitchen utensils? Why on earth would she, when I had done no such thing?

  “We come next to Sophie Bourlet and Phyllis Chivers,” said Poirot.

  “Me?” Phyllis sounded aghast. “What d’you wanna talk about me for? I haven’t done nothing!”

  Sophie had curled herself into a ball in her chair. She made no protest.

  “The motive of Mademoiselle Phyllis is clear: she heard, while listening at the dining room door, the proposal of marriage made by Mr. Scotcher to his nurse, Sophie. Envy is a powerful emotion—one that can easily lead to murder.”

  “I didn’t do it, I swear!” Phyllis stood up, clutching at her skirt. “I never killed no one! And if I had, I’d have done her in, not him!”

  “Indeed,” Poirot said. “You take from my mouth the words. A jealous woman is a hundred times more likely to kill the other woman, her rival in love, than the man, the precious object of her love. Phyllis Chivers did not murder Joseph Scotcher. And as for Sophie Bourlet, what could have been her motive? She loved Scotcher—that is undeniable. I saw it from the first moment that I saw them together. But perhaps knowing that he was soon to die, or believing that to be true—”

  “Sophie knew Joseph was as healthy as any of us,” Claudia cut in. “It’s absurd that she still pretends, as if she imagines she can save his good name even now.”

  Sophie looked frozen. Still, she maintained her silence.

  “Knowing that the man she loved was soon to die from a terrible disease—or else knowing that he would spend the rest of his life pretending he was dying, and forcing her, also, into that same unbearable pretense—Sophie Bourlet might have become unhappy enough to turn to murder as a solution to her problems,” said Poirot. “It is also possible that she loved Scotcher so much that, once she admitted to herself that he had lied to her, she felt betrayed—enough to want to end his life.”

  “Neither of those theories sounds awfully likely,” said Randall Kimpton. “Both are too vague. And yet Sophie must have done it, or else why lie about Claudia and the club and all of that?”

  “Neither theory sounds likely, Dr. Kimpton, because Sophie Bourlet did not murder Joseph Scotcher.”

  “What?” said Kimpton, looking at Claudia. “Come on, old boy, she must have.”

  “If she didn’t, then who did?” Claudia said indignantly.

  Sophie stood up. Today, for the first time since Scotcher’s death, she was neatly turned out, with her hair brushed and tied back. She looked a little like the old Sophie. “There is something I must confess,” she said. “I’m sorry, Monsieur Poirot, for the interruption. I should have told you straightaway—I wish I had! But I didn’t, and nor did I tell you at the garda station at Ballygurteen, nor just now in the parlor when we did the experiment—”

  “Experiment?” said Lady Playford, as if the word were an obscenity, and one she never expected to hear in her own home.

  “I will explain about the experiment later,” Poirot told her. “Continue, please,” he said to Sophie.

  She stood with her back perfectly straight, hands neatly folded in front of her. Her comportment brought to mind a diligent schoolgirl, asked to perform a solo at a concert. “I have lied about something important. And I am aware that some of you will think that if I can lie once, I can lie a hundred times, but I am an honest person. I do not like lies. But sometimes . . . Well, on this occasion, I panicked, and made a calculation that proved disastrous.”

  “What the devil are you talking about, you strange creature?” said Kimpton.

  “Shall I tell the story?” Poirot suggested. “You are referring, are you not, to Claudia Playford’s white dressing gown?”

  Sophie’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “How did you know? You cannot possibly have known!”

  “Poirot, he knows, mademoiselle. I asked you—it was one of the first things I asked—what Claudia Playford was wearing when you saw her beating Joseph Scotcher’s head with the club. You told me she wore a white dressing gown over her nightdress. I knew this was not true. She wore the white dressing gown when she came down the stairs after hearing your screams, to look at Scotcher’s body in the parlor. I saw the dressing gown—there was not a spot of blood on it. I notice, always, imperfections of clothing. So, I say to myself, ‘Sophie Bourlet lies—either about seeing Claudia Playford attack Scotcher’s head with the club, or about the clothing she wore to do so.’”

  “I did see her do it,” Sophie whispered. “I would stake my life upon it.”

  “You saw her, yes,” Poirot agreed. “She was wearing the green dress she wore to dinner, n’est-ce pas? Yet you knew that when she reappeared in the parlor in response to your screams, she was wearing a white dressing gown. You did not understand how she could have had time to go upstairs, change her clothes and hide a bloodstained dress in between. So you lied.”

  “It did not make sense!” Sophie said. “How could Claudia be wearing a green dress to attack Joseph in the parlor one minute, then standing in the hall in a white nightdress and dressing gown the next? The only thing that happened between those two moments was that I screamed—and not for very long before people started to hurry downstairs. There was not enough time—that was the problem. I knew that if I said I had seen her wearing the green dress to beat Joseph, I would appear a liar.”

  “And so to avoid looking like one, you became one,” said Poirot. “Many times I have encountered this phenomenon. No matter. You added a false detail . . . but once we remove that detail, we are left with what we had before. It is similar—if I may say so, Sergeant O’Dwyer—to your ‘Shut up the drawer without the drawer.’ Take away this most unconvincing drawer that you and your brother included only to keep yourselves out of trouble, and you are left with the true message, the ‘Shut up.’”

  “Poirot, what the blazes are you talking about?” asked Lady Playford. “What is this unconvincing drawer, and what does O’Dwyer’s brother have to do with any of this?”

  “Never mind—it is not important. I only mean that once we take away Sophie Bourlet’s embellishment from her story, we are left with the true message that she needed most urgently to communicate to us: that she saw two things which, taken toget
her, appeared to be impossible.”

  “Excuse me,” said Claudia loudly. “Why, might I ask, should I wish to smash up the head of a corpse? I mean, this is all jolly exhilarating, but we must remember to add a little common sense to the mix now and then.”

  “I am so sorry for lying,” said Sophie. “If only I had known . . . but we had not yet done the experiment.”

  “What blessed experiment?” said Kimpton. “My patience is rapidly evaporating, I’m afraid. Poirot, if Sophie did not kill Scotcher, then who did?”

  “All in good time, Dr. Kimpton. Michael Gathercole.” Poirot turned to the lawyer. “You have envied Joseph Scotcher ever since Lady Playford employed him as her secretary. You too applied for the job, but you were passed over. What is worse is that Scotcher used your knowledge of Lady Playford’s mystery stories to curry favor with her. So, you might have killed because of this envy. Or you might have had a more altruistic motive, for I believe that you are a good man who truly cares for others. You might have killed Scotcher for the sake of Lady Playford, to protect her. You could see what sort of man he was, and, in your opinion, she could not. She appeared oblivious to the danger of allowing him to remain at Lillieoak at the heart of her home and her family.”

  Gathercole sighed. “The man was a menace,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lady . . . Athie. That is my opinion. I would have given anything to see him sent packing.”

  Lady Playford had turned pale. “What are you saying, Michael? That you killed him?”

  “What?” Gathercole looked confused. “No! Of course not. I did nothing of the sort. Monsieur Poirot—”

  “Do not distress yourself, monsieur. It is true: Mr. Gathercole did not kill Joseph Scotcher.”

  “Well, I’m very relieved to hear it!” said Lady Playford. “But, Poirot, the only person left is me.” She sounded disappointed, as if she had bought tickets for a new play at the theater that had turned out to be a dud.