Closed Casket

by Sophie Hannah

  “Kimpton knew that now was his moment. And so, while everybody was busy staring at Scotcher, or Lady Playford—the players of the main parts in the drama—Kimpton discreetly reached into his pocket and produced the strychnine he had there. He kept it in a small vial, I expect. Why did he always keep the poison about his person? I do not know, but I can guess: if it was always with him, nobody could accidentally find it among his possessions.

  “Beneath the table, he opened whatever container the poison was in. Concealing it in a closed fist, he then dropped the strychnine into his own water glass without anybody noticing—a subtle movement of one hand, I imagine, while the other shielded the glass from view—and passed it to Sophie to give to Scotcher.”

  “But . . . oh!” I could not help exclaiming.

  “What is it, Catchpool?” Poirot asked.

  “Strychnine has a bitter taste, I believe. Does anybody remember Scotcher saying, ‘Oh, that was bitter’ after Dorro said something about him rotting in the earth? And then immediately afterwards, Dorro said, ‘Well, I feel bitter’?”

  “You do well to remember that exchange, mon ami. Indeed. Scotcher was not in the habit of making direct criticisms of others. Quite the opposite: he was a skilled flatterer of all who crossed his path. Is it more likely, then, that he meant Dorro Playford’s words or the water he had drunk when he said, ‘That was bitter’?” Without waiting for answers, Poirot said, “I am sure he meant the water: the bitter-tasting water that contained strychnine.

  “And now to return to Shakespeare’s King John, from which Dr. Kimpton quotes so liberally. When we all of us hurried to the parlor and found the deceased Joseph Scotcher, Dr. Kimpton uttered a few words. Perhaps some of you heard him, as I did. It sounded like the final part of a quote: ‘. . . the jewel of life, by some damn’d hand was robb’d and ta’en away.’ I assumed it was from King John, as all Dr. Kimpton’s quotes seemed to be. I was correct—not only about that, but also in my suspicion that I had missed the beginning of the quote. Dr. Kimpton had mumbled it, and the words were lost. The complete quote is this: ‘They found him dead and cast into the streets, an empty casket, where the jewel of life, by some damn’d hand was robb’d and ta’en away.’

  “An empty casket, ladies and gentlemen. Do you not see? The casket referred to is not a coffin, it is the human body itself!”

  Poirot looked more excited than I could remember seeing him. I was rather at a loss. While comprehending the immediate point, I could not see what bearing it had upon anything.

  “It was Randall Kimpton that Orville Rolfe overheard arguing about the open casket,” Poirot said. “Arguing with Claudia Playford. Mr. Rolfe heard a man insisting that somebody must die. Then he said, ‘Open casket: it is the only way,’ and the woman disagreed. Joseph Scotcher himself—the body of Joseph Scotcher—was the casket to which Dr. Kimpton referred. He used the word as it was used in King John, as a metaphor for a man’s body. And what he meant more generally was this: that there was only one way to establish with absolute certainty, the only kind that interested Randall Kimpton, if Scotcher had lied or told the truth about having Bright’s disease of the kidneys. Only one way, ladies and gentlemen . . . and that was to open up his body—to make him the subject of a suspicious death so that there would be a postmortem. Only an autopsy would allow a doctor to look inside the body of Joseph Scotcher and say—as in fact did happen, precisely according to Dr. Kimpton’s plan—‘This man has perfectly healthy kidneys.’”

  I thought of Kimpton’s expression of satisfaction at the inquest, when the truth about Scotcher had been revealed by the coroner. I had misunderstood it—thought he was simply pleased with himself for having known something before I did. Now I understood: according to his own standards of evidence, he had not known for sure—not until the moment he heard the coroner say it: “healthy pink kidneys.”

  “Dr. Kimpton was almost positive that Scotcher was a liar,” said Poirot. “He had been almost positive for many years. As an intelligent man, however, he knew that in science and in medicine, there are anomalies. Most people with failing kidneys do not last as long as Scotcher had (most are not dying once, then some years later dying again), but remission can occur, prognoses change, so one can never rule out absolutely the anomaly that appears to flout the rule—and perhaps, who knows, there is some other scientific cause for this anomaly?

  “Randall Kimpton knew some things beyond doubt. He knew that Scotcher had taken Iris from him, had followed him into the study of Shakespeare, had then followed him to the core of the Playford family by installing himself at Lillieoak, the home of the woman Kimpton planned to marry. He believed, also, that Scotcher had murdered Iris Gillow when she had started to suspect he was lying about his health. Kimpton believed this, but he could not prove it. Neither could he prove that Scotcher had impersonated his dead brother, Blake, at Queen’s Lane Coffee House, in order to tell the same lies about his health using a different identity. This was maddening to Kimpton, who had grown as obsessed with Scotcher as Scotcher had always been with him. Kimpton suspected that Scotcher had invented his failing kidneys in order to attract Iris’s sympathy and lure her away. He wanted to know if he was right. This wish felt so urgent that it appeared to him as a need, not a desire. He needed to solve the mystery of Joseph Scotcher. He needed to know, probably most of all, if Scotcher had murdered Iris or not. After all, if by some remote chance Scotcher was telling the truth about his ill health, then he was unlikely to have murdered Iris for catching him in a lie—for there would have been no lie!

  “Eventually it dawned upon him: he would never truly and fully be able to understand the story of his own life unless he learned the truth about the state of Joseph Scotcher’s health. And what was his response to this realization? I will tell you: Randall Kimpton resolved to know the truth, for certain and beyond doubt. And there was only one way to achieve that: a postmortem. In no other circumstance is one able to look inside the body of another person and see kidneys that are either pink and normal or brown, dry and shrunken. And so . . . the suspicious death of Joseph Scotcher had to be brought about.”

  Dorro Playford snorted impatiently. “I don’t understand what you are saying! You cannot mean—”

  “I mean, madame, that it was not excess of emotion that caused Randall Kimpton to murder Joseph Scotcher. It was not jealousy, rage, a thirst for revenge—though I imagine all of those feelings have tormented Dr. Kimpton greatly over the years as he has considered the matter of Joseph Scotcher. But they are not why he killed him. This murder was a scientific experiment. It was a quest for knowledge, for discovery. It was—put as simply as I can put it—murder for the sake of the autopsy.”

  37

  Poirot Wins Fair and Square

  Though I have no way of proving it, I saw it all, seconds after Poirot had said it. Murder for the sake of the autopsy. Murder for postmortem’s sake. Odd that a crime of such enormity can be summed up in as few as four words, isn’t it?

  Realization after realization flooded my mind. Of course; how did I not see it? Kimpton, the man of science, the man who valued facts and proof above all else, and ridiculed psychology. It made perfect sense.

  Nobody in the room moved or spoke for several moments. Then Poirot addressed Kimpton. “You did not turn away from the study of Shakespeare because your favorite theatrical work was deemed unacceptable by your peers,” he said. “Nor because Scotcher trespassed upon your scholarly specialism. No—you chose medicine as a career because you had formulated what you believed was a brilliant plan: you would train as a doctor. Such was the strength of your obsession with Scotcher that you did not care how many years it took. You would take a position, as soon as you were able, that put you in place to perform postmortems in cases of suspicious deaths, and you would do this work very close to where Joseph Scotcher lived. You would murder him close to his home, after setting up an unshakable alibi for yourself, and then he would in due course end up on your autopsy table, ready for you to
cut him open to reveal the truth. Opening up his body was essential to your experiment, and how much more satisfying if you were able to perform the procedure yourself?

  “At first your plan progressed nicely—within not too many years, thanks to your talent and determination, you were the police’s preferred autopsy man in the district of Oxford that was home to Scotcher. Then, suddenly, it all went wrong, did it not? Your new sweetheart, Claudia Playford, to whom you had recently become engaged, told you that Scotcher would soon be living and working here, at Lillieoak. You must have been enraged.”

  “Well done, old chap,” said Kimpton. “Is this the bit where I confirm that my psychological state was as you have described it? It was. I was indeed furious at that point in the narrative. If anyone can make a science out of psychology, it is you, Poirot.”

  “Randall, he is accusing you of murder!” said Claudia. “Will you not deny it?”

  “No, dearest one. I’m sorry, but there it is. Poirot won fair and square. I shall not deprive him of his victory.”

  “Will you not? I would.” Claudia stared coldly at Poirot. “You are right to describe Randall as talented and determined—but no man is ever so determined as the most determined woman. I should never give up trying to get away with murder, if I had committed it. Never!”

  “I don’t think Poirot has finished, dearest one. Though, since you have brought it up . . . as much as it pains me to disagree with my divine girl, I have a different idea about what it means to get away with a thing.” Despite his use of endearments, Kimpton’s voice was as hard as his face. I noticed that his eyes were no longer flaring and subsiding in their peculiar way; instead they were wild and wide, and apparently set firm that way.

  “Please believe me, all of you, when I tell you that I suffer from no lack of determination,” he said. “But I prefer to face facts. A murder that one gets away with is one that proves impossible to solve. It is cleanly and perfectly elusive. No one suspects the true culprit—not even the indomitable Hercule Poirot; the killer is eliminated from the ranks of the possibly guilty straightaway, and immune from suspicion and blame thereafter. That is the murder I planned to commit. The moment Poirot accuses me, I see that I have bungled the whole thing. I might be able to save my life by trying to talk my way out of it, but I cannot save my plan. I therefore prefer to choose the only other clean and perfect possibility available to me: a full confession. Did I murder Joseph Scotcher? Yes. I did.”

  “Dr. Kimpton, you were correct when you said that I had not finished,” said Poirot, not yet willing to hand the main part to another player. “Where was I? Ah, yes: I had got as far as the problem you faced when Scotcher was appointed as secretary to Lady Playford. If he was no longer to be in Oxford, how could you murder him and be assured of performing the postmortem yourself?”

  “That was what I thought at first,” said Kimpton. “I was Old Glum-boots for a while, that’s for sure.”

  “And that is why you ended your engagement to Claudia,” I heard myself say: thinking aloud. Poirot had not given me permission to speak, but he would have to put up with it, I decided. “Claudia, you told me that when you and Kimpton were engaged first time round, he began to doubt whether he did, after all, wish to marry you. This led to a separation. Five, nearly six years ago, you said—that was when it happened. Joseph Scotcher lived and worked at Lillieoak for six years.”

  I turned to Kimpton. “These doubts of yours about marrying Claudia were in response to the news that Scotcher had secured the position of private secretary to Lady Playford, I’ll wager.”

  “You are entirely correct.” Kimpton was coolly courteous. “I was furious to hear that Scotcher had wormed his way in at Lillieoak. Livid! For a variety of reasons. How could I, pathologist for the police in Oxford, perform a postmortem on Scotcher if he was suddenly in Clonakilty? All the planning I had done, all my medical training . . . Oh, I still wanted to murder the blackguard—more than ever!—but I wanted every bit as much to thwart him. He had known nothing of my plan to end his life, you see, but he had known of my engagement to my dearest one. Even after Iris—after everything he had done to me by then—he still sought to implant himself on territory that was rightfully mine and ought to have been nothing to do with him.

  “I did not know if he wanted to place himself at Lillieoak in order to enrage me or simply to be around me—I kept hearing from Oxford chaps that he still described me as his closest friend, though I had been avoiding him for years. Either way, it was irrelevant. There was plenty of time to kill him and open him up on the table—either in Oxford, or in Clonakilty; I knew I could get a job in County Cork if I had to, for I am demonstrably the best at what I do—but in the meantime, I was determined Scotcher should suffer. If I ended my engagement to Claudia, I reasoned, then, in a stroke, the connection between Lillieoak and me would be severed and Scotcher would have to face the fact that he had gone to a great deal of trouble for absolutely no reason.”

  Kimpton clenched his fists in his lap. “I was a fool. An imbecile. That is what happens when emotional impulses and not solid logic are behind one’s actions. I regretted my rashness immediately. I saw that I had, once again, allowed Scotcher to deprive me of a woman I loved. No one, ladies and gentlemen, does that to Randall Kimpton and lives to tell the tale. The final victory, I am sure we can all agree, is mine.”

  “Your definition of victory is an unusual one,” Poirot told him.

  “My definition of everything is unusual,” Kimpton replied. “I am an unusual person. Where was I? Oh, yes—well, I got down on my knees and begged my divine girl to take me back.”

  “I refused,” said Claudia. “It gave me great pleasure to do so.”

  “But you did agree to enter into a correspondence on the subject of my vileness and your infallibility, dearest one.” Kimpton turned to Poirot. “Thanks to Claudia’s letters, I discovered that Scotcher had returned to Oxford at least once. It would not have been hard to induce him to do so again. Killing him in Oxford as planned would be the simplest thing, I suspected—barely a challenge at all. Or I could move to County Cork, ingratiate myself with the police and medical establishment here . . . That would be a good way to win Claudia over: a visible willingness to abandon my world and loiter on the fringes of hers, grateful for the most threadbare scraps of attention she might toss my way.

  “You all know, of course, that my dearest one was generous enough to give me a second chance.” Kimpton looked at Claudia fondly. She turned away. “On the fateful day, until the moment that I dropped the poison into my water glass, I was undecided—about where Claudia and I should live after we married, about where I ought to kill Scotcher. Should it be Oxford, where I knew how the system worked, or Clonakilty, where I imagined—do forgive me, Inspector Conree—that the gardaí would only be able to solve a murder if the culprit handcuffed himself to the gates of the police station and sang, ‘I did it,’ from sunrise until sunset.

  “No, the biggest problem I faced was not the choice between England and County Cork. I’m afraid it was the same boring old dilemma faced by any prospective murderer: how to do it and be absolutely guaranteed of getting away with it? I thought my plan splendid—always had!—but almost foolproof and entirely foolproof are two very different prospects. You know how I dislike uncertainty, Poirot. Yet I was uncertain myself, I am ashamed to admit. I could not guarantee that I could kill Scotcher and escape detection. And so . . . a date had not been set, and a place had not been decided upon.”

  “And then at dinner on the evening of what you call ‘the fateful day,’ quelle bonne chance!” Poirot took up the tale. “Lady Playford announces her new testamentary arrangements, and suddenly there are plenty of suspects for a murder, if by chance Scotcher were to die that same night. Never would you have a better chance of getting away with it! You had the poison with you, as always, and so you acted fast.”

  “I did,” Kimpton agreed. “Here, I thought, is the guarantee I have been seeking, that elusive extr
a layer of security. Who will suspect the richest man in the house, amid hordes of the aggrieved disinherited? Ah, well. ‘How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, make deeds ill done!’” No prizes for guessing where that comes from, Poirot! I might not get to do the autopsy myself, I thought, but never mind—I would certainly be informed of its results and get the definite answer I needed. There would be an inquest that I could attend. One must adapt sometimes—don’t you find?”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “And having adapted, you continued to think most cunningly.”

  “You are too kind. I was rash. Impulsive. I made a grievous error. After all my planning, to do the deed in front of all those witnesses—it was insanity!”

  “You were cunning,” Poirot insisted. “Strychnine takes several hours to kill. Who can tell how many? Who could ever know how much of the poison you put into your glass of water? Later that evening, you made sure to put some strychnine into the blue bottle in Scotcher’s bedroom, and then to empty the bottle. You knew that would make it look as if poisoned medicine had been poured away to hide the evidence. In consequence, we all believed that Scotcher had ingested the poison at five o’clock, when Sophie Bourlet gave him the tonic. Suddenly, anybody could have killed him—or so it seemed.”