Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  What will come of it all? Tell me what to do!' Hercule Poirot stood looking straight across the water to the blue line of hills on the mainland of Asia.

  He said: 'I have told you. Leave the island before it is too late...' She shook her head. 'I can't - I can't - unless Douglas...' Poirot sighed. He shrugged his shoulders.

  Chapter 4

  Hercule Poirot sat with Pamela Lyall on the beach. She said with a certain amount of gusto, 'The triangle's going strong! They sat one each side of her last night - glowering at each other! Chantry had had too much to drink. He was positively insulting to Douglas Gold. Gold behaved very well. Kept his temper. The

  Valentine woman enjoyed it, of course. Purred like the man-eating tiger she is. What do you think will happen?' Poirot shook his head. 'I am afraid. I am very much afraid...'

  'Oh, we all are,' said Miss Lyall hypocritically. She added, 'This business is rather in your line. Or it may come to be. Can't you do anything?'

  'I have done what I could.' Miss Lyall leaned forward eagerly. 'What have you done?' she asked with pleasurable excitement. 'I advised Mrs Gold to leave the island before it was too late.'

  'Oo-er so you think - ' she stopped. 'Yes, mademoiselle?'

  'So that's what you think is going to happen!' said Pamela slowly. 'But he couldn't - he'd never do a thing like that... He's so nice really.

  It's all that Chantry woman. He wouldn't - He wouldn't - do - ' She stopped - then she said softly: 'Murder? Is that - is that really the word that's in your mind?'

  'It is in someone's mind, mademoiselle. I will tell you that.' Pamela gave a sudden shiver. 'I don't believe it,' she declared.

  Chapter 5

  The sequence of events on the night of October the twenty-ninth was perfectly clear. To begin with, there was a scene between the two men - Gold and

  Chantry. Chantry's voice rose louder and louder and his last words were overheard by four persons - the cashier at the desk, the manager, General Barnes and Pamela Lyall. 'You god-damned swine! If you and my wife think you can put this over on me, you're mistaken! As long as I'm alive, Valentine will remain my wife.' Then he had flung out of the hotel, his face livid with rage. That was before dinner. After dinner (how arranged no one knew) a reconciliation took place. Valentine asked Marjorie Gold to come out for a moonlight drive. Pamela and Sarah went with them. Gold and Chantry played billiards together. Afterwards they joined Hercule Poirot and General Barnes in the lounge. For the first time almost, Chantry's face was smiling and goodtempered. 'Have a good game?' asked the General. The Commander said: 'This fellow's too good for me! Ran out with a break of forty-six.'

  Douglas Gold deprecated this modestly. 'Pure fluke. I assure you it was. What'll you have? I'll go and get hold of a waiter.'

  'Pink gin for me, thanks.'

  'Right. General?'

  'Thanks. I'll have a whisky and soda.'

  'Same for me. What about you, M. Poirot?'

  'You are most amiable. I should like a sirop de cassis.'

  'A sirop excuse me?'

  'Sirop de cassis. The syrup of blackcurrants.'

  'Oh, a liqueur! I see. I suppose they have it here? I never heard of it.'

  'They have it, yes. But it is not a liqueur.'

  Douglas Gold said, laughing: 'Sounds a funny taste to me - but every man his own poison! I'll go and order them.' Commander Chantry sat down. Though not by nature a talkative or a social man, he was clearly doing his best to be genial. 'Odd how one gets used to doing without any news,' he remarked.

  The General grunted. 'Can't say the Continental Daily Mail four days old is much use tome.

  Of course I get The Times sent to me and Punch every week, but they're a devilish long time in coming.'

  'Wonder if we'll have a general election over this Palestine business?'

  'Whole thing's been badly mismanaged,' declared the General just as Douglas Gold reappeared followed by a waiter with the drinks. The General had just begun on an anecdote of his military career in India in the year 1905. The two Englishmen were listening politely, if without great interest. Hercule Poirot was sipping his sirop de cassis. The General reached the point of his narrative and there was dutiful laughter all round. Then the women appeared at the doorway of the lounge. They all four seemed in the best of spir its and were talking and laughing. 'Tony, darling, it was too divine,' cried Valentine as she dropped into a chair by his side. 'The most marvellous idea of Mrs Gold's. You all ought to have come!' Her husband said: 'What about a drink?' He looked inquiringly at the others. 'Pink gin for me, darling,' said Valentine. 'Gin and ginger beer,' said Pamela. 'Sidecar,' said Sarah. 'Right.' Chantry stood up. He pushed his own untouched pink gin over to his wife. 'You have this. I'll order another for myself. What's yours, Mrs Gold?' Mrs Gold was being helped out of her coat by her husband. She turned smiling: 'Can I have an orangeade, please?'

  'Right you are. Orangeade.'

  He went towards the door. Mrs Gold smiled up in her husband's face. 'It was so lovely, Douglas. I wish you had come.'

  'I wish I had too. We'll go another night, shall we?' They smiled at each other. Valentine Chantry picked up the pink gin and drained it. 'Oo! I needed that,' she sighed. Douglas Gold took Marjorie's coat and laid it on a settee. As he strolled back to the others he said sharply: 'Hallo, what's the matter?' Valentine Chantry was leaning back in her chair. Her lips were blue and her hand had gone to her heart. 'I feel - rather queer...' She gasped, fighting for breath. Chantry came back into the room. He quickened his step. 'Hallo, Val, what's the matter?'

  'I - I don't know... That drink - it tasted queer...'

  'The pink gin?' Chantry swung round his face worked. He caught Douglas Gold by the shoulder. 'That was my drink... Gold, what the hell did you put in it?' Douglas Gold was staring at the convulsed face of the woman in the chair. He had gone dead white. 'I - I - never - ' Valentine Chantry slipped down in her chair. General Barnes cried out: 'Get a doctor - quick...' Five minutes later Valentine Chantry died...

  Chapter 6

  There was no bathing the next morning.

  Pamela Lyall, white-faced, clad in a simple dark dress, clutched at Hercule Poirot in the hall and drew him into the little writing-room. 'It's horrible!' she said. 'Horrible! You said so! You foresaw it!

  Murder!' He bent his head gravely. 'Oh!' she cried out. She stamped her foot on the floor. 'You should have stopped it! Somehow! It could have been stopped!'

  'How?' asked Hercule Poirot. That brought her up short for the moment. 'Couldn't you go to someone - to the police - ?'

  'And say what? What is there to say - before the event? That someone has murder in their heart? I tell you, mon enfant, if one human being is determined to kill another human being - '

  'You could warn the victim,' insisted Pamela. 'Sometimes,' said Hercule Poirot, 'warnings are useless.' Pamela said slowly, 'You could warn the murderer - show him that you knew what was intended...' Poirot nodded appreciatively. 'Yes - a better plan, that. But even then you have to reckon with a criminal's chief vice.'

  'What is that?'

  'Conceit. A criminal never believes that his crime can fail.'

  'But it's absurd - stupid,' cried Pamela. 'The whole crime was childish! Why, the police arrested Douglas Gold at once last night.'

  'Yes.' He added thoughtfully, 'Douglas Gold is a very stupid young man.'

  'Incredibly stupid! I hear that they found the rest of the poison - whatever it was - ?'

  'A form of stropanthin. A heart poison.'

  'That they actually found the rest of it in his dinner jacket pocket?'

  'Quite true.'

  'Incredibly stupid!' said Pamela again. 'Perhaps he meant to get rid of it - and the shock of the wrong person being poisoned paralysed him. What a scene it would make on the stage. The lover putting the stropanthin in the husband's glass and then, just when his attention is elsewhere, the wife drinks it instead... Think of the ghastly moment when Douglas Gold turned round and realized he had killed
the woman he loved...' She gave a little shiver. 'Your triangle. The Eternal Triangle! Who would have thought it would end like this?'

  'I was afraid of it,' murmured Poirot. Pamela turned on him. 'You warned her - Mrs Gold. Then why didn't you warn him as well?'

  'You mean, why didn't I warn Douglas Gold?'

  'No. I mean Commander Chantry. You could have told him that he was in danger - after all, he was the real obstacle! I've no doubt Douglas Gold relied on being able to bully his wife into giving him a divorce - she's a meek-spirited little woman and terribly fond of him.

  But Chantry is a mulish sort of devil. He was determined not to give Valentine her freedom.' Poirot shrugged his shoulders. 'It would have been no good my speaking to Chantry,' he said. 'Perhaps not,' Pamela admitted. 'He'd probably have said he could look after himself and told you to go to the devil. But I do feel there ought to have been something one could have done.'

  'I did think,' said Poirot slowly, 'of trying to persuade Valentine Chantry to leave the island, but she would not have believed what I had to tell her. She was far too stupid a woman to take in a thing like that. Pauvre femme, her stupidity killed her.'

  'I don't believe it would have been any good if she had left the island,' said Pamela. 'He would simply have followed her.'

  'He?'

  'Douglas Gold.'

  'You think Douglas Gold would have followed her? Oh, no, mademoiselle, you are wrong - you are completely wrong. You have not yet appreciated the truth of this matter. If Valentine Chantry had left the island, her husband would have gone with her.' Pamela looked puzzled. 'Well, naturally.'

  'And then, you see, the crime would simply have taken place somewhere else.'

  'I don't understand you?'

  'I am saying to you that the same crime would have occurred somewhere else - that crime being the murder of Valentine Chantry by her husband.'

  Pamela stared. 'Are you trying to say that it was Commander Chantry - Tony Chantry - who murdered Valentine?'

  'Yes. You saw him do it ! Douglas Gold brought him his drink. He sat with it in front of him. When the women came in we all looked across the room, he had the stropanthin ready, he dropped it into the pink gin and presently, courteously, he passed it along to his wife and she drank it.'

  'But the packet of stropanthin was found in Douglas Gold's pocket!'

  'A very simple matter to slip it there when we were all crowding round the dying woman.' It was quite two minutes before Pamela got her breath. 'But I don't understand a word! The triangle - you said yourself - '

  Hercule Poirot nodded his head vigorously. 'I said there was a triangle - yes. But you, you imagined the wrong one. You were deceived by some very clever acting! You thought, as you were meant to think, that both Tony Chantry and Douglas Gold were in love with Valentine Chantry. You believed, as you were meant to believe, that Douglas Gold, being in love with Valentine Chantry (whose husband refused to divorce her) took the desperate step of administering a powerful heart poison to Chantry and that, by a fatal mistake, Valentine Chantry drank that poison instead. All that is illusion. Chantry has been meaning to do away with his wife for some time. He was bored to death with her, I could see that from the first. He married her for her money. Now he wants to marry another woman - so he planned to get rid of Valentine and keep her money.

  That entailed murder.'

  'Another woman?'

  Poirot said slowly: 'Yes, yes - the little Marjorie Gold. It was the eternal triangle all right!

  But you saw it the wrong way round. Neither of those two men cared in the least for Valentine Chantry. It was her vanity and Majorie Gold's very clever stage managing that made you think they did! A very clever woman, Mrs Gold, and amazingly attractive in her demure Madonna, poor-little-thing-way! I have known four women criminals of the same type. There was Mrs Adams who was acquitted of murdering her husband, but everybody knows she did it. Mary Parker did away with an aunt, a sweetheart and two brothers before she got a little careless and was caught. Then there was Mrs Rowden, she was hanged all right. Mrs Lecray escaped by the skin of her teeth. This woman is exactly the same type. I recognized it as soon as I saw her! That type takes to crime like a duck to water! And a very pretty bit of well-planned work it was. Tell me, what evidence did you ever have that Douglas Gold was in love with Valentine Chantry? When you come to think it out, you will realize that there was only Mrs Gold's confidences and Chantry's jealous bluster. Yes?

  You see?'

  'It's horrible,' cried Pamela. 'They were a clever pair,' said Poirot with professional detachment. 'They planned to "meet" here and stage their crime. That Marjorie Gold, she is a cold-blooded devil! She would have sent her poor, innocent fool of a husband to the scaffold without the least remorse.'

  Pamela cried out: 'But he was arrested and taken away by the police last night.'

  'Ah,' said Hercule Poirot, 'but after that, me, I had a few little words with the police. It is true that I did not see Chantry put the stropanthin in the glass. I, like everyone else, looked up when the ladies came in. But the moment I realized that Valentine Chantry had been poisoned, I watched her husband without taking my eyes off him. And so, you see, I actually saw him slip the packet of stropanthin in Douglas Gold's coat pocket...' He added with a grim expression on his face: 'I am a good witness. My name is well known. The moment the police heard my story they realized that it put an entirely different complexion on the matter.'

  'And then?' demanded Pamela, fascinated. 'Eh bien, then they asked Commander Chantry a few questions. He tried to bluster it out, but he is not really clever, he soon broke down.'

  'So Douglas Gold was set at liberty?'

  'Yes.'

  'And - Marjorie Gold?' Poirot's face grew stern. 'I warned her,' he said. 'Yes, I warned her... Up on the Mount of the Prophet... It was the only chance of averting the crime. I as good as told her that I suspected her. She understood. But she believed herself too clever... I told her to leave the island if she valued her life.

  She chose - to remain...'

  FOREWORD

  Hercule Poirot's flat was essentially modern in its furnishings. It gleamed with chromium. Its easy-chairs, though comfortably padded, were square and uncompromising in outline.

  On one of these chairs sat Hercule Poirot, neatly - in the middle of the chair. Opposite him, in another chair, sat Dr Burton, Fellow of All Souls, sipping appreciatively at a glass of Poirot's Château Mouton Rothschild. There was no neatness about Dr Burton. He was plump, untidy, and beneath his thatch of white hair beamed a rubicund and benign countenance. He had a deep wheezy chuckle and the habit of covering himself and everything round him with tobacco ash. In vain did Poirot surround him with ashtrays.

  Dr Burton was asking a question.

  "Tell me," he said. "Why Hercule?"

  "You mean, my Christian name?"

  "Hardly a Christian name," the other demurred. "Definitely pagan. But why? That's what I want to know. Father's fancy? Mother's whim?

  Family reasons? If I remember rightly - though my memory isn't what it was - you had a brother called Achille, did you not?"

  Poirot's mind raced back over the details of Achille Poirot's career.

  Had all that really happened?

  "Only for a short space of time," he replied.

  Dr Burton passed tactfully from the subject of Achille Poirot.

  "People should be more careful how they name their children," he ruminated. "I've got god-children. I know. Blanche, one of 'em is called - dark as a gipsy! Then there's Deirdre, Deirdre of the Sorrows - she's turned out merry as a grig. As for young Patience, she might as well have been named Impatience and be done with it! And Diana - well, Diana -" the old Classical scholar shuddered. "Weighs twelve stone now - and she's only fifteen! They say it's puppy fat - but it doesn't look that way to me. Diana! They wanted to call her Helen, but I did put my foot down there. Knowing what her father and mother looked like! And her grandmother for that matter! I tried hard for Martha o
r Dorcas or something sensible - but it was no good - waste of breath. Rum people, parents..."

  He began to wheeze gently - his small fat face crinkled up.

  Poirot looked at him inquiringly.

  "Thinking of an imaginary conversation. Your mother and the late Mrs Holmes, sitting sewing little garments or knitting: 'Achille, Hercule, Sherlock, Mycroft...'"

  Poirot failed to share his friend's amusement.

  "What I understand you to mean is, that in physical appearance I do not resemble a Hercules?"

  Dr Burton's eyes swept over Hercule Poirot, over his small neat person attired in striped trousers, correct black jacket and natty bow tie, swept up from his patent leather shoes to his egg-shaped head and the immense moustache that adorned his upper lip.

  "Frankly, Poirot," said Dr Burton, "you don't! I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the Classics?"

  "That is so."

  "Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the Classics if I had my way."

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

  "Eh bien, I have got on very well without them."

  "Got on! Got on! It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important - it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make.

  Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy - what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?"

  Poirot was ready with his reply.

  "I am going to attend - seriously - to the cultivation of vegetable marrows."

  Dr Burton was taken aback.