Verna’s eyes followed Richard as he walked over to his mother and conducted a brief conversation with her—about the timing of dinner, from what I managed to overhear.
I entertained myself briefly by imagining that Verna was a spy sent by the enemy to infiltrate the Peepers operation. Did the creators of the Landlord’s Game even know of the existence of Peepers, I mused, or was the perception of this great rivalry entirely one-sided?
A scrawny maid appeared, wearing an apron that was several sizes too big for her, and announced that dinner was about to be served. Once we were all facing each other around the large oval-shaped table in the dining room, the awkwardness only became more pronounced: Lilian’s vacant stare was harder to ignore, as was Daisy’s vicious glaring in Poirot’s direction. Richard Devonport, seated to my right, fidgeted in his chair.
The conversation would have dried up altogether were it not for Oliver Prowd, who, as the maid was serving the first course of tomato soup, said, ‘I heard something the other day, Sidney, that I think will interest you greatly. And you, Godfrey. There is much talk in London of the Landlord’s Game having been stolen.’
‘Stolen?’ the two inventors of Peepers exclaimed in unison.
Prowd nodded. ‘The details were confusing and I was in a hurry, so I didn’t get the whole story, but it seems that those claiming to have invented Landlord’s Monopoly in fact stole the work of someone else—the original inventor, whoever that was. “A scandal in waiting” is how it was described to me.’
‘Then the success of Peepers is all but assured!’ crowed Sidney Devonport. I watched to see if his smile might expand in response to such welcome tidings, but it neither widened nor narrowed: his was a face that truly did not move. There was, perhaps, some sort of medical explanation: a stroke or seizure?
Godfrey Laviolette had started to say, ‘We cannot rely on the misfortunes of our rivals to—’ when his wife interrupted him.
‘This soup is as cold as the grave,’ she said, looking around to make sure everyone had heard her. ‘I don’t know what Winnie …’ She stopped, clapped her hand over her mouth and said through her fingers, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry to mention Winnie. She’s not here, is she? This soup isn’t her concoction. And what was I thinking? I should not be speaking of graves! Oliver … Lilian … Please forgive the morbid metaphor.’
No one spoke for several seconds. The atmosphere in the room had tightened. Suddenly, it felt as if we were all much nearer to one another than we had been before. I did not believe for a moment that Verna was sorry to have mentioned either Winnie or graves. Though I had no prior knowledge of her, I would have put money on her being the sort of woman who deliberately made tactless and upsetting remarks precisely in order to upset people, followed by apologies designed to absolve herself of all responsibility for the hurt caused. My mother was that sort of woman, so I recognized the type.
It was Poirot who broke the silence. He cleared his throat and said, ‘I agree with you, Monsieur Laviolette. To rely on the failure of your adversary is not the quickest path to success for Peepers. Decidedly not! Only by our own efforts can we—’
‘You’re a fraud, M. Poirot!’ Daisy Devonport cried, rising from her seat. Her brother Richard gasped, then cowered. Verna Laviolette tried and failed to suppress a smile.
‘Daisy, darling, what on earth do you mean?’ said Oliver Prowd.
Daisy addressed her answer to Lilian Devonport. ‘Mother, M. Poirot has lied to you and Father. He is here under false pretences. His friend is not Mr Catchpool—he is Inspector Edward Catchpool, with the London police. The two of them care nothing for Peepers. Do you honestly believe that a renowned detective, in demand as he must be, would waste his time talking to complete strangers about a board game?’
A strange noise came from Sidney Devonport’s mouth.
‘It is quite true, Father,’ Daisy went on. ‘M. Poirot is not here because he admires your and Godfrey’s precious creation. He is here in connection with an unsolved murder—the murder of your son and my brother, Frank.’ Turning to Poirot, she added calmly and slowly, ‘Though, of course, it is solved now, isn’t it, M. Poirot? As I told you when we met on a motor-coach earlier today: I killed Frank. I am the one guilty of his murder.’
The din that followed was unlike anything I had ever heard: Sidney Devonport staggered to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground. He emitted a series of noises—like a wild beast roaring as it was clawed to bloodied shreds—that made me want to run from the room. Lilian had finally come to life and was sobbing loudly into her hands. Richard Devonport turned me and said, ‘Then Helen is innocent. I knew that she could not have murdered Frank.’
‘Whereas you think I could have—and did?’ Daisy smiled at him. Her anger appeared to have dissolved. Now she was serene and in command. ‘Why would I do such a thing, Richard? You know how much I loved Frank.’
Richard looked at her. ‘You said you killed him. Did you not just say so?’
‘Yes. I killed him—but why?’ Daisy’s tone was teasing, appropriate to a parlour game. ‘Why do you think I killed him, Father?’
Sidney’s face was a monstrous patchwork of purple and white. He looked as if he was choking on something, struggling to breathe. Godfrey Laviolette guided him back to the table, picked up and righted his chair and sat him in it. ‘Let me pour you some water, Sidney,’ he said. Verna, I noticed, pursed her lips and shook her head at this. She disapproved of her husband’s solicitousness.
Oliver was at Daisy’s side. He seized her by the arm and said, ‘What are you talking about, darling? Of course you did not kill Frank! Everybody knows who did that. Let us not even mention her name.’
‘Everybody thought they knew,’ said Daisy lightly. ‘Everybody was wrong. As so often.’
Oliver released his grip on her. His face had turned pale and his upper lip shook. ‘Daisy, what is this pantomime? Why are you saying this? You know it is untrue.’
‘Poor Oliver,’ she said. ‘Are you going to cry? Are you afraid they will hang me?’
‘Why, darling?’ he whispered. ‘Why now, tonight?’
Verna laughed. ‘So it’s true? And you knew, Oliver?’
‘What? No!’ Prowd staggered back. ‘It is not true. It cannot be. I … I saw Helen push Frank to his death!’
Richard Devonport said, ‘We must telephone the police at once. They must be told that Helen is innocent. It would be unpardonable to allow the execution of an innocent woman to go ahead now that we know the truth. Inspector Catchpool, can you telephone to London straight away and—’
‘The truth?’ Daisy interrupted. ‘You will happily accept my story as true, then, even though you cannot think of a single reason why I should wish to murder Frank.’
‘I … I …’ Richard gulped and gaped like a bewildered fish. Poirot had not moved from his chair. He was watching and listening with utmost attention.
‘Wait a second,’ said Verna Laviolette to nobody in particular. ‘Helen confessed. Why pretend she’d killed Frank if she hadn’t?’
‘Did you persuade her to lie for you?’ Richard asked Daisy.
‘No, I did not.’
‘Are you quite certain of that? You could make anyone agree to do anything.’
Daisy turned to Sidney, ‘Is he right, Father? Am I as persuasive as Richard thinks I am? Mother?’ She walked over to Lilian and rested her hand on her shoulder. ‘Mother, do you know why I killed Frank?’ A trickle of red ran from Lilian’s mouth down to her chin. I thought at first that it was blood, then realized it was tomato soup. Bile rose up in my throat and I had to look away.
‘Enough!’ Sidney Devonport bellowed. His face had lost its mottle of purple and white and was now an even, livid red. Despite the rage in his voice and eyes, his inflexible open-mouthed smile remained in place, as if his own face was playing the most grotesque trick on him. ‘M. Poirot, is it true what Daisy says? Are you a fraud and a liar? Mr Catchpool—or is it Inspector Catchpool?—is your interest in Pee
pers the true reason for your visit or have you deceived your way into my home?’
He sounded like a wholly different person from the jovial host who had welcomed us so warmly at first. I felt afraid, though he showed no sign of intending physical violence towards me, and I prayed for Poirot to save us somehow before all the hounds of hell burst out of Sidney Devonport and destroyed us all. This seemed a very real possibility.
Luckily, my friend came to my rescue. ‘Monsieur Devonport, I must apologize. Yes, Mademoiselle Daisy is correct. I have not been entirely sincere in my communication with you. The fault is mine and mine alone—please do not assign any blame to Inspector Catchpool here. He did not know our destination or our purpose when we set off for Kingfisher Hill this afternoon. I had been extremely secretive. Let me also say that, although there has undeniably been some artifice on my part, it is nevertheless true that I have the greatest affection and admiration for this wonderful game that you and Monsieur Laviolette have—’
‘Silence!’ Sidney Devonport roared. We all cowered. A thunderous barrage of questions followed. He demanded that Poirot explain what precisely Daisy had told him on the coach. Poirot indulged in yet more ‘artifice’, as he called it, and said that Daisy had confessed on the coach to the murder of ‘a man she loved’, but revealed no more than that. Daisy, I noticed with interest, did not correct Poirot’s account. Effectively the two of them—detective and confessed murderer—had entered into a conspiracy of sorts, colluding to deceive Sidney Devonport. I was a collaborator too.
Next, Sidney insisted that Poirot tell him if Daisy had summoned the two of us to Little Key so that we could witness her public confession in front of her family—was that the means by which the murder of Frank had come to Poirot’s attention? Why and how else could he have developed an interest, when the case was officially solved and the guilty party was preparing, imminently, to pay the terrible price for her crime?
Richard Devonport stiffened beside me. I felt his fear as acutely as if it was seeping through the air between us and into my own heart: his father must never find out that it was he who invited us here. The importance of this was as obvious to me as it was to him; I now understood perfectly well why the poor chap was so afraid of his father. If I found this version of Sidney Devonport so hellish and horrifying to be around, I could only imagine how much worse it must be for anyone who had lived in his household since birth.
Daisy did not flinch in the face of her father’s tirade. She remained calm throughout and gave off a directorial air—as if everyone was doing and saying exactly what she hoped they would. Lilian, Godfrey and Verna all seemed to be frozen in a joint resolution not to move a muscle until it was safe to do so.
Poirot explained that his meeting with Daisy on the coach from London had been purely accidental. The murder of Frank Devonport and Helen Acton’s confession and impending execution had been brought to his attention, he said, by ‘an acquaintance of Catchpool’s and mine in the field of law enforcement’. I heard Richard Devonport’s relieved exhalation.
Sidney turned on Daisy and asked her why, if she had been on a motor-coach bound for Kingfisher Hill, did she not stay on it? Why, instead, had she alighted at Cobham, making it necessary for Oliver to take a car out and fetch her?
‘That is your first question to me, Father, after what I have told you? You are more interested in my travel arrangements than in why I killed your son?’
‘You did no such thing!’ Sidney bellowed. He turned to Poirot. ‘She’s talking rot! Tell me you can see it as clearly as I can. I don’t know why she would choose to torment me and her mother with such a wicked lie, but that’s what it is—a lie! Helen Acton killed Frank and she will hang for it! As for the police … no one will inform them of anything, no one is to summon them.’ He turned his hostile eyes on me. I did my best to look uninformed and unsummoned. I don’t know if I achieved the precise facial expression most likely to deter Sidney Devonport from screaming at me, but I certainly gave it my best effort.
‘Do you hear me? No one!’ he barked at me like a savage dog. Saliva flew from his mouth. Luckily, I was not close enough to be hit. He turned on Poirot once more. ‘You will disregard Daisy’s lies and you will leave my home immediately. Richard will drive you and your … epicene lickspittle back to London. Richard—do as I ask, at once. I want these two blackguards out of this house!’
So it was that, twenty minutes later, Poirot and I were in a motorcar with our hastily packed suitcases, being driven by Richard Devonport through the darkness and out of the Kingfisher Hill Estate.
The words ‘epicene lickspittle’—quite the most unpleasant thing anyone had ever called me—echoed in my head as I waited for Poirot to begin his questioning of our driver. He seemed content to sit in silence, however, and it was Richard who spoke first: ‘He cannot stop you.’
‘Pardon, monsieur?’ said Poirot.
‘Father. I must obey his every order, but he has no hold over you—either of you. You can and must arrange for Helen to be released. Inspector Catchpool, I am begging you.’
I said nothing. At that precise instant, I did not feel inclined to arrange anything advantageous to any member, friend or associate of the Devonport family. I was thoroughly exhausted, freezing cold once again, and my stomach was painfully empty; all I had eaten since the Tartar Inn was a few spoonfuls of lukewarm tomato soup. I opted to sit in silence and imagine, fresh from the oven, a piping hot leg of lamb slathered in mint sauce. That was what I would ask my landlady, Mrs Unsworth, to cook for me as soon as I arrived home.
‘It is not so simple, mon ami,’ Poirot told Richard Devonport when I failed to answer. ‘Your Helen has confessed to this murder, has she not? She has been convicted of the crime and condemned to death. This is not so easy to undo.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you intend to—?’
‘What I intend is to speak to the right people and alert them to this new development of a second confession for the murder of Frank Devonport. I shall also speak to Mademoiselle Helen at the earliest opportunity. Tell me—do you think that she might decide that she is, after all, innocent of murder once she learns that Mademoiselle Daisy has confessed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richard said gravely. ‘I certainly hope so. But what if …?’ He left the question hanging.
‘What if she does not forswear her original story in which she is guilty? Eh bien, then it becomes complicated. With luck, and with my intervention, there could be a delay to the processes of the law. There would need to be an investigation, of course, to establish the truth. May I ask you a question, Monsieur Devonport?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Do you believe that your sister Daisy is a murderer, as she claims?’
Richard did not answer immediately. After nearly a minute, he said, ‘I would never have thought so, but I would not like to say it is impossible. Daisy does many things that ordinary, decent people would not do. I find her entirely impossible to fathom, if you want to know the truth. With Oliver, her ever-adoring lapdog, and with me, she has always been sweetness and light one minute and rude and cold the next, knowing she can get away with it, but the way she spoke to Father and Mother at the dinner table … If I had not seen it with my own eyes …’ He shook his head to express his disbelief. ‘Her whole life, she has treated them with the greatest deference and respect, even when they least deserve such treatment. She had no choice! She has always feared their disapproval and their threatened punishments as much as I have—as much as I do. They were the only people, the only thing on earth, that could restrain her. But after her performance tonight … Suddenly she was the powerful one and they were the victims. It was extraordinary.’ His voice was a mixture of admiration and resentment. After a pause, he added, ‘Though I suppose it makes sense, when you think about it.’
‘What makes sense?’ asked Poirot.
‘She confessed to murder when she happened to sit beside you on a coach and had no idea you were coming to Kingfisher
Hill. No doubt she did it to be outrageous. She loves to shock and to be the centre of attention. How sure she must have been that her confession would have no unpleasant consequences for her. Then when she arrived home and found you there, she saw that there was nothing to stop you from telling us all that she had admitted to killing someone. She realized that Father could find out imminently that she and not Helen had murdered his favourite son. That made her unusually brave—or reckless, depending on your perspective. She refused to suffer the humiliation of seeming weak and defeated in front of all of us—she is very proud and vain, my sister—so she confessed before you had a chance to incriminate her.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Poirot. ‘Sometimes when what we have feared for so long is no longer avoidable, we can find in ourselves a reserve of courage that we did not know we possessed.’
‘Not me,’ Richard Devonport muttered. ‘My sister has declared herself guilty of the murder of my brother, yet still I am petrified that Father might find out that it was I who invited you to Little Key.’
‘There is no need for him to find this out,’ Poirot assured him.
‘Thank you. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have your help. Yours too, Inspector Catchpool. And in spite of everything I have said about Daisy, truly I can’t see her killing anybody. I think she must have some strange and complicated reason for behaving in this inexplicable way. Nothing about her is straightforward.’
‘Yet you wish me to use her confession to free Mademoiselle Helen?’ asked Poirot.
‘I am certain that Helen is innocent,’ he said.
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill Page 10