‘Winnie?’ said Lilian. ‘Then are we to assume—’
‘It is not an assumption, madame.’ Poirot cut short her enquiry. ‘It is a fact: the body found in this room was the body of Winnie Lord.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Richard Devonport. ‘Who would want to murder Winnie?’
‘The killer’s identity will soon be known to you all,’ said Poirot. ‘For now, I will say this: it was very important to Winnie’s attacker that she should not be identified as Winnie. That is why her dress, handbag and shoes were stripped from her body and burned in the fire.’ He pointed at the grate. ‘Any of you might have recognized these items as belonging to her, for they were not new. By removing the recognizable items and leaving only the brand new green hat and coat that she had never before worn in this house, somebody—not necessarily her killer—ensured that Winnie could not be identified.’
‘Who killed her?’ asked Lilian. ‘I should like to be told straight away.’ This was met with a general murmur of agreement.
‘Madame, there is an order I have decided upon, and I should like to adhere to it.’ Poirot looked around the room. ‘Whoever burned the clothes of Winnie Lord so that no one would know who she was also destroyed her face for the same reason. Now, let us think who the killer of Winnie might have been. Not Helen Acton, who was in Holloway Prison at the time. And if we believe all of the accounts that we have been given, then most of you were with at least one other person when Winnie was murdered. Only one of you was not. You, Madame Laviolette.’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ said Verna. ‘Godfrey, I didn’t. I wouldn’t. What could I possibly have against poor old Winnie?’
Her husband reached over and patted her hand. ‘I know you didn’t, Verna. Be quiet. Let Moysier Poy-row say his piece.’
‘Verna Laviolette, also, might have pushed Frank Devonport to his death,’ Poirot went on. ‘She was upstairs when he fell from the balcony. So were Daisy, Sidney and Lilian Devonport, and so was Helen Acton, who confessed almost immediately to the murder of Frank. Everyone agrees that Richard Devonport, Oliver Prowd, Godfrey Laviolette and Percy Semley were downstairs when Frank fell, so they cannot have killed him,’ said Poirot. ‘Winnie Lord, also, was downstairs, preparing dinner. She too is eliminated from suspicion.’
‘Is the answer not immediately obvious?’ said Lilian. ‘There cannot be two killers roaming around Little Key. It is quite impossible. Surely that means both murders must have been committed by Verna.’
‘Your loyalty is touching, dear.’ Verna regarded her old friend with cold eyes.
‘Helen Acton killed Frank,’ said Sidney gruffly, staring down at his feet.
‘Yes, I did,’ said Helen. ‘Mr Devonport speaks the truth. You should listen to him, M. Poirot.’
‘The same person did not commit both murders,’ Poirot announced. ‘Madame Laviolette, in fact, committed neither murder. And … regrettably, Madame Devonport, what you decree to be impossible is true: there are two killers at Little Key. Both are in this room now.’
‘How horrible,’ said Richard.
‘Madame Laviolette, you might not be a killer but, like Helen Acton and Daisy Devonport, you are a liar. You and your husband did not decide to sell this house because you were in financial difficulty. I spoke two days ago to your banker in London. He told me that you have been extremely wealthy for as long as he has known you. Why, then, did you suddenly decide to sell your home at Kingfisher Hill, and why did you lie about your reason for doing so?’
‘Fascinating though it might be to hear the answer, what has this to do with the murder of my brother?’ Daisy asked.
Poirot smiled. ‘You think that I waste time on trivialities, mademoiselle? Non. These little details, apparently unconnected to the two killings, are vital to know. They are the little key that will open the heavy door.’
‘Financial difficulties,’ Godfrey Laviolette muttered. ‘What a stupid lie.’
‘Monsieur Laviolette—you felt no obligation to tell your good friend Sidney Devonport what it was about the Kingfisher Hill Estate that had made you want to leave it as soon as possible, selling your house for much less than it was worth. You said, did you not, that it was not something that would have disturbed the Devonport family at all? Eh bien, you did not believe you were concealing from them something that might have put them off.
‘What could this mysterious feature of the estate have been?’ Poirot wondered theatrically, rising from his chair to walk around the room. ‘I asked Percy Semley’s Aunt Hester, who is a keen and meticulous observer of life at Kingfisher Hill. She told me that, immediately before the Laviolettes decided to sell Kingfisher’s Rest, as this house used to be known, only one thing changed on the estate: the gate porter. Hester Semley objected to the appointment of the new gate porter and she happened to mention that only one other resident supported her in her objection: a Lavinia Stent. This assisted me greatly, for if Lavinia Stent and Hester Semley were the only two who disapproved of the new man, that meant that Godfrey and Verna Laviolette had no reservations about his appointment.’
‘He’s a thoroughly decent and amiable fellow,’ Godfrey said.
Poirot gave him a look of warning. Then he said, ‘There was, of course, another significant change at Kingfisher Hill at the same time that the Laviolettes decided to sell this house—or a short while before they made their decision, I should say: the Devonports announced that they intended to buy a house on the estate. They planned to buy Hester Semley’s house. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what made Godfrey and Verna Laviolette so eager to leave. If it was not the new gate porter and nothing else about the estate had changed, why, then it can have been nothing else. Madame Laviolette, I am right, am I not?’
‘Aren’t you always?’ said Verna drily, eyes downcast.
Poirot went on, ‘Most people who buy houses here seek an idyllic rural retreat from their busy London life. The Laviolettes were no exception. Godfrey Laviolette and Sidney Devonport were firm friends. Their families spent considerable amounts of time in each other’s company. The two men had made their fortunes together, worked together on the game Peepers …’
I winced at the mention of it.
‘… which is perhaps why it was so important to the Laviolettes to think of this idyllic country estate as theirs alone, not something to be shared with the Devonports. To have them visit was one thing, but the idea that their friends were about to buy a piece of their private paradise … non, c’etait insupportable. Yet what could they do? They owned only one house, not the whole estate. They could not prevent Sidney Devonport from buying a home here. So they solved the problem in the only way they could. Rather than share their private retreat, they would leave it—and quickly. I imagine, Madame Laviolette, that you did not wish to share ownership of Kingfisher Hill with the Devonports even for one week if you could avoid it. And the only way to avoid it was to sell them your house before they could buy Hester Semley’s.’
‘This makes little sense to me,’ said Richard Devonport. ‘Everyone with a country home at Kingfisher Hill shares the land and the facilities with many other families. That is rather the point of country park estates of this sort, and everyone knows what they’re getting when they buy in.’
‘Sharing with strangers is one thing,’ said Verna Laviolette. ‘Having your private little getaway ruined by invasion from your London friends—people who belong to another part of your life—that’s quite another.’
‘Do you mean to say that M. Poirot is right about your reason for selling?’ Richard sounded astonished.
Verna shrugged. ‘As I said before: isn’t he always right?’
‘But, Verna, you and Godfrey are always here,’ said Oliver Prowd, who seemed to share Richard’s bewilderment.
‘My word, are you boys as cloth-headed as you seem?’ Verna replied. ‘Do you know what prevents you from understanding? It’s a characteristic of men: you focus only on the intellectual side of things. You never stop to imagine how a
person might feel. M. Poirot, now, he’s different. He understands the human heart, don’t you, M. Poirot?’ Verna let out a long sigh. ‘Selling this house meant that Kingfisher Hill was no longer ours. It was the Devonports’. I was willing to visit them at their home, once it was no longer mine. Sure—why not?’
‘You were willing, yes,’ said Poirot, ‘but were you happy to do so?’
‘I had no choice,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘Godfrey and Sidney were obsessed with Peepers, which meant they wanted to be together all the time. I could have stayed home on my own, but where’s the fun in that?’
‘Tell me, madame, where was the fun for you in coming here to stay with the Devonports?’
‘There was none. I’ve just told you: Godfrey was here constantly, so I had no choice.’
‘You did not, then, find it enjoyable to come here and indulge your hatred of Sidney and Lilian Devonport?’
A sly smile crept across Verna Laviolette’s face. ‘Now that you put it like that …’ she said.
‘Catchpool and I could not understand it at first,’ said Poirot. ‘You were described to us as kind and thoughtful, first by Helen Acton and then by Hester Semley. Yet in our presence, you always seemed to be … something else. There was the cruelty, always, below the surface of your words and your comportement. Only later did I realize: Catchpool and I had only ever seen you in the company of the Devonports—the people who, as you saw it, had driven you out of Kingfisher Hill. And you find it impossible, in Sidney and Lilian Devonports’ presence, to feel kindness and sympathy towards them, n’est-ce pas?’
Verna looked at Daisy, then at Richard. ‘I don’t bear either of you two any ill will,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that.’
‘I know it,’ said Daisy at once. I remembered that Verna Laviolette was one of the people to whom she had given a copy of Midnight Gathering. Was Daisy fond of Verna, I wondered, precisely because she sensed the older woman’s resentment of Sidney and Lilian?
‘Lilian didn’t even ask me how I’d feel if they bought a house here,’ said Verna. ‘Can you imagine? Not even asking?’
‘Madame Laviolette, you did not only lie about why you sold this house,’ said Poirot. ‘You also lied about seeing Lilian Devonport walking down the stairs on the morning of Winnie Lord’s murder. You saw no such thing. You merely wished to implicate Lilian, hoping, for purely malicious reasons, to see her accused of this murder. Both she and Sidney contradicted your account. They both swore they were together in Lilian’s bedroom between ten and eleven and that neither of them left the room. So, you needed to do two things in order for your spiteful plan to work: cast doubt upon Lilian’s alibi, and invent an alibi for the two people who did not have one: Daisy Devonport and Oliver Prowd. They did not walk together in the garden that morning—you lied about that, Madame Laviolette. You knew at once, did you not, that it must have been either Daisy or Oliver who had killed Winnie Lord?’
Verna said sullenly, ‘I did not know it was Winnie, but … yes. Something was going on in the drawing room. I was watching through my half-open door. Oliver came out, Daisy ran in … Then I saw Daisy a little later wearing different clothes.’
‘Mine had blood on them after I smashed up Winnie’s head,’ Daisy told Poirot. Her father made a growling noise. ‘I put clean clothes on and burned the bloody ones along with Winnie’s.’
‘You are contemptible, Verna,’ said Lilian quietly.
‘Well, it takes one to know one, sister.’ Verna looked wildly around the room. ‘Will you all quit looking at me like that? Lilian’s nearly dead anyway. What difference does it make? I like Daisy and Oliver, and I didn’t want either of them to get into trouble.’
‘They must have been surprised and delighted to hear you invent for them this walk in the gardens that did not take place,’ said Poirot. ‘Eagerly they rushed to confirm the story and be cleared of suspicion. Mademoiselle Daisy, perhaps you would like to explain the note that you wrote and left on the body of Winnie Lord for the police to find. May we all hear what was written in the note, please?’
Sergeant Gidley recited its contents: ‘“You sat in a seat you should never have sat in, now here comes a poker to batter your hat in.”’
We all listened as Daisy told us about the day of the journey by coach, provoking much exclamation and the occasional gasp. What a talented storyteller she was. She made it sound twenty times more exciting than I could have. She omitted no detail and sounded rather proud as she recounted the story she had invented for Winnie to tell us: the mysterious stranger, the warning about the seat.
When she had finished, Poirot took over the narrative once more. ‘Daisy Devonport knew that the warning from the nameless stranger was an alluring mystery that Catchpool and I would find irresistible. She was free to make it as tempting and outlandish as she wanted, knowing it would never be resolved. The precise opposite, in fact, was true: it needed never to be resolved in order to maintain its grip on our imaginations. She used the exact same logic when she wrote the note and placed it on Winnie Lord’s body. It was a deliberate attempt to occupy my thoughts with deductions that had no possibility of ever leading to an answer. But the note was a trick—there was no true answer! And for as long as Catchpool and I were busy wondering why somebody would kill this poor woman merely for sitting in the wrong seat, and how this came to happen at Little Key when Joan-Blythe-from-the-coach had no connection to this house, we would be unable to make progress towards solving any of the real mysteries.
‘This was the thinking of Mademoiselle Daisy, who both did and did not want the body to be accurately identified. She wanted me to identify the murder victim as the woman from the coach, a complete stranger to this household—that is why the green hat and coat were left on the body. At the same time, she wanted no one to know that the dead woman was Winnie Lord, or that Winnie and Joan-from-the-coach were one and the same person.’
‘But Winnie was your friend,’ said Verna Laviolette to Daisy. ‘Why on earth would you want to kill her?’
‘I did not,’ Daisy said sadly.
‘No, mademoiselle, you did not,’ Poirot agreed. He looked around the room. ‘What most of you do not know is that Daisy Devonport confessed to Winnie Lord that she had murdered her brother Frank. She did not kill Frank—somebody else did—but Daisy entertained a fantasy of confessing publicly to the crime. The first person to hear her false account was Winnie Lord. She told Winnie that she, not Helen Acton, had killed Frank and that she planned to confess this to the great Hercule Poirot, who was waiting nearby to board the same coach. Furthermore, she offered Winnie a significant amount of money in exchange for her silence about the true motive for this murder she had not committed. However, Winnie Lord, despite at first being willing to lie, had a conscience that promises of money could not suppress. She decided she must tell the police what she knew, so she went to Scotland Yard and asked to speak to Inspector Edward Catchpool. Now, here is a point worthy of note …’
Poirot smiled at me. ‘Pay close attention, Catchpool. Sergeant Gidley, please tell me: when Winnie Lord first asked for Catchpool, had you already told her that he was the man leading a new investigation into the murder of Frank Devonport?’
‘No, M. Poirot, I had not,’ said Gidley. ‘She came in and asked for Inspector Catchpool before I had a chance to say anything much at all.’
‘Indeed so!’ Poirot pronounced triumphantly. ‘This, Catchpool, was the important item you failed to add to your list. You had spoken to Sergeant Gidley after hearing from your landlady that he had news for you about a visit from Winnie Lord—but you failed to ask him this vital question: did Winnie ask for you before or after being told that you were the one in charge of the Frank Devonport case? If it was before, how ever would Winnie Lord even know your name? Joan-Blythe-from-the-coach, on the other hand … she might have wished to tell Inspector Edward Catchpool in particular that she had lied to him and now needed to tell him the truth about a murder of which an innocent woman had been co
nvicted.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘None of that occurred to me, not even for a second. Well deduced, Poirot. So that’s what Winnie meant when she said, “I know who disposed of Frank Devonport, and I know why, and it’s not the reason you all think.”’
‘Précisément,’ said Poirot. ‘She was referring to Daisy Devonport’s false motive and her alleged true motive, both of which had been told to her by Daisy. She believed that the false motive would by then be known also to the police. Sergeant Gidley explained to her that Inspector Catchpool was not at Scotland Yard but at Little Key. It was then that Winnie Lord learned of the new investigation into the murder of Frank Devonport.
‘Determined to speak to Catchpool as soon as she could, Winnie set off for Kingfisher Hill without telling her mother where she was going or why. Her mother was frantic with worry. When Winnie arrived at Little Key—this was the knock heard by Richard Devonport from the library—the door was opened to her by Oliver Prowd. Naïve fool that she was, Winnie confided in him the reason for her visit. She told him she knew that Daisy had killed Frank and confessed to it, but that it was important for the police to know the true reason for Frank’s death; Daisy had confessed her true motive to her, and Winnie planned to tell Inspector Catchpool about it as soon as he arrived. Catchpool and I were not yet at the house. We were at Holloway Prison questioning Helen Acton. Monsieur Prowd, you invited Winnie Lord into the empty drawing room and closed the door. Then you took a poker from the fireplace and struck her on the head with it. You killed her, did you not?’
Oliver Prowd did not deny it. He remained silent, his face unreadable.
‘Why, Oliver?’ Richard Devonport was pale with shock. ‘Why would you do such a thing? Daisy, how could you …? You knew he did this and you … you …’
Daisy shot him an impatient look. ‘What did you expect me to do? Faint and weep? I was shocked, of course, but one cannot indulge in shock and self-pity when there’s a practical problem to be solved. Oliver only did what he did to Winnie to protect me. In return, I … I did what I could to protect him.’
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill Page 25