“Ah! Mon ami,” said Poirot. “You are all right, eh?”
There was a long pause and then Harrison said in a queer, dazed voice, “What did you say?”
“I said—are you all right?”
“All right? Yes, I’m all right. Why not?”
“You feel no ill effects? That is good.”
“Ill effects? From what?”
“Washing soda.”
Harrison roused himself suddenly. “Washing soda? What do you mean?”
Poirot made an apologetic gesture. “I infinitely regret the necessity, but I put some in your pocket.”
“You put some in my pocket? What on earth for?”
Harrison stared at him. Poirot spoke quietly and impersonally like a lecturer coming down to the level of a small child.
“You see, one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of being a detective is that it brings you into contact with the criminal classes. And the criminal classes, they can teach you some very interesting and curious things. There was a pickpocket once—I interested myself in him because for once in a way he had not done what they say he has done—and so I get him off. And because he is grateful he pays me in the only way he can think of—which is to show me the tricks of his trade.
“And so it happens that I can pick a man’s pocket if I choose without his ever suspecting the fact. I lay one hand on his shoulder, I excite myself, and he feels nothing. But all the same I have managed to transfer what is in his pocket to my pocket and leave washing soda in its place.
“You see,” continued Poirot dreamily, “if a man wants to get at some poison quickly to put in a glass, unobserved, he positively must keep it in his right-hand coat pocket; there is nowhere else. I knew it would be there.”
He dropped his hand into his pocket and brought out a few white, lumpy crystals. “Exceedingly dangerous,” he murmured, “to carry it like that—loose.”
Calmly and without hurrying himself, he took from another pocket a wide-mouthed bottle. He slipped in the crystals, stepped to the table and filled up the bottle with plain water. Then carefully corking it, he shook it until all the crystals were dissolved. Harrison watched him as though fascinated.
Satisfied with his solution, Poirot stepped across to the nest. He uncorked the bottle, turned his head aside, and poured the solution into the wasps’ nest, then stood back a pace or two watching.
Some wasps that were returning alighted, quivered a little and then lay still. Other wasps crawled out of the hole only to die. Poirot watched for a minute or two and then nodded his head and came back to the veranda.
“A quick death,” he said. “A very quick death.”
Harrison found his voice. “How much do you know?”
Poirot looked straight ahead. “As I told you, I saw Claude Langton’s name in the book. What I did not tell you was that almost immediately afterwards, I happened to meet him. He told me he had been buying cyanide of potassium at your request—to take a wasps’ nest. That struck me as a little odd, my friend, because I remember that at that dinner of which you spoke, you held forth on the superior merits of petrol and denounced the buying of cyanide as dangerous and unnecessary.”
“Go on.”
“I knew something else. I had seen Claude Langton and Molly Deane together when they thought no one saw them. I do not know what lovers’ quarrel it was that originally parted them and drove her into your arms, but I realized that misunderstandings were over and that Miss Deane was drifting back to her love.”
“Go on.”
“I knew something more, my friend. I was in Harley Street the other day, and I saw you come out of a certain doctor’s house. I know the doctor and for what disease one consults him, and I read the expression on your face. I have seen it only once or twice in my lifetime, but it is not easily mistaken. It was the face of a man under sentence of death. I am right, am I not?”
“Quite right. He gave me two months.”
“You did not see me, my friend, for you had other things to think about. I saw something else on your face—the thing that I told you this afternoon men try to conceal. I saw hate there, my friend. You did not trouble to conceal it, because you thought there were none to observe.”
“Go on,” said Harrison.
“There is not much more to say. I came down here, saw Langton’s name by accident in the poison book as I tell you, met him, and came here to you. I laid traps for you. You denied having asked Langton to get cyanide, or rather you expressed surprise at his having done so. You were taken aback at first at my appearance, but presently you saw how well it would fit in and you encouraged my suspicions. I knew from Langton himself that he was coming at half past eight. You told me nine o’clock, thinking I should come and find everything over. And so I knew everything.”
“Why did you come?” cried Harrison. “If only you hadn’t come!”
Poirot drew himself up. “I told you,” he said, “murder is my business.”
“Murder? Suicide, you mean.”
“No.” Poirot’s voice rang out sharply and clearly. “I mean murder. Your death was to be quick and easy, but the death you planned for Langton was the worst death any man can die. He bought the poison; he comes to see you, and he is alone with you. You die suddenly, and the cyanide is found in your glass, and Claude Langton hangs. That was your plan.”
Again Harrison moaned.
“Why did you come? Why did you come?”
“I have told you, but there is another reason. I liked you. Listen, mon ami, you are a dying man; you have lost the girl you loved, but there is one thing that you are not; you are not a murderer. Tell me now: are you glad or sorry that I came?”
There was a moment’s pause and Harrison drew himself up. There was a new dignity in his face—the look of a man who has conquered his own baser self. He stretched out his hand across the table.
“Thank goodness you came,” he cried. “Oh, thank goodness you came.”
Twenty-nine
THE THIRD FLOOR FLAT
“The Third Floor Flat” was first published in Hutchinson’s Story Magazine, January 1929.
Bother!” said Pat.
With a deepening frown she rummaged wildly in the silken trifle she called an evening bag. Two young men and another girl watched her anxiously. They were all standing outside the closed door of Patricia Garnett’s flat.
“It’s no good,” said Pat. “It’s not there. And now what shall we do?”
“What is life without a latchkey?” murmured Jimmy Faulkener.
He was a short, broad-shouldered young man, with good-tempered blue eyes.
Pat turned on him angrily. “Don’t make jokes, Jimmy. This is serious.”
“Look again, Pat,” said Donovan Bailey. “It must be there somewhere.”
He had a lazy, pleasant voice that matched his lean, dark figure.
“If you ever brought it out,” said the other girl, Mildred Hope.
“Of course I brought it out,” said Pat. “I believe I gave it to one of you two.” She turned on the men accusingly. “I told Donovan to take it for me.”
But she was not to find a scapegoat so easily. Donovan put in a firm disclaimer, and Jimmy backed him up.
“I saw you put it in your bag, myself,” said Jimmy.
“Well, then, one of you dropped it out when you picked up my bag. I’ve dropped it once or twice.”
“Once or twice!” said Donovan. “You’ve dropped it a dozen times at least, besides leaving it behind on every possible occasion.”
“I can’t see why everything on earth doesn’t drop out of it the whole time,” said Jimmy.
“The point is—how are we going to get in?” said Mildred.
She was a sensible girl, who kept to the point, but she was not nearly so attractive as the impulsive and troublesome Pat.
All four of them regarded the closed door blankly.
“Couldn’t the porter help?” suggested Jimmy. “Hasn’t he got a master key or something of that
kind?”
Pat shook her head. There were only two keys. One was inside the flat hung up in the kitchen and the other was—or should be—in the maligned bag.
“If only the flat were on the ground floor,” wailed Pat. “We could have broken open a window or something. Donovan, you wouldn’t like to be a cat burglar, would you?”
Donovan declined firmly but politely to be a cat burglar.
“A flat on the fourth floor is a bit of an undertaking,” said Jimmy.
“How about a fire escape?” suggested Donovan.
“There isn’t one.”
“There should be,” said Jimmy. “A building five storeys high ought to have a fire escape.”
“I daresay,” said Pat. “But what should be doesn’t help us. How am I ever to get into my flat?”
“Isn’t there a sort of thingummybob?” said Donovan. “A thing the tradesmen send up chops and brussels sprouts in?”
“The service lift,” said Pat. “Oh yes, but it’s only a sort of wire-basket thing. Oh wait—I know. What about the coal lift?”
“Now that,” said Donovan, “is an idea.”
Mildred made a discouraging suggestion. “It’ll be bolted,” she said. “In Pat’s kitchen, I mean, on the inside.”
But the idea was instantly negatived.
“Don’t you believe it,” said Donovan.
“Not in Pat’s kitchen,” said Jimmy. “Pat never locks and bolts things.”
“I don’t think it’s bolted,” said Pat. “I took the dustbin off this morning, and I’m sure I never bolted it afterwards, and I don’t think I’ve been near it since.”
“Well,” said Donovan, “that fact’s going to be very useful to us tonight, but, all the same, young Pat, let me point out to you that these slack habits are leaving you at the mercy of burglars—non-feline—every night.”
Pat disregarded these admonitions.
“Come on,” she cried, and began racing down the four flights of stairs. The others followed her. Pat led them through a dark recess, apparently full to overflowing of perambulators, and through another door into the well of the flats, and guided them to the right lift. There was, at the moment, a dustbin on it. Donovan lifted it off and stepped gingerly on to the platform in its place. He wrinkled up his nose.
“A little noisome,” he remarked. “But what of that? Do I go alone on this venture or is anyone coming with me?”
“I’ll come, too,” said Jimmy.
He stepped on by Donovan’s side.
“I suppose the lift will bear me,” he added doubtfully.
“You can’t weigh much more than a ton of coal,” said Pat, who had never been particularly strong on her weights-and-measures table.
“And, anyway, we shall soon find out,” said Donovan cheerfully, as he hauled on the rope.
With a grinding noise they disappeared from sight.
“This thing makes an awful noise,” remarked Jimmy, as they passed up through blackness. “What will the people in the other flats think?”
“Ghosts or burglars, I expect,” said Donovan. “Hauling this rope is quite heavy work. The porter of Friars Mansions does more work than I ever suspected. I say, Jimmy, old son, are you counting the floors?”
“Oh, Lord! No. I forgot about it.”
“Well, I have, which is just as well. That’s the third we’re passing now. The next is ours.”
“And now, I suppose,” grumbled Jimmy, “we shall find that Pat did bolt the door after all.”
But these fears were unfounded. The wooden door swung back at a touch, and Donovan and Jimmy stepped out into the inky blackness of Pat’s kitchen.
“We ought to have a torch for this wild night work,” exclaimed Donovan. “If I know Pat, everything’s on the floor, and we shall smash endless crockery before I can get to the light switch. Don’t move about, Jimmy, till I get the light on.”
He felt his way cautiously over the floor, uttering one fervent “Damn!” as a corner of the kitchen table took him unawares in the ribs. He reached the switch, and in another moment another “Damn!” floated out of the darkness.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jimmy.
“Light won’t come on. Dud bulb, I suppose. Wait a minute. I’ll turn the sitting room light on.”
The sitting room was the door immediately across the passage. Jimmy heard Donovan go out of the door, and presently fresh muffled curses reached him. He himself edged his way cautiously across the kitchen.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Rooms get bewitched at night, I believe. Everything seems to be in a different place. Chairs and tables where you least expected them. Oh, hell! Here’s another!”
But at this moment Jimmy fortunately connected with the electric light switch and pressed it down. In another minute two young men were looking at each other in silent horror.
This room was not Pat’s sitting room. They were in the wrong flat.
To begin with, the room was about ten times more crowded than Pat’s, which explained Donovan’s pathetic bewilderment at repeatedly cannoning into chairs and tables. There was a large round table in the centre of the room covered with a baize cloth, and there was an aspidistra in the window. It was, in fact, the kind of room whose owner, the young men felt sure, would be difficult to explain to. With silent horror they gazed down at the table, on which lay a little pile of letters.
“Mrs. Ernestine Grant,” breathed Donovan, picking them up and reading the name. “Oh, help! Do you think she’s heard us?”
“It’s a miracle she hasn’t heard you,” said Jimmy. “What with your language and the way you’ve been crashing into the furniture. Come on, for the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of here quickly.”
They hastily switched off the light and retraced their steps on tiptoe to the lift. Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief as they regained the fastness of its depths without further incident.
“I do like a woman to be a good, sound sleeper,” he said approvingly. “Mrs. Ernestine Grant has her points.”
“I see it now,” said Donovan; “why we made the mistake in the floor, I mean. Out in that well we started up from the basement.”
He heaved on the rope, and the lift shot up. “We’re right this time.”
“I devoutly trust we are,” said Jimmy as he stepped out into another inky void. “My nerves won’t stand many more shocks of this kind.”
But no further nerve strain was imposed. The first click of the light showed them Pat’s kitchen, and in another minute they were opening the front door and admitting the two girls who were waiting outside.
“You have been a long time,” grumbled Pat. “Mildred and I have been waiting here ages.”
“We’ve had an adventure,” said Donovan. “We might have been hauled off to the police station as dangerous malefactors.”
Pat had passed on into the sitting room, where she switched on the light and dropped her wrap on the sofa. She listened with lively interest to Donovan’s account of his adventures.
“I’m glad she didn’t catch you,” she commented. “I’m sure she’s an old curmudgeon. I got a note from her this morning—wanted to see me some time—something she had to complain about—my piano, I suppose. People who don’t like pianos over their heads shouldn’t come and live in flats. I say, Donovan, you’ve hurt your hand. It’s all over blood. Go and wash it under the tap.”
Donovan looked down at his hand in surprise. He went out of the room obediently and presently his voice called to Jimmy.
“Hullo,” said the other, “what’s up? You haven’t hurt yourself badly, have you?”
“I haven’t hurt myself at all.”
There was something so queer in Donovan’s voice that Jimmy stared at him in surprise. Donovan held out his washed hand and Jimmy saw that there was no mark or cut of any kind on it.
“That’s odd,” he said, frowning. “There was quite a lot of blood. Where did it come from?” And then suddenly he realized what his quick
er-witted friend had already seen. “By Jove,” he said. “It must have come from that flat.” He stopped, thinking over the possibilities his words implied. “You’re sure it was—er—blood?” he said. “Not paint?”
Donovan shook his head. “It was blood, all right,” he said, and shivered.
They looked at each other. The same thought was clearly in each of their minds. It was Jimmy who voiced it first.
“I say,” he said awkwardly. “Do you think we ought to—well—go down again—and have—a—look around? See it’s all right, you know?”
“What about the girls?”
“We won’t say anything to them. Pat’s going to put on an apron and make us an omelette. We’ll be back by the time they wonder where we are.”
“Oh, well, come on,” said Donovan. “I suppose we’ve got to go through with it. I daresay there isn’t anything really wrong.”
But his tone lacked conviction. They got into the lift and descended to the floor below. They found their way across the kitchen without much difficulty and once more switched on the sitting room light.
“It must have been in here,” said Donovan, “that—that I got the stuff on me. I never touched anything in the kitchen.”
He looked round him. Jimmy did the same, and they both frowned. Everything looked neat and commonplace and miles removed from any suggestion of violence or gore.
Suddenly Jimmy started violently and caught his companion’s arm.
“Look!”
Donovan followed the pointing finger, and in his turn uttered an exclamation. From beneath the heavy rep curtains there protruded a foot—a woman’s foot in a gaping patent leather shoe.
Jimmy went to the curtains and drew them sharply apart. In the recess of the window a woman’s huddled body lay on the floor, a sticky dark pool beside it. She was dead, there was no doubt of that. Jimmy was attempting to raise her up when Donovan stopped him.
“You’d better not do that. She oughtn’t to be touched till the police come.”
“The police. Oh, of course. I say, Donovan, what a ghastly business. Who do you think she is? Mrs. Ernestine Grant?”
“Looks like it. At any rate, if there’s anyone else in the flat they’re keeping jolly quiet.”
Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories Page 53