The Big Four hp-5

by Agatha Christie

  "The housekeeper answered these questions as best she could, but was rather puzzled as to their purport. A terrible discovery was made on the following morning.

  One of the housemaids, on descending, was met by a sickening odour of burned flesh which seemed to come from her master's study. She tried the door, but it was locked on the inside. With the assistance of Gerald Paynter and the Chinaman that was soon broken in, but a terrible sight greeted them. Mr. Paynter had fallen forward into the gas fire, and his face and head were charred beyond recognition.

  "Of course, at the moment, no suspicion was aroused as to its being anything but a ghastly accident. If blame attached to any one, it was to Doctor Quentin for giving his patient a narcotic and leaving him in such a dangerous position. And then a rather curious discovery was made.

  "There was a newspaper on the floor, lying where it had slipped from the old man's knees. On turning it over, words were found to be scrawled across it, feebly traced in ink. A writing-table stood close to the chair in which Mr. Paynter had been sitting, and the forefinger of the victim's right hand was ink-stained up to the second joint. It was clear that, too weak to hold a pen, Mr.

  Paynter had dipped his finger in the ink-pot and managed to scrawl these two words across the surface of the newspaper he held-but the words themselves seemed utterly fantastic: Yellow Jasmine-just that and nothing more.

  "Croftlands has a large quantity of yellow jasmine growing up its walls, and it was thought that this dying message had some reference to them, showing that the poor old man's mind was wandering. Of course, the newspapers, agog for anything out of the common, took up the story hotly, calling it the Mystery of the Yellow Jasmine-though in all probability the words are completely unimportant."

  "They are unimportant, you say?" said Poirot.

  "Well, doubtless, since you say so, it must be so."

  I regarded him dubiously, but I could detect no mockery in his eye.

  "And then," I continued, "there came the excitements of the inquest."

  "This is where you lick your lips, I perceive."

  "There was a certain amount of feeling evidenced against Dr. Quentin. To begin with, he was not the regular doctor, only a locum, putting in a month's work, whilst Dr. Bolitho was away on a well-earned holiday.

  Then it was felt that his carelessness was the direct cause of the accident. But his evidence was little short of sensational.

  Mr. Paynter had been ailing in health ever since his arrival at Croftlands. Dr. Bolitho had attended him for some time, but when Dr. Quentin first saw his patient, he was mystified by some of the symptoms. He had only attended him once before the night when he was sent for after dinner. As soon as he was alone with Mr. Paynter, the latter had unfolded a surprising tale.

  To begin with, he was not feeling ill at all, he explained, but the taste of some curry that he had been eating at dinner had struck him as peculiar. Making an excuse to get rid of Ah Ling for a few minutes, he had turned the contents of his plate into a bowl, and he now handed it over to the doctor with injunctions to find out if there were really anything wrong with it.

  "In spite of his statement that he was not feeling ill, the doctor noted that the shock of his suspicions had evidently affected him, and that his heart was feeling it.

  Accordingly he administered an injection-not of a narcotic, but of strychnine.

  "That, I think, completes the case-except for the crux of the whole thing-the fact that the uneaten curry, duly analysed, was found to contain enough powdered opium to have killed two men!"

  I paused.

  "And your conclusions, Hastings?" asked Poirot quietly.

  "It's difficult to say. It might be an accident-the fact that some one attempted to poison him the same night might be merely a coincidence."

  "But you don't think so? You prefer to believe it-murder!"

  "Don't you?"

  "Mon ami, you and I do not reason in the same way.

  I am not trying to make up my mind between two opposite solutions-murder or accident-that will come when we have solved the other problem-the mystery of the 'Yellow Jasmine.' By the way, you have left out something there."

  "You mean the two lines at right angles to each other faintly indicated under the words? I did not think they could be of any possible importance."

  "What you think is always so important to yourself, Hastings. But let us pass from the mystery of the Yellow Jasmine to the Mystery of the Curry."

  "I know. Who poisoned it? Why? There are a hundred questions one can ask. Ah Ling, of course, prepared it. But why should he wish to kill his master? Is he a member of a long, or something like that? One reads of such things. The long of the Yellow Jasmine, perhaps.

  Then there is Gerald Paynter."

  I came to an abrupt pause.

  "Yes," said Poirot, nodding his head. "There is Gerald Paynter, as you say. He is his uncle's heir. He was dining out that night, though."

  "He might have got at some of the ingredients of the curry," I suggested. "And he would take care to be out, so as not to have to partake of the dish."

  I think my reasoning rather impressed Poirot. He looked at me with a more respectful attention than he had given me so far.

  "He returns late," I mused, pursuing a hypothetical case. "Sees the light in his uncle's study, enters, and, finding his plan has failed, thrusts the old man down into the fire."

  "Mr. Paynter, who was a fairly hearty man of fifty five, would not permit himself to be burnt to death without a struggle, Hastings. Such a reconstruction is not feasible."

  "Well, Poirot," I cried, "we're nearly there, I fancy.

  Let us hear what you think?"

  Poirot threw me a smile, swelled out his chest, and began in a pompous manner.

  "Assuming murder, the question at once arises, why choose that particular method? I can think of only one reason-to confuse identity, the face being charred beyond recognition."

  "What?" I cried. "You think-"

  "A moment's patience, Hastings. I was going on to say that I examine that theory. Is there any ground for believing that the body is not that of Mr. Paynter? Is there any one else whose body it possibly could be? I examine these two questions and finally I answer them both in the negative."

  "Oh!" I said, rather disappointed. "And then?"

  Poirot's eyes twinkled a little.

  "And then I say to myself, 'since there is here something that I do not understand, it would be well that I should investigate the matter. I must not permit myself to be wholly engrossed by the Big Four.' Ah! we are just arriving. My little clothes brush, where does it hide itself? Here it is-brush me down, I pray you, my friend, and then I will perform the same service for you."

  "Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully, as he put away the brush, " one must not permit oneself to be obsessed by one idea. I have been in danger of that. Figure to yourself, my friend, that even here, in this case, I am in danger of it. Those two lines you mentioned, a downstroke and a line at right angles to it, what are they but the beginning of a 4? "

  "Good gracious, Poirot," I cried, laughing.

  "Is it not absurd? I see the hand of the Big Four everywhere. It is well to employ one's wits in a totally different milieu. Ah! there is Japp come to meet us." 7fX«^

  10. We Investigate at Croftlands

  The Scotland Yard Inspector was, indeed, waiting on the platform, and greeted us warmly.

  "Well, Moosior Poirot, this is good. Thought you'd like to be let in on this. Tip-top mystery, isn't it?"

  I read this aright as showing Japp to be completely puzzled and hoping to pick up a pointer from Poirot.

  Japp had a car waiting, and we drove up in it to Croftlands. It was a square, white house, quite unpretentious, and covered with creepers, including the starry yellow jasmine. Japp looked up at it as we did.

  "Must have been balmy to go writing that, poor old cove," he remarked. "Hallucinations, perhaps, and thought he was outside."

  Poirot was smiling
at him.

  "Which was it, my good Japp?" he asked; "accident or murder?"

  The Inspector seemed a little embarrassed by the question.

  "Well/if it weren't for that curry business, I'd be for accident every time. There's no sense in holding a live man's head in the fire-why, he'd scream the house down."

  "Ah!" said Poirot in a low voice. "Fool that I have been. Triple imbecile! You are a cleverer man than I am, Japp."

  Japp was rather taken aback by the compliment-Poirot being usually given to exclusive self-praise. He reddened and muttered something about there being a lot of doubt about that.

  He led the way through the house to the room where the tragedy had occurred-Mr. Paynter's study. It was a wide, low room, with book-lined walls and big leather armchairs.

  Poirot looked across at once to the window which gave upon a gravelled terrace.

  "The window, it was unlatched?" he asked.

  "That's the whole point, of course. When the doctor left this room, he merely closed the door behind him.

  The next morning it was found locked. Who locked it?

  Mr. Paynter? Ah Ling declares that the window was closed and bolted. Dr. Quentin, on the other hand, has an impression that it was closed, but not fastened, but he won't swear either way. If he could, it would make a great difference. If the man was murdered, some one entered the room either through the door or the window -if through the door, it was an inside job; if through the window, it might have been any one. First thing when they had broken the door down, they flung the window open, and the housemaid who did it thinks that it wasn't fastened, but she's a precious bad witness- will remember anything you ask her to!"

  "What about the key?"

  "There you are again. It was on the floor among the wreckage of the door. Might have fallen from the keyhole, might have been dropped there by one of the people who entered, might have been slipped underneath the door from the outside."

  "In fact everything is 'might have been'?"

  "You've hit it, Moosior Poirot. That's just what it is."

  Poirot was looking round him, frowning unhappily.

  "I cannot see light," he murmured. "Just now-yes, I got a gleam, but now all is darkness once more. I have not the clue-the motive."

  "Young Gerald Paynter had a pretty good motive," remarked Japp grimly. "He's been wild enough in his time, I can tell you. And extravagant. You know what artists are, too-no morals at all."

  Poirot did not pay much attention to Japp's sweeping strictures on the artistic temperament. Instead he smiled knowingly.

  "My good Japp, is it possible that you throw the mud in my eyes? I know well enough that it is the Chinaman you suspect. But you are so artful. You want me to help you-and yet you drag the red kipper across the trail."

  Japp burst out laughing.

  "That's you all over, Mr. Poirot. Yes, I'd bet on the Chink, I'll admit it now. It stands to reason that it was he who doctored the curry, and if he'd try once in an evening to get his master out of the way, he'd try twice."

  "I wonder if he would," said Poirot softly.

  "But it's the motive that beats me. Some heathen revenge or other, I suppose."

  "I wonder," said Poirot again. "There has been no robbery? Nothing has disappeared? No jewellery, or money, or papers?" 100 Agatha Christie "No-that is, not exactly."

  I pricked up my ears; so did Poirot.

  "There's been no robbery, I mean," explained Japp.

  "But the old boy was writing a book of some sort. We only knew about it this morning when there was a letter from the publishers asking about the manuscript. It was just completed, it seems. Young Paynter and I have searched high and low, but can't find a trace of it-he must have hidden it away somewhere."

  Poirot's eyes were shining with the green light I knew so well.

  "How was it called, this book?" he asked.

  "The Hidden Hand in China, I think it was called."

  "Aha!" said Poirot, with almost a gasp. Then he said quickly, "Let me see the Chinaman, Ah Ling."

  The Chinaman was sent for and appeared, shuffling along, with his eyes cast down, and his pigtail swinging.

  His impassive face showed no trace of any kind of emotion.

  "Ah Ling," said Poirot, "are you sorry your master is dead?"

  "I welly sorry. He good master."

  "You know who kill him?"

  "I not know. I tell pleeceman if I know."

  The questions and answers went on. With the same impassive face. Ah Ling described how he had made the curry. The cook had had nothing to do with it, he declared, no hand had touched it but his own. I wondered if he saw where his admission was leading him. He stuck to it too, that the window to the garden was bolted that evening. If it was open in the morning, his master must have opened it himself. At last Poirot dismissed him.

  "That will do, Ah Ling." Just as the Chinaman had got to the door, Poirot recalled him. "And you know nothing, you say, of the Yellow Jasmine?"

  "No, what should I know?"

  "Nor yet of the sign that was written underneath it?"

  Poirot leant forward as he spoke, and quickly traced something on the dust of a little table. I was near enough to see it before he rubbed it out. A down stroke, a line at right angles, and then a second line down which completed a big 4. The effect on the Chinaman was electrical.

  For one moment his face was a mask of terror.

  Then, as suddenly, it was impassive again, and repeating his grave disclaimer, he withdrew.

  Japp departed in search of young Paynter, and Poirot and I were left alone together.

  "The Big Four, Hastings," cried Poirot. "Once again, the Big Four. Paynter was a great traveller. In his book there was doubtless some vital information concerning the doings of Number One, Li Chang Yen, the head and brains of the Big Four."

  "But who-how-"

  "Hush, here they come."

  Gerald Paynter was an amiable, rather weak-looking young man. He had a soft brown beard, and a peculiar flowing tie. He answered Poirot's questions readily enough.

  "I dined out with some neighbours of ours, the Wycherlys," he explained. "What time did I get home?

  Oh, about eleven. I had a latch-key, you know. All the servants had gone to bed, and I naturally thought my uncle had done the same. As a matter of fact, I did think I caught sight of that soft-footed Chinese beggar Ah Ling just whisking round the corner of the hall, but I fancy I was mistaken."

  "When did you last see your uncle, Mr. Paynter? I mean before you came to live with him."

  "Oh! not since I was a kid of ten. He and his brother (my father) quarrelled, you know."

  "But he found you again with very little trouble, did he not? In spite of all the years that had passed?"

  "Yes, it was quite a bit of luck my seeing the lawyer's advertisement."

  Poirot asked no more questions.

  Our next move was to visit Dr. Quentin. His story was substantially the same as he had told at the inquest, and he had little to add to it. He received us in his surgery, having just come to the end of his consulting patients.

  He seemed an intelligent man. A certain primness of manner went well with his pince-nez, but I fancied that he would be thoroughly modern in his methods.

  "I wish I could remember about the window," he said frankly. "But it's dangerous to think back, one becomes quite positive about something that never existed. That's psychology, isn't it, M. Poirot? You see, I've read all about your methods, and I may say I'm an enormous admirer of yours. No, I suppose it's pretty certain that the Chinaman put the powdered opium in the curry, but he'll never admit it, and we shall never know why. But holding a man down in a fire-that's not in keeping with our Chinese friend's character, it seems to me."

  I commented on this last point to Poirot as we walked down the main street of Market Handford.

  "Do you think he let a confederate in?" I asked. "By the way, I suppose Japp can be trusted to keep an eye on him?" (The Inspector had passed i
nto the police station on some business or other.) "The emissaries of the Big Four are pretty spry."

  "Japp is keeping an eye on both of them," said Poirot grimly. "They have been closely shadowed ever since the body was discovered."

  "Well, at any rate we know that Gerald Paynter had nothing to do with it."

  "You always know so much more than I do, Hastings, that it becomes quite fatiguing."

  "You old fox," I laughed. "You never will commit yourself."

  "To be honest, Hastings, the case is now quite clear to me-all but the words, Yellow Jasmine-and I am coming to agree with you that they have no bearing on the crime. In a case of this kind, you have got to make up your mind who is lying. I have done that. And yet-"

  He suddenly darted from my side and entered an adjacent bookshop. He emerged a few minutes later, hugging a parcel. Then Japp rejoined us, and we all sought quarters at the inn.

  I slept late the next morning. When I descended to the sitting-room reserved for us, I found Poirot already there, pacing up and down, his face contorted with agony.

  "Do not converse with me," he cried, waving an agitated hand. "Not until I know that all is well-that the arrest is made. Ah! but my psychology has been weak.

  Hastings, if a man writes a dying message, it is because it is important. Every one has said-'Yellow Jasmine?

  There is yellow jasmine growing up the house-it means nothing.' "

  "Well, what does it mean? Just what it says. Listen."

  He held up a little book he was holding.

  "My friend, it struck me that it would be well to inquire into the subject. What exactly is yellow jasmine?

  This little book has told me. Listen."

  He read.

  " 'Gelsemini Radix. Yellow Jasmine. Composition: Alkaloids gelseminine CziHigNiOa, a potent poison acting like coniine; gelsemine CnH^NOi, acting like strychnine; gelsemic acid, etc. Gelsemium is a powerful depressant to the central nervous system. At a late stage in its action it paralyses the motor nerve endings, and in large doses causes giddiness and loss of muscular power.