Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  Poirot picked up one of the papers on the table by his side and studied it. A bad record though not positively criminal. Small frauds on garages, hooliganism, smashing up things, on probation twice. All those things were the fashion of the day. They did not come under Poirot's category of evil. He had been a promising painter, but had chucked it. He was the king that did no steady work. He was vain, proud, a peacock in love with his own appearance. Was he anything more than that? Poirot wondered. He stretched out an arm and picked up a sheet of paper on which was scribbled down the rough heads of the conversation held between Norma and David in the cafe --that is, as well as Mrs. Oliver could remember them. And how well was that, Poirot thought? He shook his head doubtfully. One never knew quite at what point Mrs. Oliver's imagination would take over! Did the boy care for Norma, really want to marry her? There was no doubt about her feelings for him.

  He had suggested marrying her. Had Norma got money of her own? She was the daughter of a rich man, but that was not the same thing. Poirot made an exclamation of vexation. He had forgotten to enquire the terms of the late Mrs. Restarick's will. He flipped through the sheets of notes. No, Mr. Goby had not neglected this obvious need. Mrs. Restarick apparently had been well provided for by her husband during her lifetime. She had had, apparently, a small income of her own amounting perhaps to a thousand a year. She had left everything she possessed to her daughter. It would hardly amount, Poirot thought, to a motive for marriage. Probably, as his only child, she would inherit a lot of money at her father's death but that was not at all the same thing. Her father might leave her very little indeed if he disliked the man she had married. He would say then, that David did care for her, since he was willing to marry her. And yet -- Poirot shook his head. It was about the fifth time he had shaken it. All these things did not tie up, they did not make a satisfactory pattern. He remembered Restarick's desk, and the cheque he had been writing -- apparently to buy off the young man -- and the young man, apparently, was quite willing to be bought off! So that again did not tally. The cheque had certainly been made out to David Baker and it was for a very large -- really a preposterous -- sum. It was a sum that might have tempted any impecunious young man of bad character. And yet he had suggested marriage to her only a day before.

  That, of course, might have been just a move in the game -- a move to raise the price he was asking. Poirot remembered Restarick sitting there, his lips hard. He must care a great deal for his daughter to be willing to pay so high a sum, and he must have been afraid too that the girl herself was quite determined to marry him. From thoughts of Restarick, he went on to Claudia. Claudia and Andrew Restarick. Was it chance, sheer chance, that she had come to be his secretary? There might be a link between them. Claudia. He considered her. Three girls in a flat, Claudia Reece-Holland's flat. She had been the one who had taken the flat originally, and shared it first with a friend, a girl she already knew, and then with another girl, the third girl. The third girl, thought Poirot. Yes, it always came back to that.

  The third girl. And that is where he had come in the end. Where he had had to come. Where all this thinking out of patterns had led. To Norma Restarick. A girl who had come to consult him as he sat at breakfast. A girl whom he had joined at a table in a cafe where she had recently been eating baked beans with the young man she loved. (He always seemed to see her at meal times, he noted!) And what did he think about her? First, what did other people think about her? Restarick cared for her and was desperately anxious about her, desperately frightened for her. He not only suspected -- he was quite sure, apparently, that she had tried to poison his recently married wife. He had consulted a doctor about her. Poirot felt he would like dearly to talk to that doctor himself, but he doubted if he would get anywhere.

  Doctors were very chary of parting with medical information to anyone but a duly accredited person such as the parents. But Poirot could imagine fairly well what the doctor had said. He had been cautious, Poirot thought, as doctors are apt to be. He'd hemmed and hawed and spoken perhaps of medical treatment. He had not stressed too positively a mental angle, but had certainly suggested it or hinted at it. In fact, the doctor probably was privately sure that that was what had happened. But he also knew a good deal about hysterical girls, and that they sometimes did things that were not really the result of mental causes, but merely of temper, jealousy, emotion, and hysteria. He would not be a psychiatrist himself nor a neurologist. He would be a G.P. who took no risks of making accusations about which he could not be sure, but suggested certain things out of caution. A job somewhere or other — a job in London, later perhaps treatment from a specialist?

  What did anyone else think of Norma Restarick? Claudia Reece-Holland? He didn't know. Certainly not from the little that he knew about her. She was capable of hiding any secret, she would certainly let nothing escape her which she did not mean to let escape. She had shown no signs of wanting to turn the girl out — which she might have done if she had been afraid of her mental condition. There could not have been much discussion between her and Frances on the subject since the other girl had so innocently let escape the fact that Norma had not returned to them after her weekend at home. Claudia had been annoyed about that. It was possible that Claudia was more in the pattern than she appeared. She had brains, Poirot thought, and efficiency... He came back to Norma, came back once again to the third girl. What was her place in the pattern? The place that would pull the whole thing together.

  Ophelia, he thought? But there were two opinions to that, just as there were two opinions about Norma. Was Ophelia mad or was she pretending madness? Actresses had been variously divided as to how the part should be played — or perhaps, he should say, producers. They were the ones with ideas. Was Hamlet mad or sane? Take your choice. Was Ophelia mad or sane? Restarick would not have used the word "mad" even in his thoughts about his daughter. Mentally disturbed was the term that everyone preferred to use. The other word that had been used of Norma had been "batty". "She's a bit batty". "Not quite all there". "A bit wanting, if you know what I mean". Where "daily women" good judges? Poirot thought they might be. There was something odd about Norma, certainly, but she might be odd in a different way to what she seemed. He remembered the picture she had made slouching into his room, a girl of today, the modern type looking just as so many other girls looked. Limp hair hanging on her shoulders, the characterless shift dress, a skimpy look about the knees -- all to his old-fashioned eyes looking like an adult girl pretending to be a child.

  "I’m sorry, you are too old.” Perhaps it was true. He'd looked at her through the eyes of someone old, without admiration, to him just a girl without apparently will to please, without coquetry. A girl without any sense of her own femininity -- no charm or mystery or enticement, who had nothing to offer, perhaps, but plain biological sex. So it may be that she was right in her condemnation of him. He could not help her because he did not understand her, because it was not even possible for him to appreciate her. He had done his best for her, but what had that meant up to date? What had he done for her since that one moment of appeal? And in his thoughts the answer came quickly. He had kept her safe. That at least.

  If, indeed, she needed keeping safe. That was where the whole point lay. Did she need keeping safe? That preposterous confession! Really, not so much a confession as an announcement:" think I may have committed a murder." Hold on to that, because that was the crux of the whole thing. That was his metier. To deal with murder, to clear up murder, to prevent murder! To be the good dog who hunts down murder. Murder announced. Murder somewhere. He had looked for it and had not found it. The pattern of arsenic in the soup? A pattern of young hooligans stabbing each other with knives? The ridiculous and sinister phrase, bloodstains in the courtyard. A shot fired from a revolver. At whom, and why? It was not as it ought to be, a form of crime that would fit with the words she had said: "I may have committed a murder".

  He had stumbled on in the dark, trying to see a pattern of crime, trying to see wh
ere the third girl fitted into that pattern, and coming back always to the same urgent need to know what this girl was really like. And then with a casual phrase, Ariadne Oliver had, as he thought, shown him the light. The supposed suicide of a woman at Borodene Mansions. That would fit. It was where the third girl had her living quarters. It must be the murder that she had meant.

  Another murder committed about the same time would have been too much of a coincidence! Besides there was no sign or trace of any other murder that had been committed about then. No other death that could have sent her hot-foot to consult him, after listening at a party to the lavish admiration of his own achievements which his friend, Mrs. Oliver, had given to the world. And so, when Mrs. Oliver had informed him in a casual manner of the woman who had thrown herself out of the window, it had seemed to him that at last he had got what he had been looking for. Here was the clue. The answer to his perplexity. Here he would find what he needed. The why, the when, the where. "Quelle deception." said Hercule Poirot, out loud.

  He stretched out his hand, and sorted out the neatly typed resume of a woman's life. The bold facts of Mrs. Charpentier's existence. A woman of forty-three of good social position, reported to have been a wild girl — two marriages — two divorces — a woman who liked men. A woman who of late years. Had drunk more than was good for her. A woman who liked parties. A woman who was now reported to go about with men a good many years younger than herself. Living in a flat alone in Borodene Mansions, Poirot could understand and feel the sort of woman she was, and had been, and he could see why such a woman might wish to throw herself out of a high window one early morning when she awoke to despair.

  Because she had cancer or thought she had cancer? But at the inquest, the medical evidence had said very definitely that that was not so. What he wanted was some kind of a link with Norma Restarick. He could not find it. He read through the dry facts again. Identification had been supplied at the inquest by a solicitor. Louise Carpenter, though she had used a Frenchified form of her surname -- Charpentier. Because it went better with her Christian name?

  Louise? Why was the name Louise familiar ? Some casual mention? -- a phrase? -- his fingers rimed neatly through typewritten pages. Ah! there it was! Just that one reference. The girl for whom Andrew Restarick had left his wife had been a girl named Louise Birell. Someone who had proved to be of little significance in Restarick's later life. They had quarrelled and parted after about a year. The same pattern, Poirot thought. The same thing obtaining that had probably obtained all through this particular woman's life. To love a man violently, to break up his home, perhaps, to live with him, and then to quarrel with him and leave him. He felt sure, absolutely sure, that this Louise Charpentier was the same Louise.

  Even so, how did it tie up with the girl Norma? Had Restarick and Louise Charpentier come together again when he returned to England? Poirot doubted it. Their lives had parted years ago. That they had by any chance come together again seemed unlikely to the point of impossibility I It had been a brief and in reality unimportant infatuation. His present wife would hardly be jealous enough of her husband's past to wish to push his former mistress out of a window. Ridiculous! The only person so far as he could see who might have been the type to harbour a grudge over many long years, and wish to execute revenge upon the woman who had broken up her home, might have been the first Mrs. Restarick. And that sounded wildly impossible also, and anyway, the first Mrs. Restarick was dead!

  The telephone rang. Poirot did not move. At this particular moment he did not want to be disturbed. He had a feeling of being on a trail of some kind... He wanted to pursue it... The telephone stopped. Good. Miss Lemon would be coping with it. The door opened and Miss Lemon entered. "Mrs. Oliver wants to speak to you," she said.

  Poirot waved a hand. "Not now, not now, I pray you, I cannot speak to her now." "She says there is something that she has just thought of — something she forget to tell you. About a piece of paper — an unfinished letter, which seems to have fallen out of a blotter in a desk in a furniture van. A rather incoherent story," added Miss Lemon, allowing a note of disapproval to enter her voice.

  Poirot waved more frantically. "Not now," he urged. "I beg of you, not now."

  "I will tell her you are busy." Miss Lemon retreated.

  Peace descended once more upon the room. Poirot felt waves of fatigue creeping over him. Too much thinking. One must relax. Yes, one must relax. One must let tension go — in relaxation the pattern would come. He closed his eyes. There were all the components there. He was sure of that now, there was nothing more he could learn from outside. It must come from inside. And quite suddenly — just as his eyelids were relaxing in sleep — it came. It was all there — waiting for him! He would have to work it all out. But he knew now. All the bits were there, disconnected bits and pieces, all fitting in. A wig, a picture, women and their hair dos, the Peacock Boy all leading to the phrase with which it had begun: Third Girl.

  "I may have committed a murder..." Of course! A ridiculous nursery rhyme came into his mind. He repeated it aloud. Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub And who do you think they be? A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. Too bad, he couldn't remember the last line. A baker, yes, and in a far-fetched way, a butcher — He tried out a feminine parody: Pat a cake, pat, three girls in a flat And who do you think they be? A Personal Aide and a girl from the Slade And the Third is a — Miss Lemon came in. "Ah — I remember now — 'And they all came out of a weenie potato.' "

  Miss Lemon looked at him in anxiety. "Dr. Stillingfleet insists on speaking to you at once. He says it is urgent.

  "Tell Dr. Stillingfleet he can—Dr. Stillingfleet, did you say?" He pushed past her, caught up the receiver. "I am here. Poirot speaking! Something has happened?"

  "She's walked out on me."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. She's walked out. Walked out through the front gate."

  "You let her go?"

  "What else could I do?"

  "You could have stopped her."

  "No."

  "To let her go was madness."

  "No."

  "You don't understand."

  "That was the arrangement. Free to go at any time."

  "You don't understand what may be involved."

  "All right then, I don't. But I know what I'm doing. And if I don't let her go, all the work I've done on her would go for nothing. And I have worked on her. Your job and my job aren't the same. We're not out for the same thing. I tell you I was getting somewhere. Getting somewhere, so that I was quite sure she wouldn't walk out on me."

  "Ah yes. And then, mon ami, she did."

  "Frankly, I can't understand it. I can't see why the setback came."

  "Something happened."

  "Yes, but what?"

  "Somebody she saw, somebody who spoke to her, somebody who found out where she was."

  "I don't see how that could have happened... But what you don't seem to see is that she's a free agent. She had to be a free agent." "Somebody got at her. Somebody found out where she was. Did she get a letter, a telegram, a telephone call?"

  "No, nothing of that kind. That I am quite sure of."

  "Then how--of course! Newspapers. You have newspapers, I suppose, in that establishment of yours?"

  "Certainly. Normal everyday life, that's what I stand for in my place of business."

  "Then that is how they got at her. Normal, everyday life. What papers do you take?"

  "Five." He named the five.

  "When did she go?"

  "This morning. Half past ten."

  "Exactly. After she read the papers. That is good enough to start on. Which paper did she usually read?"

  "I don't think she had any special choice. Sometimes one, sometimes another, sometimes the whole lot of them -- sometimes only glanced at them."

  "Well, I must not waste time talking."

  "You think she saw an advertisement. Something of that kind?" "What other explanation can there be? Good-bye, I
can say no more now. I have to search. Search for the possible advertisement and then get on quickly." He replaced the receiver. "Miss Lemon, bring me our two papers. The Morning News and the Daily Comet. Send Georges out for all the others." As he opened out the papers to the Personal advertisements and went carefully down them, he followed his line of thought. He would be in time. He must be in time There had been one murder already. There would be another one to come. But he, Hercule Poirot, would prevent that. If he was in time... He was Hercule Poirot -- the avenger of the innocent. Did he not say (and people laughed when he said it) "I do not approve of murder". They had thought it an understatement. But it was not an understatement. It was a simple statement of fact without melodrama. He did not approve of murder. George came in with a sheaf of newspapers.

  "There are all this morning's, sir." Poirot looked at Miss Lemon, who was standing by waiting to be efficient.

  "Look through the ones that I have searched in case I have missed anything."

  "The Personal column, you mean?"

  "Yes. I thought there would be the name David perhaps. A girl's name. Some pet name or nickname. They would not use Norma. An appeal for help, perhaps, or to a meeting."

  Miss Lemon took the papers obediently with some distaste. This was not her kind of efficiency, but for the moment he had no other job to give her. He himself spread out the Morning Chronicle. That was the biggest field to search. Three columns of it. He bent over the open sheet. A lady who wanted to dispose of her fur coat... Passengers wanted for a car trip abroad... Lovely period house for sale. Paying guests... Backward children. Home-made chocolates... "Julia. Shall never forget. Always yours." That was more the kind of thing. He considered it, but passed on. Louis XVth furniture. Middle-aged lady to help run an hotel.