by Mark Place
‘Ah! Jeunesse, Jeunesse ,’ murmured Hercule Poirot, pleasurably affected by the sight. They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air. Their figures, however, he considered lamentably deficient. Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer?
He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women…One woman, in particular—what a sumptuous creature—Bird of Paradise—a Venus…What woman was there amongst these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff? A genuine Russian aristocrat, an aristocrat to her fingertips! And also, he remembered, a most accomplished thief…One of those natural geniuses…With a sigh, Poirot wrenched his thoughts away from the flamboyant creature of his dreams. It was not only, he noted, the little nursemaids and their like who were being wooed under the trees of Regent’s Park.
That was a Schiaparelli creation there, under that lime tree, with the young man who bent his head so close to hers, who was pleading so earnestly. One must not yield too soon! He hoped the girl understood that. The pleasure of the chase must be extended as long as possible…His beneficent eye still on them, he became suddenly aware of a familiarity in those two figures. So Jane Olivera had come to Regent’s Park to meet her young American revolutionary? His face grew suddenly sad and rather stern. After only a brief hesitation he crossed the grass to them. Sweeping off his hat with a flourish, he said: ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle.’ Jane Olivera, he thought, was not entirely displeased to see him. Howard Raikes, on the other hand, was a good deal annoyed at the interruption. He growled: ‘Oh, so it’s you again!’
‘Good afternoon, M. Poirot,’ said Jane. ‘How unexpectedly you always pop up, don’t you?’
‘Kind of a Jack in the Box,’ said Raikes, still eyeing Poirot with a considerable coldness. ‘I do not intrude?’ Poirot asked anxiously. Jane Olivera said kindly: ‘Not at all.’
Howard Raikes said nothing.
‘It is a pleasant spot you have found here,’ said Poirot.
‘It was,’ said Mr Raikes.
Jane said: ‘Be quiet, Howard. You need to learn manners!’
Howard Raikes snorted and asked: ‘What’s the good of manners?’
‘You’ll find they kind of help you along,’ said Jane. ‘I haven’t got any myself, but that doesn’t matter so much. To begin with I’m rich, and I’m moderately good-looking, and I’ve got a lot of influential friends—and none of those unfortunate disabilities they talk about so freely in the advertisements nowadays. I can get along all right without manners.’
Raikes said: ‘I’m not in the mood for small talk, Jane. I guess I’ll take myself off.’
He got up, nodded curtly to Poirot and strode away.
Jane Olivera stared after him, her chin cupped in her palm.
Poirot said with a sigh: ‘Alas, the proverb is true. When you are courting, two is company, is it not, three is none?’
Jane said: ‘Courting? What a word!’
‘But yes, it is the right word, is it not? For a young man who pays attention to a young lady before asking her hand in marriage? They say, do they not, a courting couple?’
‘Your friends seem to say some very funny things.’
Hercule Poirot chanted softly: ‘Thirteen, fourteen, maids are courting. See, all around us they are doing it.’
Jane said sharply: ‘Yes—I’m just one of the crowd, I suppose…’ She turned suddenly to Poirot. ‘I want to apologize to you. I made a mistake the other day. I thought you had wormed your way in and come down to Exsham just to spy on Howard. But afterwards Uncle Alistair told me that he had definitely asked you because he wanted you to clear up this business of that missing woman—Sainsbury Seale. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So I’m sorry for what I said to you that evening. But it did look like it, you know. I mean—as though you were just following Howard and spying on us both.’
‘Even if it were true, Mademoiselle—I was an excellent witness to the fact that Mr Raikes bravely saved your uncle’s life by springing on his assailant and preventing him from firing another shot.’
‘You’ve got a funny way of saying things, M. Poirot. I never know whether you’re serious or not.’ Poirot said gravely: ‘At the moment I am very serious, Miss Olivera.’ Jane said with a slight break in her voice: ‘Why do you look at me like that? As though—as though you were sorry for me?’
‘Perhaps because I am sorry, Mademoiselle, for the things that I shall have to do so soon…’
‘Well, then—don’t do them!’
‘Alas, Mademoiselle, but I must…’
She stared at him for a minute or two, then she said: ‘Have you—found that woman?’
Poirot said: ‘Let us say—that I know where she is.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘I have not said so.’
‘She’s alive, then?’
‘I have not said that either.’
Jane looked at him with irritation. She exclaimed: ‘Well, she’s got to be one or the other, hasn’t she?’
‘Actually, it’s not quite so simple.’
‘I believe you just like making things difficult!’
‘It has been said of me,’ admitted Hercule Poirot.
Jane shivered. She said: ‘Isn’t it funny? It’s a lovely warm day—and yet I suddenly feel cold…’
‘Perhaps you had better walk on, Mademoiselle.’
Jane rose to her feet. She stood a minute irresolute. She said abruptly: ‘Howard wants me to marry him. At once. Without letting anyone know. He says—he says it’s the only way I’ll ever do it—that I’m weak—’ She broke off, then with one hand she gripped Poirot’s arm with surprising strength. ‘What shall I do about it, M. Poirot?’
‘Why ask me to advise you? There are those who are nearer!’
‘Mother? She’d scream the house down at the bare idea! Uncle Alistair? He’d be cautious and prosy. Plenty of time, my dear. Got to make quite sure, you know. Bit of an odd fish—this young man of yours. No sense in rushing things—’
‘Your friends?’ suggested Poirot.
‘I haven’t got any friends. Only a silly crowd I drink and dance and talk inane catchwords with! Howard’s the only real person I’ve ever come up against.’
‘Still—why ask me, Miss Olivera?’
Jane said: ‘Because you’ve got a queer look on your face—as though you were sorry about something—as though you knew something that—that—was—coming…’ She stopped. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What do you say?’ Hercule Poirot slowly shook his head.
IV
When Poirot reached home, George said: ‘Chief Inspector Japp is here, sir.’ Japp grinned in a rueful way as Poirot came into the room.
‘Here I am, old boy. Come round to say: “Aren’t you a marvel? How do you do it? What makes you think of these things?”
‘All this meaning—? But pardon, you will have some refreshment? A sirop? Or perhaps the whisky?’
‘The whisky is good enough for me.’
A few minutes later he raised his glass, observing: ‘Here’s to Hercule Poirot who is always right!’ ‘No, no, mon ami.’ ‘Here we had a lovely case of suicide. H.P. says it’s murder—wants it to be murder—and dash it all, it is murder!’
‘Ah? So you agree at last?’
‘Well, nobody can say I’m pig-headed. I don’t fly in the face of evidence. The trouble was there wasn’t any evidence before.’
‘But there is now?’
‘Yes, and I’ve come round to make the amend honourable, as you call it, and present the titbit to you on toast, as it were.’
‘I am all agog, my good Japp.’
‘All right. Here goes. The pistol that Frank Carter tried to shoot Blunt with on Saturday is a twin pistol to the one that killed Morley!’
Poirot stared: ‘But this is extraordinary!’
‘Yes, it makes it look rather black for Master Frank.’
‘
It is not conclusive.’
‘No, but it’s enough to make us reconsider the suicide verdict. They’re a foreign make of pistol and rather an uncommon one at that!’
Hercule Poirot stared. His eyebrows looked like crescent moons. He said at last: ‘Frank Carter? No—surely not!’
Japp breathed a sigh of exasperation.
‘What’s the matter with you, Poirot? First you will have it that Morley was murdered and that it wasn’t suicide. Then when I come and tell you we’re inclined to come round to your views you hem and ha and don’t seem to like it.’
‘You really believe that Morley was murdered by Frank Carter?’
‘It fits. Carter had got a grudge against Morley—that we knew all along. He came to Queen Charlotte Street that morning—and he pretended afterwards that he had come along to tell his young woman he’d got a job—but we’ve now discovered that he hadn’t got the job then. He didn’t get it till later in the day. He admits that now. So there’s lie No. 1. He can’t account for where he was at twenty-five past twelve onwards. Says he was walking in the Marylebone Road, but the first thing he can prove is having a drink in a pub at five past one. And the barman says he was in a regular state—his hand shaking and his face as white as a sheet!’
Hercule Poirot sighed and shook his head. He murmured: ‘It does not accord with my ideas.’
‘What are these ideas of yours?’
‘It is very disturbing what you tell me. Very disturbing indeed. Because, you see, if you are right…’
The door opened softly and George murmured deferentially:
‘Excuse me, sir, but…’
He got no further. Miss Gladys Nevill thrust him aside and came agitatedly into the room. She was crying. ‘Oh, M. Poirot—’
‘Here, I’ll be off,’ said Japp hurriedly.
He left the room precipitately. Gladys Nevill paid his back the tribute of a venomous look. ‘That’s the man—that horrid Inspector from Scotland Yard—it’s he who has trumped up a whole case against poor Frank.’
‘Now, now, you must not agitate yourself.’
‘But he has. First they pretend that he tried to murder this Mr Blunt and not content with that they’ve accused him or murdering poor Mr Morley.’
Hercule Poirot coughed. He said: ‘I was down there, you know, at Exsham, when the shot was fired at Mr Blunt.’
Gladys Nevill said with a somewhat confusing use of pronouns: ‘But even if Frank did—did do a foolish thing like that—and he’s one of those Imperial Shirts, you know—they march with banners and have a ridiculous salute, and of course I suppose Mr Blunt’s wife was a very notorious Jewess, and they just work up these poor young men—quite harmless ones like Frank—until they think they are doing something wonderful and patriotic.’
‘Is that Mr Carter’s defence?’ asked Hercule Poirot.
‘Oh no. Frank just swears he didn’t do anything and had never seen the pistol before. I haven’t spoken to him, of course—they wouldn’t let me—but he’s got a solicitor acting for him and he told me what Frank had said. Frank just says it’s all a frame-up.’
Poirot murmured: ‘And the solicitor is of opinion that his client had better think of a more plausible story?’
‘Lawyers are so difficult. They won’t say anything straight out. But it’s the murder charge I’m worrying about. Oh! M. Poirot, I’m sure Frank couldn’t have killed Mr Morley. I mean really—he hadn’t any reason to.’
‘Is it true,’ said Poirot, ‘that when he came round that morning he had not yet got a job of any kind?’
‘Well, really, M. Poirot, I don’t see what difference that makes. Whether he got the job in the morning or the afternoon can’t matter.’
Poirot said: ‘But his story was that he came to tell you about his good luck. Now, it seems, he had as yet had no luck. Why, then, did he come?’
‘Well, M. Poirot, the poor boy was dispirited and upset, and to tell the truth I believe he’d been drinking a little. Poor Frank has rather a weak head—and the drink upset him and so he felt like—like making a row, and he came round to Queen Charlotte Street to have it out with Mr Morley, because, you see, Frank is awfully sensitive and it had upset him a lot to feel that Mr Morley disapproved of him, and was what he called poisoning my mind.’
‘So he conceived the idea of making a scene in business hours?’
‘Well—yes—I suppose that was his idea. Of course it was very wrong of Frank to think of such a thing.’
Poirot looked thoughtfully at the tearful blonde young woman in front of him. He said: ‘Did you know that Frank Carter had a pistol—or a pair of pistols?’
‘Oh no, M. Poirot. I swear I didn’t. And I don’t believe it’s true, either.’
Poirot shook his head slowly in a perplexed manner.
‘Oh! M. Poirot, do help us. If I could only feel that you were on our side—’
Poirot said: ‘I do not take sides. I am on the side only of the truth.’
V
After he had got rid of the girl, Poirot rang up Scotland Yard. Japp had not yet returned but Detective Sergeant Beddoes was obliging and informative. The police had not as yet found any evidence to prove Frank Carter’s possession of the pistol before the assault at Exsham. Poirot hung up the receiver thoughtfully. It was a point in Carter’s favour. But so far it was the only one. He had also learned from Beddoes a few more details as to the statement Frank Carter had made about his employment as gardener at Exsham. He stuck to his story of a Secret Service job. He had been given money in advance and some testimonials as to his gardening abilities and been told to apply to Mr MacAlister, the head gardener, for the post.
His instructions were to listen to the other gardeners’ conversations and sound them as to their ‘red’ tendencies, and to pretend to be a bit of a ‘red’ himself. He had been interviewed and instructed in his task by a woman who had told him that she was known as Q.H.56, and that he had been recommended to her as a strong anti-communist. She had interviewed him in a dim light and he did not think he would know her again. She was a red-haired lady with a lot of make-up on. Poirot groaned. The Phillips Oppenheim touch seemed to be reappearing. He was tempted to consult Mr Barnes on the subject. According to Mr Barnes these things happened. The last post brought him something which disturbed him more still. A cheap envelope in an unformed handwriting, postmarked Hertfordshire. Poirot opened it and read:
Dear Sir,
Hoping as you will forgive me for troubling you, but I am very worried and do not know what to do. I do not want to be mixed up with the police in any way. I know that perhaps I ought to have told something I know before, but as they said the master had shot himself it was all right I thought and I wouldn’t have liked to get Miss Nevill’s young man into trouble and never thought really for one moment as he had done it but now I see he has been took up for shooting at a gentleman in the country and so perhaps he isn’t quite all there and I ought to say but I thought I would write to you, you being a friend of the mistress and asking me so particular the other day if there was anything and of course I wish now I had told you then. But I do hope it won’t mean getting mixed up with the police because I shouldn’t like that and my mother wouldn’t like it either. She has always been most particular.
Yours respectfully
Agnes Fletcher.
Poirot murmured: ‘I always knew it was something to do with some man. I guessed the wrong man that is all.’
Fifteen, Sixteen, Maids in the Kitchen
I
The interview with Agnes Fletcher took place in Hertford, in a somewhat derelict teashop, for Agnes had been anxious not to tell her story under Miss Morley’s critical eye. The first quarter of an hour was taken up listening to exactly how particular Agnes’ mother had always been. Also how Agnes’ father, though a proprietor of licensed premises, had never once had any friction with the police, closing time being strictly observed to the second, and indeed Agnes’ father and mother were universally respected and lo
oked up to in Little Darlingham, Gloucestershire, and none of Mrs Fletcher’s family of six (two having died in infancy) had ever occasioned their parents the least anxiety. And if Agnes, now, were to get mixed up with the police in any way, Mum and Dad would probably die of it, because as she’d been saying, they’d always held their heads high, and never had no trouble of any kind with the police. After this had been repeated, da capo , and with various embellishments, several times, Agnes drew a little nearer to the subject of the interview.
‘I wouldn’t like to say anything to Miss Morley, sir, because it might be, you see, that she’d say as how I ought to have said something before, but me and cook, we talked it over and we didn’t see as it was any business of ours, because we’d read quite clear and plain in the paper as how the master had made a mistake in the drug he was giving and that he’d shot himself and the pistol was in his hands and everything, so it did seem quite clear, didn’t it, sir?’
‘When did you begin to feel differently?’ Poirot hoped to get a little nearer the promised revelation by an encouraging but not too direct question. Agnes replied promptly. ‘Seeing it in the paper about that Frank Carter—Miss Nevill’s young man as was. When I read as he’d shot at that gentleman where he was gardener, well, I thought, it looks as if he might be queer in the head, because I do know there’s people it takes like that, think they’re being persecuted, or something, and that they’re ringed round by enemies, and in the end it’s dangerous to keep them at home and they have to be took away to the asylum. And I thought that maybe that Frank Carter was like that, because I did remember that he used to go on about Mr Morley and say as Mr Morley was against him and trying to separate him from Miss Nevill, but of course she wouldn’t hear a word against him, and quite right too we thought—Emma and me, because you couldn’t deny as Mr Carter was very nice-looking and quite the gentleman. But, of course, neither of us thought he’d really done anything to Mr Morley. We just thought it was a bit queer if you know what I mean.’