by Mark Place
‘Disappointing,’ I suggested.
‘Enfin,’ said Poirot, ‘I am modest. But one should not need to use a rapier to cut the string of a parcel.’
I shook my head in a solemn manner. Poirot continued, ‘I have occupied myself of late in reading various real life unsolved mysteries. I apply to them my own solutions.’
‘You mean cases like the Bravo case, Adelaide Bartlett and all the rest of them?’
‘Exactly. But it was in a way too easy. There is no doubt whatever in my own mind as to who murdered Charles Bravo. The companion may have been involved, but she was certainly not the moving spirit in the matter. Then there was that unfortunate adolescent, Constance Kent. The true motive that lay behind her strangling of the small brother whom she undoubtedly loved has always been a puzzle. But not to me. It was clear as soon as I read about the case. As for Lizzie Borden, one wishes only that one could put a few necessary questions to various people concerned. I am fairly sure in my own mind of what the answers would be. Alas, they are all by now dead, I fear.’
I thought to myself, as so often before, that modesty was certainly not Hercules Poirot’s strong point.
‘And what did I do next?’ continued Poirot.
I guessed that for some time now he had had no one much to talk to and was enjoying the sound of his own voice.
‘From real life I turned to fiction. You see me here with various examples of criminal fiction at my right hand and my left. I have been working backwards. Here—’ he picked up the volume that he had laid on the arm of his chair when I entered, ‘—here, my dear Colin, is The Leavenworth Case .’ He handed the book to me.
‘That’s going back quite a long time,’ I said. ‘I believe my father mentioned that he read it as a boy. I believe I once read it myself. It must seem rather old-fashioned now.’
‘It is admirable,’ said Poirot. ‘One savours its period atmosphere, its studied and deliberate melodrama.
Those rich and lavish descriptions of the golden beauty of Eleanor, the moonlight beauty of Mary!’
‘I must read it again,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten the parts about the beautiful girls.’
‘And there is the maid-servant, Hannah, so true to type, and the murderer, an excellent psychological study.’
I perceived that I had let myself in for a lecture. I composed myself to listen. ‘Then we will take the Adventures of Arsene Lupin,’ Poirot went on. ‘How fantastic, how unreal. And yet what vitality there is in them, what vigour, what life! They are preposterous, but they have panache. There is humour, too.’
He laid down the Adventures of Arsene Lupin and picked up another book. ‘And there is The Mystery of the Yellow Room . That—ah, that is really a classic! I approve of it from start to finish. Such a logical approach! There were criticisms of it, I remember, which said that it was unfair. But it is not unfair, my dear Colin. No, no. Very nearly so, perhaps, but not quite. There is the hair’s breadth of difference. No.
All through there is truth, concealed with a careful and cunning use of words. Everything should be clear at that supreme moment when the men meet at the angle of three corridors.’ He laid it down reverently.
‘Definitely a masterpiece, and, I gather, almost forgotten nowadays.’
Poirot skipped twenty years or so, to approach the works of somewhat later authors. ‘I have read also,’ he said, ‘some of the early works of Mrs Ariadne Oliver. She is by way of being a friend of mine, and of yours, I think. I do not wholly approve of her works, mind you. The happenings in them are highly improbable. The long arm of coincidence is far too freely employed. And, being young at the time, she was foolish enough to make her detective a Finn, and it is clear that she knows nothing about Finns or Finland except possibly the works of Sibelius. Still, she has an original habit of mind, she makes an occasional shrewd deduction, and of later years she has learnt a good deal about things which she did not know before. Police procedure for instance. She is also now a little more reliable on the subject of firearms. What was even more needed, she has possibly acquired a solicitor or a barrister friend who has put her right on certain points of the law.’
He laid aside Mrs Ariadne Oliver and picked up another book.
‘Now here is Mr Cyril Quain. Ah, he is a master, Mr Quain, of the alibi.’
‘He’s a deadly dull writer if I remember rightly,’ I said.
‘It is true,’ said Poirot, ‘that nothing particularly thrilling happens in his books. There is a corpse, of course. Occasionally more than one. But the whole point is always the alibi, the railway time-table, the bus routes, the plans of the cross-country roads. I confess I enjoy this intricate, this elaborate use of the alibi. I enjoy trying to catch Mr Cyril Quain out.’
‘And I suppose you always succeed,’ I said.
Poirot was honest. ‘Not always,’ he admitted. ‘No, not always. Of course, after a time one realizes that one book of his is almost exactly like another. The alibis resemble each other every time, even though they are not exactly the same. You know, mon cher Colin, I imagine this Cyril Quain sitting in his room, smoking his pipe as he is represented to do in his photographs, sitting there with around him the A.B.C.s, the continental Bradshaws, the airline brochures, the time-tables of every kind. Even the movements of liners. Say what you will, Colin, there is order and method in Mr Cyril Quain.’
He laid Mr Quain down and picked up another book.
‘Now here is Mr Garry Gregson, a prodigious writer of thrillers. He has written at least sixty-four, I understand. He is almost the exact opposite of Mr Quain. In Mr Quain’s books nothing much happens, in Garry Gregson’s far too many things happen. They happen implausibly and in mass confusion. They are all highly coloured. It is melodrama stirred up with a stick. Bloodshed—bodies—clues—thrills piled up and bulging over. All lurid, all very unlike life. He is not quite, as you would say, my cup of tea. He is, in fact, not a cup of tea at all. He is more like one of these American cocktails of the more obscure kind, whose ingredients are highly suspect.’
Poirot paused, sighed and resumed his lecture. ‘Then we turn to America.’ He plucked a book from the left-hand pile. ‘Florence Elks, now. There is order and method there, colourful happenings, yes, but plenty of point in them. Gay and alive. She has wit, this lady, though perhaps, like so many American writers, a little too obsessed with drink. I am, as you know, mon ami , a connoisseur of wine. A claret or a burgundy introduced into a story, with its vintage and date properly authenticated, I always find pleasing. But the exact amount of rye and bourbon that are consumed on every other page by the detective in an American thriller do not seem to me interesting at all. Whether he drinks a pint or a half-pint which he takes from his collar drawer does not seem to me really to affect the action of the story in any way. This drink motive in American books is very much what King Charles’s head was to poor Mr Dick when he tried to write his memoirs. Impossible to keep it out.’
‘What about the tough school?’ I asked.
Poirot waved aside the tough school much as he would have waved an intruding fly or mosquito. ‘Violence for violence’ sake? Since when has that been interesting? I have seen plenty of violence in my early career as a police officer. Bah, you might as well read a medical text book. Tout de même, I give American crime fiction on the whole a pretty high place. I think it is more ingenious, more imaginative than English writing. It is less atmospheric and over-laden with atmosphere than most French writers. Now take Louisa O’Malley for instance.’ He dived once more for a book.
‘What a model of fine scholarly writing is hers, yet what excitement, what mounting apprehension she arouses in her reader. Those brownstone mansions in New York. Enfin what is a brownstone mansion—I have never known? Those exclusive apartments, and soulful snobberies, and underneath, deep unsuspected seams of crime run their uncharted course. It could happen so, and it does happen so. She is very good, this Louisa O’Malley, she is very good indeed.’
He sighed, leaned back, s
hook his head and drank off the remainder of his tisane. ‘And then—there are always the old favourites.’ Again he dived for a book.
‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,’ he murmured lovingly, and even uttered reverently the one word,
‘Maître!’
‘Sherlock Holmes?’ I asked.
‘Ah, non ,non , not Sherlock Holmes! It is the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that I salute. These tales of Sherlock Holmes are in reality far-fetched, full of fallacies and most artificially contrived. But the art of the writing—ah, that is entirely different. The pleasure of the language, the creation above all of that magnificent character, Dr Watson. Ah, that was indeed a triumph.’
He sighed and shook his head and murmured, obviously by a natural association of ideas: ‘Ce cher Hastings. My friend Hastings of whom you have often heard me speak. It is a long time since I have had news of him. What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions.’
‘That’s not confined to South America,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re having revolutions all over the world nowadays.’
‘Let us not discuss the Bomb,’ said Hercules Poirot. ‘If it has to be, it has to be, but let us not discuss it.’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I came to discuss something quite different with you.’
‘Ah! You are about to be married, is that it? I am delighted, mon cher, delighted.’
‘What on earth put that in your head, Poirot?’ I asked. ‘Nothing of the kind.’
‘It happens,’ said Poirot, ‘it happens every day.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said firmly, ‘but not to me. Actually I came to tell you that I’d run across rather a pretty little problem in murder.’
‘Indeed? A pretty problem in murder, you say? And you have brought it to me. Why?’
‘Well—’ I was slightly embarrassed. ‘I—I thought you might enjoy it,’ I said.
Poirot looked at me thoughtfully. He caressed his moustache with a loving hand, then he spoke.
‘A master,’ he said, ‘is often kind to his dog. He goes out and throws a ball for the dog. A dog, however, is also capable of being kind to its master. A dog kills a rabbit or a rat and he brings it and lays it at his master’s feet. And what does he do then? He wags his tail.’
I laughed in spite of myself. ‘Am I wagging my tail?’
‘I think you are, my friend. Yes, I think you are.’
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘And what does master say? Does he want to see doggy’s rat? Does he want to know all about it?’
‘Of course. Naturally. It is a crime that you think will interest me. Is that right?’
‘The whole point of it is,’ I said, ‘that it just doesn’t make sense.’
‘That is impossible,’ said Poirot. ‘Everything makes sense. Everything.’
‘Well, you try and make sense of this. I can’t. Not that it’s really anything to do with me. I just happened to come in on it. Mind you, it may turn out to be quite straightforward, once the dead man is identified.’
‘You are talking without method or order,’ said Poirot severely. ‘Let me beg of you to let me have the facts. You say it is a murder, yes?’
‘It’s a murder all right,’ I assured him. ‘Well, here we go.’
I described to him in detail the events that had taken place at 19, Wilbraham Crescent. Hercules Poirot leant back in his chair. He closed his eyes and gently tapped with a forefinger the arm of his chair while he listened to my recital. When I finally stopped, he did not speak for a moment. Then he asked, without opening his eyes:
‘Sans blague?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ I said.
‘Epatant,’ said Hercules Poirot. He savoured the word on his tongue and repeated it syllable by syllable.
‘E-patant.’ After that he continued his tapping on the arm of his chair and gently nodded his head.
‘Well,’ I said impatiently, after waiting a few moments more. ‘What have you got to say?’
‘But what do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to give me the solution. I’ve always understood from you that it was perfectly possible to lie back in one’s chair, just think about it all, and come up with the answer. That it was quite unnecessary to go and question people and run about looking for clues.’
‘It is what I have always maintained.’
‘Well, I’m calling your bluff,’ I said. ‘I’ve given you the facts, and now I want the answer.’
‘Just like that, hein? But then there is a lot more to be known, mon ami . We are only at the beginning of the facts. Is that not so?’
‘I still want you to come up with something.’
‘I see.’ He reflected a moment. ‘One thing is certain,’ he pronounced. ‘It must be a very simple crime.’
‘Simple?’ I demanded in some astonishment.
‘Naturally.’
‘Why must it be simple?’
‘Because it appears so complex. If it has necessarily to appear complex, it must be simple. You comprehend that?’
‘I don’t really know that I do.’
‘Curious,’ mused Poirot, ‘what you have told me—I think—yes, there is something familiar to me there.
Now where—when—have I come across something…’ He paused.
‘Your memory,’ I said, ‘must be one vast reservoir of crimes. But you can’t possibly remember them all, can you?’
‘Unfortunately no,’ said Poirot, ‘but from time to time these reminiscences are helpful. There was a soap boiler, I remember, once, at Liège. He poisoned his wife in order to marry a blonde stenographer. The crime made a pattern. Later, much later, that pattern recurred. I recognized it. This time it was an affair of a kidnapped Pekinese dog, but the pattern was the same. I looked for the equivalent of the blonde stenographer and the soap boiler, and voilà ! That is the kind of thing. And here again in what you have told me I have that feeling of recognition.’
‘Clocks?’ I suggested hopefully. ‘Bogus insurance agents?’
‘No, no,’ Poirot shook his head.
‘Blind women?’
‘No, no, no. Do not confuse me.’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Poirot,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d give me the answer straight away.’
‘But, my friend, at present you have presented me only with a pattern. There are many more things to find out. Presumably this man will be identified. In that kind of thing the police are excellent. They have their criminal records, they can advertise the man’s picture, they have access to a list of missing persons, there is scientific examination of the dead man’s clothing, and so on and so on. Oh, yes, there are a hundred other ways and means at their disposal. Undoubtedly, this man will be identified.’
‘So there’s nothing to do at the moment. Is that what you think?’
‘There is always something to do,’ said Hercules Poirot, severely. ‘Such as?’
He wagged an emphatic forefinger at me.
‘Talk to the neighbours,’ he said.
‘I’ve done that,’ I said. ‘I went with Hardcastle when he was questioning them. They don’t know anything useful.’
‘Ah, tcha, tcha, that is what you think. But I assure you, that cannot be so. You go to them, you ask them: “Have you seen anything suspicious?” and they say no, and you think that that is all there is to it.
But that is not what I mean when I say talk to the neighbours. I say talk to them. Let them talk to you. And from their conversation always, somewhere, you will find a clue. They may be talking about their gardens or their pets or their hairdressing or their dressmaker, or their friends, or the kind of food they like. Always somewhere there will be a word that sheds light. You say there was nothing in those conversations that was useful. I say that cannot be so. If you could repeat them to me word for word…’
‘Well, that’s practically what I can do,’ I said. ‘I took shorthand transcripts of what was said, acting in my role of assistant police offi
cer. I’ve had them transcribed and typed and I’ve brought them along to you. Here they are.’
‘Ah, but you are a good boy, you are a very good boy indeed! What you have done is exactly right.
Exactly. Je vous remercie infiniment.’
I felt quite embarrassed.
‘Have you any more suggestions?’ I asked.
‘Yes, always I have suggestions. There is this girl. You can talk to this girl. Go and see her. Already you are friends, are you not? Have you not clasped her in your arms when she flew from the house in terror?’
‘You’ve been affected by reading Garry Gregson,’ I said. ‘You’ve caught the melodramatic style.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Poirot admitted. ‘One gets infected, it is true, by the style of a work that one has been reading.’
‘As for the girl—’ I said, then paused.
Poirot looked at me inquiringly.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘I shouldn’t like—I don’t want…’
‘Ah, so that is it. At the back of your mind you think she is concerned somehow in this case.’
‘No, I don’t. It was absolutely pure chance that she happened to be there.’
‘No, no, mon ami , it was not pure chance. You know that very well. You’ve told me so. She was asked for over the telephone. Asked for specially.’
‘But she doesn’t know why.’
‘You cannot be sure that she does not know why. Very likely she does know why and is hiding the fact.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said obstinately.
‘It is even possible you may find out why by talking to her, even if she herself does not realize the truth.’
‘I don’t see very well how—I mean—I hardly know her.’
Hercules Poirot shut his eyes again.
‘There is a time,’ he said, ‘in the course of an attraction between two persons of the opposite sex, when that particular statement is bound to be true. She is an attractive girl, I suppose?’