Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

‘So you don’t know what’s happened to Edna Brent?’

  ‘Happened to her?’ asked Sheila, sharply, her voice rising. ‘Happened to her? What do you mean? Has she had an accident or something—been run over?’

  ‘Very dangerous, all this speeding,’ put in the professor.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hardcastle, ‘something’s happened to her.’ He paused and then said, putting it as brutally as possible, ‘She was strangled about half past twelve, in a telephone box.’

  ‘In a telephone box?’ said the professor, rising to the occasion by showing some interest. Sheila Webb said nothing. She stared at him. Her mouth opened slightly, her eyes widened. ‘Either this is the first you’ve heard of it or you’re a damn’ good actress,’ thought Hardcastle to himself.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said the professor. ‘Strangled in a telephone box. That seems very extraordinary to me. Very extraordinary. Not the sort of place I would choose myself. I mean, if I were to do such a thing. No, indeed. Well, well. Poor girl. Most unfortunate for her.’

  ‘Edna—killed! But why?’

  ‘Did you know, Miss Webb, that Edna Brent was very anxious to see you the day before yesterday, that she came to your aunt’s house, and waited for some time for you to come back?’

  ‘My fault again,’ said the professor guiltily. ‘I kept Miss Webb very late that evening, I remember. Very late indeed. I really still feel very apologetic about it. You must always remind me of the time, my dear.

  You really must.’

  ‘My aunt told me about that,’ said Sheila, ‘but I didn’t know it was anything special. Was it? Was Edna in trouble of any kind?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said the inspector. ‘We probably never shall know. Unless you can tell us?’

  ‘I tell you? How should I know?’

  ‘You might have had some idea, perhaps, of what Edna Brent wanted to see you about?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea, no idea at all.’

  ‘Hasn’t she hinted anything to you, spoken to you in the office at all about whatever the trouble was?’

  ‘No. No, indeed she hasn’t—hadn’t—I wasn’t at the office at all yesterday. I had to go over to Landis Bay to one of our authors for the whole day.’

  ‘You didn’t think that she’d been worried lately?’

  ‘Well, Edna always looked worried or puzzled. She had a very—what shall I say—diffident, uncertain kind of mind. I mean, she was never quite sure that what she thought of doing was the right thing or not. She missed out two whole pages in typing Armand Levine’s book once and she was terribly worried about what to do then, because she’d sent it off to him before she realized what had happened.’

  ‘I see. And she asked you all your advice as to what she should do about it?’

  ‘Yes. I told her she’d better write a note to him quickly because people don’t always start reading their typescript at once for correction. She could write and say what had happened and ask him not to complain to Miss Martindale. But she said she didn’t quite like to do that.’

  ‘She usually came and asked for advice when one of these problems arose?’

  ‘Oh, yes, always. But the trouble was, of course, that we didn’t always all agree as to what she should do. Then she got puzzled again.’

  ‘So it would be quite natural that she should come to one of you if she had a problem? It happened quite frequently?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it did.’

  ‘You don’t think it might have been something more serious this time?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. What sort of serious thing could it be?’

  Was Sheila Webb, the inspector wondered, quite as much at ease as she tried to appear?’

  ‘I don’t know what she wanted to talk to me about,’ she went on, speaking faster and rather breathlessly. ‘I’ve no idea. And I certainly can’t imagine why she wanted to come out to my aunt’s house and speak to meet here.’

  ‘It would seem, wouldn’t it, that it was something she did not want to speak to you about at the Cavendish Bureau? Before the other girls, shall we say? Something, perhaps, that she felt ought to be kept private between you and her. Could that have been the case?’

  ‘I think it’s very unlikely. I’m sure it couldn’t have been at all like that.’ Her breath came quickly.

  ‘So you can’t help me, Miss Webb?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry about Edna, but I don’t know anything that could help you.’

  ‘Nothing that might have a connection or a tie-up with what happened on the 9th of September?’

  ‘You mean—that man—that man in Wilbraham Crescent?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘How could it have been? What could Edna have known about that?’

  ‘Nothing very important, perhaps,’ said the inspector, ‘but something. And anything would help. Anything, however small.’ He paused. ‘The telephone box where she was killed was in Wilbraham Crescent. Does that convey anything to you, Miss Webb?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Were you yourself in Wilbraham Crescent today?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said vehemently. ‘I never went near it. I’m beginning to feel that it’s a horrible place.

  I wish I’d never gone there in the first place, I wish I’d never got mixed up in all this. Why did they send for me, ask for me specially, that day? Why did Edna have to get killed near there? You must find out, Inspector, you must, you must!’

  ‘We mean to find out, Miss Webb,’ the inspector said. There was a faint menace in his voice as he went on: ‘I can assure you of that.’

  ‘You’re trembling, my dear,’ said Professor Purdy. ‘I think, I really do think that you ought to have a glass of sherry.’

  Chapter 20

  Colin Lamb’s Narrative

  I reported to Beck as soon as I got to London. He waved his cigar at me. ‘There might have been something in that idiotic crescent idea of yours after all,’ he allowed.

  ‘I’ve turned up something at last, have I?’

  ‘I won’t go as far as that, but I’ll just say that you may have. Our construction engineer, Mr Ramsay of 62, Wilbraham Crescent, is not all he seems. Some very curious assignments he’s taken on lately. Genuine firms, but firms without much back history, and what history they have, rather a peculiar one. Ramsay went off at a minute’s notice about five weeks ago. He went to Rumania.’

  ‘That’s not what he told his wife.’

  ‘Possibly not, but that’s where he went. And that’s where he is now. We’d like to know a bit more about him. So you can stir your stumps, my lad, and get going. I’ve got all the visas ready for you, and a nice new passport. Nigel Trench it will be this time. Rub up your knowledge of rare plants in the Balkans.

  You’re a botanist.’

  ‘Any special instructions?’

  ‘No. We’ll give you your contact when you pick up your papers. Find out all you can about our Mr Ramsay.’ He looked at me keenly. ‘You don’t sound as pleased as you might be.’ He peered through the cigar smoke.

  ‘It’s always pleasant when a hunch pays off,’ I said evasively.

  ‘Right Crescent, wrong number. 61 is occupied by a perfectly blameless builder. Blameless in our sense, that is. Poor old Hanbury got the number wrong, but he wasn’t far off.’

  ‘Have you vetted the others? Or only Ramsay?’

  ‘Diana Lodge seems to be as pure as Diana. A long history of cats. McNaughton was vaguely interesting. He’s a retired professor, as you know. Mathematics. Quite brilliant, it seems. Resigned his Chair quite suddenly on the grounds of ill-health. I suppose that may be true—but he seems quite hale and hearty. He seems to have cut himself off from all his old friends, which is rather odd.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘that we get to thinking that everything that everybody does is highly suspicious.’

  ‘You may have got something there,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘There are times when I suspect you, Colin, of havin
g changed over to the other side. There are times when I suspect myself of having changed over to the other side, and then having changed back again to this one! All a jolly mix-up.’

  My plane left at ten p.m. I went to see Hercules Poirot first. This time he was drinking a sirop de cassis (Black-currant to you and me). He offered me some. I refused. George brought me whisky. Everything as usual.

  ‘You look depressed,’ said Poirot.

  ‘Not at all. I’m just off abroad.’

  He looked at me. I nodded.

  ‘So it is like that?’

  ‘Yes, it is like that.’

  ‘I wish you all success.’

  ‘Thank you. And what about you, Poirot, how are you getting along with your homework?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘What about the Crowdean Clocks Murder—Have you leaned back, closed your eyes and come up with all the answers?’

  ‘I have read what you left here with great interest,’ said Poirot.

  ‘Not much there, was there? I told you these particular neighbours were a wash-out—’

  ‘On the contrary. In the case of at least two of these people very illuminating remarks were made—’

  ‘Which of them? And what were the remarks?’

  Poirot told me in an irritating fashion that I must read my notes carefully.

  ‘You will see for yourself then—It leaps to the eye. The thing to do now is to talk to more neighbours.’

  ‘There aren’t any more.’

  ‘There must be. Somebody has always seen something. It is an axiom.’

  ‘It may be an axiom but it isn’t so in this case. And I’ve got further details for you. There has been another murder.’

  ‘Indeed? So soon? That is interesting. Tell me.’

  I told him. He questioned me closely until he got every single detail out of me. I told him, too, of the postcard I had passed on to Hardcastle. ‘Remember—four one three—or four thirteen,’ he repeated. ‘Yes—it is the same pattern.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Poirot closed his eyes. ‘That postcard lacks only one thing, a fingerprint dipped in blood.’

  I looked at him doubtfully. ‘What do you really think of this business?’

  ‘It grows much clearer—as usual, the murderer cannot let well alone.’

  ‘But who’s the murderer?’

  Poirot craftily did not reply to that. ‘Whilst you are away, you permit that I make a few researches?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Tomorrow I shall instruct Miss Lemon to write a letter to an old lawyer friend of mine, Mr Enderby. I shall ask her to consult the marriage records at Somerset House. She will also send for me a certain overseas cable.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ I objected. ‘You’re not just sitting and thinking.’

  ‘That is exactly what I am doing! What Miss Lemon is to do, is to verify for me the answers that I have already arrived at. I ask not for information, but for confirmation.’

  ‘I don’t believe you know a thing, Poirot! This is all bluff. Why, nobody knows yet who the dead man is—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I have no idea. His name is not important. I know, if you can understand, not who he is but who he is.’

  ‘A blackmailer?’

  Poirot closed his eyes.

  ‘A private detective?’

  Poirot opened his eyes.

  ‘I say to you a little quotation. As I did last time. And after that I say no more.’

  He recited with the utmost solemnity:

  ‘Dilly, dilly, dilly—Come and be killed.’

  Chapter 21

  Detective Inspector Hardcastle looked at the calendar on his desk. 20th September. Just over ten days.

  They hadn’t been able to make as much progress as he would have liked because they were held up with that initial difficulty: the identification of a dead body. It had taken longer than he would have thought possible. All the leads seemed to have petered out, failed. The laboratory examination of the clothes had brought in nothing particularly helpful. The clothes themselves had yielded no clues. They were good quality clothes, export quality, not new but well cared for. Dentists had not helped, nor laundries, nor cleaners. The dead man remained a ‘mystery man’! And yet, Hardcastle felt, he was not really a ‘mystery man’. There was nothing spectacular or dramatic about him. He was just a man whom nobody had been able to come forward and recognize. That was the pattern of it, he was sure. Hardcastle sighed as he thought of the telephone calls and letters that had necessarily poured in after the publication in the public press of the photograph with the caption below it: DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN ? Astonishing the amount of people who thought they did know this man. Daughters who wrote in a hopeful vein of fathers from whom they’d been estranged for years. An old woman of ninety was sure that the photograph in question was her son who had left home thirty years ago. Innumerable wives had been sure that it was a missing husband. Sisters had not been quite so anxious to claim brothers. Sisters, perhaps, were less hopeful thinkers. And, of course, there were vast numbers of people who had seen that very man in Lincolnshire, Newcastle, Devon, London, on a tube, in a bus, lurking on a pier, looking sinister at the corner of a road, trying to hide his face as he came out of the cinema. Hundreds of leads, the more promising of them patiently followed up and not yielding anything.

  But today, the inspector felt slightly more hopeful. He looked again at the letter on his desk. Merlina Rival. He didn’t like the Christian name very much. Nobody in their senses, he thought, could christen a child Merlina. No doubt it was a fancy name adopted by the lady herself. But he liked the feel of the letter. It was not extravagant or over-confident. It merely said that the writer thought it possible that the man in question was her husband from whom she had parted several years ago. She was due this morning. He pressed his buzzer and Sergeant Cray came in.

  ‘That Mrs Rival not arrived yet?’

  ‘Just come this minute,’ said Cray. ‘I was coming to tell you.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Bit theatrical-looking,’ said Cray, after reflecting a moment. ‘Lots of make-up—not very good make-up. Fairly reliable sort of woman on the whole, I should say.’

  ‘Did she seem upset?’

  ‘No. Not noticeably.’

  ‘All right,’ said Hardcastle, ‘let’s have her in.’

  Cray departed and presently returned saying as he did so, ‘Mrs Rival, sir.’

  The inspector got up and shook hands with her. About fifty, he would judge, but from a long way away—quite a long way—she might have looked thirty. Close at hand, the result of make-up carelessly applied made her look rather older than fifty but on the whole he put it at fifty. Dark hair heavily hennaed.

  No hat, medium height and build, wearing a dark coat and skirt and a white blouse. Carrying a large tartan bag. A jingly bracelet or two, several rings. On the whole, he thought, making moral judgements on the basis of his experience, rather a good sort. Not over-scrupulous, probably, but easy to live with, reasonably generous, possibly kind. Reliable? That was the question. He wouldn’t bank on it, but then he couldn’t afford to bank on that kind of thing anyway.

  ‘I’m very glad to see you, Mrs Rival,’ he said, ‘and I hope very much you’ll be able to help us.’

  ‘Of course, I’m not at all sure,’ said Mrs Rival. She spoke apologetically. ‘But it did look like Harry.

  Very much like Harry. Of course I’m quite prepared to find that it isn’t, and I hope I shan’t have taken up your time for nothing.’

  She seemed quite apologetic about it.

  ‘You mustn’t feel that in any case,’ said the inspector. ‘We want help very badly over this case.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I hope I’ll be able to be sure. You see, it’s a long time since I saw him.’

  ‘Shall we get down a few facts to help us? When did you last see your husband?’

&nb
sp; ‘I’ve been trying to get it accurate,’ said Mrs Rival, ‘all the way down in the train. It’s terrible how one’s memory goes when it comes to time. I believe I said in my letter to you it was about ten years ago, but it’s more than that. D’you know, I think it’s nearer fifteen. Time does go so fast. I suppose,’ she added shrewdly, ‘that one tends to think it’s less than it is because it makes you yourself feel younger. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I should think it could do,’ said the inspector. ‘Anyway you think it’s roughly fifteen years since you saw him? When were you married?’

  ‘It must have been about three years before that,’ said Mrs Rival.

  ‘And you were living then?’

  ‘At a place called Shipton Bois in Suffolk. Nice town. Market town. Rather one-horse, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘And what did your husband do?’

  ‘He was an insurance agent. At least—’ she stopped herself ‘—that’s what he said he was.’

  The inspector looked up sharply.

  ‘You found out that that wasn’t true?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly…Not at the time. It’s only since then that I’ve thought that perhaps it wasn’t true.

  It’d be an easy thing for a man to say, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it would in certain circumstances.’

  ‘I mean, it gives a man an excuse for being away from home a good deal.’

  ‘Your husband was away from home a good deal, Mrs Rival?’

  ‘Yes. I never thought about it much to begin with—’

  ‘But later?’

  She did not answer at once then she said:

  ‘Can’t we get on with it? After all, if it isn’t Harry…’

  He wondered what exactly she was thinking. There was strain in her voice, possibly emotion? He was not sure.

  ‘I can understand,’ he said, ‘that you’d like to get it over. We’ll go now.’ He rose and escorted her out of the room to the waiting car. Her nervousness when they got to where they were going, was no more than the nervousness of other people he had taken to this same place. He said the usual reassuring things. ‘It’ll be quite all right. Nothing distressing. It will only take a minute or two.’