Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  Hardcastle would not have put it like that, but he fully agreed with the sentiment, and nodded vigorously. Poirot went on: ‘It is, as it were, the opposite of Chesterton’s, “Where would you hide a leaf? In a forest. Where would you hide a pebble? On a beach.” Here there is excess, fantasy, melodrama! When I say to myself in imitation of Chesterton, “Where does a middle-aged woman hide her fading beauty?” I do not reply,

  “Amongst other faded middle-aged faces.” Not at all. She hides it under make-up, under rouge and mascara, with handsome furs wrapped round her and with jewels round her neck and hanging in her ears.

  You follow me?’

  ‘Well—’ said the inspector, disguising the fact that he didn’t.

  ‘Because then, you see, people will look at the furs and the jewels and the coiffure and the haute couture , and they will not observe what the woman herself is like at all! So I say to myself—and I say to my friend Colin—Since this murder has so many fantastic trappings to distract one it must really be very simple. Did I not?’

  ‘You did,’ I said. ‘But I still don’t see how you can possibly be right.’

  ‘For that you must wait. So, then, we discard the trappings of the crime and we go to the essentials. A man has been killed. Why has he been killed? And who is he? The answer to the first question will obviously depend on the answer to the second. And until you get the right answer to these two questions you cannot possibly proceed. He could be a blackmailer, or a confidence trickster, or somebody’s husband whose existence was obnoxious or dangerous to his wife. He could be one of a dozen things. The more I heard, the more everybody seems to agree that he looked a perfectly ordinary, well-to-do, reputable elderly man. And suddenly I think to myself, “You say this should be a simple crime? Very well, make it so. Let this man be exactly what he seems —a well-to-do respectable elderly man.” ’ He looked at the inspector. ‘You see?’

  ‘Well—’ said the inspector again, and paused politely.

  ‘So here is someone, an ordinary, pleasant, elderly man whose removal is necessary to someone. To whom? And here at last we can narrow the field a little. There is local knowledge—of Miss Pebmarsh and her habits, of the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau, of a girl working there called Sheila Webb. And so I say to my friend Colin: “The neighbours. Converse with them. Find out about them. Their backgrounds. But above all, engage in conversation. Because in conversation you do not get merely the answers to questions—in ordinary conversational prattle things slip out. People are on their guard when the subject may be dangerous to them, but the moment ordinary talk ensues they relax, they succumb to the relief of speaking the truth, which is always very much easier than lying. And so they let slip one little fact which unbeknown to them makes all the difference.’

  ‘An admirable exposition,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately it didn’t happen in this case.’

  ‘But, mon cher, it did. One little sentence of inestimable importance.’

  ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘Who said it? When?’

  ‘In due course ,mon cher .’

  ‘You were saying, M. Poirot?’ The inspector politely drew Poirot back to the subject.

  ‘If you draw a circle round Number 19, anybody within it might have killed Mr Curry. Mrs Hemming, the Blands, the McNaughtons, Miss Waterhouse. But more important still, there are those already positioned on the spot. Miss Pebmarsh who could have killed him before she went out at 1.35 or thereabouts and Miss Webb who could have arranged to meet him there, and killed him before rushing from the house and giving the alarm.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the inspector. ‘You’re coming down to brass tacks now.’

  ‘And of course,’ said Poirot, wheeling round, ‘you, my dear Colin. You were also on the spot. Looking for a high number where the low numbers were.’

  ‘Well, really,’ I said indignantly. ‘What will you say next?’

  ‘Me, I say anything!’ declared Poirot grandly.

  ‘And yet I am the person who comes and dumps the whole thing in your lap!’

  ‘Murderers are often conceited,’ Poirot pointed out. ‘And there too, it might have amused you—to have a joke like that at my expense.’

  ‘If you go on, you’ll convince me,’ I said.

  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Poirot turned back to Inspector Hardcastle. ‘Here, I say to myself, must be essentially a simple crime. The presence of irrelevant clocks, the advancing of time by an hour, the arrangements made so deliberately for the discovery of the body, all these must be set aside for the moment. They are, as is said in your immortal “Alice” like “shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings”. The vital point is that an ordinary elderly man is dead and that somebody wanted him dead. If we knew who the dead man was, it would give us a pointer to his killer. If he was a well-known blackmailer then we must look for a man who could be blackmailed. If he was a detective, then we look for a man who has a criminal secret; if he is a man of wealth, then we look among his heirs. But if we do not know who the man is—then we have the more difficult task of hunting amongst those in the surrounding circle for a man who has a reason to kill. ‘Setting aside Miss Pebmarsh and Sheila Webb, who is there who might not be what they seem to be?

  The answer was disappointing. With the exception of Mr Ramsay who I understood was not what he seemed to be?’ Here Poirot looked inquiringly at me and I nodded, ‘everybody’s bona fides were genuine. Bland was a well-known local builder, McNaughton had had a Chair at Cambridge, Mrs Hemming was the widow of a local auctioneer, the Waterhouses were respectable residents of long standing. So we come back to Mr Curry. Where did he come from? What brought him to 19, Wilbraham Crescent? And here one very valuable remark was spoken by one of the neighbours, Mrs Hemming. When told that the dead man did not live at Number 19, she said, “Oh! I see. He just came there to be killed. How odd.” She had the gift, often possessed by those who are too occupied with their own thoughts to pay attention to what others are saying, to come to the heart of the problem. She summed up the whole crime. Mr Curry came to 19, Wilbraham Crescent to be killed . It was as simple as that!’

  ‘That remark of hers struck me at the time,’ I said.

  Poirot took no notice of me. “Dilly, dilly, dilly—come and be killed.” Mr Curry came—and he was killed. But that was not all. It was important that he should not be identified . He had no wallet, no papers, the tailor’s marks were removed from his clothes. But that would not be enough. The printed card of Curry, Insurance Agent, was only a temporary measure. If the man’s identity was to be concealed permanently , he must be given a false identity. Sooner or later, I was sure, somebody would turn up, recognize him positively and that would be that. A brother, a sister, a wife. It was a wife. Mrs Rival—and the name alone might have aroused suspicion. There is a village in Somerset—I have stayed near there with friends—the village of Curry Rival—Subconsciously, without knowing why those two names suggested themselves, they were chosen. Mr Curry—Mrs Rival.

  ‘So far—the plan is obvious, but what puzzled me was why our murderer took for granted that there would be no real identification. If the man had no family, there are at least landladies, servants, business associates. That led me to the next assumption—this man was not known to be missing . A further assumption was that he was not English, and was only visiting this country. That would tie in with the fact that the dental work done on his teeth did not correspond with any dental records here.

  ‘I began to have a shadowy picture both of the victim and of the murderer. No more than that. The crime was well planned and intelligently carried out—but now there came that one piece of sheer bad luck that no murderer can foresee.’

  ‘And what was that?’ asked Hardcastle.

  Unexpectedly, Poirot threw his head back, and recited dramatically:

  ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost,

  For want of a shoe the horse was lost,

  For want of a horse the battle was lost,

  For want of a b
attle the Kingdom was lost,

  And all for the want of a horse shoe nail.’

  He leaned forward.

  ‘A good many people could have killed Mr Curry. But only one person could have killed, or could have had reason to kill, the girl Edna.’

  We both stared at him. ‘Let us consider the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau. Eight girls work there. On the 9th of September, four of those girls were out on assignments some little distance away—that is, they were provided with lunch by the clients to whom they had gone. They were the four who normally took the first lunch period from 12.30 to 1.30. The remaining four, Sheila Webb, Edna Brent and two girls, Janet and Maureen, took the second period, 1.30 to 2.30. But on that day Edna Brent had an accident quite soon after leaving the office. She tore the heel off her shoe in the grating. She could not walk like that. She bought some buns and came back to the office.’

  Poirot shook an emphatic finger at us.

  ‘We have been told that Edna Brent was worried about something. She tried to see Sheila Webb out of the office, but failed. It has been assumed that that something was connected with Sheila Webb, but there is no evidence of that. She might only have wanted to consult Sheila Webb about something that had puzzled her—but if so one thing was clear. She wanted to talk to Sheila Webbaway from the bureau. ‘Her words to the constable at the inquest are the only clue we have as to what was worrying her: She said something like: “I don’t see how what she said can have been true.” Three women had given evidence that morning. Edna could have been referring to Miss Pebmarsh. Or, as it has been generally assumed, she could have been referring to Sheila Webb. But there is a third possibility—she could have been referring to Miss Martindale.’

  ‘Miss Martindale? But her evidence only lasted a few minutes.’

  ‘Exactly. It consisted only of the telephone call she had received purporting to be from Miss Pebmarsh.’

  ‘Do you mean that Edna knew that it wasn’t from Miss Pebmarsh?’

  ‘I think it was simpler than that. I am suggesting that there was no telephone call at all.’

  He went on: ‘The heel of Edna’s shoe came off. The grating was quite close to the office. She came back to the bureau. But Miss Martindale, in her private office, did not know that Edna had come back. As far as she knew there was nobody but herself in the bureau. All she need do was to say a telephone call had come through at 1.49. Edna does not see the significance of what she knows at first. Sheila is called in to Miss Martindale and told to go out on an appointment. How and when that appointment was made is not mentioned to Edna. News of the murder comes through and little by little the story gets more definite. Miss Pebmarsh rang up and asked for Sheila Webb to be sent. But Miss Pebmarsh says it was not she who rang up. The call is said to have come through at ten minutes to two. But Edna knows that couldn’t be true . No telephone call came through then. Miss Martindale must have made a mistake—But Miss Martindale definitely doesn’t make mistakes. The more Edna thinks about it, the more puzzling it is. She must ask Sheila about it. Sheila will know.

  ‘And then comes the inquest. And the girls all go to it. Miss Martindale repeats her story of the telephone call and Edna knows definitely now that the evidence Miss Martindale gives so clearly, with such precision as to the exact time, is untrue. It was then that she asked the constable if she could speak to the inspector. I think probably that Miss Martindale, leaving the Corn market in a crowd of people, overheard her asking that. Perhaps by then she had heard the girls chaffing Edna about her shoe accident without realizing what it involved. Anyway, she followed the girl to Wilbraham Crescent. Why did Edna go there, I wonder?’

  ‘Just to stare at the place where it happened, I expect,’ said Hardcastle with a sigh. ‘People do.’

  ‘Yes, that is true enough. Perhaps Miss Martindale speaks to her there, walks with her down the road and Edna plumps out her question. Miss Martindale acts quickly. They are just by the telephone box. She says, “This is very important. You must ring up the police at once. The number of the police station is so and so. Ring up and tell them we are both coming there now.” It is second nature for Edna to do what she is told. She goes in, picks up the receiver and Miss Martindale comes in behind her, pulls the scarf round her neck and strangles her.’

  ‘And nobody saw this?’

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders. ‘They might have done, but they didn’t! It was just on one o’clock. Lunch time. And what people there were in the Crescent were busy staring at 19. It was a chance boldly taken by a bold and unscrupulous woman.’ Hardcastle was shaking his head doubtfully. ‘Miss Martindale? I don’t see how she can possibly come into it.’

  ‘No. One does not see at first. But since Miss Martindale undoubtedly killed Edna—oh, yes—only she could have killed Edna, then she must come into it. And I begin to suspect that in Miss Martindale we have the Lady Macbeth of this crime, a woman who is ruthless and unimaginative.’

  ‘Unimaginative?’ queried Hardcastle.

  ‘Oh, yes, quite unimaginative. But very efficient. A good planner.’

  ‘But why? Where’s the motive?’

  Hercules Poirot looked at me. He wagged a finger. ‘So the neighbours’ conversation was no use to you, eh? I found one most illuminating sentence. Do you remember that after talking of living abroad, Mrs Bland remarked that she liked living in Crowdean because she had a sister here. But Mrs Bland was not supposed to have a sister . She had inherited a large fortune a year ago from a Canadian great-uncle because she was the only surviving member of his family.’ Hardcastle sat up alertly. ‘So you think—’ Poirot leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. He half closed his eyes and spoke dreamily. ‘Say you are a man, a very ordinary and not too scrupulous man, in bad financial difficulties. A letter comes one day from a firm of lawyers to say that your wife has inherited a big fortune from a great-uncle in Canada. The letter is addressed to Mrs Bland and the only difficulty is that the Mrs Bland who receives it is the wrong Mrs Bland—she is the second wife—not the first one—Imagine the chagrin! The fury! And then an idea comes. Who is to know that it is the wrong Mrs Bland? Nobody in Crowdean knows that Bland was married before. His first marriage, years ago, took place during the war when he was overseas. Presumably his first wife died soon afterwards, and he almost immediately remarried. He has the original marriage certificate, various family papers, photographs of Canadian relations now dead—It will be all plain sailing. Anyway, it is worth risking. They risk it, and it comes off. The legal formalities go through. And there the Blands are, rich and prosperous, all their financial troubles over—‘And then—a year later—something happens. What happens? I suggest that someone was coming over from Canada to this country—and that this someone had known the first Mrs Bland well enough not to be deceived by an impersonation. He may have been an elderly member of the family attorneys, or a close friend of the family—but whoever he was, he will know. Perhaps they thought of ways of avoiding a meeting. Mrs Bland could feign illness, she could go abroad—but anything of that kind would only arouse suspicion. The visitor would insist on seeing the woman he had come over to see—’

  ‘And so—to murder?’

  ‘Yes. And here, I fancy, Mrs Bland’s sister may have been the ruling spirit. She thought up and planned the whole thing.’

  ‘You are taking it that Miss Martindale and Mrs Bland are sisters?’

  ‘It is the only way things make sense.’

  ‘Mrs Bland did remind me of someone when I saw her,’ said Hardcastle. ‘They’re very different in manner—but it’s true—there is a likeness. But how could they hope to get away with it?’ The man would be missed. Inquiries would be made—’

  ‘If this man were travelling abroad—perhaps for pleasure, not for business, his schedule would be vague. A letter from one place—a postcard from another—it would be a little time before people wondered why they had not heard from him. By that time who would connect a man identified and buried as Harry Castleton, wit
h a rich Canadian visitor to the country who has not even been seen in this part of the world? If I had been the murderer, I would have slipped over on a day trip to France or Belgium and discarded the dead man’s passport in a train or a tram so that the inquiry would take place from another country.’ I moved involuntarily, and Poirot’s eyes came round to me.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Bland mentioned to me that he had recently taken a day trip to Boulogne—with a blonde, I understand—’

  ‘Which would make it quite a natural thing to do. Doubtless it is a habit of his.’

  ‘This is still conjecture,’ Hardcastle objected.

  ‘But inquiries can be made,’ said Poirot. He took a sheet of hotel notepaper from the rack in front of him and handed it to Hardcastle.

  ‘If you will write to Mr Enderby at 10, Ennismore Gardens, S.W.7 he has promised to make certain inquiries for me in Canada. He is a well-known international lawyer.’

  ‘And what about the business of the clocks?’

  ‘Oh! The clocks. Those famous clocks!’ Poirot smiled. ‘I think you will find that Miss Martindale was responsible for them. Since the crime, as I said, was a simple crime, it was disguised by making it a fantastic one. That Rosemary clock that Sheila Webb took to be repaired. Did she lose it in the Bureau of Secretarial Studies? Did Miss Martindale take it as the foundation of her rigmarole, and was it partly because of that clock that she chose Sheila as the person to discover the body—?’ Hardcastle burst out: ‘And you say this woman is unimaginative? When she concocted all this?’

  ‘But she did not concoct it. That is what is so interesting. It was all there—waiting for her. From the very first I detected a pattern—a pattern I knew. A pattern familiar because I had just been reading such patterns. I have been very fortunate. As Colin here will tell you, I attended this week a sale of authors’ manuscripts . Among them were some of Garry Gregson’s. I hardly dared hope. But luck was with me. Here —’ Like a conjuror he whipped from a drawer in the desk two shabby exercise books ‘—it is all here ! Among the many plots of books he planned to write. He did not live to write this one—but Miss Martindale, who was his secretary, knew all about it. She just lifted it bodily to suit her purpose.’