'Eh tnn - here it is.' He spoke curtly - trenchantly. 'Leave
this place at once - before it is too late.'
'What?' She stared at him.
'You heard me. Leave this island.'
'Leave the island?'
She stared at him stupefied.
'That is what I say.'
'But why - why?'
'It is my advice to you - if you valueyour life.'
She gave a gasp.
'Oh! what do you mean? You're frightening me - you're
frightening me.'
'Yes,' said Poirot gravely, 'that is my intention.'
She sank down, her face in her hands.
'But I can't! He wouldn't come! Douglas wouldn't, I mean.
She wouldn't let him. She's got hold of him - body and soul.
He won't listen to anything against her... He's crazy about her
... He believes everything she tells him - that her husband ill-treats
her - that she's an injured innocent - that nobody has
ever understood her ... He doesn't even think about me any
more - I don't count - I'm not real to him. He wants me to give
him his fdom - to divorce him. He believes that she'll
divorce her husband and marry him. But I'm afraid ...
Chantry won't give her up. He's'hot that kind of fium. Last
night she showed Douglas braises on her arm - said her
husband had done it. It made Douglas wild..He's so chivalrous
... Oh! I'm afraid! What will come of it all? Tell me what to
do!'
133
Hercule Poirot stood looking straight across the water to the
blue line of hills on the mainland of Asia. He said:
'I have told you. Leave the island before it is too late...' She shook her head.
'I can't - I can't - unless Douglas...'
Poirot sighed.
He shrugged his shoulders.
CHAPTER 4
Hercule Poirot sat with Pamela Lyall on the beach.
She said with a certain amount of gusto, 'The triangle's
going strong! They sat one each side of her last night glowering
at each other! Chantry had had too much to drink.
He was positively insulting to Douglas Gold. Gold behaved
very well. Kept his temper. The Valentine woman enjoyed it,
of course. Purred like the man-eating tiger she is. What do you
think will happen?'
Poirot shook his head.
'I am afraid. I am very much afraid...'
'Oh, we all are,' said Miss Lyall hypocritically. She added,
'This business is rather inyourline. Or it may come to be. Can't
you do anything?'
'I have done what I could.'
Miss Lyall leaned forward eagerly.
'What have you done?' she asked with pleasurable
excitement.
'I advised Mrs Gold to leave the island before it was too late.'
'Oo-er - so you think -' she stopped.
'Yes, mademoiselle?'
'So that's what you think is going to happen!' said Pamela
slowly. 'But he couldn't - he'd never do a thing like that ...
134
He's so nice really. It's all that Chantry woman. He wouldn't He
wouldn't - do '
She stopped - then she said softly:
'Murder? Is that - is that really the word that's in your
mind?'
'It is in someone's mind, mademoiselle. I will tell you that.'
Pamela gave a sudden shiver.
'I don't believe it,' she declared.
CHAPTER5
The sequence of events on the night of October the twenty-ninth
was perfectly clear.
To begin with, there was a scene between the two men Gold
and Chantry. Chantry's voice rose louder and louder and
his last words were overheard by four persons - the cashier at
the desk, the manager, General Barnes and Pamela Lyall.
'You god-damned swine! If you and my wife think you can
put this over on me, you're mistaken! As long as I'm alive, Valentine will remain my wife.'
Then he had flung out of the hotel, his face livid with rage.
That was before dinner. After dinner (how arranged no one
knew) a reconciliation took place. Valentine asked Marjorie
Gold to come out for a moonlight drive. Pamela and Sarah
went with them. Gold and Chantry played billiards together.
Afterwards they joined Hercule Poirot and General Barnes in
the lounge.
For the fn, st time almost, Chantry's face was smiling and
good-tempered.
'Have a good game?' asked the General.
The Commander said:
'This fellow's too good for me! Ran out with a break of forty-six.'
135
Douglas Gold deprecated this modesfiy.
'Pure fluke. I assure you it was. What'll you have? I'll go and
get hold of a waiter.'
'Pink gin for me, thanks.'
'Right. General?'
'Thanks. I'll have a whisky and soda.'
'Same for me. What about you, M. Poirot?'
'You are most amiable. I should like a sirop de cassis.'
'A sirop - excuse me?'
'Sirop de cassis. The syrup of blackcurrants.'
'Oh, a liqueur! I see. I suppose they have it here? I never
heard of it.'
'They have it, yes. But it is not a liqueur.'
Douglas Gold said, laughing:
'Sounds a funny taste to me - but every man his own poison!
I'll go and order them.'
Commander Chantry sat down. Though not by nature a
talkative or a social man, he was clearly doing his best to be
genial.
'Odd how one gets used to doing without any news,' he
remarked.
The General grunted.
'Can't say the Continental Daily Mail four days old is much
use to me. Of course I get The Times sent to me and Punch every
week, but they're a devilish long time in coming.'
'Wonder if we'll have a general election over this Palestine
business?'
'Whole thing's been badly mismanaged,' declared the
General just as Douglas Gold reappeared followed by a walter
with the drinks.
The General had just begun on an anecdote of his military
career in India in the year 1905. The two Englishmen were
listening politely, if without great interest. Hercule Poirot was
sipping his sirop de cassis.
The General reached the point of his narrative and there was
dutiful laughter all round.
Then the women appeared at the doorwfiy of the lounge.
136
They all four eemed in the best of spirits and were talldog
laughing.
'Tony, daring, it was too divine,' cried Valentine as
dropped into chair by his side. 'The most marvellous idcv
Mrs Gold's. you all ought to have come!'
Her husbard said:
'What about a drink?'
He looked iaquiringly at the others.
'Pink gin for me, darling,' said Valentine.
'Gin and gigerbeer,' said Pamela.
'Sidecar,' d Sarah.
ped
'Right.' Clammy stood up. He pushed his own untottC for
pink gin over to his wife. 'You have this. I'll order mother
myself. What's yours, Mrs Gold?'
Mr Gold was being helped out of her coat by her busbOd'
She turned smiling:
'Can I have an orangeade, please?'
'Right you are. Orangeade.'
per
He went to
,ards the door. Mrs Gold smiled up io
husband's face.
'It was so lovely, Douglas. I wish you had come.'
'I wish I had too. We'll go another night, shall we?'
They smiled at each other.
Valentine Clantry picked up the pink gin and drained
'0o! I needed that,' she sighed.
Douglas Gold took Marjorie's coat and laid it on a serte'
As he strolled back to the others he said sharply:
'Hallo, what's the matter?'
Valentine Chantry was leaning back in her chair. Her lils
were blue and her hand had gone to her heart.
'I feel - rather queer...'
She gasped, fghting for breath.
Chantry came back into the room. He quickened his sgel
'Hallo, Val, what's the matter?'
'I - I don't know ... That drink - it tasted queer...'
'The pink gin?'
Chantry swung round his face worked. He caught Douglas Gold by the shoulder.
'That was my drink...Gold, what the hell did you put in it?'.
Douglas Gold was staring at the convulsed face of the
woman in the chair. He had gone dead white.
'I - I - never '.
Valentine Chantry slipped down in her chair.
General Barnes cried out:
'Get a doctor - quick...'
Five minutes later Valentine Chantry died...
CHAPTER 6
There was no bathing the next morning.
Pamela Lyall, white-faced, clad in a simple dark cless,
clutched at Hercule Poirot in the hall and drew him into the
little writing-room.
'It's horrible!' she said. 'Horrible! You said so! You foresaw
it! Murder?
He bent his head gravely.
'Oh!' she cried Out. She stamped her foot on the floor. 'You
should have stopped it! Somehow! It couldhave been stopped?
'How?' asked Hercule Poirot.
That brought her up short for the moment.
'Couldn't you go to someone - to the police ?'
'And say what? What is there to say - before the event? That
someone has murder in their heart? I tell you, mort enfant, if one
human being is determined to kill another human being '
'You could warn the victim,' insisted Pamela.
'Sometimes,' said Hercule Poirot, 'warnings are useless.'
Pamela said slowly, 'You could warn the murderer - show him that you knew what was intended...'
Poirot nodded appreciatively.
138
'Yes - a better plan, that. But even then you have to reckon
with a criminal's chief vice.'
'What is that?'
'Conceit. A criminal never believes that his crime can fail.'
'But it's absurd - stupid,' cried Pamela.'Tlae whole crime
was childish! Why, the police arrested Douglas Gold at once
last night.'
'Yes.' He added thoughtfully, 'Douglas Gold is a verY stupid
young man.'
'Incredibly stupid! I hear that they found the rest of the
poison - whatever it was ?'
'A form of stropanthin. A heart poison.'
'That they actually fo,md the rest of it in his dinner jacket
pocket?'
'Quite true.'
'Incredibly stupid? said Pamela again. 'PerhPs he eant to
get rid of it - and the shock of the wrong person Ieing poisoned
paralysed him. What a scene it would make on the stage-The
lover putting the stropanthin in the husband's tlass mad then,
just when his attention is elsewhere, the wife drinks it instead
... Think of the ghastly moment when Douglas Gold turned
round and realized he had killed the woman he loved...'
She gave a little shiver.
'Your triangle. The Eternal Triangle/ WhO would have
thought it would end like this?'
'I was afraid of it,' murmured Poirot.
Pamela turned on him.
'You warned her - Mrs Gold. Then why dicln't you warn
him as well?'
'You mean, why didn't I warn Douglas Gold?'
'No. I mean Commander Chantry. You could have told him
that he was in danger - after all, he was the real obstacle! I've
no doubt Douglas Gold relied on being able to bully his wife
into giving him a divorce - she's a meek-spirited little woman
and terribly fond of him. But Chantry is a mulisla sort of devil.
He was determined not to give Valentine her freedom.'
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
139
'It would have been no good my speaking to Chantry,' he
said.
'Perhaps not,' Pamela admitted. 'He'd probably have said he
could look after himself and told you to go to the devil. But I do
feel there ought to have been something one could have done.'
'I did think,' said Poirot slowly, 'of trying to persuade
Valentine Chantry to leave the island, but she would not have
believed what I had to tell her. She was far too stupid a woman
to take in a thing like that. Pauvre fernme, her stupidity killed
her.'
'I don't believe it would have been any good if she had left
the island,' said Pamela. 'He would simply have followed her.'
'He?'
'Douglas Gold.'
'You think Douglas Gold would have followed her? Oh, no,
mademoiselle, you are wrong - you are completely wrong. You
have not yet appreciated the truth of this matter. If Valentine
Chantry had left the island, her husband would have gone with
her.'
Pamela looked puzzled.
'Well, naturally.'
'And then, you see, the crime would simply have taken place
somewhere else.'
'I don't understand you?'
'I am saying to you that the same crime would have occurred
somewhere else - that crime being the murder of Valentine
Chantry by her husband.'
Pamela stared:
'Are you trying to say that it was Commander Chantry o
Tony Chantry - who murdered Valentine?'
'Yes. You saw him do it! Douglas Gold brought him his
drink. He sat with it in front of him. When the women came in
we all looked across the room, he had the stropanthin ready, he
dropped it into the pink gin and presently, courteously, he
passed it along to his wife and she drank it.'
'But the packet of stropanthin was found in Douglas Gold's
pocket!'
140
'A very simple matter to slip it there when we were all
crowding round the dying woman.'
It was quite two minutes before Pamela got her breath.
'But I don't understand a word! The triangle - you said
yourself -'
Hercule Poirot nodded his head vigorously.
'I said there was a triangle - yes. But you, you imagined the
wrong one. You were deceived by some very clever acting! You
thought, as you were meant to think, that both Tony Chantry
and Douglas Gold were in love with Valentine Chantry. You
believed, as you were meant to believe, that Douglas Gold,
being in love with Valentine Chantry (whose husband refused
to divorce her) took the desperate step of administering a
powerful heart poison to Chantry and that, by a fatal mistake,
Valentine Chantry drank that poison instead. All that is
illusion. Chantry has been meaning to do away with his wife for
some time. He was bored to death with her, I could see
that
from the first. He married her for her money. Now he wants to
marry another woman - so he planned to get rid of Valentine
and keep her money. That entailed murder.'
'Another woman?' Poirot said slowly:
'Yes, yes - the little Marjorie Gold. It was the eternal triangle
all right! But you saw it the wrong way round. Neither of those
two men cared in the least for Valentine Chantry. It was her
vanity and Majorie Gold's very clever stage managing that made
you think they did! A very clever woman, Mrs Gold, and
amazingly attractive in her demure Madonna, poor-littlething-way!
I have known four women criminals of the same
type. There was Mrs Adams who was acquitted of murdering
her husband, but everybody knows she did it. Mary Parker did
away with an aunt, a sweetheart and two brothers before she
got a little careless and was caught. Then there was Mrs
Rowden, she was hanged all right. Mrs Lecray escaped by the
skin of her teeth. This woman is exactly the same type. I
recognized it as soon as I saw her! That type takes to crime like
a duck to water! And a very pretty bit of well-planned work it
141
was. Tell me, what ev/dence did you ever have that Douglas
Gold was in love with Valentine Chantry? When you come to
think it out, you will realize that there was only Mrs Gold's
confidences Chantry's jealous bluster. Yes? You see?'
'It's horrible,' cried Pamela.
'They were a clever pair,' said Poirot with professional
detachment. 'They planned to "meet" here and stage their
crime. That Marjorie Gold, she is a cold-blooded devil! She
AgathaChristie-HerculePoirotsCasebook Page 16