McCrodden emitted a hollow laugh. ‘Matters of the heart, do you mean? Oh, John cares not a jot for the woman in Spain. He makes use of her, that’s all. It’s unsavoury and immoral, the way he carries on. I’ve told him what I think—I’ve told him his mother must be weeping in her grave—and do you know what he does? He laughs at me!’
‘I wonder …’ Poirot said quietly.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I wonder if, by pretending he is me, the letter-writer conceals a more important identity.’
‘Do you mean the identity of the murderer?’ asked McCrodden. ‘The murderer of Barnabas Pandy?’
Something about the way he said it, in his woodwind-instrument voice, sent a shiver through me. It is hard to warm to a man who proudly announces that he would hang his own child.
‘No, my friend,’ said Poirot. ‘That is not what I mean. It is another possibility that occurs to me … a most interesting one.’
I knew he would say no more about it for the time being, so I asked McCrodden about his own whereabouts on the seventh of December. Without hesitation, he said, ‘I was at my club, the Athenaeum, all day—with Stanley Donaldson. In the evening the two of us went to see Dear Love at the Palace Theatre. Please feel free to confirm that with Stanley.’
Seeing that I was surprised by how readily he had answered my question, he said, ‘As soon as I discovered the date of Pandy’s death, I asked …’ He stopped, grimaced, then continued, ‘I asked Miss Mason to bring me last year’s appointments diary. I thought that if I recalled my own whereabouts, it might help me to know where John was. If it were a day on which I had attempted to communicate with him and been rebuffed, for instance …’ The reedy voice shook. He tried to disguise it with a cough. ‘In any case, I am in the fortunate position of having a far better alibi than some of the other players in this unpleasant little drama. School Christmas Fair!’ he snorted contemp-tuously.
‘You are unenthusiastic about Christmas, monsieur? About the shiny—what did you call them?—ah, yes, the trinkets. On the market stalls. And now also about the Christmas Fair of Turville College.’
‘I have no objection to a Christmas Fair, though I would not attend one myself if I had a choice,’ said McCrodden. ‘But frankly, Poirot, the notion that someone’s presence at the Christmas Fair of a large school is any sort of alibi at all is complete and utter bunkum.’
‘Why do you say so, my friend?’
‘It’s a long time since I last attended such an event, but I recall them only too well from my youth. I remember trying to get through the day without speaking to anyone at all. It’s something I still do at large gatherings, which I loathe. I shall certainly try to do it at the Law Society dinner. The secret is to pass by everybody with a friendly smile, while looking as if you’re on your way to rejoin another little group that is waiting for you just over there. No one notices if you ever do join those towards whom you seem to be striding so urgently. Once you’ve passed them, they don’t notice where you go or what you do.’
Poirot was frowning. His eyes darted up and down. ‘You make a valuable point, monsieur. He is correct, is he not, Catchpool? I too have attended the large gatherings of this kind. It is the easiest thing in the word to disappear and reappear some while later, and no one will notice because everybody is busy talking to somebody else. Je suis imbécile! Monsieur McCrodden, do you know what you have done? You have brought ruination to the alibis of many people! And now we know less than we knew before we started!’
‘Come now, Poirot,’ I said. ‘Do not exaggerate. Who are these many people with ruined alibis? Annabel Treadway still has hers: she was with Ivy and Lenore Lavington in Ivy’s bedroom—though that will need checking. John McCrodden might have been in Spain—that too needs to be established. At most, this Christmas Fair problem you’re so worried about leaves only two alibis looking shaky: Sylvia Rule’s and Hugo Dockerill’s.’
‘You are wrong, mon ami. Also at the Christmas Fair at Turville College on the seventh of December were Jane Dockerill, the wife of Hugo, and Timothy Lavington, Barnabas Pandy’s great-grandson. Oh—and young Freddie Rule, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Why are they relevant?’ Rowland McCrodden asked. ‘No one has accused them of anything.’
‘No one has accused the manservant Kingsbury either,’ said Poirot. ‘This does not make him irrelevant. No one has accused Vincent Lobb, Barnabas Pandy’s old enemy. And we must not forget Sylvia Rule’s hated Eustace. He, too, might be significant. I prefer to think of everybody as relevant—all of the people whose names arise in connection with this puzzling affair—until I can prove otherwise.’
‘Are you suggesting that one of the people at the Christmas Fair that day might have left the grounds of Turville College, gone to Combingham Hall, and murdered Barnabas Pandy?’ I said. ‘They would need to have driven, or been driven, since it’s a good hour’s drive. And then what? They drowned Barnabas Pandy in his bathtub, then returned to the fair, where they walked around making sure lots of people observed their presence?’
‘That could have happened,’ said Poirot grimly. ‘All too easily.’
‘We mustn’t forget that Barnabas Pandy’s death is likely to have been an accident,’ I said.
‘But if it was murder …’ Poirot said with a faraway expression on his face. ‘If it was murder, then the murderer has a powerful incentive to cast suspicion on someone other than himself, does he not?’
‘Not if no one suspects him in the first place, because the death has been accepted to be an accident,’ I said.
‘Ah, but perhaps not everybody has accepted it,’ said Poirot. ‘The killer might discover that the truth is known by at least one person, and is about to be revealed. So—he casts the suspicion! Even more ingeniously, he casts suspicion on four innocent people simultaneously. That is more effective than simply to accuse one innocent person.’
‘Why?’ McCrodden and I asked at the same time.
‘If you accuse only one person, the matter is concluded too quickly. The accused produces his alibi, or else no proof can be found to tie him to the crime, and that is that. Whereas if you accuse four people, and sign the name of Hercule Poirot to those accusations, what happens? Chaos! Confusion! Denials from many different quarters! That is the situation in which we now find ourselves and it is assuredly the most brilliant screen of smoke, is it not? We know nothing. We see nothing!’
‘You’re right,’ said Rowland McCrodden. ‘The way the letter-writer has conducted himself … it’s rather ingenious. He has posed a question: which one of the four is guilty? He doubtless hopes that Poirot will investigate. A question that appears to have one of only four possible answers sets up a choice with an illusory limit. In truth, many more answers might be possible, and somebody entirely other might be guilty.’ McCrodden leaned forward and said urgently, ‘Poirot, do you believe, as I do, that the letter-writer is likely to be Barnabas Pandy’s murderer?’
‘I try to make no assumptions. As Catchpool says, we do not know, yet, if Monsieur Pandy was murdered. What I fear, mes amis, is that we may never know. I am at a loss as to how to pursue …’ He left the sentence unfinished and, whispering something inaudible in French, pulled the plate on the table towards him. He picked up his cake fork. Holding it over the slice of Church Window Cake, he looked up at Rowland McCrodden and said purposefully, ‘It is your son John that I will pursue.’
‘What?’ McCrodden scowled. ‘Haven’t I told you—’
‘You misunderstand me. I do not mean that I think he is guilty. I mean that his position in the structure fascinates me.’
‘What position? What structure?’
Poirot put down his cake fork and picked up a knife. ‘See here the four squares in the cake,’ he said. ‘In the top half, a yellow and a pink square side by side, and in the bottom half the same. For the purposes of this exercise, these four little squares, these four quarters of the one slice, represent our four letter-recipients.
‘At
first I thought that there were two pairs of two.’ Poirot cut the slice of cake in half, to illustrate his point. ‘Annabel Treadway and Hugo Dockerill were one pair, both connected to Barnabas Pandy. Sylvia Rule and John McCrodden were the other pair. They both told me that they had never heard of Monsieur Pandy. But then …’ Poirot cut one of the halves in half again, and pushed the newly detached pink square towards the half-slice that was still intact, leaving one solitary yellow square isolated at the bottom of the plate. ‘Then I discover that Sylvia Rule’s son, Freddie, is at school with Timothy Lavington, Barnabas Pandy’s great-grandson. So now we have three people with a clear link to Monsieur Pandy and to each other: Annabel Treadway refused a marriage proposal from Hugo Dockerill. Hugo Dockerill is a housemaster at the school attended by Sylvia Rule’s son, who is at school with Annabel Treadway’s nephew. Only John McCrodden has, as far as we can see at the moment, nothing linking him to any of the others, or to Barnabas Pandy.’
‘He might also have a connection to Pandy, though,’ I said. ‘One that just hasn’t emerged yet.’
‘But all of these other connections are very clear to see,’ said Poirot. ‘They are unmistakeable, straight away visible, impossible to miss.’
‘You’re right,’ I conceded. ‘John McCrodden does rather feel like the odd one out.’
Rowland McCrodden looked stricken, but said nothing.
Poirot pushed the lone yellow square of cake off the plate and on to the tablecloth. ‘I wonder if this is what the writer of the letters wants me to think about,’ he said. ‘I wonder if he—or she—wants me to consider, above all, the guilt of Monsieur John McCrodden.’
CHAPTER 13
The Hooks
That evening, Poirot and I sat in front of a crackling log fire in the excessively decorated and alarmingly furnished drawing room of my landlady, Blanche Unsworth. We had sat like this many times, and no longer noticed the lurid shades of pink and purple, or the quite unnecessary fringes and trims appended to the ends and edges of every lampshade, armchair and curtain.
We each held a drink in our hand. Neither of us had spoken for some time. Poirot had been staring into the flickering flames for nearly an hour, occasionally nodding or shaking his head. I had just filled in the last clue of my crossword puzzle when he said quietly, ‘Sylvia Rule burned the letter she received.’
I waited.
‘John McCrodden tore his into pieces, which he sent to his father,’ Poirot went on. ‘Annabel Treadway first scribbled over the words of her letter, then tore it up and then burned it, and Hugo Dockerill lost his. His wife Jane subsequently found it.’
‘Are any of these facts important?’ I asked.
‘I do not know what matters and what does not, my friend. I sit here and think more furiously than I have ever thought before, and I find no answer to the most important puzzle of all.’
‘Whether Pandy was murdered, you mean?’
‘No. There is a question still more important than that: Why should we pursue this matter at all? It is not the first time I have tried to discover if an accidental death might be a murder in disguise. Pas du tout. This I have done many times, but only ever when a person who appears to be of reliable character tells me that all might not be as it seems, or when I have the suspicion myself, based on my own observations. None of these conditions pertains to our present problem.’
‘No,’ I agreed, acutely aware that while I indulged the whims of Poirot, Rowland McCrodden and the Super, work would be mounting up on my desk at Scotland Yard.
‘Instead, we have the suggestion that Monsieur Pandy’s death was murder coming from a character we know to be untrustworthy—a person who writes letters and signs them with a name that is not his own. We know beyond the reasonable doubt that the sender of these letters is a fraud, a liar, a maker of the mischief! If I were to decide to take no further steps and turn my attention to other things, no one could fault my decision.’
‘I certainly wouldn’t,’ I told him.
‘And yet … the hooks, they have been successfully planted in the mind of Hercule Poirot. I would like to know why is Mademoiselle Annabel Treadway so sad? Who sent the letters, and why? Why four? And why to these four people? Does the person responsible truly believe that Barnabas Pandy was murdered, or is it some sort of trick or trap? What if he is the murderer as well as the letter-writer? Is it one culprit I must identify, or two?’
‘Well, if the author of the letters is also the murderer, he or she must be one of the biggest fools that ever lived and breathed! “Dear Hercule Poirot, I should like to draw to your attention to the fact that I committed a murder in December of last year and I appear to have got away with it.” No one would be so idiotic.’
‘Perhaps. It is possible, Catchpool, that somebody who is not at all the idiot seeks to manipulate me—to what end I cannot and do not know.’
‘Why not retaliate with a manipulation of your own? Do absolutely nothing. That might provoke the mischief-maker into sending more letters. He may write to you directly the next time.’
‘If I had the patience … but it is not in my nature to do nothing. So …’ Poirot clapped his hands together. ‘You will start immediately to check all of the alibis and all of the typewriters.’
‘In the world? Or only all the typewriters in London?’
‘Very amusing, mon ami. No, not only in London. Also at Turville College, and Combingham Hall. I want you to test every typewriter you can find that might have been used by any of the people involved in this matter. Even Eustace!’
‘But, Poirot—’
‘Also, you must find Vincent Lobb. Ask him why he and Barnabas Pandy were enemies for so long. And, finally—for I do not want to burden you with too many tasks—please find a way to persuade Rowland McCrodden to do what we need him to do at the Law Society dinner.’
‘Can’t you tackle McCrodden?’ I said. ‘He’s more likely to listen to you than to me.’
‘What is your opinion of him?’ Poirot asked.
‘Frankly, I’ve been less favourably inclined towards him since hearing him say he would be pleased to hang his own son.’
‘If his son were a murderer … and Rowland McCrodden is adamant that John is not. Therefore, when he says he would willingly hang him, it is not, in his mind, his son, but a fantasy version of John. This is why he is able to say it and believe he means it. Be assured, mon ami: if John McCrodden ever committed a murder, his father would do everything he could to save him from punishment. He would tie himself in the complicated knots and find a way to believe that John was innocent.’
‘You are probably right,’ I said. ‘Do you think he might have sent the four letters? Think of it this way: he deliberately places his son in hot water so that he can rush to the rescue, thereby forcing John to acknowledge that he’s a devoted father and not the hateful ogre John thinks he is. If at some point soon he is able to say to John, “I set Hercule Poirot to work on your behalf and he has exonerated you,” and if John can see that is undeniably true, relations between them might improve greatly.’
‘And he sends the letters to three other people as well, so that it does not look as if the whole exercise is about John?’ said Poirot. ‘It is possible. I have been thinking of Annabel Treadway as our most likely letter-writer, but it might be Rowland McCrodden.’
‘Why Annabel Treadway?’ I asked.
‘Do you recall, I spoke of an identity that the sender of the letters might have sought to conceal? Rowland McCrodden asked me if I meant the identity of the murderer of Barnabas Pandy.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘What I meant, mon ami, is the identity of the harbourer of suspicions. I have been developing this theory with Annabel Treadway in mind.’
I sipped my drink, waiting for him to elaborate.
‘It seems to me that if anyone murdered Monsieur Pandy, the most likely person is his manservant, Kingsbury,’ Poirot went on. ‘From what we have been told, he had the opportunity. The three women
of the household were in a room together with the door closed, probably talking in an animated fashion; they would not have seen or heard anything.
‘Let us say that Mademoiselle Annabel—who did not strike me as a brave or confident woman—suspects that Kingsbury killed her grandfather. She cannot prove it, so she places her faith in a gamble. She decides it is possible that Hercule Poirot might be able to prove her suspicions to be correct. Why, in that case, did she not come to me and ask more straightforwardly for help?’
‘I can’t think of any reason why she wouldn’t do precisely that,’ I told him.
‘What if she was afraid of Kingsbury finding out that she had done so? She might have anticipated how difficult it would be to prove that a very old man was pushed underwater while in his bath. How could it ever be proven, if only Monsieur Pandy and Kingsbury were in the room at the time?’
‘I see. So you’re saying she’d have thought it likely that Kingsbury would get away with it?’
‘Exactly. The law would be powerless to punish him, on account of the lack of evidence. Meanwhile, he—a murderer—would know that it was Annabel Treadway who had reported her suspicions to me. What is to stop him killing her next?’
I wasn’t at all convinced by this theory, and I said so. ‘If that was her fear, there was a far simpler plan of action available to her. She could have accused Kingsbury in an anonymous letter to you, rather than accusing herself and three other people in letters purporting to be from you. That would have been far more straightforward.’
‘Indeed,’ Poirot agreed. ‘For her purposes, it would have been too straightforward. Kingsbury might have suspected her of writing such a letter, as she was at Combingham Hall when Monsieur Pandy died. She would have been one of three obvious suspects, and the other two would have been her sister and niece, to whom she seems devoted—she would not have wished to risk their lives either. No, no. My theory is better. The four letters having been sent to this strange collection of people, including Annabel Treadway herself, she now stands accused of her grand-father’s murder. This, I think, would not lead Kingsbury to believe that she suspected him of the crime. Do you see, Catchpool?’
The Mystery of Three Quarters Page 10