‘Yes, but—’
‘She signs the four letters as “Hercule Poirot”, and, in doing so, she secures my involvement. Once I am involved, once I am successfully hooked like a fish and reeled in, then she sits back and hopes that her efforts were not in vain—that I will investigate and discover the guilt of Kingbury and a means of proving it.’
‘All right, but then why accuse the three others? She could have sent one letter, to herself, signed in your name, accusing her and nobody else of her grandfather’s murder.’
‘She is a woman of extreme caution and trepidation,’ said Poirot.
‘Is she really?’ I laughed. ‘Then you’ve disproved your own colourful theory! No one of a cautious temperament would attempt a scheme like this.’
‘Ah, but you must consider also her desperation.’
‘I fear we have entered the realm of pure invention,’ I told him.
‘Maybe so. Then again, maybe not. I hope, one day soon, to know. The next step, in any case, is clear.’
‘Not to me it isn’t.’
‘Yes, it is, Catchpool. I have given to you the clarity: Vincent Lobb, alibis and typewriters.’
I was relieved that persuading Rowland McCrodden to turn the Law Society dinner into a pantomime of Poirot’s devising seemed to be off the list. ‘And what will you be doing, while I search for faulty letter “e”s?’
‘Is it not obvious?’ asked Poirot. ‘First thing tomorrow, I shall depart for Combingham Hall. We will see what answers I may find.’
‘Be a sport and check the typewriters while you’re there,’ I said with a grin. ‘Since you’re going anyway.’
‘Of course, mon ami. Poirot, he shall be the sport!’
CHAPTER 14
At Combingham Hall
There were many reasons, thought Poirot as he stood and stared at its façade the next day, why Combingham Hall ought to have looked appealing. The sky was bright with winter sun, and the temperature mild for February. In an apparent invitation for all visitors to enter, the front door stood half open. No one could have disputed that this was a fine and handsome building. It was surrounded by all that one might wish for: attractive lawned gardens and, further from the house, a lake, a tennis court, two cottages, an orchard and a substantial wooded area, all of which Poirot had seen from the windows of the motorcar that had brought him here from the nearest railway station.
Yet he lingered outside, reluctant to enter the Hall. One might be proud to own and live in such a building, but could one grow fond of it? The open door was more suggestive of carelessness than of active welcome. Instead of nestling in its natural environment as buildings ought to, it protruded in an ungainly fashion—loomed, almost—as if an ill-wisher had reached down from above and balanced it where it stood, with the aim of tricking people into thinking it belonged there. ‘Or else I am a foolish old man who imagines these things,’ Poirot said to himself.
A woman of perhaps forty or a few years more, wearing a yellow dress with a thin belt, appeared in the doorway. She stared at Poirot without smiling.
‘Strangeness upon strangeness,’ Poirot thought to himself. The woman had something in common with the building from which she had emerged. She was undoubtedly beautiful, with golden hair and every feature perfectly designed and precisely in proportion with the others, yet she looked …
‘Uninviting,’ Poirot murmured to himself.
He produced his best smile and walked briskly towards her. ‘Good afternoon, madame,’ he said before introducing himself.
She extended her hand for him to shake. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ she said, though her face remained impassive. ‘I’m Lenore Lavington. Please come in. We are ready for you.’
Poirot thought this a strange thing to say: as if he was an ordeal to be endured. He followed her into a large, bare entrance hall with a staircase of dark wood on the far left and a row of three archways straight ahead. Beyond these was a vaulted corridor and then a further three archways which led into a dining hall that contained a wooden table, long and narrow, with many chairs around it.
Poirot shivered. It was colder in the house than outside. The reason for this was obvious. Where were the walls? Where were the doors separating one room from another? From where he stood, Poirot could not see any. It was quite wrong, he decided, to walk into a house and be able to see, in the distance, its dining table.
He felt greatly relieved when Lenore Lavington led him to a small, warmer sitting room with pale green wallpaper, a lit fire and a closeable door. Two other women awaited him there: Annabel Treadway, and a much younger, broad-shouldered woman with dark hair, intelligent eyes and an untidy filigree of scars trailing down one side of her face and, along her neck under her ear. This must be Ivy Lavington, thought Poirot. She could have covered some of the scarring by arranging her hair differently, but had evidently chosen not to.
A large dog with a lot of brown, fluffy hair—curly in places—was sitting on Annabel Treadway’s feet, his head balanced in her lap. When Poirot appeared, he roused himself and trotted across the room to greet the new visitor. Poirot patted him, at which the dog lifted his front paw and patted him back.
‘Ah! He greets me!’
‘Hoppy’s the friendliest boy in the world,’ said Annabel Treadway. ‘Hopscotch, meet M. Hercule Poirot!’
‘This is my daughter, Ivy,’ said Lenore Lavington. There was no suggestion in her tone that she intended this remark as a reproach to her sister.
‘Yes, of course—this is Ivy,’ said Annabel.
‘Hello, M. Poirot. It is an honour to meet you,’ said the younger woman. Her voice was warm and deep.
Hopscotch, still at Poirot’s feet and staring up at him, raised his paw and patted the air between them, as if not quite daring to touch the great detective a second time.
‘Oh, how sweet! He wants you to play with him,’ said Annabel. ‘In a moment he’ll lie on his back and expect you to stroke his tummy.’
‘I’m sure M. Poirot has more important things to think about,’ said her sister.
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’
‘No apology is necessary,’ Poirot told her.
The dog was now lying on his back. Poirot stepped around him and, invited by Lenore Lavington to sit, lowered himself into a chair. This could not be Combingham Hall’s main drawing room, he thought. It was far too small, though perhaps it was the only part of the house warm enough for human habitation.
He was offered refreshments, which he declined. Lenore Lavington sent Ivy to find Kingsbury and instruct him to prepare something to eat and drink ‘in case M. Poirot changes his mind’. Once her daughter had left the room, she said, ‘There is no need to wait until Ivy returns. Perhaps you could tell me why you are here?’
‘You don’t mind explaining, do you?’ added Annabel quickly. ‘You will do it so much better than I would.’
‘Do you mean to say, mademoiselle, that you have not told Madame Lavington about the letter you received?’
‘C’est vraiment incroyable,’ Poirot said silently to himself. People: their strangeness had no limits. How could one sister tell another that the famous detective Hercule Poirot was to visit them at their home and not reveal the reason for the visit? And how could the other sister not demand to know, in advance of the detective’s arrival?
‘Annabel has told me nothing. I should very much like to know what this is about.’
As efficiently as he could, Poirot explained the situation. As she listened, Lenore Lavington paid close attention, nodding now and then. If his story surprised her, she showed no sign of it.
When he had finished, she said, ‘I see,’ and then, ‘An unpleasant business—though not as unpleasant, I suppose, as if there was a chance the accusations were true.’
‘You are going to tell me there is no such chance?’
‘None whatever. Grandfather wasn’t murdered, either by my sister or by anybody else. There was no one in the house when he died apart from Ann
abel, me, Ivy and Kingsbury—as you know, because you have just told me. Annabel is quite correct: she, Ivy and I were together in Ivy’s bedroom between when Grandfather called out to us and when Kingsbury alerted us and we all ran to the bathroom to find Grandfather dead. None of us left the room in between.’
Poirot noted that she referred to Barnabas Pandy as ‘Grandfather’, not ‘Grandy’, as her sister called him. ‘What about Kingsbury?’ he asked.
‘Kingsbury? Well, he wasn’t in the room with us … but Kingsbury, kill Grandfather? It’s unthinkable. I expect you’ll wish to speak to him too before you leave?’
‘Oui, madame.’
‘Then you will soon see how absurd an idea it is. May I ask why you are pursuing this investigation, M. Poirot, when no police force and no court seems to have the slightest suspicion that Grandfather’s death was anything but an accident? Has someone sent you? Or are you here simply to satisfy your own curiosity?’
‘I am curious, I will admit. Always, I am curious. Also, the father of Monsieur John McCrodden, who received one of the four letters, asked for my help in clearing the name of his son.’
Lenore Lavington shook her head. ‘This has gone too far already,’ she said. ‘Clear his name? It’s laughable. He wasn’t here in the house when Grandfather died. There: his name is cleared, and there is no need for you or the father of this Mr McClodden to waste any more of your time.’
‘Though we are happy to answer your questions, of course,’ said Annabel, stroking the dog under his chin. He had returned to his mistress and was once more draped across the lower part of her legs.
‘May I ask? When I arrived, the front door stood open.’
‘Yes. It’s always open,’ said Lenore.
‘It’s because of Hopscotch,’ said Annabel. ‘He likes to come and go quite freely between the house and garden, you see. We’d like it better—Lenore would like it better—if we could let him out, or in, and then close the door, but … well, he barks rather loudly, I’m afraid.’
‘He requires the door to be left open, and Annabel insists that we indulge him.’
‘Hoppy’s extremely clever, M. Poirot,’ said Annabel. ‘He prefers the front door to be open so that whenever he wants to go out, he can, without having first to summon one of us.’
‘If the door is habitually left open, is it not possible that somebody entered the house while your grandfather was in his bath on the seventh of December last year?’ Poirot asked.
‘No. It is not.’
‘No,’ Annabel echoed her sister. ‘Ivy’s bedroom is at the front of the house. One of the three of us would have seen someone coming up the driveway, whether they were in a vehicle or on a bicycle or on foot. It’s impossible that none of us would have noticed.’
‘What if a person approached the house from the back?’ Poirot asked.
‘Why would they?’ asked Annabel. ‘It’s far easier from the front. Oh—I suppose if they didn’t want to be seen …’
‘Précisément.’
‘The back door is also left open most of the time, though Hoppy prefers to go in and out at the front.’
Lenore said, ‘The dog would have brought down the house with his barking if someone had been prowling around. He’d have smelled a stranger.’
‘He did not bark when I came into the room,’ Poirot pointed out.
‘That’s because you came in with Lenore,’ said Annabel. ‘He saw that you were a welcome guest.’
Lenore Lavington raised her eyebrows a little at that. ‘Let us proceed,’ she said. ‘Do you have more questions, M. Poirot, or are you satisfied?’
‘Alas, I am not yet satisfied,’ Poirot told her. ‘Is there a typewriter in the house?’
‘A typewriter? Yes. Why do you ask?’
‘May I use it before I leave?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Thank you, madame. Now, I should like to ask you about Vincent Lobb. He was an acquaintance of your grandfather’s.’
‘We know who he was,’ said Lenore. ‘He and Grandfather knew each other a long time ago. They were great friends, until something happened to turn them into enemies.’
‘Before you ask, we don’t know what happened,’ said Annabel. ‘Grandy never told us.’
‘Perhaps you know that not long before he died, Monsieur Pandy wrote a letter to Monsieur Lobb in which he expressed a wish to end the froideur that existed between them?’
The sisters exchanged a look. Then Lenore said, ‘No. We did not know. Who told you that?’
‘Your grandfather’s lawyer, Monsieur Peter Vout.’
‘I see.’
‘It makes me happy to think that Grandy did that.’ Annabel sighed. ‘And I’m not surprised to hear it. He was terribly kind and forgiving.’
‘Annabel, you do say the most puzzling things,’ said her sister.
‘Do I, Lenore?’
‘Yes, you do. Grandfather, forgiving? Whatever Vincent Lobb did, it was fifty years ago. Grandfather held a grudge for fifty years. I’m not saying he was wrong or cruel to do so—most people hold grudges, though not you, Annabel.’
‘You do, Lenore.’
‘Yes, I do,’ her sister agreed. ‘And you are the one with the forgiving nature. Not Grandfather.’
‘No, I’m not!’ Annabel seemed distressed by the suggestion. ‘Who am I to forgive anybody? I’m …’ She blinked away tears. Then she said, ‘It’s true, I forgave Grandy for ignoring Hoppy, and Skittle before him, and for preferring Lenore to me. I forgave him because he forgave me! He found me to be a dreadful disappointment, but he did his best not to show it. I knew how he felt about me, but I appreciated his daily efforts to hide it.’
‘My sister is upset,’ Lenore Lavington told Poirot. There was a small, neat smile on her face. ‘She tends to exaggerate. I wonder where Ivy has got to? I do hope she’s not eating the food intended for you, M. Poirot.’
‘Why did your grandfather find you disappointing?’ Poirot asked Annabel.
‘I think it was because I had a superior older sister,’ she said.
‘Oh, really, Annabel!’
‘No, Lenore, it’s true. You are superior to me. I think so, and Grandy thought so too. Lenore was always his favourite, M. Poirot, and rightly so. She’s so determined and efficient and strong, just like Grandy was. And she married and gave him great-grandchildren. Continued the family line. Whereas I seemed to want spend all my time with my dogs, and, worst of all, I’m a spinster with no children.’
‘Annabel received many proposals of marriage,’ Lenore told Poirot. ‘She wasn’t short of offers.’
‘Grandy thought I hid away with animals because I couldn’t hold my own with people. Maybe he was right. I do think animals are less bothersome than people, and they’re certainly more loyal. They love one in spite of one’s flaws. Oh—I’m not complaining about Grandy or anybody else. I should hate you to think that! He did his best, and I let him down so badly, I let—’ She stopped with a sharp intake of breath. ‘Here comes Ivy,’ she said. It was a rather obvious attempt to change the subject.
‘What do you mean, mademoiselle?’ Poirot asked, wondering why she suddenly looked so frightened—as if the ghost of Barnabas Pandy himself had walked into the room.
The door opened and Ivy Lavington entered. She saw her aunt’s face and looked alarmed. ‘What has happened?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Lenore Lavington. Considering that Ivy had not yet heard Poirot’s explanation of why he was at Combingham Hall, this was an inadequate answer in every respect.
‘How did you let your grandfather down?’ Poirot asked Annabel Treadway again.
‘I’ve told you already,’ she said in a voice that sounded choked. ‘He would have liked for me to marry and have children.’
There was something that she was determined not to say, thought Poirot. He decided not to pursue the matter now. There would be an opportunity to ask her later, he hoped. Perhaps when her sister and niece were not present, she would
speak more freely.
He turned to Lenore Lavington. ‘If it would not be too upsetting for you, madame, would you show me the bathroom in which your grandfather drowned?’
‘That’s rather morbid, isn’t it?’ said Ivy.
Her mother ignored her. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said to Poirot. ‘If you think it’s necessary.’
Annabel stood to follow them, but Lenore said, ‘No.’
Annabel accepted the command without question, and sat down again.
‘Why don’t you tell Ivy what’s happened?’ Lenore suggested to her. ‘Come with me, M. Poirot.’
CHAPTER 15
The Scene of the Possible Crime
The journey to the bathroom in which Barnabas Pandy had died was a relatively long one. Poirot had been inside many large country houses, but none with corridors as seemingly endless as those of Combingham Hall. When he saw that Lenore Lavington had no intention of conversing as they walked, he took the opportunity to go over in his mind the events that had taken place in the sitting room down-stairs.
It had struck Poirot immediately, upon encountering Annabel Treadway a second time, that her air of unhappiness was less pronounced today. It was not that she seemed any happier, or happy at all—she did not, in spite of the presence of the dog whom she plainly loved. No, it was more that …
Poirot shook his head. He could not have said what it was, and that unnerved him. His thoughts moved on to Lenore Lavington. He decided that she was one of those rare people to whom one might speak for hours and still come away knowing nothing about their character. The only thing he felt he had learned about her was that she liked to make sure events unfolded in a certain way. There was an air about her of being always on duty. Poirot wondered if she was afraid of whatever it was that her sister had stopped herself from saying.
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