The Mystery of Three Quarters

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Legs again!’ said Hugo Dockerill. ‘Golly!’

  ‘You are probably right, monsieur,’ Poirot smiled at him. ‘The subconscious influence must have been at work. In any case, when I heard Rowland McCrodden apologize to Catchpool, I knew for a certainty the reason for Barnabas Pandy’s sudden lightness of spirit, noticed by his lawyer Peter Vout. I knew that it must have been caused by his understanding, finally, the pain of the timid, sad granddaughter whom for so long he had judged and found wanting. Suddenly, he comprehends how she has suffered for so many years. He regrets, profoundly, his severe judgement of her. And he finds that he no longer feels antipathy towards Vincent Lobb. He can forgive not only Annabel Treadway’s weakness but also Lobb’s. What he cannot tolerate, he finds, is the harsh judgement he sees in the eyes and hears in the voice of his other granddaughter, Lenore Lavington. This reminds him of his own punitive way of looking at the world until so late in his life. Eh bien, he resolves to ensure that Lenore Lavington does not benefit after his death—and he resolves to compensate Annabel Treadway for his years of preferential treatment towards her sister that must have greatly increased Mademoiselle Annabel’s suffering.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Lenore Lavington. ‘It’s nonsense.’

  ‘I am explaining, madame, that you were the one your grandfather would have cut out of his will, had he survived.’

  ‘But … that cannot be true,’ said Annabel Treadway. She looked utterly lost.

  ‘I was in London this morning,’ said Poirot. ‘I asked Monsieur Peter Vout: did Monsieur Pandy state explicitly that it was Mademoiselle Annabel whom he planned to deprive of her inheritance? I was given the answer I expected: no, he had not specified which granddaughter he had in mind for this unfortunate fate. In fact, I was told by Monsieur Vout that Monsieur Pandy had been uncharacte‌ristically oblique when speaking of his new will. His solicitor had merely assumed, as did Lenore Lavington when he told her of his intentions without naming any names, that Mademoiselle Annabel would be the one cut off without a penny, because she had always been the least favoured granddaughter.’

  ‘Why would Mr Pandy behave in this deliberately misleading fashion?’ asked Jane Dockerill. ‘Surely one would only do that if one wished to deliver a surprise punishment from beyond the grave—one that was designed to come as a great shock.’

  ‘Précisément, madame. Of course, Lenore Lavington was in no doubt that she would be the one to end up twice as wealthy as she would otherwise have been as a result of this new will. How could it not be so? Had Monsieur Pandy not learned, a day or two earlier, that Annabel Treadway had left his great-granddaughter to drown in a river while saving a dog? He had! And it was she, Lenore Lavington, who had been summoned, in secret, to be told of her grandfather’s plan to make this change to his will. I expect he said—to use Kingsbury’s phrase again—words to the effect of “Everybody will get what they deserve after I die. Those who deserve nothing will get nothing.”’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ Lenore Lavington said. ‘Even if he was able to forgive Annabel and Vincent Lobb, Grandfather had no reason suddenly to decide to cut me off.’

  ‘I believe he did,’ said Poirot. ‘At the dinner table on the evening of the unpleasantness, I believe he noticed a cruel, unforgiving glint in your eye, when you saw that he had realized the truth about Mademoiselle Ivy’s accident and your sister’s actions on that day. He saw you watching him closely, hoping that this new knowledge would kill any feelings of affection or loyalty that he had towards your sister once and for all. He saw in your eyes pure, unforgiving hatred. It shocked him. He found it unbearable. Shall I tell you why? Because it reminded him of himself! Suddenly, he saw how cruelly unforgiving he had been to his once good friend, Vincent Lobb. He realized, perhaps, that the very worst sin of all is the inability to forgive the sins of others. That, Madame Lavington, is why he decided you deserved nothing.’

  ‘This is quite shameless invention on your part, Poirot,’ said John McCrodden. ‘Truly, I don’t see how you can claim to know any of this.’

  ‘I make deductions based upon what facts I do know, monsieur.’

  Poirot turned back to Lenore Lavington. He said, ‘After the disaster of the dinner, your grandfather decided to make for you a test. He wanted to test whether you—knowing that guilt had consumed the life and soul of Mademoiselle Annabel, and knowing how much she loved Mademoiselle Ivy and how sorry she must be—would beg him to reconsider and to forgive. That is why he told you about his plan to make a new will. It is the only reason he did so. If you had said, “Please, do not punish Annabel, who has already suffered enough,” he would have been content to let his existing will remain in place. But you did no such thing. Instead, you showed him that you were delighted by the prospect of your sister being doomed to live in poverty. You demonstrated that you had no compassion.’

  ‘M. Poirot, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that Mother did in fact have a substantial motive for murdering Grandy,’ said Timothy Lavington. ‘Except that, one, he wasn’t murdered, and two, Mother didn’t know she had a motive to kill him. She believed Aunt Annabel would be the one to lose out under the terms of the new will, not her.’

  ‘That is precisely correct,’ Poirot said. ‘Barnabas Pandy was not murdered, but it was his accidental drowning that caused the murder of poor Kingsbury and the attempted murder of Mademoiselle Annabel. I do not believe that Lenore Lavington would have tried to bring about the death of her sister if Monsieur Pandy had not died. He would have changed his will, and Lenore Lavington would have assumed the change was in her favour and to the detriment of her sister. That might have been enough for her—Mademoiselle Annabel’s punishment of being entirely cut off from the family fortune—at least until Monsieur Pandy eventually died and she learned the truth about the changed will.

  ‘Instead, her grandfather died before making the promised alterations to his testamentary affairs. This was too much for Madame Lavington to bear. Mademoiselle Annabel would not, after all, get her punishment of poverty! That, ladies and gentlemen, was when Lenore Lavington decided to see if she might be able to arrange for her sister to hang for a murder she did not commit. This last part, of course, is mere supposition. I cannot prove it.’

  ‘That and the rest of what you’ve told us today,’ said John McCrodden coldly. ‘Where is your proof that Mr Pandy would have disinherited Lenore, whom you yourself say he always favoured? Your silly experiment proves nothing.’

  ‘Do you think so, monsieur? I disagree. I think everybody in this room who is not in love with Lenore Lavington can see the logic in what I have said. Let me tell you one more thing that might convince you: Kingsbury told me that on the night of the dinner disaster, he saw Monsieur Pandy sitting at the table and crying, once his granddaughters and great-granddaughter had left him alone. One single, solitary tear, Kingsbury said. Does this suggest that Barnabas Pandy was angry with Mademoiselle Annabel? Non, mes amis. One might cry from anger, but there would be a flood of passionate tears, would there not? He was not angry with Mademoiselle Annabel. He felt compassion for her. He was sad—sad and full of regret. With no knowledge of the terrible guilt she struggled with every day, he had treated her with impatience. Suddenly, this incomprehensible granddaughter of his made sense to him: the invisible layer of tragedy that seemed always to surround her; her refusal to marry and bear children.

  ‘It is not difficult to see how such thoughts—such a startling change of perspective—might lead him to reflect upon the other person whom he had treated with undue harshness: his enemy, Vincent Lobb. The analogy, when I considered it, was extremely strong, and convinced me I was right. Vincent Lobb, like Annabel Treadway, was guilty of cowardice. Too afraid of the possible consequences of choosing the right course of action, he chose the wrong one. He then felt guilty for the rest of his life—once again, like Annabel Treadway. Lobb did something terribly wrong, as did Mademoiselle Annabel, and both suffered greatly. Both were unable, thereaft
er, to enjoy their lives and live them to the full. In that moment, as he sat at the dinner table, Barnabas Pandy decided that he must forgive them both. It was a wise decision that he made.’

  ‘It’s all very well to spout about forgiveness, Poirot, when you are not personally the one with something to forgive,’ said John McCrodden. ‘You don’t have children, do you? Neither do I, but I do possess an imagination. Do you believe you could ever forgive a person who left your four-year-old child to drown in a river, while saving a dog instead? I know I could not!’

  ‘I know, monsieur, that I would never stick a wet dress to the bottom of a bed frame in the hope that it would be found by Hercule Poirot and result in the person I could not forgive being sent to the gallows for a murder she did not commit. That much I know.

  ‘You made a fatal miscalculation, madame,’ Poirot said to Lenore Lavington. ‘The discovery of the dress provided me with a vital clue. It told me that that either your sister had murdered Monsieur Pandy, or else someone needed me to believe that she had. That was the moment when I knew there was a murderer to be caught: either one who had killed already, or one who intended to cause the death of Annabel Treadway, or perhaps both. Without the wet dress, I might not have pursued my investigation so assiduously, and the world might never have known of your guilt, madame.’

  Annabel Treadway stood up. Hopscotch made a noise as he too rose from his seated position and stood by her side. It was as if he knew she had something important to say. ‘My sister cannot be guilty of murder, M. Poirot. She was with me when Kingsbury was killed. Weren’t you, Lenore? You were with me the whole time, between two o’clock and when we both arrived in the drawing room together. So you see, she cannot have done it.’

  ‘I can see that you wish to follow your grandfather’s example and be compassionate, mademoiselle. You intend to forgive your sister, n’est-ce pas, for her attempt to end your life? You cannot fool Hercule Poirot. If you and Madame Lavington had been together between two o’clock and when you arrived in the drawing room, you would have said so much sooner.’

  ‘No, that’s not true,’ said Annabel. ‘Lenore, tell him. We were together—don’t you remember?’

  Lenore Lavington ignored her sister. She looked at Poirot and said, ‘I am a mother who loves her children. That is all.’

  ‘Lenore.’ John McCrodden knelt beside her and took her hand in both of his. ‘You must be strong. I love you, darling. He cannot prove a damned thing, and I believe he knows it.’

  A tear escaped from the corner of Lenore’s eye and started, slowly, to creep down the side of her face. One single solitary tear: exactly like the one Barnabas Pandy had shed, described by Kingsbury to Poirot.

  ‘I love you, John,’ she said. ‘I have never stopped loving you.’

  ‘It turns out that you are capable of forgiveness after all, madame,’ said Poirot. ‘That is good. Whatever else has happened or will happen, that is always good.’

  CHAPTER 38

  Rowland Without a Rope

  ‘The visitor you have been expecting has arrived, sir,’ said George to Poirot late one Tuesday afternoon. Nearly two weeks had passed since Poirot and I had left Combingham Hall and returned to London.

  ‘Monsieur Rowland McCrodden?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Shall I show him in?’

  ‘Yes, please, Georges.’

  Rowland McCrodden entered the room moments later, looking defiant, then seemed to slump a little when he caught sight of Poirot and heard his heartfelt welcome.

  ‘You need not be abashed,’ Poirot said. ‘I know what you have come to tell me. I expected it. It is quite natural that it should happen.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard?’ said McCrodden.

  ‘I have heard nothing. I have been told nothing. Yet, still, I know.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘You have come to tell me that you will be assisting in the defence of Lenore Lavington—is that not so? She is to plead not guilty to the charges of murder and attempted murder.’

  ‘Someone has told you. You must have spoken to John.’

  ‘My friend, I have spoken to no one. You have spoken to John at great length, though, have you not, since our time at Combingham Hall? The two of you have put aside all the unpleasantness that has passed between you, like the water under a bridge, non?’

  ‘Well, yes. But I fail to see how you could have—’

  ‘Tell me, is it possible that John will now follow you into the law, as you always hoped he would?’

  ‘Why, yes, he … he expressed his intention to do so only yesterday,’ said Rowland McCrodden suspiciously. ‘Why won’t you be straight with me, Poirot? It is simply not credible to think that anyone could guess correctly in so much detail. Even you.’

  ‘It is not a guess. It is knowledge of human nature,’ Poirot explained. ‘Monsieur John, he wishes he himself could defend the woman he loves—though he is grateful for your efforts on his, and her, behalf. He shows his appreciation by deciding that, after all, it would not be such a bad thing if he were to practise the law. Especially now that his father has changed his mind about what ought to happen to those who have committed murder.’

  ‘You talk about my own opinions and how they have changed as if you know more about it than I do,’ said McCrodden.

  ‘Not more—only the same amount,’ said Poirot. ‘I know what must be true, always. And in this case, it was all so easy to foresee. Your son loves Lenore Lavington, and you, mon ami, you love your son as any good father does. And so, although you believe that Poirot is right and that Madame Lavington is guilty, you will help to defend her. You know that if she were to hang for murder, your son’s heart would break. His hopes of any future happiness would be crushed. You would do anything to prevent that, would you not? Having once lost him—seemingly irretrievably, and for so long—you will not now risk losing him again, neither on account of a disagreement about the law and its morality, nor to his own grief. And so, you help Lenore Lavington, and you change your mind about certain issues of law and justice. I imagine you now believe that no murderer should hang for his or her crime? Are we now to call you “Rowland Without a Rope”?’

  ‘This is not what I came here to discuss, Poirot.’

  ‘Or are you still an advocate for the death penalty in all cases apart from this one?’

  ‘That would make me a hypocrite,’ said McCrodden with a sigh. ‘Isn’t there another possibility? Might I not believe that Lenore Lavington is innocent?’

  ‘No. You do not believe that.’

  The two men sat for a few moments in silence. Then McCrodden said, ‘I came here because I wanted to tell you in person that I shall be helping Lenore. I also want to thank you. When I first found out that John had received that horrible letter—’

  ‘You refer to the letter sent to him by Lenore Lavington—the woman you intend to help?’

  ‘I am trying to thank you, Poirot. I am grateful to you for exonerating my son.’

  ‘He is not a murderer.’

  ‘As you might be aware, Miss Treadway is sticking to her version of events,’ said McCrodden.

  ‘You mean she continues to insist that she was with her sister when Kingsbury died? That, too, I expected. It is her guilt at work—at work in the service of injustice. Madame Lavington is lucky indeed to have Mademoiselle Annabel to help her, and you, and your son. Less lucky are those she might kill in the future, if you all prevail. I’m sure you are aware, my friend, that once a person has allowed themselves to take one life, it is easy for them to kill again and again. This is why I pray that you will not prevail. The jury, I hope, will believe me—not because of my reputation but because I will be telling the truth.’

  ‘All of the evidence against Lenore is circumstantial,’ said McCrodden. ‘You have nothing concrete, Poirot. No indisputable facts.’

  ‘Mon ami, let us not argue the merits of our respective cases here and now. This is not a murder trial. Soon enough we will be in a courtroom, and we wi
ll see whom the jury believes.’

  McCrodden nodded curtly. ‘I bear you no ill will, Poirot,’ he said on his way to the door. ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘Merci. And I …’ Poirot found it hard to decide what to say. Finally he said, ‘I am pleased to hear that relations between you and your son have improved. Family is very important. For your sake, I am glad that you do not find the price of reconciliation to be too high. Please do Poirot one little favour: ask yourself every day if this is the course you wish to pursue, and if it is the right course.’

  ‘Kingsbury had no living relatives,’ said McCrodden. ‘And Annabel Treadway is not on her way to the gallows for a crime she didn’t commit.’

  ‘And so no harm is done if Lenore Lavington walks free? I disagree. When justice is deliberately distorted and denied, harm is done. You, your son, Lenore Lavington … and, yes, Annabel Treadway for her lies … if you are all lucky, you might not pay the price for your actions in this life. Beyond that, it is not up to Hercule Poirot to speculate.’

  ‘Goodbye, Poirot. Thank you for everything you did for John.’

  With these words, Rowland McCrodden turned and left.

  CHAPTER 39

  A New Typewriter

  I am typing this final section of my account of ‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ six months subsequent to the events of the preceding chapter, and on a brand new typewriter. All the letter ‘e’s in this last chapter are, therefore, perfect. Our friend the eel need no longer feel down at heel.