It was all conjecture, and Poirot shook his head doubtfully. He replaced the pile of comics neatly on the table, his passion for tidiness always in the ascendent. As he did so, he was suddenly assailed with the feeling of something missing. Something… What was it? Something that ought to have been there… Something… He shook his head as the elusive impression faded.
He went slowly out of the boathouse, unhappy and displeased with himself. He, Hercule Poirot, had been summoned to prevent a murder – and he had not prevented it. It had happened. What was even more humiliating was that he had no real ideas even now, as to what had actually happened. It was ignominious. And tomorrow he must return to London defeated. His ego was seriously deflated – even his moustaches drooped.
Chapter 15
It was a fortnight later that Inspector Bland had a long and unsatisfying interview with the Chief Constable of the County.
Major Merrall had irritable tufted eyebrows and looked rather like an angry terrier. But his men all liked him and respected his judgment.
"Well, well, well," said Major Merrall. "What have we got? Nothing that we can act on. This fellow De Sousa now? We can't connect him in any way with the Girl Guide. If Lady Stubbs's body had turned up, that would have been different." He brought his eyebrows down towards his nose and glared at Bland. "You think there is a body, don't you?"
"What do you think, sir?"
"Oh, I agree with you. Otherwise, we'd have traced her by now. Unless, of course, she'd made her plans very carefully. And I don't see the least indication of that. She'd no money, you know. We've been into all the financial side of it. Sir George had the money. He made her a very generous allowance, but she's not got a stiver of her own. And there's no trace of a lover. No rumour of one, no gossip – and there would be, mark you, in a country district like that."
He took a turn up and down the floor.
"The plain fact of it is that we don't know. We think De Sousa for some unknown reason of his own, made away with his cousin. The most probable thing is that he got her to meet him down at the boathouse, took her aboard the launch and pushed her overboard. You've tested that that could happen?"
"Good lord, sir! You could drown a whole boatful of people during holiday time in the river or on the seashore. Nobody'd think anything of it. Everyone spends their time squealing and pushing each other off things. But the thing De Sousa didn't know about, was that the girl was in the boathouse, bored to death with nothing to do and ten to one was looking out of the window."
"Hoskins looked out of the window and watched the performance you put up, and you didn't see him?"
"No, sir. You'd have no idea anyone was in that boathouse unless they came out on the balcony and showed themselves -"
"Perhaps the girl did come out on the balcony. De Sousa realises she's seen what he's doing, so he comes ashore and deals with her, gets her to let him into the boathouse by asking her what she's doing there. She tells him, pleased with her part in the Murder Hunt, he puts the cord round her neck in a playful manner – and whoooosh…" Major Merrall made an expressive gesture with his hands. "That's that! Okay, Bland; okay. Let's say that's how it happened. Pure guesswork. We haven't got any evidence. We haven't got a body, and if we attempted to detain De Sousa in this country we'd have a hornet's nest about our ears. We'll have to let him go."
"Is he going, sir?"
"He's laying up his yacht a week from now. Going back to his blasted island."
"So we haven't got much time," said Inspector Bland gloomily.
"There are other possibilities, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, sir, there are several possibilities. I still hold to it that she must have been murdered by somebody who was in on the facts of the Murder Hunt. We can clear two people completely. Sir George Stubbs and Captain Warburton. They were running shows on the lawn and taking charge of things the entire afternoon. They are vouched for by dozens of people. The same applies to Mrs Masterton, if, that is, one can include her at all."
"Include everybody," said Major Merrall. "She's continually ringing me up about bloodhounds. In a detective story," he added wistfully, "she'd be just the woman who had done it. But, dash it, I've known Connie Masterton pretty well all my life. I just can't see her going round strangling Girl Guides, or disposing of mysterious exotic beauties. Now, then, who else is there?"
"There's Mrs Oliver," said Bland. "She devised the Murder Hunt. She's rather eccentric and she was away on her own for a good part of the afternoon. Then there's Mr Alec Legge."
"Fellow in the pink cottage, eh?"
"Yes. He left the show fairly early on, or he wasn't seen there. He says he got fed up with it and walked back to his cottage. On the other hand, old Merdell – that's the old boy down at the quay who looks after people's boats for them and helps with the parking – he says Alec Legge passed him going back to the cottage about five o'clock. Not earlier. That leaves about an hour of his time unaccounted for. He says, of course, that Merdell has no idea of time and was quite wrong as to when he saw him. And after all, the old man is ninety-two."
"Rather unsatisfactory," said Major Merrall. "No motive or anything of that kind to tie him in?"
"He might have been having an affair with Lady Stubbs," said Bland doubtfully, "and she might have been threatening to tell his wife, and he might have done her in, and the girl might have seen it happen -"
"And he concealed Lady Stubbs's body somewhere?"
"Yes. But I'm blessed if I know how or where. My men have searched that sixty-five acres and there's no trace anywhere of disturbed earth, and I should say that by now we've rooted under every bush there is. Still, say he did manage to hide the body, he could have thrown her hat into the river as a blind. And Marlene Tucker saw him and so he disposed of her? That part of it's always the same." Inspector Bland paused, then said, "And, of course, there's Mrs Legge -"
"What have we got on her?"
"She wasn't in the tea tent from four to half-past as she says she was," said Inspector Bland slowly. "I spotted that as soon as I'd talked to her and to Mrs Folliat. Evidence supports Mrs Folliat's statement. And that's the particular, vital half-hour." Again he paused. "Then there's the architect, young Michael Weyman. It's difficult to tie him up with it in any way, but he's what I should call a likely murderer – one of those cocky, nervy young fellows. Would kill anyone and not turn a hair about it. In with a loose set, I shouldn't wonder."
"You're so damned respectable, Bland," said Major Merrall. "How does he account for his movements?"
"Very vague, sir. Very vague indeed."
"That proves he's a genuine architect," said Major Merrall with feeling. He had recently built himself a house near the sea coast. "They're so vague, I wonder they're alive at all sometimes."
"Doesn't know where he was or when and there's nobody who seems to have seen him. There is some evidence that Lady Stubbs was keen on him."
"I suppose you're hinting at one of these sex murders?"
"I'm only looking about for what I can find, sir," said Inspector Bland with dignity. "And then there's Miss Brewis…" He paused. It was a long pause.
"That's the secretary, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. Very efficient woman."
Again there was a pause. Major Merrall eyed his subordinate keenly.
"You've got something on your mind about her, haven't you?" he said.
"Yes, I have, sir. You see, she admits quite openly that she was in the boathouse at about the time the murder must have been committed."
"Would she do that if she was guilty?"
"She might," said Inspector Bland slowly. "Actually, it's the best thing she could do. You see, if she picks up a tray with cake and a fruit drink and tells everyone she's taking that for the child down there – well, then, her presence is accounted for. She goes there and comes back and says the girl was alive at that time. We've taken her word for it. But if you remember, sir, and look again at the medical evidence, Dr Cook's time of death is between four o
'clock and quarter to five. We've only Miss Brewis's word for it that Marlene was alive at a quarter past four. And there's one curious point that came up about her testimony. She told me that it was Lady Stubbs who told her to take the cakes and fruit drink to Marlene. But another witness said quite definitely that that wasn't the sort of thing that Lady Stubbs would think about. And I think, you know, that they're right there. It's not like Lady Stubbs. Lady Stubbs was a dumb beauty wrapped up in herself and her own appearance. She never seems to have ordered meals or taken an interest in household management or thought of anybody at all except her own handsome self. The more I think of it, the more it seems most unlikely that she should have told Miss Brewis to take anything to the Girl Guide."
"You know, Bland," said Merrall, "you've got something there. But what's her motive, if so?"
"No motive for killing the girl," said Bland; "but I do think, you know, that she might have a motive for killing Lady Stubbs. According to M. Poirot, whom I told you about, she's head over heels in love with her employer. Supposing she followed Lady Stubbs into the woods and killed her and that Marlene Tucker, bored in the boathouse, came out and happened to see it? Then of course she'd have to kill Marlene too. What would she do next? Put the girl's body in the boathouse, come back to the house, fetch the tray and go down to the boathouse again. Then she's covered her own absence from the fête and we've got her testimony, our only reliable testimony on the face of it, that Marlene Tucker was alive at a quarter past four."
"Well," said Major Merrall, with a sigh, "keep after it, Bland. Keep after it. What do you think she did with Lady Stubbs's body, if she's the guilty party?"
"Hid it in the woods, buried it, or threw it into the river."
"The last would be rather difficult, wouldn't it?"
"It depends where the murder was committed," said the inspector. "She's quite a hefty woman. If it was not far from the boathouse, she could have carried her down there and thrown her off the edge of the quay."
"With every pleasure steamer on the Helm looking on?"
"It would be just another piece of horse-play. Risky, but possible. But I think it far more likely myself that she hid the body somewhere, and just threw the hat into the Helm. It's possible, you see, that she, knowing the house and grounds well, might know some place where you could conceal a body. She may have managed to dispose of it in the river later. Who knows? That is, of course, if she did it," added Inspector Bland as an afterthought. "But actually, sir, I stick to de Sousa -"
Major Merall had been noting down points on a pad. He looked up now, clearing his throat.
"It comes to this, then. We can summarise it as follows: we've got five or six people who could have killed Marlene Tucker. Some of them are more likely than others, but that's as far as we can go. In a general way, we know why she was killed. She was killed because she saw something. But until we know exactly what it was she saw – we don't know who killed her."
"Put like that, you make it sound a bit difficult, sir."
"Oh, it is difficult. But we shall get there – in the end."
"And meantime that chap will have left England – laughing in his sleeve – having got away with two murders."
"You're fairly sure about him, aren't you? I don't say you're wrong. All the same…"
The chief constable was silent for a moment or two, then he said, with a shrug of his shoulders:
"Anyway, it's better than having one of these psychopathic murderers. We'd probably having a third murer on our hands by now."
"They do say things go in threes," said the inspector gloomily.
He repeated that remark the following morning when he heard that old Merdell, returning home from a visit to his favourite pub across the river at Gitcham, must have exceeded his usual potations and fallen in the river when boarding the quay. His boat was found adrift, and the old man's body was recovered that evening.
The inquest was short and simple. The night had been dark and overcast, old Merdell had had three pints of beer and, after all, he was ninety-two.
The verdict brought in was Accidental Death.
Chapter 16
I
Hercule Poirot sat in a square chair in front of the square fireplace in the square room of his London flat. In front of him were various objects that were not square: that were instead violently and almost impossibly curved. Each of them, studied separately, looked as if they could not have any conceivable function in a sane world. They appeared improbable, irresponsible, and wholly fortuitous. In actual fact, of course, they were nothing of the sort.
Assessed correctly, each had its particular place in a particular universe. Assembled in their proper place in their particular universe, they not only made sense, they made a picture. In other words, Hercule Poirot was doing a jigsaw puzzle.
He looked down at where a rectangle still showed improbably shaped gaps. It was an occupation he found soothing and pleasant. It brought disorder into order. It had, he reflected, a certain resemblance to his own profession. There, too, one was faced with various improbably shaped and unlikely facts which, though seeming to bear no relationship to each other, yet did each have its properly balanced part in assembling the whole. His fingers deftly picked up an improbable piece of dark grey and fitted it into a blue sky. It was, he now perceived, part of an aeroplane.
"Yes," murmured Poirot to himself, "that is what one must do. The unlikely piece here, the improbable piece there, the oh-so-rational piece that is not what it seems; all of these have their appointed place, and once they are fitted in, eh bien, there is an end of the business! All is clear. All is – as they say nowadays – in the picture."
He fitted in, in rapid succession, a small piece of a minaret, another piece that looked as though it was part of a striped awning and was actually the backside of a cat, and a missing piece of sunset that had changed with Turneresque suddenness from orange to pink.
If one knew what to look for, it would be so easy, said Hercule Poirot to himself. But one does not know what to look for. And so one looks in the wrong places or for the wrong things. He sighed vexedly. His eyes strayed from the jigsaw puzzle in front of him to the chair on the other side of the fireplace. There, not half an hour ago, Inspector Bland had sat consuming tea and crumpets (square crumpets) and talking sadly. He had had to come to London on police business and that police business having been accomplished, he had come to call upon M. Poirot. He had wondered, he explained, whether M. Poirot had any ideas. He had then proceeded to explain his own ideas. On every point he outlined, Poirot had agreed with him. Inspector Bland, so Poirot thought, had made a very fair and unprejudiced survey of the case.
It was now a month, nearly five weeks, since the occurrences at Nasse House. It had been five weeks of stagnation and of negation. Lady Stubbs's body had not been recovered. Lady Stubbs, if living, had not been traced. The odds, Inspector Bland pointed out, were strongly against her being alive. Poirot agreed with him.
"Of course," said Bland, "the body might not have been washed up. There's no telling with a body once it's in the water. It may show up yet, though it will be pretty unrecognisable when it does."
"There is a third possibility," Poirot pointed out. Bland nodded.
"Yes," he said," I've thought of that. I keep thinking of that, in fact. You mean the body's there – at Nasse, hidden somewhere where we've never thought of looking. It could be, you know. It just could be. With an old house, and with grounds like that, there are places you'd never think of – that you'd never know were there."
He paused a moment, ruminated, and then said;
"There's a house I was in only the other day. They'd built an air-raid shelter, you know, in the war. A flimsy sort of more or less home-made job in the garden, by the wall of the house, and had made a way from it into the house – into the cellar. Well, the war ended, the shelter tumbled down, they heaped it up in irregular mounds and made a kind of rockery of it. Walking through that garden now, you'd never think that the p
lace had once been an air-raid shelter and that there was a chamber underneath. Looks as though it was always meant to be a rockery. And all the time, behind a wine bin in the cellar, there's a passage leading into it. That's what I mean. That kind of thing. Some sort of way into some kind of place that no outsider would know about. I don't suppose there's an actual Priest's Hole or anything of that kind?"
"Hardly – not at that period."
"That's what Mr Weyman says – he says the house was built about 1790 or thereabouts. No reason for priests to hide themselves by that date. All the same, you know, there might be – somewhere, some alteration in the structure – something that one of the family might know about. What do you think, M. Poirot?"
"It is possible, yes," said Poirot. "Mais oui, decidedly it is an idea. If one accepts the possibility, then the next thing is – who would know about it? Anyone staying in the house might know, I suppose?"
"Yes. Of course it would let out De Sousa." The inspector looked dissatisfied. De Sousa was still his preferred suspect. "As you say, anyone who lived in the house, such as a servant or one of the family, might know about it. Someone just staying in the house would be less likely. People who only came in from outside, like the Legges, less likely still."
"The person who would certainly know about such a thing, and who could tell you if you asked her, would be Mrs Folliat," said Poirot.
Mrs Folliat, he thought, knew all there was to know about Nasse House. Mrs Folliat knew a great deal… Mrs Folliat had known straight away that Hattie Stubbs was dead. Mrs Folliat knew, before Marlene and Hattie Stubbs died, that it was a very wicked world and that there were very wicked people in it. Mrs Folliat, thought Poirot vexedly, was the key to the whole business. But Mrs Folliat, he reflected, was a key that would not easily turn in the lock.
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