Taken at the Flood

by Agatha Christie

  He then dismissed them to consider their verdict.

  They took three quarters of an hour.

  They returned a verdict of Wilful Murder against David Hunter.

  Five

  “I was afraid they’d do it,” said the coroner apologetically. “Local prejudice! Feeling rather than logic.”

  The coroner, the Chief Constable, Superintendent Spence and Hercule Poirot were all in consultation together after the inquest.

  “You did your best,” said the Chief Constable.

  “It’s premature, to say the least of it,” said Spence frowning. “And it hampers us. Do you know M. Hercule Poirot? He was instrumental in bringing Porter forward.”

  The coroner said graciously:

  “I have heard of you, M. Poirot,” and Poirot made an unsuccessful attempt to look modest.

  “M. Poirot’s interested in the case,” said Spence with a grin.

  “Truly, that is so,” said Poirot. “I was in it, as you might say, before there was a case.”

  And in answer to their interested glances he told of the queer little scene in the club when he had first heard a mention of Robert Underhay’s name.

  “That’s an additional point in Porter’s evidence when the case comes to trial,” said the Chief Constable thoughtfully. “Underhay actually planned a pretended death—and spoke of using the name of Enoch Arden.”

  The Chief Constable murmured: “Ah, but will that be admissible as evidence? Words spoken by a man who is now dead?”

  “It may not be admissible as evidence,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “But it raises a very interesting and suggestive line of thought.”

  “What we want,” said Spence, “is not suggestion, but a few concrete facts. Someone who actually saw David Hunter at the Stag or near it on Tuesday evening.”

  “It ought to be easy,” said the Chief Constable, frowning.

  “If it was abroad in my country it would be easy enough,” said Poirot. “There would be a little café where someone takes the evening coffee—but in provincial England!” He threw up his hands.

  The Superintendent nodded.

  “Some of the folks are in the pubs, and will stay in the pubs till closing time, and the rest of the population are inside their houses listening to the nine o’clock news. If you ever go along the main street here between eight thirty and ten it’s completely deserted. Not a soul.”

  “He counted on that?” suggested the Chief Constable.

  “Maybe,” said Spence. His expression was not a happy one.

  Presently the Chief Constable and the coroner departed. Spence and Poirot were left together.

  “You do not like the case, no?” asked Poirot sympathetically.

  “That young man worries me,” said Spence. “He’s the kind that you never know where you are with them. When they’re most innocent of a business, they act as though they were guilty. And when they’re guilty—why, you’d take your oath they were angels of light!”

  “You think he is guilty?” asked Poirot.

  “Don’t you?” Spence countered.

  Poirot spread out his hands.

  “I should be interested to know,” he said, “just exactly how much you have against him?”

  “You don’t mean legally? You mean in the way of probability?”

  Poirot nodded.

  “There’s the lighter,” said Spence.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Under the body.”

  “Fingerprints on it?”

  “None.”

  “Ah,” said Poirot.

  “Yes,” said Spence. “I don’t like that too much myself. Then the dead man’s watch has stopped at 9:10. That fits in with the medical evidence quite nicely—and with Rowley Cloade’s evidence that Underhay was expecting his client at any minute—presumably that client was almost due.”

  Poirot nodded.

  “Yes—it is all very neat.”

  “And the thing you can’t get away from, to my mind, M. Poirot, is that he’s the only person (he and his sister, that is to say) who has the ghost or shadow of a motive. Either David Hunter killed Underhay—or else Underhay was killed by some outsider who followed him here for some reason that we know nothing about—and that seems wildly improbable.”

  “Oh, I agree, I agree.”

  “You see, there’s no one in Warmsley Vale who could possibly have a motive—unless by a coincidence someone is living here (other than the Hunters) who had a connection with Underhay in the past. I never rule out coincidence, but there hasn’t been a hint or suggestion of anything of the kind. The man was a stranger to every one but that brother and sister.”

  Poirot nodded.

  “To the Cloade family Robert Underhay would be the apple of their eye to be kept alive by every possible precaution. Robert Underhay, alive and kicking, means the certainty of a large fortune divided amongst them.”

  “Again, mon ami, I agree with you enthusiastically. Robert Underhay, alive and kicking, is what the Cloade family needs.”

  “So back we come—Rosaleen and David Hunter are the only two people who have a motive. Rosaleen Cloade was in London. But David, we know, was in Warmsley Vale that day. He arrived at 5:30 at Warmsley Heath station.”

  “So now we have Motive, written very big and the fact that at 5:30 and onward to some unspecified time, he was on the spot.”

  “Exactly. Now take Beatrice Lippincott’s story. I believe that story. She overheard what she says she overheard, though she may have gingered it up a little, as is only human.”

  “Only human as you say.”

  “Apart from knowing the girl, I believe her because she couldn’t have invented some of the things. She’d never heard of Robert Underhay before, for instance. So I believe her story of what passed between the two men and not David Hunter’s.”

  “I, too,” said Poirot. “She strikes me as a singularly truthful witness.”

  “We’ve confirmation that her story is true. What do you suppose the brother and sister went off to London for?”

  “That is one of the things that has interested me most.”

  “Well, the money position’s like this. Rosaleen Cloade has only a life interest in Gordon Cloade’s estate. She can’t touch the capital—except, I believe, for about a thousand pounds. But jewellery, etc., is hers. The first thing she did on going to town was to take some of the most valuable pieces round to Bond Street and sell them. She wanted a large sum of cash quickly—in other words she had to pay a blackmailer.”

  “You call that evidence against David Hunter?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Poirot shook his head.

  “Evidence that there was blackmail, yes. Evidence of intent to commit murder, no. You cannot have it both ways, mon cher. Either that young man was going to pay up, or else he was planning to kill. You have produced evidence that he was planning to pay.”

  “Yes—yes, perhaps that is so. But he may have changed his mind.”

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

  “I know his type,” said the Superintendent thoughtfully. “It’s a type that’s done well during the war. Any amount of physical courage. Audacity and a reckless disregard of personal safety. The sort that will face any odds. It’s the kind that is likely to win the V.C.—though, mind you, it’s often a posthumous one. Yes, in wartime, a man like that is a hero. But in peace—well, in peace such men usually end up in prison. They like excitement and they can’t run straight, and they don’t give a damn for society—and finally they’ve no regard for human life.”

  Poirot nodded.

  “I tell you,” the Superintendent repeated, “I know the type.”

  There was some few minutes of silence.

  “Eh bien,” said Poirot at last. “We agree that we have here the type of a killer. But that is all. It takes us no further.”

  Spence looked at him with curiosity.

  “You’re taking a great interest in this business, M. Poirot?”


  “Yes.”

  “Why, if I may ask?”

  “Frankly,” Poirot spread out his hands, “I do not quite know. Perhaps it is because when two years ago, I am sitting very sick in my stomach (for I did not like air raids, and I am not very brave though I endeavour to put up the good appearance) when, as I say, I am sitting with a sick feeling here,” Poirot clasped his stomach expressively, “in the smoking room of my friend’s club, there, droning away, is the club bore, the good Major Porter, recounting a long history to which nobody listens; but me, I listen, because I am wishful to distract myself from the bombs, and because the facts he is relating seem to me interesting and suggestive. And I think to myself that it is possible that some day something may come of the situation he recounts. And now something has come of it.”

  “The unexpected has happened, eh?”

  “On the contrary,” Poirot corrected him. “It is the expected that has happened—which in itself is sufficiently remarkable.”

  “You expected murder?” Spence asked sceptically.

  “No, no, no! But a wife remarries. Possibility that first husband is still alive? He is alive. He may turn up? He does turn up! There may be blackmail. There is blackmail! Possibility, therefore, that blackmailer may be silenced? Ma foi, he is silenced!”

  “Well,” said Spence, eyeing Poirot rather doubtfully. “I suppose these things run pretty close to type. It’s a common sort of crime—blackmail resulting in murder.”

  “Not interesting, you would say? Usually, no. But this case is interesting, because, you see,” said Poirot placidly, “it is all wrong.”

  “All wrong? What do you mean by all wrong?”

  “None of it is, how shall I put it, the right shape?”

  Spence stared. “Chief Inspector Japp,” he remarked, “always said you have a tortuous mind. Give me an instance of what you call wrong?”

  “Well, the dead man, for instance, he is all wrong.”

  Spence shook his head.

  “You do not feel that?” Poirot asked. “Oh, well, perhaps I am fanciful. Then take this point. Underhay arrives at the Stag. He writes to David Hunter. Hunter receives that letter the next morning—at breakfast time?”

  “Yes, that’s so. He admits receiving a letter from Arden then.”

  “That was the first intimation, was it not, of the arrival of Underhay in Warmsley Vale? What is the first thing he does—bundles his sister off to London!”

  “That’s quite understandable,” said Spence. “He wants a clear hand to deal with things his own way. He may have been afraid the woman would have been weak. He’s the leading spirit, remember. Mrs. Cloade is entirely under his thumb.”

  “Oh, yes, that shows itself plainly. So he sends her to London and calls on this Enoch Arden. We have a pretty clear account of their conversation from Beatrice Lippincott, and the thing that sticks out, a mile, as you say, is that David Hunter was not sure whether the man he was talking to was Robert Underhay or not. He suspected it, but he didn’t know.”

  “But there’s nothing odd about that, M. Poirot. Rosaleen Hunter married Underhay in Cape Town and went with him straight to Nigeria. Hunter and Underhay never met. Therefore though, as you say, Hunter suspected that Arden was Underhay, he couldn’t know it for a fact—because he had never met the man.”

  Poirot looked at Superintendent Spence thoughtfully.

  “So there is nothing there that strikes you as—peculiar?” he asked.

  “I know what you’re driving at. Why didn’t Underhay say straight out that he was Underhay? Well, I think that’s understandable, too. Respectable people who are doing something crooked like to preserve appearances. They like to put things in such a way that it keeps them in the clear—if you know what I mean. No—I don’t think that that is so very remarkable. You’ve got to allow for human nature.”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “Human nature. That, I think, is perhaps the real answer as to why I am interested in this case. I was looking round the Coroner’s Court, looking at all the people, looking particularly at the Cloades—so many of them, all bound by a common interest, all so different in their characters, in their thoughts and feelings. All of them dependent for many years on the strong man, the power in the family, on Gordon Cloade! I do not mean, perhaps, directly dependent. They had all their independent means of existence. But they had come, they must have come, consciously or unconsciously, to lean on him. And what happens—I will ask you this, Superintendent—What happens to the ivy when the oak round which it clings is struck down?”

  “That’s hardly a question in my line,” said Spence.

  “You think not? I think it is. Character, mon cher, does not stand still. It can gather strength. It can also deteriorate. What a person really is, is only apparent when the test comes—that is, the moment when you stand or fall on your own feet.”

  “I don’t really know what you are getting at, M. Poirot.” Spence looked bewildered. “Anyway, the Cloades are all right now. Or will be, once the legal formalities are through.”

  That, Poirot reminded him, might take some time. “There is still Mrs. Gordon Cloade’s evidence to shake. After all, a woman should know her own husband when she sees him?”

  He put his head a little on one side and gazed inquiringly at the big Superintendent.

  “Isn’t it worth while to a woman not to recognize her husband if the income of a couple of million pounds depends on it?” asked the Superintendent cynically. “Besides, if he wasn’t Robert Underhay, why was he killed?”

  “That,” murmured Poirot, “is indeed the question.”

  Six

  Poirot left the police station frowning to himself. His steps grew slower as he walked. In the market square he paused, looking about him. There was Dr. Cloade’s house with its worn brass plate, and a little way along was the post office. On the other side was Jeremy Cloade’s house. In front of Poirot, set back a little, was the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption, a small modest affair, a shrinking violet compared to the aggressiveness of St. Mary’s which stood arrogantly in the middle of the square facing the Cornmarket, and proclaiming the dominance of the Protestant religion.

  Moved by an impulse Poirot went through the gate and along the path to the door of the Roman Catholic building. He removed his hat, genuflected in front of the altar and knelt down behind one of the chairs. His prayers were interrupted by the sound of stifled heartbroken sobs.

  He turned his head. Across the aisle a woman in a dark dress was kneeling, her head buried in her hands. Presently she got up and, still sobbing under her breath, went towards the door. Poirot, his eyes wide with interest, got up and followed her. He had recognized Rosaleen Cloade.

  She stood in the porch, fighting for control, and there Poirot spoke to her, very gently:

  “Madame, can I help you?”

  She showed no signs of surprise, but answered with the simplicity of an unhappy child.

  “No,” she said. “No one can help me.”

  “You are in very bad trouble. That is it, is it not?”

  She said: “They’ve taken David away…I’m all alone. They say he killed—But he didn’t! He didn’t!”

  She looked at Poirot and said: “You were there today? At the inquest. I saw you!”

  “Yes. If I can help you, Madame, I shall be very glad to do so.”

  “I’m frightened. David said I’d be safe as long as he was there to look after me. But now they’ve taken him away—I’m afraid. He said—they all wanted me dead. That’s a dreadful thing to say. But perhaps it’s true.”

  “Let me help you, Madame.”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “No one can help me. I can’t go to confession, even. I’ve got to bear the weight of my wickedness all alone. I’m cut off from the mercy of God.”

  “Nobody,” said Hercule Poirot, “is cut off from the mercy of God. You know that well, my child.”

  Again she looked at him—a wild unhappy look.

 
; “I’d have to confess my sins—to confess. If I could confess—”

  “Can’t you confess? You came to the church for that, did you not?”

  “I came to get comfort—comfort. But what comfort is there for me? I’m a sinner.”

  “We are all sinners.”

  “But you’d have to repent—I’d have to say—to tell—” Her hands went up to her face. “Oh, the lies I’ve told—the lies I’ve told.”

  “You told a lie about your husband? About Robert Underhay? It was Robert Underhay who was killed here, wasn’t it?”

  She turned sharply on him. Her eyes were suspicious, wary. She cried out sharply:

  “I tell you it was not my husband. It wasn’t the least like him!”

  “The dead man was not in the least like your husband?”

  “No,” she said defiantly.

  “Tell me,” said Poirot, “what was your husband like?”

  Her eyes stared at him. Then her face hardened into alarm. Her eyes grew dark with fear.

  She cried out:

  “I’ll not talk to you any more!”

  Going swiftly past him, she ran down the path and passed through the gate out into the market square.

  Poirot did not try and follow her. Instead he nodded his head with a good deal of satisfaction.

  “Ah,” he said. “So that is that!”

  He walked slowly out into the square.

  After a momentary hesitation he followed the High Street until he came to the Stag, which was the last building before the open country.

  In the doorway of the Stag he met Rowley Cloade and Lynn Marchmont.

  Poirot looked at the girl with interest. A handsome girl, he thought, and intelligent also. Not the type he himself admired. He preferred something softer, more feminine. Lynn Marchmont, he thought, was essentially a modern type—though one might, with equal accuracy, call it an Elizabethan type. Women who thought for themselves, who were free in language, and who admired enterprise and audacity in men.