Taken at the Flood

by Agatha Christie

  She had lived in Furrowbank as a foreign visitor might live at the Ritz or at the Savoy.

  “I wonder,” thought Poirot, “if the other—”

  Lynn broke the chain of his thought by asking him of what he was thinking, and why he looked so grim.

  “The wages of sin, Mademoiselle, are said to be death. But sometimes the wages of sin seem to be luxury. Is that any more endurable, I wonder? To be cut off from one’s own home life. To catch, perhaps, a single glimpse of it when the way back to it is barred—”

  He broke off. The parlourmaid, her superior manner laid aside, a mere frightened middle-aged woman, came running into the room, stammering and choking with words she could hardly get out.

  “Oh Miss Marchmont! Oh, sir, the mistress—upstairs—she’s very bad—she doesn’t speak and I can’t rouse her and her hand’s so cold.”

  Sharply, Poirot turned and ran out of the room. Lynn and the maid came behind him. He raced up to the first floor. The parlourmaid indicated the open door facing the head of the stairs.

  It was a large beautiful bedroom, the sun pouring in through the open windows on to pale beautiful rugs.

  In the big carved bedstead Rosaleen was lying—apparently asleep. Her long dark lashes lay on her cheeks, her head turned naturally into the pillow. There was a crumpled-up handkerchief in one hand. She looked like a sad child who had cried itself to sleep.

  Poirot picked up her hand and felt for the pulse. The hand was ice-cold and told him what he already guessed.

  He said quietly to Lynn:

  “She has been dead some time. She died in her sleep.”

  “Oh, sir—oh—what shall we do?” The parlourmaid burst out crying.

  “Who was her doctor?”

  “Uncle Lionel,” said Lynn.

  Poirot said to the parlourmaid: “Go and telephone to Dr. Cloade.” She went out of the room, still sobbing. Poirot moved here and there about the room. A small white cardboard box beside the bed bore a label, “One powder to be taken at bedtime.” Using his handkerchief, he pushed the box open. There were three powders left. He moved across to the mantelpiece, then to the writing-table. The chair in front of it was pushed aside, the blotter was open. A sheet of paper was there, with words scrawled in an unformed childish hand.

  “I don’t know what to do…I can’t go on…I’ve been so wicked. I must tell someone and get peace…I didn’t mean to be so wicked to begin with. I didn’t know all that was going to come of it. I must write down—”

  The words sprawled off in a dash. The pen lay where it had been flung down. Poirot stood looking down at those written words. Lynn still stood by the bed looking down at the dead girl.

  Then the door was pushed violently open and David Hunter strode breathlessly into the room.

  “David,” Lynn started forward. “Have they released you? I’m so glad—”

  He brushed her words aside, as he brushed her aside, thrusting her almost roughly out of the way as he bent over the still white figure.

  “Rosa! Rosaleen…” He touched her hand, then he swung round on Lynn, his face blazing with anger. His words came high and deliberate!

  “So you’ve killed her, have you? You’ve got rid of her at last! You got rid of me, sent me to gaol on a trumped-up charge, and then, amongst you all, you put her out of the way! All of you? Or just one of you? I don’t care which it is! You killed her! You wanted the damned money—now you’ve got it! Her death gives it to you! You’ll all be out of Queer Street now. You’ll all be rich—a lot of dirty murdering thieves, that’s what you are! You weren’t able to touch her so long as I was by. I knew how to protect my sister—she was never one to be able to protect herself. But when she was alone here, you saw your chance and you took it.” He paused, swayed slightly, and said in a low quivering voice, “Murderers.”

  Lynn cried out:

  “No, David. No, you’re wrong. None of us would kill her. We wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “One of you killed her, Lynn Marchmont. And you know that as well as I do!”

  “I swear we didn’t, David. I swear we did nothing of the kind.”

  The wildness of his gaze softened a little.

  “Maybe it wasn’t you, Lynn—”

  “It wasn’t, David, I swear it wasn’t—”

  Hercule Poirot moved forward a step and coughed. David swung round on him.

  “I think,” said Poirot, “that your assumptions are a little overdramatic. Why jump to the conclusion that your sister was murdered?”

  “You say she wasn’t murdered? Do you call this”—he indicated the figure on the bed—“a natural death? Rosaleen suffered from nerves, yes, but she had no organic weakness. Her heart was sound enough.”

  “Last night,” said Poirot, “before she went to bed, she sat writing here—”

  David strode past him, bent over the sheet of paper.

  “Do not touch it,” Poirot warned him.

  David drew back his hand, and read the words as he stood motionless.

  He turned his head sharply and looked searchingly at Poirot.

  “Are you suggesting suicide? Why should Rosaleen commit suicide?”

  The voice that answered the question was not Poirot’s. Superintendent Spence’s quiet Oastshire voice spoke from the open doorway:

  “Supposing that last Tuesday night Mrs. Cloade wasn’t in London, but in Warmsley Vale? Suppose she went to see the man who had been blackmailing her? Suppose that in a nervous frenzy she killed him?”

  David swung round on him. His eyes were hard and angry.

  “My sister was in London on Tuesday night. She was there in the flat when I got in at eleven o’clock.”

  “Yes,” said Spence, “that’s your story, Mr. Hunter. And I dare say you’ll stick to it. But I’m not obliged to believe that story. And in any case, isn’t it a little late”—he gestured towards the bed—“the case will never come to court now.”

  Fourteen

  “He won’t admit it,” said Spence. “But I think he knows she did it.” Sitting in his room at the police station he looked across the table at Poirot. “Funny how it was his alibi we were so careful about checking. We never gave much thought to hers. And yet there’s no corroboration at all for her being in the flat in London that night. We’ve only got his word that she was there. We knew all along that only two people had a motive for doing away with Arden—David Hunter and Rosaleen Cloade. I went bald-headed for him and passed her by. Fact is, she seemed such a gentle thing—even a bit half-witted—but I dare say that partly explains it. Very likely David Hunter hustled her up to London for just that reason. He may have realized that she’d lose her head, and he may have known that she’s the kind who gets dangerous when they panic. Another funny thing: I’ve often seen her going about in an orange linen frock—it was a favourite colour of hers. Orange scarves—a striped orange frock, an orange beret. And yet, even when old Mrs. Leadbetter described a young woman with her head tied up in an orange scarf I still didn’t tumble to it that it must have been Mrs. Gordon herself. I still think the girl wasn’t quite all there—wasn’t wholly responsible. The way you describe her as haunting the R.C. church here sounds as though she was half off her head with remorse and a sense of guilt.”

  “She had a sense of guilt, yes,” said Poirot.

  Spence said thoughtfully, “She must have attacked Arden in a kind of frenzy. I don’t suppose he had the least idea of what was coming to him. He wouldn’t be on his guard with a slip of a girl like that.” He ruminated for a moment or two in silence, then he remarked, “There’s still one thing I’m not quite clear about. Who got at Porter? You say it wasn’t Mrs. Jeremy? Bet you it was all the same!”

  “No,” said Poirot. “It was not Mrs. Jeremy. She assured me of that and I believe her. I have been stupid over that. I should have known who it was. Major Porter himself told me.”

  “He told you?”

  “Oh, indirectly, of course. He did not know that he had done so.”
>
  “Well, who was it?”

  Poirot put his head a little on one side.

  “Is it permitted, first, that I ask you two questions?”

  The Superintendent looked surprised.

  “Ask anything you like.”

  “Those sleeping powders in a box by Rosaleen Cloade’s bed. What were they?”

  The Superintendent looked more surprised.

  “Those? Oh, they were quite harmless. Bromide. Soothing to the nerves. She took one every night. We analysed them, of course. They were quite all right.”

  “Who prescribed them?”

  “Dr. Cloade.”

  “When did he prescribe them?”

  “Oh, some time ago.”

  “What poison was it that killed her?”

  “Well, we haven’t actually got the report yet, but I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. Morphia and a pretty hefty dose of it.”

  “Was any morphia found in her possession?”

  Spence looked curiously at the other man.

  “No. What are you getting at, M. Poirot?”

  “I will pass now to my second question,” said Poirot evasively. “David Hunter put through a call from London to Lynn Marchmont at 11:5 on that Tuesday night. You say you checked up on calls. That was the only outgoing call from the flat in Shepherd’s Court. Were there any incoming calls?”

  “One. At 10:15. Also from Warmsley Vale. It was put through from a public call box.”

  “I see.” Poirot was silent for a moment or two.

  “What’s the big idea, M. Poirot?”

  “That call was answered? The operator, I mean, got a response from the London number.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Spence slowly. “There must have been someone in the flat. It couldn’t be David Hunter—he was in the train on his way back. It looks, then, as if it must have been Rosaleen Cloade. And if so, Rosaleen Cloade couldn’t have been at the Stag a few minutes earlier. What you’re getting at, M. Poirot, is that the woman in the orange scarf, wasn’t Rosaleen Cloade. And if so, it wasn’t Rosaleen Cloade who killed Arden. But then why did she commit suicide?”

  “The answer to that,” said Poirot, “is very simple. She did not commit suicide. Rosaleen Cloade was killed!”

  “What?”

  “She was deliberately and cold-bloodedly murdered.”

  “But who killed Arden? We’ve eliminated David—”

  “It was not David.”

  “And now you eliminate Rosaleen? But dash it all, those two were the only ones with a shadow of a motive!”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “Motive. It was that which has led us astray. If A has a motive for killing C and B has a motive for killing D—well, it does not seem to make sense, does it, that A should kill D and B should kill C?”

  Spence groaned. “Go easy, M. Poirot, go easy. I don’t even begin to understand what you are talking about with your A’s and B’s and C’s.”

  “It is complicated,” said Poirot, “it is very complicated. Because, you see, you have here two different kinds of crime—and consequently you have, you must have, two different murderers. Enter First Murderer, and enter Second Murderer.”

  “Don’t quote Shakespeare,” groaned Spence. “This isn’t Elizabethan Drama.”

  “But yes, it is very Shakespearean—there are here all the emotions—the human emotions—in which Shakespeare would have revelled—the jealousies, the hates—the swift passionate actions. And here, too, is successful opportunism. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its flood leads on to fortune…’ Someone acted on that, Superintendent. To seize opportunity and turn it to one’s own ends—that has been triumphantly accomplished—under your nose so to speak!”

  Spence rubbed his nose irritably.

  “Talk sense, M. Poirot,” he pleaded. “If it’s possible, just say what you mean.”

  “I will be very clear—clear as crystal. We have here, have we not, three deaths? You agree to that, do you not? Three people are dead.”

  Spence looked at him curiously.

  “I should certainly say so…You’re not going to make me believe that one of the three is still alive?”

  “No, no,” said Poirot. “They are dead. But how did they die? How, that is to say, would you classify their deaths?”

  “Well, as to that, M. Poirot, you know my views. One murder, and two suicides. But according to you the last suicide isn’t a suicide. It’s another murder.”

  “According to me,” said Poirot, “there has been one suicide, one accident and one murder.”

  “Accident? Do you mean Mrs. Cloade poisoned herself by accident? Or do you mean Major Porter’s shooting himself was an accident?”

  “No,” said Poirot. “The accident was the death of Charles Trenton—otherwise Enoch Arden.”

  “Accident!” The Superintendent exploded. “Accident? You say that a particularly brutal murder, where a man’s head is stove in by repeated blows, is an accident!”

  Quite unmoved by the Superintendent’s vigour, Poirot replied calmly:

  “When I say an accident, I mean that there was no intent to kill.”

  “No intent to kill—when a man’s head is battered in! Do you mean that he was attacked by a lunatic?”

  “I think that that is very near the truth—though not quite in the sense you mean it.”

  “Mrs. Gordon was the only batty woman in this case. I’ve seen her looking very queer sometimes. Of course, Mrs. Lionel Cloade is a bit bats in the belfry—but she’d never be violent. Mrs. Jeremy has got her head screwed on the right way if any one has. By the way, you say that it was not Mrs. Jeremy who bribed Porter?”

  “No. I know who it was. As I say, it was Porter himself who gave it away. One simple little remark—ah, I could kick myself, as you say, all round the town, for not noticing it at the time.”

  “And then your anonymous A B C lunatic murdered Rosaleen Cloade?” Spence’s voice was more and more sceptical.

  Poirot shook his head vigorously.

  “By no means. This is where the First Murderer exits and Second Murderer enters. Quite a different type of crime this, no heat, and no passion. Cold deliberate murder and I intend Superintendent Spence, to see that her murderer is hanged for that murder.”

  He got up as he spoke and moved towards the door.

  “Hi!” cried Spence. “You’ve got to give me a few names. You can’t leave it like this.”

  “In a very little while—yes, I will tell you. But there is something for which I wait—to be exact, a letter from across the sea.”

  “Don’t talk like a ruddy fortune-teller! Hi—Poirot.”

  But Poirot had slipped away.

  He went straight across the square and rang the bell of Dr. Cloade’s house. Mrs. Cloade came to the door and gave her usual gasp at seeing Poirot. He wasted no time.

  “Madame, I must speak to you.”

  “Oh, of course—do come in—I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to dust, but—”

  “I want to ask you something. How long has your husband been a morphia addict?”

  Aunt Kathie immediately burst into tears.

  “Oh dear, oh dear—I did so hope nobody would ever know—it began in the war. He was so dreadfully overtired and had such dreadful neuralgia. And since then he’s been trying to lessen the dose—he has indeed. But that’s what makes him so dreadfully irritable sometimes—”

  “That is one of the reasons why he has needed money, is it not?”

  “I suppose so. Oh, dear, M. Poirot. He has promised to go for a cure—”

  “Calm yourself, Madame, and answer me one more little question. On the night when you telephoned to Lynn Marchmont, you went out to the call box outside the post office, did you not? Did you meet anybody in the square that night?”

  “Oh, no, M. Poirot, not a soul.”

  “But I understood you had to borrow twopence because you had only halfpennies.”

  “Oh, yes. I had to ask a woma
n who came out of the box. She gave me two pennies for one halfpenny—”

  “What did she look like, this woman?”

  “Well, rather actressy, if you know what I mean. An orange scarf round her head. The funny thing was that I’m almost sure I’d met her somewhere. Her face seemed very familiar. She must, I think, have been someone who had passed over. And yet, you know, I couldn’t remember where and how I had known her.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Cloade,” said Hercule Poirot.

  Fifteen

  Lynn came out of the house and glanced up at the sky.

  The sun was getting low, there was no red in the sky but a rather unnatural glow of light. A still evening with a breathless feel about it. There would be, she thought, a storm later.

  Well, the time had come now. She couldn’t put things off any longer. She must go to Long Willows and tell Rowley. She owed him that at least—to tell him herself. Not to choose the easy way of the written word.

  Her mind was made up—quite made up—she told herself and yet she felt a curious reluctance. She looked round her and thought: “It’s goodbye to all this—to my own world—my own way of life.”

  For she had no illusions. Life with David was a gamble—an adventure that was as likely to turn out badly as to turn out well. He himself had warned her….

  The night of the murder, over the telephone.

  And now, a few hours ago, he had said:

  “I meant to go out of your life. I was a fool—to think I could leave you behind me. We’ll go to London and be married by special licence—oh, yes, I’m not going to give you the chance of shilly-shallying about. You’ve got roots here, roots that hold you down. I’ve got to pull you up by the roots.” He had added: “We’ll break it to Rowley when you’re actually Mrs. David Hunter. Poor devil, it’s the best way to break it to him.”