‘No,’ Diana screamed. ‘No—no!’
He looked at her, then he smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it was not like that. It might have been so—it is plausible—it is possible—but it cannot have been like that for two reasons. The first reason is that you picked Michaelmas daisies at seven o’clock, the second arises from something that mademoiselle here told me.’ He turned toward Joan, who stared at him in bewilderment. He nodded encouragement.
‘But yes, mademoiselle. You told me that you hurried downstairs because you thought it was the second gong sounding, having already heard the first.’
He shot a rapid glance round the room.
‘You do not see what that means?’ he cried. ‘You do not see. Look! Look!’ He sprang forward to the chair where the victim had sat. ‘Did you notice how the body was? Not sitting square to the desk—no, sitting sideways to the desk, facing the window. Is that a natural way to commit suicide? Jamais, jamais! You write your apologia “sorry” on a piece of paper—you open the drawer, you take out the pistol, you hold it to your head and you fire. That is the way of suicide. But now consider murder! The victim sits at his desk, the murderer stands beside him—talking. And talking still—fires. Where does the bullet go then?’ He paused. ‘Straight through the head, through the door if it is open, and so—hits the gong.
‘Ah! you begin to see? That was the first gong—heard only by mademoiselle, since her room is above.
‘What does our murderer do next? Shuts the door, locks it, puts the key in the dead man’s pocket, then turns the body sideways in the chair, presses the dead man’s fingers on the pistol and then drops it by his side, cracks the mirror on the wall as a final spectacular touch—in short, “arranges” his suicide. Then out through the window, the bolt is shaken home, the murderer steps not on the grass, where footprints must show, but on the flower bed, where they can be smoothed out behind him, leaving no trace. Then back into the house, and at twelve minutes past eight, when he is alone in the drawing room, he fires a service revolver out of the drawing room window and dashes out into the hall. Is that how you did it, Mr Geoffrey Keene?’
Fascinated, the secretary stared at the accusing figure drawing nearer to him. Then, with a gurgling cry, he fell to the ground.
‘I think I am answered,’ said Poirot. ‘Captain Marshall, will you ring up the police?’ He bent over the prostrate form. ‘I fancy he will be still unconscious when they come.’
‘Geoffrey Keene,’ murmured Diana. ‘But what motive had he?’
‘I fancy that as secretary he had certain opportunities—accounts—cheques. Something awakened Mr Lytcham Roche’s suspicions. He sent for me.’
‘Why for you? Why not for the police?’
‘I think, mademoiselle, you can answer that question. Monsieur suspected that there was something between you and that young man. To divert his mind from Captain Marshall, you had flirted shamelessly with Mr Keene. But yes, you need not deny! Mr Keene gets wind of my coming and acts promptly. The essence of his scheme is that the crime must seem to take place at 8:12, when he has an alibi. His one danger is the bullet, which must be lying somewhere near the gong and which he has not had time to retrieve. When we are all on our way to the study he picks that up. At such a tense moment he thinks no one will notice. But me, I notice everything! I question him. He reflects a little minute and then he plays the comedy! He insinuates that what he picked up was the silk rosebud, he plays the part of the young man in love shielding the lady he loves. Oh, it was very clever, and if you had not picked Michaelmas daisies—’
‘I don’t understand what they have to do with it.’
‘You do not? Listen—there were only four footprints in the bed, but when you were picking the flowers you must have made many more than that. So in between your picking the flowers and your coming to get the rosebud someone must have smoothed over the bed. Not a gardener—no gardener works after seven. Then it must be someone guilty—it must be the murderer—the murder was committed before the shot was heard.’
‘But why did nobody hear the real shot?’ asked Harry.
‘A silencer. They will find that and the revolver thrown into the shrubbery.’
‘What a risk!’
‘Why a risk? Everyone was upstairs dressing for dinner. It was a very good moment. The bullet was the only contretemps, and even that, as he thought, passed off well.’
Poirot picked it up. ‘He threw it under the mirror when I was examining the window with Mr Dalehouse.’
‘Oh!’ Diana wheeled on Marshall. ‘Marry me, John, and take me away.’
Barling coughed. ‘My dear Diana, under the terms of my friend’s will—’
‘I don’t care,’ the girl cried. ‘We can draw pictures on pavements.’
‘There’s no need to do that,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll go halves, Di. I’m not going to bag things because Uncle had a bee in his bonnet.’
Suddenly there was a cry. Mrs Lytcham Roche had sprung to her feet.
‘M. Poirot—the mirror—he—he must have deliberately smashed it.’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘Oh!’ She stared at him. ‘But it is unlucky to break a mirror.’
‘It has proved very unlucky for Mr Geoffrey Keene,’ said Poirot cheerfully.
Yellow Iris
Hercule Poirot stretched out his feet towards the electric radiator set in the wall. Its neat arrangement of red hot bars pleased his orderly mind.
‘A coal fire,’ he mused to himself, ‘was always shapeless and haphazard! Never did it achieve the symmetry.’
The telephone bell rang. Poirot rose, glancing at his watch as he did so. The time was close on half past eleven. He wondered who was ringing him up at this hour. It might, of course, be a wrong number.
‘And it might,’ he murmured to himself with a whimsical smile, ‘be a millionaire newspaper proprietor, found dead in the library of his country house, with a spotted orchid clasped in his left hand and a page torn from a cookbook pinned to his breast.’
Smiling at the pleasing conceit, he lifted the receiver.
Immediately a voice spoke—a soft husky woman’s voice with a kind of desperate urgency about it.
‘Is that M. Hercule Poirot? Is that M. Hercule Poirot?’
‘Hercule Poirot speaks.’
‘M. Poirot—can you come at once—at once—I’m in danger—in great danger—I know it …’
Poirot said sharply:
‘Who are you? Where are you speaking from?’
The voice came more faintly but with an even greater urgency.
‘At once … it’s life or death … the Jardin des Cygnes … at once … table with yellow irises …’
There was a pause—a queer kind of gasp—the line went dead.
Hercule Poirot hung up. His face was puzzled. He murmured between his teeth:
‘There is something here very curious.’
In the doorway of the Jardin des Cygnes, fat Luigi hurried forward.
‘Buona sera, M. Poirot. You desire a table—yes?’
‘No, no, my good Luigi. I seek here for some friends. I will look round—perhaps they are not here yet. Ah, let me see, that table there in the corner with the yellow irises—a little question by the way, if it is not indiscreet. On all the other tables there are tulips—pink tulips—why on that one table do you have yellow irises?’
Luigi shrugged his expressive shoulders.
‘A command, Monsieur! A special order! Without doubt, the favourite flowers of one of the ladies. That table it is the table of Mr Barton Russell—an American—immensely rich.’
‘Aha, one must study the whims of the ladies, must one not, Luigi?’
‘Monsieur has said it,’ said Luigi.
‘I see at that table an acquaintance of mine. I must go and speak to him.’
Poirot skirted his way delicately round the dancing floor on which couples were revolving. The table in question was set for six, but it had at the moment only one oc
cupant, a young man who was thoughtfully, and it seemed pessimistically, drinking champagne.
He was not at all the person that Poirot had expected to see. It seemed impossible to associate the idea of danger or melodrama with any party of which Tony Chapell was a member.
Poirot paused delicately by the table.
‘Ah, it is, is it not, my friend Anthony Chapell?’
‘By all that’s wonderful—Poirot, the police hound!’ cried the young man. ‘Not Anthony, my dear fellow—Tony to friends!’
He drew out a chair.
‘Come, sit with me. Let us discourse of crime! Let us go further and drink to crime.’ He poured champagne into an empty glass. ‘But what are you doing in this haunt of song and dance and merriment, my dear Poirot? We have no bodies here, positively not a single body to offer you.’
Poirot sipped the champagne.
‘You seem very gay, mon cher?’
‘Gay? I am steeped in misery—wallowing in gloom. Tell me, you hear this tune they are playing. You recognize it?’
Poirot hazarded cautiously:
‘Something perhaps to do with your baby having left you?’
‘Not a bad guess,’ said the young man, ‘but wrong for once. “There’s nothing like love for making you miserable!” That’s what it’s called.’
‘Aha?’
‘My favourite tune,’ said Tony Chapell mournfully. ‘And my favourite restaurant and my favourite band—and my favourite girl’s here and she’s dancing it with somebody else.’
‘Hence the melancholy?’ said Poirot.
‘Exactly. Pauline and I, you see, have had what the vulgar call words. That is to say, she’s had ninety-five words to five of mine out of every hundred. My five are: “But, darling—I can explain.”—Then she starts in on her ninety-five again and we get no further. I think,’ added Tony sadly, ‘that I shall poison myself.’
‘Pauline?’ murmured Poirot.
‘Pauline Weatherby. Barton Russell’s young sister-in-law. Young, lovely, disgustingly rich. Tonight Barton Russell gives a party. You know him? Big Business, clean-shaven American—full of pep and personality. His wife was Pauline’s sister.’
‘And who else is there at this party?’
‘You’ll meet ’em in a minute when the music stops. There’s Lola Valdez—you know, the South American dancer in the new show at the Metropole, and there’s Stephen Carter. D’you know Carter—he’s in the diplomatic service. Very hush-hush. Known as silent Stephen. Sort of man who says, “I am not at liberty to state, etc, etc.” Hullo, here they come.’
Poirot rose. He was introduced to Barton Russell, to Stephen Carter, to Señora Lola Valdez, a dark and luscious creature, and to Pauline Weatherby, very young, very fair, with eyes like cornflowers.
Barton Russell said:
‘What, is this the great M. Hercule Poirot? I am indeed pleased to meet you, sir. Won’t you sit down and join us? That is, unless—’
Tony Chapell broke in.
‘He’s got an appointment with a body, I believe, or is it an absconding financier, or the Rajah of Borrioboolagah’s great ruby?’
‘Ah, my friend, do you think I am never off duty? Can I not, for once, seek only to amuse myself?’
‘Perhaps you’ve got an appointment with Carter here. The latest from the UN International situation now acute. The stolen plans must be found or war will be declared tomorrow!’
Pauline Weatherby said cuttingly:
‘Must you be so completely idiotic, Tony?’
‘Sorry, Pauline.’
Tony Chapell relapsed into crestfallen silence.
‘How severe you are, Mademoiselle.’
‘I hate people who play the fool all the time!’
‘I must be careful, I see. I must converse only of serious matters.’
‘Oh, no, M. Poirot. I didn’t mean you.’
She turned a smiling face to him and asked:
‘Are you really a kind of Sherlock Holmes and do wonderful deductions?’
‘Ah, the deductions—they are not so easy in real life. But shall I try? Now then, I deduce—that yellow irises are your favourite flowers?’
‘Quite wrong, M. Poirot. Lilies of the valley or roses.’
Poirot sighed.
‘A failure. I will try once more. This evening, not very long ago, you telephoned to someone.’
Pauline laughed and clapped her hands.
‘Quite right.’
‘It was not long after you arrived here?’
‘Right again. I telephoned the minute I got inside the doors.’
‘Ah—that is not so good. You telephoned before you came to this table?’
‘Yes.’
‘Decidedly very bad.’
‘Oh, no, I think it was very clever of you. How did you know I had telephoned?’
‘That, Mademoiselle, is the great detective’s secret. And the person to whom you telephoned—does the name begin with a P—or perhaps with an H?’
Pauline laughed.
‘Quite wrong. I telephoned to my maid to post some frightfully important letters that I’d never sent off. Her name’s Louise.’
‘I am confused—quite confused.’
The music began again.
‘What about it, Pauline?’ asked Tony.
‘I don’t think I want to dance again so soon, Tony.’
‘Isn’t that too bad?’ said Tony bitterly to the world at large.
Poirot murmured to the South American girl on his other side:
‘Señora, I would not dare to ask you to dance with me. I am too much of the antique.’
Lola Valdez said:
‘Ah, it ees nonsense that you talk there! You are steel young. Your hair, eet is still black!’
Poirot winced slightly.
‘Pauline, as your brother-in-law and your guardian,’ Barton Russell spoke heavily, ‘I’m just going to force you onto the floor! This one’s a waltz and a waltz is about the only dance I really can do.’
‘Why, of course, Barton, we’ll take the floor right away.’
‘Good girl, Pauline, that’s swell of you.’
They went off together. Tony tipped back his chair. Then he looked at Stephen Carter.
‘Talkative little fellow, aren’t you, Carter?’ he remarked. ‘Help to make a party go with your merry chatter, eh, what?’
‘Really, Chapell, I don’t know what you mean?’
‘Oh, you don’t—don’t you?’ Tony mimicked him.
‘My dear fellow.’
‘Drink, man, drink, if you won’t talk.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Then I will.’
Stephen Carter shrugged his shoulders.
‘Excuse me, must just speak to a fellow I know over there. Fellow I was with at Eton.’
Stephen Carter got up and walked to a table a few places away.
Tony said gloomily:
‘Somebody ought to drown old Etonians at birth.’
Hercule Poirot was still being gallant to the dark beauty beside him.
He murmured:
‘I wonder, may I ask, what are the favourite flowers of Mademoiselle?’
‘Ah, now, why ees eet you want to know?’
Lola was arch.
‘Mademoiselle, if I send flowers to a lady, I am particular that they should be flowers she likes.’
‘That ees very charming of you, M. Poirot. I weel tell you—I adore the big dark red carnations—or the dark red roses.’
‘Superb—yes, superb! You do not, then, like yellow irises?’
‘Yellow flowers—no—they do not accord with my temperament.’
‘How wise … Tell me, Mademoiselle, did you ring up a friend tonight, since you arrived here?’
‘I? Ring up a friend? No, what a curious question!’
‘Ah, but I, I am a very curious man.’
‘I’m sure you are.’ She rolled her dark eyes at him. ‘A vairy dangerous man.’
‘No, no, not dangerous; sa
y, a man who may be useful—in danger! You understand?’
Lola giggled. She showed white even teeth.
‘No, no,’ she laughed. ‘You are dangerous.’
Hercule Poirot sighed.
‘I see that you do not understand. All this is very strange.’
Tony came out of a fit of abstraction and said suddenly:
‘Lola, what about a spot of swoop and dip? Come along.’
‘I weel come—yes. Since M. Poirot ees not brave enough!’
Tony put an arm round her and remarked over his shoulder to Poirot as they glided off:
‘You can meditate on crime yet to come, old boy!’
Poirot said: ‘It is profound what you say there. Yes, it is profound …’
He sat meditatively for a minute or two, then he raised a finger. Luigi came promptly, his wide Italian face wreathed in smiles.
‘Mon vieux,’ said Poirot. ‘I need some information.’
‘Always at your service, Monsieur.’
‘I desire to know how many of these people at this table here have used the telephone tonight?’
‘I can tell you, Monsieur. The young lady, the one in white, she telephoned at once when she got here. Then she went to leave her cloak and while she was doing that the other lady came out of the cloakroom and went into the telephone box.’
‘So the Señora did telephone! Was that before she came into the restaurant?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘No, Monsieur.’
‘All this, Luigi, gives me furiously to think!’
‘Indeed, Monsieur.’
‘Yes. I think, Luigi, that tonight of all nights, I must have my wits about me! Something is going to happen, Luigi, and I am not at all sure what it is.’
‘Anything I can do. Monsieur—’
Poirot made a sign. Luigi slipped discreetly away. Stephen Carter was returning to the table.
‘We are still deserted, Mr Carter,’ said Poirot.
Problem at Pollensa Bay Page 5