帷幕4

Chapter 3

For a moment or two I stared at Poirot in dismay, then I reacted.

‘No, it won’t,’ I said. ‘You’ll prevent that.’

Poirot threw me an affectionate glance.

‘My loyal friend. How much I appreciate your faith in me. Tout de même,I am not sure if it is justified in this case.’

‘Nonsense. Of course you can stop it.’

Poirot’s voice was grave as he said: ‘Reflect a minute, Hastings. One cancatch a murderer, yes. But how does one proceed to stop a murder?’

‘Well, you – you – well, I mean – if you know beforehand –’

I paused rather feebly – for suddenly I saw the difficulties.

Poirot said: ‘You see? It is not so simple. There are, in fact, only threemethods. The first is to warn the victim. To put the victim on his or herguard. That does not always succeed, for it is unbelievably difficult to con-vince some people that they are in grave danger – possibly from someonenear and dear to them. They are indignant and refuse to believe. Thesecond course is to warn the murderer. To say, in language that is onlyslightly veiled, “I know your intentions. If so-and-so dies, my friend, you willmost surely hang.” That succeeds more often than the first method, buteven there it is likely to fail. For a murderer, my friend, is more conceitedthan any creature on this earth. A murderer is always more clever thananyone else – no one will ever suspect him or her – the police will be ut-terly baffled, etc. Therefore he (or she) goes ahead just the same, and allyou can have is the satisfaction of hanging them afterwards.’ He pausedand said thoughtfully: ‘Twice in my life I have warned a murderer – oncein Egypt, once elsewhere. In each case, the criminal was determined to kill… It may be so here.’

‘You said there was a third method,’ I reminded him.

‘Ah yes. For that one needs the utmost ingenuity. You have to guess ex-actly how and when the blow is timed to fall and you have to be ready tostep in at the exact psychological moment. You have to catch the mur-derer, if not quite red-handed, then guilty of the intention beyond any pos-sible doubt.

‘And that, my friend,’ went on Poirot, ‘is, I can assure you, a matter ofgreat difficulty and delicacy, and I would not for a moment guarantee itssuccess! I may be conceited, but I am not so conceited as that.’

‘Which method do you propose to try here?’

‘Possibly all three. The first is the most difficult.’

‘Why? I should have thought it the easiest.’

‘Yes, if you know the intended victim. But do you not realize, Hastings,that here I do not know the victim?’

‘What?’

I gave vent to the exclamation without reflecting. Then the difficulties ofthe position began to draw on me. There was, there must be, some linkconnecting this series of crimes, but we did not know what that link was.

The motive, the vitally important motive, was missing. And without know-ing that, we could not tell who was threatened.

Poirot nodded as he saw by my face that I was realizing the difficultiesof the situation.

‘You see, my friend, it is not so easy.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I see that. You have so far been able to find no connectionbetween these varying cases?’

Poirot shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

I reflected again. In the ABC crimes, we had to deal with what purportedto be an alphabetical series, though in actuality it had turned out to besomething very different.

I asked: ‘There is, you are quite sure, no far-fetched financial motive –nothing, for instance, like you found in the case of Evelyn Carlisle?’

‘No. You may be quite sure, my dear Hastings, that financial gain is thefirst thing for which I look.’

That was true enough. Poirot had always been completely cynical aboutmoney.

I thought again. A vendetta of some kind? That was more in accordancewith the facts. But even there, there seemed a lack of any connecting link.

I recalled a story I had read of a series of purposeless murders – the cluebeing that the victims had happened to serve as members of a jury, andthe crimes had been committed by a man whom they had condemned. Itstruck me that something of that kind would meet this case. I am ashamedto say that I kept the idea to myself. It would have been such a feather inmy cap if I could go to Poirot with the solution.

Instead I asked: ‘And now tell me, who is X?’

To my intense annoyance Poirot shook his head very decidedly. ‘That,my friend, I do not tell.’

‘Nonsense. Why not?’

Poirot’s eyes twinkled. ‘Because, mon cher, you are still the same oldHastings. You have still the speaking countenance. I do not wish, you see,that you should sit staring at X with your mouth hanging open, your facesaying plainly: “This – this that I am looking at – is a murderer.”’

‘You might give me credit for a little dissimulation at need.’

‘When you try to dissimulate, it is worse. No, no, mon ami, we must bevery incognito, you and I. Then, when we pounce, we pounce.’

‘You obstinate old devil,’ I said. ‘I’ve a good mind to –’

I broke off as there was a tap on the door. Poirot called, ‘Come in,’ andmy daughter Judith entered.

I should like to describe Judith, but I’ve always been a poor hand at de-scriptions.

Judith is tall, she holds her head high, she has level dark brows, and avery lovely line of cheek and jaw, severe in its austerity. She is grave andslightly scornful, and to my mind there has always hung about her a sug-gestion of tragedy.

Judith didn’t come and kiss me – she is not that kind. She just smiled atme and said, ‘Hullo, Father.’

Her smile was shy and a little embarrassed, but it made me feel that inspite of her undemonstrativeness she was pleased to see me.

‘Well,’ I said, feeling foolish as I so often do with the younger generation,‘I’ve got here.’

‘Very clever of you, darling,’ said Judith.

‘I describe to him,’ said Poirot, ‘the cooking.’

‘Is it very bad?’ asked Judith.

‘You should not have to ask that, my child. Is it that you think of nothingbut the test tubes and the microscopes? Your middle finger it is stainedwith methylene blue. It is not a good thing for your husband if you take nointerest in his stomach.’

‘I dare say I shan’t have a husband.’

‘Certainly you will have a husband. What did the bon Dieu create youfor?’

‘Many things, I hope,’ said Judith.

‘Le mariage first of all.’

‘Very well,’ said Judith. ‘You will find me a nice husband and I will lookafter his stomach very carefully.’

‘She laughs at me,’ said Poirot. ‘Some day she will know how wise oldmen are.’

There was another tap on the door and Dr Franklin entered. He was atall, angular young man of thirty-five, with a decided jaw, reddish hair,and bright blue eyes. He was the most ungainly man I had ever known,and was always knocking into things in an absentminded way.

He cannoned into the screen round Poirot’s chair, and half turning hishead murmured ‘I beg your pardon’ to it automatically.

I wanted to laugh, but Judith, I noted, remained quite grave. I supposeshe was quite used to that sort of thing.

‘You remember my father,’ said Judith.

Dr Franklin started, shied nervously, screwed up his eyes and peered atme, then stuck out a hand, saying awkwardly: ‘Of course, of course, howare you? I heard you were coming down.’ He turned to Judith. ‘I say, doyou think we need change? If not we might go on a bit after dinner. If wegot a few more of those slides prepared –’

‘No,’ said Judith. ‘I want to talk to my father.’

‘Oh, yes. Oh, of course.’ Suddenly he smiled, an apologetic, boyish smile.

‘I am sorry – I get so awfully wrapped up in a thing. It’s quite unpardon-able – makes me so selfish. Do forgive me.’

The clock struck and Franklin glanced at it hurriedly.

‘Good Lord, is it as late as that? I shall get into trouble. Promised Bar-bara I’d read to her before dinner.’

He grinned at us both and hurried out, colliding with the door post as hewent.

‘How is Mrs Franklin?’ I asked.

‘The same and rather more so,’ said Judith.

‘It’s very sad her being such an invalid,’ I said.

‘It’s maddening for a doctor,’ said Judith. ‘Doctors like healthy people.’

‘How hard you young people are!’ I exclaimed.

Judith said coldly: ‘I was just stating a fact.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Poirot, ‘the good doctor hurries to read to her.’

‘Very stupid,’ said Judith. ‘That nurse of hers can read to her perfectlywell if she wants to be read to. Personally I should loathe anyone readingaloud to me.’

‘Well, well, tastes differ,’ I said.

‘She’s a very stupid woman,’ said Judith.

‘Now there, mon enfant,’ said Poirot, ‘I do not agree with you.’

‘She never reads anything but the cheapest kind of novel. She takes nointerest in his work. She doesn’t keep abreast of current thought. She justtalks about her health to everyone who will listen.’

‘I still maintain, said Poirot, ‘that she uses her grey cells in ways thatyou, my child, know nothing about.’

‘She’s a very feminine sort of woman,’ said Judith. ‘She coos and purrs. Iexpect you like ’em like that, Uncle Hercule.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘He likes them large and flamboyant and Russian forchoice.’

‘So that is how you give me away, Hastings? Your father, Judith, has al-ways had a penchant for auburn hair. It has landed him in trouble many atime.’

Judith smiled at us both indulgently. She said: ‘What a funny couple youare.’

She turned away and I rose.

‘I must get unpacked, and I might have a bath before dinner.’

Poirot pressed a little bell within reach of his hand and a minute or twolater his valet attendant entered. I was surprised to find that the man wasa stranger.

‘Why! Where’s George?’

Poirot’s valet George had been with him for many years.

‘George has returned to his family. His father is ill. I hope he will comeback to me some time. In the meantime –’ he smiled at the new valet –‘Curtiss looks after me.’

Curtiss smiled back respectfully. He was a big man with a bovine, ratherstupid, face.

As I went out of the door I noted that Poirot was carefully locking up thedespatch case with the papers inside it.

My mind in a whirl I crossed the passage to my own room.

 

分享到：