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Chapter 18

II don’t want to write about it at all.

I want, you see, to think about it as little as possible. Hercule Poirot wasdead – and with him died a good part of Arthur Hastings.

I will give you the bare facts without embroidery. It is all I can bear todo.

He died, they said, of natural causes. That is to say he died of a heart at-tack. It was the way, so Franklin said, that he had expected him to go.

Doubtless the shock of Norton’s death brought one on. By some oversight,it seems, the amyl nitrate ampoules were not by his bed.

Was it an oversight? Did someone deliberately remove them? No, itmust have been something more than that. X could not count on Poirot’shaving a heart attack.

For, you see, I refuse to believe that Poirot’s death was natural. He waskilled, as Norton was killed, as Barbara Franklin was killed. And I don’tknow why they were killed – and I don’t know who killed them!

There was an inquest on Norton and a verdict of suicide. The only pointof doubt was raised by the surgeon who said it was unusual for a man toshoot himself in the exact centre of his forehead. But that was the onlyshadow of doubt. The whole thing was so plain. The door locked on the in-side, the key in the dead man’s pocket, the windows closely shuttered, thepistol in his hand. Norton had complained of headaches, it seemed, andsome of his investments had been doing badly lately. Hardly reasons forsuicide, but they had to put forward something.

The pistol was apparently his own. It had been seen lying on his dress-ing-table twice by the housemaid during his stay at Styles. So that wasthat. Another crime beautifully stage-managed and as usual with no al-ternative solution.

In the duel between Poirot and X, X had won.

It was now up to me.

I went to Poirot’s room and took away the despatch box.

I knew that he had made me his executor, so I had a perfect right to doso. The key was round his neck.

In my own room I opened the box.

And at once I had a shock. The dossiers of X’s cases were gone. I had seenthem there only a day or two previously when Poirot unlocked it. Thatwas proof, if I had been needing it, that X had been at work. Either Poirothad destroyed those papers himself (most unlikely) or else X had done so.

X. X. That damned fiend X.

But the case was not empty. I remembered Poirot’s promise that Ishould find other indications which X would not know about.

Were these the indications?

There was a copy of one of Shakespeare’s plays, Othello, in a small cheapedition. The other book was the play John Fergueson by St John Ervine.

There was a marker in it at the third act.

I stared at the two books blankly.

Here were the clues that Poirot had left for me – and they meant nothingto me at all!

What could they mean?

The only thing I could think of was a code of some kind. A word codebased on the plays.

But if so, how was I to get at it?

There were no words, no letters, underlined anywhere. I tried gentleheat with no result.

I read the third act of John Fergueson carefully through. A most admir-able and thrilling scene where the ‘wanting’ Clutie John sits and talks, andwhich ends with the younger Fergueson going out to seek for the manwho has wronged his sister. Masterly character drawing – but I couldhardly think that Poirot had left them to improve my taste in literature!

And then, as I turned the leaves of the book over, a slip of paper fell out.

It bore a phrase in Poirot’s handwriting.

‘Talk to my valet George.’

Well, here was something. Possibly the key to the code – if code it was –had been left with George. I must get hold of his address and go to seehim.

But first there was the sad business of burying my dear friend.

Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this coun-try. He was to lie here at the last.

Judith was very kind to me in these days.

She spent a lot of time with me and helped to make all the arrange-ments. She was gentle and sympathetic. Elizabeth Cole and Boyd Carring-ton were very kind too.

Elizabeth Cole was less affected by Norton’s death than I should havethought. If she felt any deep grief she kept it to herself.

And so it was all ended …

 

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