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Chapter 15

IMy memory is a little vague about the events of the days immediately fol-lowing the inquest on Mrs Franklin. There was, of course, the funeral,which I may say was attended by a large number of the curious of StylesSt Mary. It was on that occasion that I was addressed by an old womanwith rheumy eyes and an unpleasant ghoulish manner.

She accosted me just as we were filing out of the cemetery.

‘Remember you, sir, don’t I?’

‘Well – er – possibly …’

She went on, hardly listening to what I said.

‘Twenty years ago and over. When the old lady died up at the Court.

That was the first murder we had at Styles. Won’t be the last, I say. OldMrs Inglethorp, her husband done her in sowe all said. Sure of it we was.’

She leered at me cunningly. ‘Maybe it’s the husband this time.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said sharply. ‘Didn’t you hear the verdict was sui-cide?’

‘That’s what Coroner said. But he might be wrong, don’t you think?’ Shenudged me. ‘Doctors, they know how to do away with their wives. And shewasn’t much good to him seemingly.’

I turned on her angrily and she slunk away murmuring she hadn’tmeant anything, only it seemed odd like, didn’t it, happening a secondtime. ‘And it’s queer you should be there both times, sir, isn’t it now?’

For one fantastic moment I wondered if she suspected me of havingreally committed both crimes. It was most disturbing. It certainly mademe realize what a queer, haunting thing local suspicion is.

And it was not, after all, so far wrong. For somebody had killed MrsFranklin.

As I say I remember very little of those days. Poirot’s health, for onething, was giving me grave concern. Curtiss came to me with his woodenface slightly disturbed and reported that Poirot had had a somewhatalarming heart attack.

‘Seems to me, sir, he ought to see a doctor.’

I went post-haste to Poirot who negatived the suggestion most vigor-ously. It was, I thought, a little unlike him. He had always been, in myopinion, extremely fussy about his health. Distrusting draughts, wrappingup his neck in silk and wool, showing a horror of getting his feet damp,and taking his temperature and retiring to bed at the least suspicion of achill – ‘For otherwise it may be for me a fluxion de poitrine!’ In most littleailments, he had, I knew, always consulted a doctor immediately.

Now, when he was really ill, the position seemed reversed.

Yet perhaps that was the real reason. Those other ailments had been tri-fling. Now, when he was indeed a sick man, he feared, perhaps, admittingthe reality of his illness. He made light of it because he was afraid.

He answered my protests with energy and bitterness.

‘Ah, but I have consulted doctors! Not one but many. I have been toBlank and to Dash [he named two specialists] and they do what? – theysend me to Egypt where immediately I am rendered much worse. I havebeen, too, to R… .’

R. was, I knew, a heart specialist. I asked quickly: ‘What did he say?’

Poirot gave me a sudden sidelong glance – and my heart gave an agon-ized leap.

He said quietly: ‘He has done for me all that can be done. I have mytreatments, my remedies, all close at hand. Beyond that – there is nothing.

So you see, Hastings, to call in more doctors would be of no avail. The ma-chine, mon ami, wears out. One cannot, alas, install the new engine andcontinue to run as before like a motor-car.’

‘But look here, Poirot, surely there’s something.

Curtiss –’

Poirot said sharply: ‘Curtiss?’

‘Yes, he came to me. He was worried – You had an attack –’

Poirot nodded gently. ‘Yes, yes. They are sometimes, these attacks, pain-ful to witness. Curtiss, I think, is not used to these attacks of the heart.’

‘Won’t you really see a doctor?’

‘It is of no avail, my friend.’

He spoke very gently but with finality. And again my heart felt a painfulconstriction. Poirot smiled at me. He said: ‘This, Hastings, will be my lastcase. It will be, too, my most interesting case – and my most interestingcriminal. For in X we have a technique superb, magnificent, that arousesadmiration in spite of oneself. So far, mon cher, this X has operated with somuch ability that he has defeated me, Hercule Poirot! He has developedthe attack to which I can find no answer.’

‘If you had your health –’ I began soothingly.

But apparently that was not the right thing to say. Hercule Poirot imme-diately flew into a rage.

‘Ah! Have I got to tell you thirty-six times, and then again thirty-six, thatthere is no need of physical effort? One needs only – to think.’

‘Well – of course – yes, you can do that all right.’

‘All right? I can do it superlatively. My limbs they are paralysed, myheart, it plays me the tricks, but my brain, Hastings, my brain it functionswithout impairment of any kind. It is still of the first excellence my brain.’

‘That,’ I said soothingly, ‘is splendid.’

But as I went slowly downstairs, I thought to myself that Poirot’s brainwas not getting on with things as fast as it might do. First the narrow es-cape of Mrs Luttrell and now the death of Mrs Franklin. And what werewe doing about it? Practically nothing.

 

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