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Eleven
Superintendent Spence, the following morning, used almost Frances’ words:
“So we’re back where we started,” he said with a sigh. “We’ve got to find who this
fellow Enoch Arden really was.”
“I can tell you that, Superintendent,” said Poirot. “His name was Charles Trenton.”
“Charles Trenton!” The Superintendent whistled. “H’m! One of the Trentons—I suppose
she put him up to it—Mrs. Jeremy, I mean…However, we shan’t be able to prove her connection
with it. Charles Trenton? I seem to remember—”
Poirot nodded.
“Yes. He has a record.”
“Thought so. Swindling hotels if I remember rightly. Used to arrive at the Ritz, go out and buy
a Rolls, subject to a morning’s trial, go round in the Rolls to all the most expensive shops and
buy stuff—and I can tell you a man who’s got his Rolls outside waiting to take his purchases
back to the Ritz doesn’t get his cheques queried! Besides, he had the manner and the breeding.
He’d stay a week or so and then, just when suspicions began to arise, he’d quietly disappear,
selling the various items cheap to the pals he’d picked up. Charles Trenton. H’m—” He
looked at Poirot. “You find out things, don’t you?”
“How does your case progress against David Hunter?”
“We shall have to let him go. There was a woman there that night with Arden. It doesn’t
only depend on that old tartar’s word. Jimmy Pierce was going home, got pushed out of the Load
of Hay—he gets quarrelsome after a glass or two. He saw a woman come out of the Stag and go
into the telephone box outside the post office—that was just after ten. Said it wasn’t any one he
knew, thought it was someone staying at the Stag. ‘A tart from London,’ is what he called
her.”
“He was not very near her?”
“No, right across the street. Who the devil was she, M. Poirot?”
“Did he say how she was dressed?”
“Tweed coat, he said, orange scarf round her head. Trousers and a lot of makeup. Fits with the
old lady’s description.”
“Yes, it fits.” Poirot was frowning.
Spence asked:
“Well, who was she, where did she come from, where did she go? You know our train service.
The 9:20’s the last train up to London—and the 10:03 the other way. Did that woman hang about
all night and go up on the 6:18 in the morning? Had she got a car? Did she hitch-hike? We’ve
sent out all over the place—but no results.”
“What about the 6:18?”
“It’s always crowded—mostly men, though. I think they’d have noticed a woman—that
type of woman, that’s to say. I suppose she might have come and left by car, but a car’s noticed
in Warmsley Vale nowadays. We’re off the main road, you see.”
“No cars noticed out that night?”
“Only Dr. Cloade’s. He was out on a case—over Middlingham way. You’d think someone
would have noticed a strange woman in a car.”
“It need not have been a stranger,” Poirot said slowly. “A man slightly drunk and a hundred
yards away might not recognize a local person whom he did not know very well. Someone,
perhaps, dressed in a different way from their usual way.”
Spence looked at him questioningly.
“Would this young Pierce recognize, for instance, Lynn Marchmont? She has been away for
some years.”
“Lynn Marchmont was at the White House with her mother at that time,” said Spence.
“Are you sure?”
“Mrs. Lionel Cloade—that’s the scatty one, the doctor’s wife—says she telephoned to her
there at ten minutes past ten. Rosaleen Cloade was in London. Mrs. Jeremy—well, I’ve never
seen her in slacks and she doesn’t use much makeup. Anyway, she isn’t young.”
“Oh, mon cher. Poirot leaned forward. “On a dim night, with feeble street lights, can one tell
youth or age under a mask of makeup?”
“Look here, Poirot,” said Spence, “what are you getting at?”
Poirot leaned back and half-closed his eyes.
“Slacks, a tweed coat, an orange scarf enveloping the head, a great deal of makeup, a dropped
lipstick. It is suggestive.”
“Think you’re the oracle at Delphi,” growled the Superintendent. “Not that I know what
the oracle at Delphi was—sort of thing young Graves gives himself airs about knowing—doesn’t
help his police work any. Any more cryptic pronnouncements, M. Poirot?”
“I told you,” said Poirot, “that this case was the wrong shape. As an instance I said to you
that the dead man was all wrong. So he was, as Underhay. Underhay was clearly an eccentric,
chivalrous individual, old-fashioned and reactionary. The man at the Stag was a blackmailer; he
was neither chivalrous, old- fashioned, nor reactionary, nor was he particularly eccentric —
therefore he was not Underhay. He could not be Underhay, for people do not change. The
interesting thing was that Porter said he was Underhay.”
“Leading you to Mrs. Jeremy?”
“The likeness led me to Mrs. Jeremy. A very distinctive cast of countenance, the Trenton
profile. To permit myself a little play on words, as Charles Trenton the dead man is the right
shape. But there are still questions to which we require answers. Why did David Hunter permit
himself to be blackmailed so readily? Is he the kind of man who lets himself be blackmailed? One
would say very decidedly, no. So he too acts out of character. Then there is Rosaleen Cloade. Her
whole behaviour is incomprehensible—but there is one thing I should like to know very much.
Why is she afraid? Why does she think that something will happen to her now that her brother is
no longer there to protect her? Someone—or something has given her that fear. And it is not that
she fears losing her fortune—no, it is more than that. It is for her life that she is afraid….”
“Good Lord, M. Poirot, you don’t think—”
“Let us remember, Spence, that as you said just now, we are back where we started. That is to
say, the Cloade family are back where they started. Robert Underhay died in Africa. And Rosaleen
Cloade’s life stands between them and the enjoyment of Gordon Cloade’s money—”
“Do you honestly think that one of them would do that?”
“I think this. Rosaleen Cloade is twenty- six, and though mentally somewhat unstable,
physically she is strong and healthy. She may live to be seventy, she may live longer still. Forty-
four years, let us say. Don’t you think, Superintendent, that forty-four years may be too long for
someone to contemplate?”
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