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Fourteen
“He won’t admit it,” said Spence. “But I think he knows she did it.” Sitting in his room at
the police station he looked across the table at Poirot. “Funny how it was his alibi we were so
careful about checking. We never gave much thought to hers. And yet there’s no corroboration
at all for her being in the flat in London that night. We’ve only got his word that she was there.
We knew all along that only two people had a motive for doing away with Arden—David Hunter
and Rosaleen Cloade. I went bald-headed for him and passed her by. Fact is, she seemed such a
gentle thing—even a bit half-witted—but I dare say that partly explains it. Very likely David
Hunter hustled her up to London for just that reason. He may have realized that she’d lose her
head, and he may have known that she’s the kind who gets dangerous when they panic. Another
funny thing: I’ve often seen her going about in an orange linen frock—it was a favourite colour
of hers. Orange scarves—a striped orange frock, an orange beret. And yet, even when old Mrs.
Leadbetter described a young woman with her head tied up in an orange scarf I still didn’t
tumble to it that it must have been Mrs. Gordon herself. I still think the girl wasn’t quite all there
—wasn’t wholly responsible. The way you describe her as haunting the R.C. church here sounds
as though she was half off her head with remorse and a sense of guilt.”
“She had a sense of guilt, yes,” said Poirot.
Spence said thoughtfully, “She must have attacked Arden in a kind of frenzy. I don’t suppose
he had the least idea of what was coming to him. He wouldn’t be on his guard with a slip of a
girl like that.” He ruminated for a moment or two in silence, then he remarked, “There’s still
one thing I’m not quite clear about. Who got at Porter? You say it wasn’t Mrs. Jeremy? Bet
you it was all the same!”
“No,” said Poirot. “It was not Mrs. Jeremy. She assured me of that and I believe her. I have
been stupid over that. I should have known who it was. Major Porter himself told me.”
“He told you?”
“Oh, indirectly, of course. He did not know that he had done so.”
“Well, who was it?”
Poirot put his head a little on one side.
“Is it permitted, first, that I ask you two questions?”
The Superintendent looked surprised.
“Ask anything you like.”
“Those sleeping powders in a box by Rosaleen Cloade’s bed. What were they?”
The Superintendent looked more surprised.
“Those? Oh, they were quite harmless. Bromide. Soothing to the nerves. She took one every
night. We analysed them, of course. They were quite all right.”
“Who prescribed them?”
“Dr. Cloade.”
“When did he prescribe them?”
“Oh, some time ago.”
“What poison was it that killed her?”
“Well, we haven’t actually got the report yet, but I don’t think there’s much doubt about
it. Morphia and a pretty hefty dose of it.”
“Was any morphia found in her possession?”
Spence looked curiously at the other man.
“No. What are you getting at, M. Poirot?”
“I will pass now to my second question,” said Poirot evasively. “David Hunter put through
a call from London to Lynn Marchmont at 11:5 on that Tuesday night. You say you checked up on
calls. That was the only outgoing call from the flat in Shepherd’s Court. Were there any
incoming calls?”
“One. At 10:15. Also from Warmsley Vale. It was put through from a public call box.”
“I see.” Poirot was silent for a moment or two.
“What’s the big idea, M. Poirot?”
“That call was answered? The operator, I mean, got a response from the London number.”
“I see what you mean,” said Spence slowly. “There must have been someone in the flat. It
couldn’t be David Hunter—he was in the train on his way back. It looks, then, as if it must have
been Rosaleen Cloade. And if so, Rosaleen Cloade couldn’t have been at the Stag a few minutes
earlier. What you’re getting at, M. Poirot, is that the woman in the orange scarf, wasn’t
Rosaleen Cloade. And if so, it wasn’t Rosaleen Cloade who killed Arden. But then why did she
commit suicide?”
“The answer to that,” said Poirot, “is very simple. She did not commit suicide. Rosaleen
Cloade was killed!”
“What?”
“She was deliberately and cold-bloodedly murdered.”
“But who killed Arden? We’ve eliminated David—”
“It was not David.”
“And now you eliminate Rosaleen? But dash it all, those two were the only ones with a
shadow of a motive!”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “Motive. It was that which has led us astray. If A has a motive for killing
C and B has a motive for killing D—well, it does not seem to make sense, does it, that A should
kill D and B should kill C?”
Spence groaned. “Go easy, M. Poirot, go easy. I don’t even begin to understand what you are
talking about with your A’s and B’s and C’s.”
“It is complicated,” said Poirot, “it is very complicated. Because, you see, you have here
two different kinds of crime—and consequently you have, you must have, two different murderers.
Enter First Murderer, and enter Second Murderer.”
“Don’t quote Shakespeare,” groaned Spence. “This isn’t Elizabethan Drama.”
“But yes, it is very Shakespearean—there are here all the emotions—the human emotions—in
which Shakespeare would have revelled—the jealousies, the hates—the swift passionate actions.
And here, too, is successful opportunism. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its
flood leads on to fortune…’ Someone acted on that, Superintendent. To seize opportunity and
turn it to one’s own ends—that has been triumphantly accomplished—under your nose so to
speak!”
Spence rubbed his nose irritably.
“Talk sense, M. Poirot,” he pleaded. “If it’s possible, just say what you mean.”
“I will be very clear—clear as crystal. We have here, have we not, three deaths? You agree to
that, do you not? Three people are dead.”
Spence looked at him curiously.
“I should certainly say so…You’re not going to make me believe that one of the three is still
alive?”
“No, no,” said Poirot. “They are dead. But how did they die? How, that is to say, would you
classify their deaths?”
“Well, as to that, M. Poirot, you know my views. One murder, and two suicides. But according
to you the last suicide isn’t a suicide. It’s another murder.”
“According to me,” said Poirot, “there has been one suicide, one accident and one
murder.”
“Accident? Do you mean Mrs. Cloade poisoned herself by accident? Or do you mean Major
Porter’s shooting himself was an accident?”
“No,” said Poirot. “The accident was the death of Charles Trenton — otherwise Enoch
Arden.”
“Accident!” The Superintendent exploded. “Accident? You say that a particularly brutal
murder, where a man’s head is stove in by repeated blows, is an accident!”
Quite unmoved by the Superintendent’s vigour, Poirot replied calmly:
“When I say an accident, I mean that there was no intent to kill.”
“No intent to kill—when a man’s head is battered in! Do you mean that he was attacked by a
lunatic?”
“I think that that is very near the truth—though not quite in the sense you mean it.”
“Mrs. Gordon was the only batty woman in this case. I’ve seen her looking very queer
sometimes. Of course, Mrs. Lionel Cloade is a bit bats in the belfry—but she’d never be violent.
Mrs. Jeremy has got her head screwed on the right way if any one has. By the way, you say that it
was not Mrs. Jeremy who bribed Porter?”
“No. I know who it was. As I say, it was Porter himself who gave it away. One simple little
remark—ah, I could kick myself, as you say, all round the town, for not noticing it at the time.”
“And then your anonymous A B C lunatic murdered Rosaleen Cloade?” Spence’s voice
was more and more sceptical.
Poirot shook his head vigorously.
“By no means. This is where the First Murderer exits and Second Murderer enters. Quite a
different type of crime this, no heat, and no passion. Cold deliberate murder and I intend
Superintendent Spence, to see that her murderer is hanged for that murder.”
He got up as he spoke and moved towards the door.
“Hi!” cried Spence. “You’ve got to give me a few names. You can’t leave it like this.”
“In a very little while—yes, I will tell you. But there is something for which I wait—to be
exact, a letter from across the sea.”
“Don’t talk like a ruddy fortune-teller! Hi—Poirot.”
But Poirot had slipped away.
He went straight across the square and rang the bell of Dr. Cloade’s house. Mrs. Cloade came
to the door and gave her usual gasp at seeing Poirot. He wasted no time.
“Madame, I must speak to you.”
“Oh, of course—do come in—I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to dust, but—”
“I want to ask you something. How long has your husband been a morphia addict?”
Aunt Kathie immediately burst into tears.
“Oh dear, oh dear—I did so hope nobody would ever know—it began in the war. He was so
dreadfully overtired and had such dreadful neuralgia. And since then he’s been trying to lessen
the dose—he has indeed. But that’s what makes him so dreadfully irritable sometimes—”
“That is one of the reasons why he has needed money, is it not?”
“I suppose so. Oh, dear, M. Poirot. He has promised to go for a cure—”
“Calm yourself, Madame, and answer me one more little question. On the night when you
telephoned to Lynn Marchmont, you went out to the call box outside the post office, did you not?
Did you meet anybody in the square that night?”
“Oh, no, M. Poirot, not a soul.”
“But I understood you had to borrow twopence because you had only halfpennies.”
“Oh, yes. I had to ask a woman who came out of the box. She gave me two pennies for one
halfpenny—”
“What did she look like, this woman?”
“Well, rather actressy, if you know what I mean. An orange scarf round her head. The funny
thing was that I’m almost sure I’d met her somewhere. Her face seemed very familiar. She
must, I think, have been someone who had passed over. And yet, you know, I couldn’t remember
where and how I had known her.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cloade,” said Hercule Poirot.
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