Fourteen

COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE

It had been quite a long time since I had visited Whitehaven Mansions.

Some years ago it had been an outstanding building of modern flats. Nowthere were many other more imposing and even more modern blocks ofbuildings flanking it on either side. Inside, I noted, it had recently had aface-lift. It had been repainted in pale shades of yellow and green.

I went up in the lift and pressed the bell of Number 203. It was openedto me by that impeccable manservant, George. A smile of welcome cameto his face.

“Mr. Colin! It’s a long time since we’ve seen you here.”

“Yes, I know. How are you, George?”

“I am in good health, I am thankful to say, sir.”

I lowered my voice. “And how’s he?”

George lowered his own voice, though that was hardly necessary since ithad been pitched in a most discreet key from the beginning of our conver-sation.

“I think, sir, that sometimes he gets a little depressed.”

I nodded sympathetically.

“If you will come this way, sir—” He relieved me of my hat.

“Announce me, please, as Mr. Colin Lamb.”

“Very good, sir.” He opened a door and spoke in a clear voice. “Mr. ColinLamb to see you, sir.”

He drew back to allow me to pass him and I went into the room.

My friend, Hercule Poirot, was sitting in his usual large, square arm-chair in front of the fireplace. I noted that one bar of the rectangular elec-tric fire glowed red. It was early September, the weather was warm, butPoirot was one of the first men to recognize the autumn chill, and to takeprecautions against it. On either side of him on the floor was a neat pile ofbooks. More books stood on the table at his left side. At his right hand wasa cup from which steam rose. A tisane, I suspected. He was fond of tisanesand often urged them on me. They were nauseating to taste and pungentto smell.

“Don’t get up,” I said, but Poirot was already on his feet. He came to-wards me on twinkling, patent-leather shod feet with outstretched hands.

“Aha, so it is you, it is you, my friend! My young friend Colin. But why doyou call yourself by the name of Lamb? Let me think now. There is a pro-verb or a saying. Something about mutton dressed as lamb. No. That iswhat is said of elderly ladies who are trying to appear younger than theyare. That does not apply to you. Aha, I have it. You are a wolf in sheep’sclothing. Is that it?”

“Not even that,” I said. “It’s just that in my line of business I thought myown name might be rather a mistake, that it might be connected too muchwith my old man. Hence Lamb. Short, simple, easily remembered. Suiting,I flatter myself, my personality.”

“Of that I cannot be sure,” said Poirot. “And how is my good friend, yourfather?”

“The old man’s fine,” I said. “Very busy with his holly-hocks—or is itchrysanthemums? The seasons go by so fast I can never remember what itis at the moment.”

“He busies himself then, with the horticulture?”

“Everyone seems to come to that in the end,” I said.

“Not me,” said Hercule Poirot. “Once the vegetable marrows, yes—butnever again. If you want the best flowers, why not go to the florist’s shop?

I thought the good Superintendent was going to write his memoirs?”

“He started,” I said, “but he found that so much would have to be left outthat he finally came to the conclusion that what was left in would be sounbearably tame as not to be worth writing.”

“One has to have the discretion, yes. It is unfortunate,” said Poirot, “be-cause your father could tell some very interesting things. I have much ad-miration for him. I always had. You know, his methods were to me veryinteresting. He was so straightforward. He used the obvious as no man hasused it before. He would set the trap, the very obvious trap and the peoplehe wished to catch would say ‘it is too obvious, that. It cannot be true’ andso they fell into it!”

I laughed. “Well,” I said, “it’s not the fashion nowadays for sons to ad-mire their fathers. Most of them seem to sit down, venom in their pens,and remember all the dirty things they can and put them down with obvi-ous satisfaction. But personally, I’ve got enormous respect for my old man.

I hope I’ll even be as good as he was. Not that I’m exactly in his line ofbusiness, of course.”

“But related to it,” said Poirot. “Closely related to it, though you have towork behind the scenes in a way that he did not.” He coughed delicately.

“I think I am to congratulate you on having had a rather spectacular suc-cess lately. Is it not so? The affaire Larkin.”

“It’s all right so far as it goes,” I said. “But there’s a good deal more thatI’d like to have, just to round it off properly. Still, that isn’t really what Icame here to talk to you about.”

“Of course not, of course not,” said Poirot. He waved me to a chair andoffered me some tisane, which I instantly refused.

George entered at the apposite moment with a whisky decanter, a glassand a siphon which he placed at my elbow.

“And what are you doing with yourself these days?” I asked Poirot.

Casting a look at the various books around him I said: “It looks asthough you are doing a little research?”

Poirot sighed. “You may call it that. Yes, perhaps in a way it is true.

Lately I have felt very badly the need for a problem. It does not matter, Isaid to myself, what the problem is. It can be like the good SherlockHolmes, the depth at which the parsley has sunk in the butter. All thatmatters is that there should be a problem. It is not the muscles I need toexercise, you see, it is the cells of the brain.”

“Just a question of keeping fit. I understand.”

“As you say.” He sighed. “But problems, mon cher, are not so easy tocome by. It is true that last Thursday one presented itself to me. The un-warranted appearance of three pieces of dried orange peel in my um-brella stand. How did they come there? How could they have come there? Ido not eat oranges myself. George would never put old pieces of orangepeel in the umbrella stand. Nor is a visitor likely to bring with him threepieces of orange peel. Yes, it was quite a problem.”

“And you solved it?”

“I solved it,” said Poirot.

He spoke with more melancholy than pride.

“It was not in the end very interesting. A question of a remplacement ofthe usual cleaning woman and the new one brought with her, strictlyagainst orders, one of her children. Although it does not sound interesting,nevertheless it needed a steady penetration of lies, camouflage and all therest of it. It was satisfactory, shall we say, but not important.”

“Disappointing,” I suggested.

“Enfin,” said Poirot, “I am modest. But one should not need to use arapier to cut the string of a parcel.”

I shook my head in a solemn manner. Poirot continued, “I have occu-pied myself of late in reading various real life unsolved mysteries. I applyto them my own solutions.”

“You mean cases like the Bravo case, Adelaide Bartlett and all the rest ofthem?”

“Exactly. But it was in a way too easy. There is no doubt whatever in myown mind as to who murdered Charles Bravo. The companion may havebeen involved, but she was certainly not the moving spirit in the matter.

Then there was that unfortunate adolescent, Constance Kent. The truemotive that lay behind her strangling of the small brother whom she un-doubtedly loved has always been a puzzle. But not to me. It was clear assoon as I read about the case. As for Lizzie Borden, one wishes only thatone could put a few necessary questions to various people concerned. Iam fairly sure in my own mind of what the answers would be. Alas, theyare all by now dead, I fear.”

I thought to myself, as so often before, that modesty was certainly notHercule Poirot’s strong point.

“And what did I do next?” continued Poirot.

I guessed that for some time now he had had no one much to talk to andwas enjoying the sound of his own voice.

“From real life I turned to fiction. You see me here with various ex-amples of criminal fiction at my right hand and my left. I have been work-ing backwards. Here—” he picked up the volume that he had laid on thearm of his chair when I entered, “—here, my dear Colin, is The Leaven-worth Case.” He handed the book to me.

“That’s going back quite a long time,” I said. “I believe my father men-tioned that he read it as a boy. I believe I once read it myself. It must seemrather old-fashioned now.”

“It is admirable,” said Poirot. “One savours its period atmosphere, itsstudied and deliberate melodrama. Those rich and lavish descriptions ofthe golden beauty of Eleanor, the moonlight beauty of Mary!”

“I must read it again,” I said. “I’d forgotten the parts about the beautifulgirls.”

“And there is the maidservant, Hannah, so true to type, and the mur-derer, an excellent psychological study.”

I perceived that I had let myself in for a lecture. I composed myself tolisten.

“Then we will take the Adventures of Arsene Lupin,” Poirot went on.

“How fantastic, how unreal. And yet what vitality there is in them, whatvigour, what life! They are preposterous, but they have panache. There ishumour, too.”

He laid down the Adventures of Arsene Lupin and picked up anotherbook. “And there is The Mystery of the Yellow Room. That—ah, that is reallya classic! I approve of it from start to finish. Such a logical approach! Therewere criticisms of it, I remember, which said that it was unfair. But it isnot unfair, my dear Colin. No, no. Very nearly so, perhaps, but not quite.

There is the hair’s breadth of difference. No. All through there is truth,concealed with a careful and cunning use of words. Everything should beclear at that supreme moment when the men meet at the angle of threecorridors.” He laid it down reverently. “Definitely a masterpiece, and, Igather, almost forgotten nowadays.”

Poirot skipped twenty years or so, to approach the works of somewhatlater authors.

“I have read also,” he said, “some of the early works of Mrs. AriadneOliver. She is by way of being a friend of mine, and of yours, I think. I donot wholly approve of her works, mind you. The happenings in them arehighly improbable. The long arm of coincidence is far too freely em-ployed. And, being young at the time, she was foolish enough to make herdetective a Finn, and it is clear that she knows nothing about Finns or Fin-land except possibly the works of Sibelius. Still, she has an original habitof mind, she makes an occasional shrewd deduction, and of later years shehas learnt a good deal about things which she did not know before. Policeprocedure for instance. She is also now a little more reliable on the subjectof firearms. What was even more needed, she has possibly acquired a soli-citor or a barrister friend who has put her right on certain points of thelaw.”

He laid aside Mrs. Ariadne Oliver and picked up another book.

“Now here is Mr. Cyril Quain. Ah, he is a master, Mr. Quain, of the alibi.”

“He’s a deadly dull writer if I remember rightly,” I said.

“It is true,” said Poirot, “that nothing particularly thrilling happens inhis books. There is a corpse, of course. Occasionally more than one. Butthe whole point is always the alibi, the railway timetable, the bus routes,the plans of the cross-country roads. I confess I enjoy this intricate, thiselaborate use of the alibi. I enjoy trying to catch Mr. Cyril Quain out.”

“And I suppose you always succeed,” I said.

Poirot was honest.

“Not always,” he admitted. “No, not always. Of course, after a time onerealizes that one book of his is almost exactly like another. The alibis re-semble each other every time, even though they are not exactly the same.

You know, mon cher Colin, I imagine this Cyril Quain sitting in his room,smoking his pipe as he is represented to do in his photographs, sittingthere with around him the A.B.C.s, the continental Bradshaws, the airlinebrochures, the timetables of every kind. Even the movements of liners.

Say what you will, Colin, there is order and method in Mr. Cyril Quain.”

He laid Mr. Quain down and picked up another book.

“Now here is Mr. Garry Gregson, a prodigious writer of thrillers. He haswritten at least sixty-four, I understand. He is almost the exact opposite ofMr. Quain. In Mr. Quain’s books nothing much happens, in Garry Greg-son’s far too many things happen. They happen implausibly and in massconfusion. They are all highly coloured. It is melodrama stirred up with astick. Bloodshed—bodies—clues—thrills piled up and bulging over. Alllurid, all very unlike life. He is not quite, as you would say, my cup of tea.

He is, in fact, not a cup of tea at all. He is more like one of these Americancocktails of the more obscure kind, whose ingredients are highly suspect.”

Poirot paused, sighed and resumed his lecture. “Then we turn to Amer-ica.” He plucked a book from the left-hand pile. “Florence Elks, now. Thereis order and method there, colourful happenings, yes, but plenty of pointin them. Gay and alive. She has wit, this lady, though perhaps, like somany American writers, a little too obsessed with drink. I am, as youknow, mon ami, a connoisseur of wine. A claret or a burgundy introducedinto a story, with its vintage and date properly authenticated, I always findpleasing. But the exact amount of rye and bourbon that are consumed onevery other page by the detective in an American thriller do not seem tome interesting at all. Whether he drinks a pint or a half-pint which hetakes from his collar drawer does not seem to me really to affect the ac-tion of the story in any way. This drink motive in American books is verymuch what King Charles’s head was to poor Mr. Dick when he tried towrite his memoirs. Impossible to keep it out.”

“What about the tough school?” I asked.

Poirot waved aside the tough school much as he would have waved anintruding fly or mosquito.

“Violence for violence’ sake? Since when has that been interesting? Ihave seen plenty of violence in my early career as a police officer. Bah,you might as well read a medical text book. Tout de même, I give Americancrime fiction on the whole a pretty high place. I think it is more ingenious,more imaginative than English writing. It is less atmospheric and over-laden with atmosphere than most French writers. Now take Louisa O’Mal-ley for instance.”

He dived once more for a book.

“What a model of fine scholarly writing is hers, yet what excitement,what mounting apprehension she arouses in her reader. Those brown-stone mansions in New York. Enfin what is a brownstone mansion—I havenever known? Those exclusive apartments, and soulful snobberies, andunderneath, deep unsuspected seams of crime run their uncharted course.

It could happen so, and it does happen so. She is very good, this LouisaO’Malley, she is very good indeed.”

He sighed, leaned back, shook his head and drank off the remainder ofhis tisane.

“And then—there are always the old favourites.”

Again he dived for a book.

“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” he murmured lovingly, and evenuttered reverently the one word, “Ma?tre!”

“Sherlock Holmes?” I asked.

“Ah, non, non, not Sherlock Holmes! It is the author, Sir Arthur ConanDoyle, that I salute. These tales of Sherlock Holmes are in reality far-fetched, full of fallacies and most artificially contrived. But the art of thewriting—ah, that is entirely different. The pleasure of the language, thecreation above all of that magnificent character, Dr. Watson. Ah, that wasindeed a triumph.”

He sighed and shook his head and murmured, obviously by a natural as-sociation of ideas:

“Ce cher Hastings. My friend Hastings of whom you have often heard mespeak. It is a long time since I have had news of him. What an absurdity togo and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having re-volutions.”

“That’s not confined to South America,” I pointed out. “They’re havingrevolutions all over the world nowadays.”

“Let us not discuss the Bomb,” said Hercule Poirot. “If it has to be, it hasto be, but let us not discuss it.”

“Actually,” I said, “I came to discuss something quite different with you.”

“Ah! You are about to be married, is that it? I am delighted, mon cher, de-lighted.”

“What on earth put that in your head, Poirot?” I asked. “Nothing of thekind.”

“It happens,” said Poirot, “it happens every day.”

“Perhaps,” I said firmly, “but not to me. Actually I came to tell you thatI’d run across rather a pretty little problem in murder.”

“Indeed? A pretty problem in murder, you say? And you have brought itto me. Why?”

“Well—” I was slightly embarrassed. “I—I thought you might enjoy it,” Isaid.

Poirot looked at me thoughtfully. He caressed his moustache with a lov-ing hand, then he spoke.

“A master,” he said, “is often kind to his dog. He goes out and throws aball for the dog. A dog, however, is also capable of being kind to its master.

A dog kills a rabbit or a rat and he brings it and lays it at his master’s feet.

And what does he do then? He wags his tail.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Am I wagging my tail?”

“I think you are, my friend. Yes, I think you are.”

“All right then,” I said. “And what does master say? Does he want to seedoggy’s rat? Does he want to know all about it?”

“Of course. Naturally. It is a crime that you think will interest me. Is thatright?”

“The whole point of it is,” I said, “that it just doesn’t make sense.”

“That is impossible,” said Poirot. “Everything makes sense. Everything.”

“Well, you try and make sense of this. I can’t. Not that it’s really any-thing to do with me. I just happened to come in on it. Mind you, it mayturn out to be quite straightforward, once the dead man is identified.”

“You are talking without method or order,” said Poirot severely. “Let mebeg of you to let me have the facts. You say it is a murder, yes?”

“It’s a murder all right,” I assured him. “Well, here we go.”

I described to him in detail the events that had taken place at 19, Wilbra-ham Crescent. Hercule Poirot leant back in his chair. He closed his eyesand gently tapped with a forefinger the arm of his chair while he listenedto my recital. When I finally stopped, he did not speak for a moment. Thenhe asked, without opening his eyes:

“Sans blague?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said.

“Epatant,” said Hercule Poirot. He savoured the word on his tongue andrepeated it syllable by syllable. “E-pa-tant.” After that he continued histapping on the arm of his chair and gently nodded his head.

“Well,” I said impatiently, after waiting a few moments more. “Whathave you got to say?”

“But what do you want me to say?”

“I want you to give me the solution. I’ve always understood from youthat it was perfectly possible to lie back in one’s chair, just think about itall, and come up with the answer. That it was quite unnecessary to go andquestion people and run about looking for clues.”

“It is what I have always maintained.”

“Well, I’m calling your bluff,” I said. “I’ve given you the facts, and now Iwant the answer.”

“Just like that, hein? But then there is a lot more to be known, mon ami.

We are only at the beginning of the facts. Is that not so?”

“I still want you to come up with something.”

“I see.” He reflected a moment. “One thing is certain,” he pronounced.

“It must be a very simple crime.”

“Simple?” I demanded in some astonishment.

“Naturally.”

“Why must it be simple?”

“Because it appears so complex. If it has necessarily to appear complex,it must be simple. You comprehend that?”

“I don’t really know that I do.”

“Curious,” mused Poirot, “what you have told me—I think—yes, there issomething familiar to me there. Now where—when—have I come acrosssomething … ” He paused.

“Your memory,” I said, “must be one vast reservoir of crimes. But youcan’t possibly remember them all, can you?”

“Unfortunately no,” said Poirot, “but from time to time these reminis-cences are helpful. There was a soap boiler, I remember, once, at Liège. Hepoisoned his wife in order to marry a blonde stenographer. The crimemade a pattern. Later, much later, that pattern recurred. I recognized it.

This time it was an affair of a kidnapped Pekinese dog, but the pattern wasthe same. I looked for the equivalent of the blonde stenographer and thesoap boiler, and voilà! That is the kind of thing. And here again in whatyou have told me I have that feeling of recognition.”

“Clocks?” I suggested hopefully. “Bogus insurance agents?”

“No, no,” Poirot shook his head.

“Blind women?”

“No, no, no. Do not confuse me.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Poirot,” I said. “I thought you’d give me the an-swer straight away.”

“But, my friend, at present you have presented me only with a pattern.

There are many more things to find out. Presumably this man will beidentified. In that kind of thing the police are excellent. They have theircriminal records, they can advertise the man’s picture, they have access toa list of missing persons, there is scientific examination of the dead man’sclothing, and so on and so on. Oh, yes, there are a hundred other ways andmeans at their disposal. Undoubtedly, this man will be identified.”

“So there’s nothing to do at the moment. Is that what you think?”

“There is always something to do,” said Hercule Poirot, severely.

“Such as?”

He wagged an emphatic forefinger at me.

“Talk to the neighbours,” he said.

“I’ve done that,” I said. “I went with Hardcastle when he was question-ing them. They don’t know anything useful.”

“Ah, tcha, tcha, that is what you think. But I assure you, that cannot beso. You go to them, you ask them: ‘Have you seen anything suspicious?’

and they say no, and you think that that is all there is to it. But that is notwhat I mean when I say talk to the neighbours. I say talk to them. Letthem talk to you. And from their conversation always, somewhere, youwill find a clue. They may be talking about their gardens or their pets ortheir hairdressing or their dressmaker, or their friends, or the kind of foodthey like. Always somewhere there will be a word that sheds light. You saythere was nothing in those conversations that was useful. I say that cannotbe so. If you could repeat them to me word for word….”

“Well, that’s practically what I can do,” I said. “I took shorthand tran-scripts of what was said, acting in my role of assistant police officer. I’vehad them transcribed and typed and I’ve brought them along to you. Herethey are.”

“Ah, but you are a good boy, you are a very good boy indeed! What youhave done is exactly right. Exactly. Je vous remercie infiniment.”

I felt quite embarrassed.

“Have you any more suggestions?” I asked.

“Yes, always I have suggestions. There is this girl. You can talk to thisgirl. Go and see her. Already you are friends, are you not? Have you notclasped her in your arms when she flew from the house in terror?”

“You’ve been affected by reading Garry Gregson,” I said. “You’ve caughtthe melodramatic style.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Poirot admitted. “One gets infected, it is true, bythe style of a work that one has been reading.”

“As for the girl—” I said, then paused.

Poirot looked at me inquiringly.

“Yes?” he said.

“I shouldn’t like—I don’t want….”

“Ah, so that is it. At the back of your mind you think she is concernedsomehow in this case.”

“No, I don’t. It was absolutely pure chance that she happened to bethere.”

“No, no, mon ami, it was not pure chance. You know that very well.

You’ve told me so. She was asked for over the telephone. Asked for spe-cially.”

“But she doesn’t know why.”

“You cannot be sure that she does not know why. Very likely she doesknow why and is hiding the fact.”

“I don’t think so,” I said obstinately.

“It is even possible you may find out why by talking to her, even if sheherself does not realize the truth.”

“I don’t see very well how—I mean—I hardly know her.”

Hercule Poirot shut his eyes again.

“There is a time,” he said, “in the course of an attraction between twopersons of the opposite sex, when that particular statement is bound to betrue. She is an attractive girl, I suppose?”

“Well—yes,” I said. “Quite attractive.”

“You will talk to her,” Poirot ordered, “because you are already friends,and you will go again and see this blind woman with some excuse. Andyou will talk to her. And you will go to the typewriting bureau on the pre-tence perhaps of having some manuscript typed. You will make friends,perhaps, with one of the other young ladies who works there. You will talkto all these people and then you will come and see me again and you willtell me all the things that they will say.”

“Have mercy!” I said.

“Not at all,” said Poirot, “you will enjoy it.”

“You don’t seem to realize that I’ve got my own work to do.”

“You will work all the better for having a certain amount of relaxation,”

Poirot assured me.

I got up and laughed.

“Well,” I said, “you’re the doctor! Any more words of wisdom for me?

What do you feel about this strange business of the clocks?”

Poirot leaned back in his chair again and closed his eyes.

The words he spoke were quite unexpected.

“‘The time has come, the Walrus said,

To talk of many things.

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,

And cabbages and kings.

And why the sea is boiling hot

And whether pigs have wings.’”

He opened his eyes again and nodded his head.

“Do you understand?” he said.

“Quotation from ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ Alice Through the Look-ing Glass.”

“Exactly. For the moment, that is the best I can do for you, mon cher. Re-flect upon it.”