Chapter 21

 Ronald’s Story

I found it hard to understand Poirot’s attitude. Surely this was what he had predicted all along?

All the way to Regent Gate, he sat perplexed and frowning, paying no attention to Japp’s self-congratulations.

He came out of his reverie at last with a sigh.

‘At all events,’ he murmured, ‘we can see what he has to say.’

‘Next to nothing if he’s wise,’ said Japp. ‘There’s any amount of men that have hanged themselves by being too eager to make a statement. Well, no one can say as we don’t warn them! It’s all fair and above board. And the more guilty they are, the more anxious they are to pipe up and tell you the lies they’ve thought out to meet the case. They don’t know that you should always submit your lies to a solicitor first.’

He sighed and said:

‘Solicitors and coroners are the worst enemies of the police. Again and again I’ve had a perfectly clear case messed up by the Coroner fooling about and letting the guilty party get away with it. Lawyers you can’t object to so much, I suppose. They’re paid for their artfulness and twisting things this way and that.’

On arrival at Regent Gate we found that our quarry was at home. The family were still at the luncheon table. Japp proffered a request to speak to Lord Edgware privately. We were shown into the library.

In a minute or two the young man came to us. There was an easy smile on his face which changed a little as he cast a quick glance over us. His lips tightened.

‘Hello, Inspector,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

Japp said his little piece in the classic fashion.

‘So that’s it, is it?’ said Ronald.

He drew a chair towards him and sat down. He pulled out a cigarette case.

‘I think, Inspector, I’d like to make a statement.’

‘That’s as you please, my lord.’

‘Meaning that it’s damned foolish on my part. All the same, I think I will. “Having no reason to fear the truth,” as the heroes in books always say.’

Japp said nothing. His face remained expressionless.

‘There’s a nice handy table and chair,’ went on the young man. ‘Your minion can sit down and take it all down in shorthand.’

I don’t think that Japp was used to having his arrangements made for him so thoughtfully. Lord Edgware’s suggestion was adopted.

‘To begin with,’ said the young man. ‘Having some grains of intelligence, I strongly suspect that my beautiful alibi has bust. Gone up in smoke. Exit the useful Dortheimers. Taxi-driver, I suppose?’

‘We know all about your movements on that night,’ said Japp woodenly.

‘I have the greatest admiration for Scotland Yard. All the same, you know, if I had really been planning a deed of violence I shouldn’t have hired a taxi and driven straight to the place and kept the fellow waiting. Have you thought of that? Ah! I see M. Poirot has.’

‘It had occurred to me, yes,’ said Poirot.

‘Such is not the manner of premeditated crime,’ said Ronald. ‘Put on a red moustache and horn-rimmed glasses and drive to the next street and pay the man off. Take the tube – well – well, I won’t go into it all. My Counsel, at a fee of several thousand guineas, will do it better than I can. Of course, I see the answer. Crime was a sudden impulse. There was I, waiting in the cab, etc., etc. It occurs to me, ‘Now, my boy, up and doing.’

‘Well, I’m going to tell you the truth. I was in a hole for money. That’s been pretty clear, I think. It was rather a desperate business. I had to get it by the next day or drop out of things. I tried my uncle. He’d no love for me, but I thought he might care for the honour of his name. Middle-aged men sometimes do. My uncle proved to be lamentably modern in his cynical indifference.

‘Well – it looked like just having to grin and bear it. I was going to try and have a shot at borrowing from Dortheimer, but I knew there wasn’t a hope. And marry his daughter I couldn’t. She’s much too sensible a girl to take me, anyway. Then, by chance, I met my cousin at the opera. I don’t often come across her, but she was always a decent kid when I lived in the house. I found myself telling her all about it. She’d heard something from her father anyway. Then she showed her mettle. She suggested I should take her pearls. They’d belonged to her mother.’

He paused. There was something like real emotion, I think, in his voice. Or else he suggested it better than I could have believed possible.

‘Well – I accepted the blessed child’s offer. I could raise the money I wanted on them, and I swore I’d turn to and redeem them even if it meant working to manage it. But the pearls were at home in Regent Gate. We decided that the best thing to do would be to go and fetch them at once. We jumped in a taxi and off we went.

‘We made the fellow stop on the opposite side of the street in case anyone should hear the taxi draw up at the door. Geraldine got out and went across the road. She had her latchkey with her. She would go in quietly, get the pearls and bring them out to me. She didn’t expect to meet anyone except, possibly, a servant. Miss Carroll, my uncle’s secretary, usually went to bed at half past nine. He, himself, would probably be in the library.

‘So off Dina went. I stood on the pavement smoking a cigarette. Every now and then I looked over towards the house to see if she was coming. And now I come to that part of the story that you may believe or not as you like. A man passed me on the sidewalk. I turned to look after him. To my surprise he went up the steps and let himself in to No. 17. At least I thought it was No. 17, but, of course, I was some distance away. That surprised me very much for two reasons. One was that the man had let himself in with a key, and the second was that I thought I recognized in him a certain well-known actor.

‘I was so surprised that I determined to look into matters. I happened to have my own key of No. 17 in my pocket. I’d lost it or thought I’d lost it three years ago, had come across it unexpectedly a day or two ago and had been meaning to give it back to my uncle this morning. However, in the heat of our discussion, it had slipped my memory. I had transferred it with the other contents of my pockets when I changed.

‘Telling the taxi man to wait, I strode hurriedly along the pavement, crossed the road, went up the steps of No. 17, and opened the door with my key. The hall was empty. There was no sign of any visitor having just entered. I stood for a minute looking about me. Then I went towards the library door. Perhaps the man was in with my uncle. If so, I should hear the murmur of voices. I stood outside the library door, but I heard nothing.

‘I suddenly felt I had made the most abject fool of myself. Of course the man must have gone into some other house – the house beyond, probably. Regent Gate is rather dimly lighted at night. I felt an absolute idiot. What on earth had possessed me to follow the fellow, I could not think. It had landed me here, and a pretty fool I should look if my uncle were to come suddenly out of the library and find me. I should get Geraldine into trouble and altogether the fat would be in the fire. All because something in the man’s manner had made me imagine that he was doing something that he didn’t want known. Luckily no one caught me. I must get out of it as soon as I could.

‘I tiptoed back towards the front door and at the same moment Geraldine came down the stairs with the pearls in her hand.

‘She was very startled at seeing me, of course. I got her out of the house, and then explained.’

He paused.

‘We hurried back to the opera. Got there just as the curtain was going up. No one suspected that we’d left it. It was a hot night and several people went outside to get a breath of air.’

He paused.

‘I know what you’ll say: Why didn’t I tell you this right away? And now I put it to you: Would you, with a motive for murder sticking out a yard, admit light-heartedly that you’d actually been at the place the murder was committed on the night in question?

‘Frankly, I funked it! Even if we were believed, it was going to be a lot of worry for me and for Geraldine. We’d nothing to do with the murder, we’d seen nothing, we’d heard nothing. Obviously, I thought, Aunt Jane had done it. Well, why bring myself in? I told you about the quarrel and my lack of money because I knew you’d ferret it out, and if I’d tried to conceal all that you’d be much more suspicious and you’d probably examine that alibi much more closely. As it was, I thought that if I bucked enough about it it would almost hypnotize you into thinking it all right. The Dortheimers were, I know, honestly convinced that I’d been at Covent Garden all the time. That I spent one interval with my cousin wouldn’t strike them as suspicious. And she could always say she’d been with me there and that we hadn’t left the place.’

‘Miss Marsh agreed to this – concealment?’

‘Yes. Soon as I got the news, I got on to her and cautioned her for her life not to say anything about her excursion here last night. She’d been with me and I’d been with her during the last interval at Covent Garden. We’d talked in the street a little, that was all. She understood and she quite agreed.’

He paused.

‘I know it looks bad – coming out with this afterwards. But the story’s true enough. I can give you the name and address of the man who let me have the cash on Geraldine’s pearls this morning. And if you ask her, she’ll confirm every word I’ve told you.’

He sat back in his chair and looked at Japp.

Japp continued to look expressionless.

‘You say you thought Jane Wilkinson had committed the murder, Lord Edgware?’ he said.

‘Well, wouldn’t you have thought so? After the butler’s story?’

‘What about your wager with Miss Adams?’

‘Wager with Miss Adams? With Carlotta Adams, do you mean? What has she got to do with it?’

‘Do you deny that you offered her the sum of ten thousand dollars to impersonate Miss Jane Wilkinson at the house that night?’

Ronald stared.

‘Offered her ten thousand dollars? Nonsense. Some-one’s been pulling your leg. I haven’t got ten thousand dollars to offer. You’ve got hold of a mare’s nest. Does she say so? Oh! Dash it all – I forgot, she’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot quietly. ‘She is dead.’

Ronald turned his eyes from one to the other of us. He had been debonair before. Now his face had whitened. His eyes looked frightened.

‘I don’t understand all this,’ he said. ‘It’s true what I told you. I suppose you don’t believe me – any of you.’

And then, to my amazement, Poirot stepped forward.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I believe you.’