| |||||
|
III
Hercule Poirot stared at the inspector in the utmost surprise. He repeated incredulously:
“The revolver that Gerda Christow was holding and which was subsequently dropped into the
pool was not the revolver that fired the fatal shot? But that is extraordinary.”
“Exactly, M. Poirot. Put bluntly, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Poirot murmured softly:
“No, it does not make sense. But all the same, Inspector, it has got to make sense, eh?”
The inspector sighed heavily: “That’s just it, M. Poirot. We’ve got to find some way that it does
make sense—but at the moment I can’t see it. The truth is that we shan’t get much further until
we’ve found the gun that was used. It came from Sir Henry’s collection all right—at least, there’s
one missing—and that means that the whole thing is still tied up with The Hollow.”
“Yes,” murmured Poirot. “It is still tied up with The Hollow.”
“It seemed a simple, straightforward business,” went on the inspector. “Well, it isn’t so simple
or so straightforward.”
“No,” said Poirot, “it is not simple.”
“We’ve got to admit the possibility that the thing was a frame-up—that’s to say that it was all
set to implicate Gerda Christow. But if that was so, why not leave the right revolver lying by the
body for her to pick up?”
“She might not have picked it up.”
“That’s true, but even if she didn’t, so long as nobody else’s fingerprints were on the gun—
that’s to say if it was wiped after use—she would probably have been suspected all right. And
that’s what the murderer wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?”
Grange stared.
“Well, if you’d done a murder, you’d want to plant it good and quick on someone else,
wouldn’t you? That would be a murderer’s normal reaction.”
“Ye-es,” said Poirot. “But then perhaps we have here a rather unusual type of murderer. It is
possible that that is the solution of our problem.”
“What is the solution?”
Poirot said thoughtfully:
“An unusual type of murderer.”
Inspector Grange stared at him curiously. He said:
“But then—what was the murderer’s idea? What was he or she getting at?”
Poirot spread out his hands with a sigh.
“I have no idea—I have no idea at all. But it seems to me—dimly—”
“Yes?”
“That the murderer is someone who wanted to kill John Christow but who did not want to
implicate Gerda Christow.”
“H’h! Actually, we suspected her right away.”
“Ah, yes, but it was only a matter of time before the facts about the gun came to light, and that
was bound to give a new angle. In the interval the murderer has had time—” Poirot came to a full
stop.
“Time to do what?”
“Ah, mom ami, there you have me. Again I have to say I do not know.”
Inspector Grange took a turn or two up and down the room. Then he stopped and came to a
stand in front of Poirot.
“I’ve come to you this afternoon, M. Poirot, for two reasons. One is because I know—it’s pretty
well known in the Force—that you’re a man of wide experience who’s done some very tricky
work on this type of problem. That’s reason number one. But there’s another reason. You were
there. You were an eyewitness. You saw what happened.”
Poirot nodded.
“Yes, I saw what happened—but the eyes, Inspector Grange, are very unreliable witnesses.”
“What do you mean, M. Poirot?”
“The eyes see, sometimes, what they are meant to see.”
“You think that it was planned out beforehand?”
“I suspect it. It was exactly, you understand, like a stage scene. What I saw was clear enough. A
man who had just been shot and the woman who had shot him holding in her hand the gun she had
just used. That is what I saw, and already we know that in one particular the picture is wrong. That
gun had not been used to shoot John Christow.”
“Hm!” The inspector pulled his drooping moustache firmly downwards. “What you are getting
at is that some of the other particulars of the picture may be wrong too?”
Poirot nodded. He said:
“There were three other people present—three people who had apparently just arrived on the
scene. But that may not be true either. The pool is surrounded by a thick grove of young chestnuts.
From the pool five paths lead away, one to the house, one up to the woods, one up to the flower
walk, one down from the pool to the farm and one to the lane here.
“Of those three people, each one came along a different path, Edward Angkatell from the woods
above, Lady Angkatell up from the farm, and Henrietta Savernake from the flower border above
the house. Those three arrived upon the scene of the crime almost simultaneously, and a few
minutes after Gerda Christow.
“But one of those three, Inspector, could have been at the pool before Gerda Christow arrived,
could have shot John Christow, and could have retreated up or down one of the paths and then,
turning around, could have arrived at the same time as the others.”
Inspector Grange said:
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“And another possibility, not envisaged at the time. Someone could have come along the path
from the lane, could have shot John Christow, and could have gone back the same way, unseen.”
Grange said: “You’re dead right. There are two other possible suspects besides Gerda Christow.
We’ve got the same motive—jealousy. It’s definitely a crime passionel. There were two other
women mixed up with John Christow.”
He paused and said:
“Christow went over to see Veronica Cray that morning. They had a row. She told him that
she’d make him sorry for what he’d done, and she said she hated him more than she believed she
could hate anyone.”
“Interesting,” murmured Poirot.
“She’s straight from Hollywood—and by what I read in the papers they do a bit of shooting
each other out there sometimes. She could have come along to get her furs, which she’d left in the
pavilion the night before. They could have met—the whole thing could have flared up—she fired
at him—and then, hearing someone coming, she could have dodged back the way she came.”
He paused a moment and added irritably:
“And now we come to the part where it all goes haywire. That damned gun! Unless,” his eyes
brightened, “she shot him with her own gun and dropped one that she’d pinched from Sir Henry’s
study so as to throw suspicion on the crowd at The Hollow. She mightn’t know about our being
able to identify the gun used from the marks on the rifling.”
“How many people do know that, I wonder?”
“I put the point to Sir Henry. He said he thought quite a lot of people would know—on account
of all the detective stories that are written. Quoted a new one, The Clue of the Dripping Fountain,
which he said John Christow himself had been reading on Saturday and which emphasized that
particular point.”
“But Veronica Cray would have had to have got the gun somehow from Sir Henry’s study.”
“Yes, it would mean premeditation.” The inspector took another tug at his moustache, then he
looked at Poirot. “But you’ve hinted yourself at another possibility, M. Poirot. There’s Miss
Savernake. And here’s where your eyewitness stuff, or rather I should say, earwitness stuff, comes
in again. Dr. Christow said: ‘Henrietta’ when he was dying. You heard him—they all heard him,
though Mr. Angkatell doesn’t seem to have caught what he said.”
“Edward Angkatell did not hear? That is interesting.”
“But the others did. Miss Savernake herself says he tried to speak to her. Lady Angkatell says
he opened his eyes, saw Miss Savernake, and said: ‘Henrietta.’ She doesn’t, I think, attach any
importance to it.”
Poirot smiled. “No—she would not attach importance to it.”
“Now, M. Poirot, what about you? You were there—you saw—you heard. Was Dr. Christow
trying to tell you all that it was Henrietta who had shot him? In short, was that word an
accusation?”
Poirot said slowly:
“I did not think so at the time.”
“But now, M. Poirot? What do you think now?”
Poirot sighed. Then he said slowly:
“It may have been so. I cannot say more than that. It is an impression only for which you are
asking me, and when the moment is past there is a temptation to read into things a meaning which
was not there at the time.”
Grange said hastily:
“Of course, this is all off the record. What M. Poirot thought isn’t evidence—I know that. It’s
only a pointer I’m trying to get.”
“Oh, I understand you very well—and an impression from an eyewitness can be a very useful
thing. But I am humiliated to have to say that my impressions are valueless. I was under the
misconception, induced by the visual evidence, that Mrs. Christow had just shot her husband; so
that when Dr. Christow opened his eyes and said ‘Henrietta’ I never thought of it as being an
accusation. It is tempting now, looking back, to read into that scene something that was not there.”
“I know what you mean,” said Grange. “But it seems to me that since ‘Henrietta’ was the last
word Christow spoke, it must have meant one of two things. It was either an accusation of murder
or else it was—well, purely emotional. She’s the woman he’s in love with and he’s dying. Now,
bearing everything in mind, which of the two did it sound like to you?”
Poirot sighed, stirred, closed his eyes, opened them again, stretched out his hands in acute
vexation. He said:
“His voice was urgent—that is all I can say—urgent. It seemed to me neither accusing nor
emotional—but urgent, yes! And of one thing I am sure. He was in full possession of his faculties.
He spoke—yes, he spoke like a doctor—a doctor who has, say, a sudden surgical emergency on
his hands—a patient who is bleeding to death, perhaps.” Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “That is
the best I can do for you.”
“Medical, eh?” said the inspector. “Well, yes, that is a third way of looking at it. He was shot,
he suspected he was dying, he wanted something done for him quickly. And if, as Lady Angkatell
says, Miss Savernake was the first person he saw when his eyes opened, then he would appeal to
her. It’s not very satisfactory, though.”
“Nothing about this case is satisfactory,” said Poirot with some bitterness.
A murder scene, set and staged to deceive Hercule Poirot—and which had deceived him! No, it
was not satisfactory.
Inspector Grange was looking out of the window.
“Hallo,” he said, “here’s Clark, my sergeant. Looks as though he’s got something. He’s been
working on the servants—the friendly touch. He’s a nice looking chap, got a way with women.”
Sergeant Clark came in a little breathlessly. He was clearly pleased with himself, though
subduing the fact under a respectful official manner.
“Thought I’d better come and report, sir, since I knew where you’d gone.”
He hesitated, shooting a doubtful glance at Poirot, whose exotic foreign appearance did not
commend itself to his sense of official reticence.
“Out with it, my lad,” said Grange. “Never mind M. Poirot here. He’s forgotten more about this
game than you’ll know for many years to come.”
“Yes, sir. It’s this way, sir. I got something out of the kitchen maid—”
Grange interrupted. He turned to Poirot triumphantly.
“What did I tell you? There’s always hope where there’s a kitchen maid. Heaven help us when
domestic staffs are so reduced that nobody keeps a kitchen maid any more. Kitchen maids talk,
kitchen maids babble. They’re so kept down and in their place by the cook and the upper servants
that it’s only human nature to talk about what they know to someone who wants to hear it. Go on,
Clark.”
“This is what the girl says, sir. That on Sunday afternoon she saw Gudgeon, the butler, walking
across the hall with a revolver in his hand.”
“Gudgeon?”
“Yes, sir.” Clark referred to a notebook. “These are her own words. ‘I don’t know what to do,
but I think I ought to say what I saw that day. I saw Mr. Gudgeon, he was standing in the hall with
a revolver in his hand. Mr. Gudgeon looked very peculiar indeed.’
“I don’t suppose,” said Clark, breaking off, “that the part about looking peculiar means
anything. She probably put that in out of her head. But I thought you ought to know about it at
once, sir.”
Inspector Grange rose, with the satisfaction of a man who sees a task ahead of him which he is
well-fitted to perform.
“Gudgeon?” he said. “I’ll have a word with Mr. Gudgeon right away.”
|
|||||
上一篇：空幻之屋28 下一篇：没有了 |
- 发表评论
-
- 最新评论 进入详细评论页>>
