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Sixteen
Into an atmosphere quivering with danger Hercule Poirot brought his own atmosphere of
deliberate anticlimax.
“The kettle, it is boiling?” he inquired.
Rowley said heavily—stupidly—“Yes, it’s boiling.”
“Then you will, perhaps, make some coffee? Or some tea if it is easier.”
Like an automaton Rowley obeyed.
Hercule Poirot took a large clean handkerchief from his pocket; he soaked it in cold water,
wrung it out and came to Lynn.
“There, Mademoiselle, if you fasten that round your throat—so. Yes, I have the safety pin.
There, that will at once ease the pain.”
Croaking hoarsely, Lynn thanked him. The kitchen of Long Willows, Poirot fussing about—it
all had for her the quality of a nightmare. She felt horribly ill, and her throat was paining her
badly. She staggered to her feet and Poirot guided her gently to a chair and put her into it.
“There,” he said, and over his shoulder:
“The coffee?” he demanded.
“It’s ready,” said Rowley.
He brought it. Poirot poured out a cup and took it to Lynn.
“Look here,” said Rowley, “I don’t think you understand. I tried to strangle Lynn.”
“Tscha, tscha,” said Poirot in a vexed voice. He seemed to be deploring a lapse of bad taste
on Rowley’s part.
“Two deaths I’ve got on my conscience,” said Rowley. “Hers would have been the third
—if you hadn’t arrived.”
“Let us drink up our coffee,” said Poirot, “and not talk of deaths. It is not agreeable for
Mademoiselle Lynn.”
“My God!” said Rowley. He stared at Poirot.
Lynn sipped her coffee with difficulty. It was hot and strong. Presently she felt her throat less
painful, and the stimulant began to act.
“There, that is better, yes?” said Poirot.
She nodded.
“Now we can talk,” said Poirot. “When I say that, I mean, really, that I shall talk.”
“How much do you know?” said Rowley heavily. “Do you know that I killed Charles
Trenton?”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “I have known that for some time.”
The door burst open. It was David Hunter.
“Lynn,” he cried. “You never told me—”
He stopped, puzzled, his eyes going from one to the other.
“What’s the matter with your throat?”
“Another cup,” said Poirot. Rowley took one from the dresser. Poirot received it, filled it
with coffee and handed it to David. Once more, Poirot dominated the situation.
“Sit down,” he said to David. “We will sit here and drink coffee, and you shall all three
listen to Hercule Poirot while he gives you a lecture on crime.”
He looked round on them and nodded his head.
Lynn thought:
“This is some fantastic nightmare. It isn’t real!”
They were all, it seemed, under the sway of this absurd little man with the big moustaches.
They sat there, obediently—Rowley the killer; she, his victim; David, the man who loved her—all
holding cups of coffee, listening to this little man who in some strange way dominated them all.
“What causes crime?” Hercule Poirot demanded rhetorically. “It is a question, that. What
stimulus is needed? What inbred predisposition does there have to be? Is every one capable of
crime—of some crime? And what happens—that is what I have asked myself from the beginning,
what happens when people who have been protected from real life—from its assaults and ravages
—are suddenly deprived of that protection?”
“I am speaking, you see, of the Cloades. There is only one Cloade here, and so I can speak
very freely. From the beginning the problem has fascinated me. Here is a whole family who
circumstances have prevented from ever having to stand on their own feet. Though each one of the
family had a life of his or her own, a profession, yet really they have never escaped from the
shadow of a beneficent protection. They have had, always, freedom from fear. They have lived in
security—and a security which was unnatural and artificial. Gordon Cloade was always there
behind them.
“What I say to you is this, there is no telling what a human character is, until the test comes.
To most of us the test comes early in life. A man is confronted quite soon with the necessity to
stand on his own feet, to face dangers and difficulties and to take his own line of dealing with
them. It may be the straight way, it may be the crooked way—whichever it is, a man usually learns
early just what he is made of.
“But the Cloades had no opportunity of knowing their own weaknesses until the time when
they were suddenly shorn of protection and were forced, quite unprepared, to face difficulty. One
thing, and one thing only, stood between them and the resumption of security, the life of Rosaleen
Cloade. I am quite certain in my own mind that every single one of the Cloades thought at one
time or another, ‘If Rosaleen was to die—’”
Lynn shivered. Poirot paused, letting the words sink in, then went on:
“The thought of death, her death, passed through every mind—of that I am certain. Did the
further thought of murder pass through also? And did the thought, in one particular instance, go
beyond thinking and become action.”
Without a change of voice he turned to Rowley:
“Did you think of killing her?”
“Yes,” said Rowley. “It was the day she came to the farm. There was no one else there. I
thought then—I could kill her quite easily. She looked pathetic—and very pretty—like the calves
I’d sent to market. You can see how pathetic they are—but you send them off just the same. I
wondered, really, that she wasn’t afraid…She would have been, if she’d known what was in
my mind…Yes, it was in my mind when I took the lighter from her to light her cigarette.”
“She left it behind, I suppose. That’s how you got hold of it.”
Rowley nodded.
“I don’t know why I didn’t kill her,” he said wonderingly. “I thought of it. One could
have faked it up as an accident, or something.”
“It was not your type of crime,” said Poirot. “That is the answer. The man you did kill, you
killed in a rage—and you did not really mean to kill him, I fancy?”
“Good Lord, no. I hit him on the jaw. He went over backwards and hit his head on that marble
fender. I couldn’t believe it when I found he was dead.”
Then suddenly he shot a startled glance at Poirot:
“How did you know that?”
“I think,” said Poirot, “that I have reconstructed your actions fairly accurately. You shall
tell me if I am wrong. You went to the Stag, did you not, and Beatrice Lippincott told you about
the conversation she had overheard? Thereupon you went, as you have said, to your uncle’s,
Jeremy Cloade, to get his opinion as a solicitor upon the position. Now something happened there,
something that made you change your mind about consulting him. I think I know what that
something was. You saw a photograph—”
Rowley nodded.
“Yes, it was on the desk. I suddenly realized the likeness. I realized too why the fellow’s
face had seemed so familiar. I tumbled to it that Jeremy and Frances were getting some relation of
hers to put up a stunt and get money out of Rosaleen. It made me see red. I went headlong back to
the Stag and up to No. 5 and accused the fellow of being a fraud. He laughed and admitted it—
said David Hunter was going to come across all right with the money that very evening. I just saw
red when I realized that my own family was, as I saw it, double-crossing me. I called him a swine
and hit him. He went down as I said.”
There was a pause. Poirot said: “And then?”
“It was the lighter,” said Rowley slowly. “It fell out of my pocket. I’d been carrying it
about meaning to give it back to Rosaleen when I saw her. It fell down on the body, and I saw the
initials, D.H. It was David’s, not hers.
“Ever since that party at Aunt Kathie’s I’d realized—well, never mind all that. I’ve
sometimes thought I’m going mad—perhaps I am a bit mad. First Johnnie going—and then the
war—I—I can’t talk about things but sometimes I’d feel blind with rage—and now Lynn—and
this fellow. I dragged the dead man into the middle of the room and turned him over on his face.
Then I picked up those heavy steel tongs—well, I won’t go into details. I wiped off fingerprints,
cleaned up the marble curb—then I deliberately put the hands of the wristwatch at ten minutes
past nine and smashed it. I took away his ration book and his papers—I thought his identity might
be traced through them. Then I got out. It seemed to me that with Beatrice’s story of what
she’d overheard, David would be for it all right.”
“And then,” said Poirot, “you came to me. It was a pretty little comedy that you played
there, was it not, asking me to produce some witnesses that knew Underhay? It was already clear
to me that Jeremy Cloade had repeated to his family the story that Major Porter had told. For
nearly two years all the family had cherished a secret hope that Underhay might turn up. That wish
influenced Mrs. Lionel Cloade in her manipulation of the Ouija board—unconsciously, but it was
a very revealing accident.
“Eh bien, I perform my ‘conjuring trick.’ I flatter myself that I impress you and really it is I
who am the complete mug. Yes and there in Major Porter’s room, he says, after he offers me a
cigarette, he says to you, ‘You don’t, do you?’
“How did he know that you did not smoke? He is supposed only that moment to have met you.
Imbecile that I am, I should have seen the truth then—that already you and Major Porter, you had
made your little arrangement together! No wonder he was nervous that morning. Yes, I am to be
the mug, I am to bring Major Porter down to identify the body. But I do not go on being the mug
for ever—no, I am not the mug now, am I?”
He looked round angrily and then went on:
“But then, Major Porter went back on that arrangement. He does not care to be a witness upon
oath in a murder trial, and the strength of the case against David Hunter depends very largely upon
the identity of the dead man. So Major Porter backs out.”
“He wrote to me he wouldn’t go through with it,” said Rowley thickly. “The damned fool.
Didn’t he see we’d gone too far to stop? I came up to try to drive some sense into him. I was
too late. He’d said he’d rather shoot himself than perjure himself when it was a question of
murder. The front door wasn’t locked—I went up and found him.
“I can’t tell you what I felt like. It was as though I was a murderer twice over. If only he’d
waited—if he’d only let me talk to him.”
“There was a note there?” Poirot asked. “You took it away?”
“Yes—I was in for things now. Might as well go the whole hog. The note was to the coroner.
It simply said that he’d given perjured evidence at the inquest. The dead man was not Robert
Underhay. I took the note away and destroyed it.”
Rowley struck his fist on the table. “It was like a bad dream—a horrible nightmare! I’d
begun this thing and I’d got to go on with it. I wanted the money to get Lynn—and I wanted
Hunter to hang. And then—I couldn’t understand it—the case against him broke down. Some
story about a woman—a woman who was with Arden later. I couldn’t understand, I still can’t
understand. What woman? How could a woman be in there talking to Arden after he was dead?”
“There was no woman,” said Poirot.
“But, M. Poirot,” Lynn croaked. “That old lady. She saw her. She heard her.”
“Aha,” said Poirot. “But what did she see? And what did she hear? She saw someone in
trousers, with a light tweed coat. She saw a head completely enveloped in an orange scarf
arranged turban-wise and a face covered with makeup and a lipsticked mouth. She saw that in a
dim light. And what did she hear? She saw the ‘hussy’ draw back into No. 5 and from within
the room she heard a man’s voice saying, ‘Get out of here, my girl.’ Eh bien, it was a man
she saw and a man she heard! But it was a very ingenious idea, Mr. Hunter,” Poirot added,
turning placidly to David.
“What do you mean?” David asked sharply.
“It is now to you that I will tell a story. You come along to the Stag at nine o’clock or
thereabouts. You come not to murder, but to pay. What do you find? You find the man who had
been blackmailing you lying on the floor, murdered in a particularly brutal manner. You can think
fast, Mr. Hunter, and you realize at once that you are in imminent danger. You have not been seen
entering the Stag by any one as far as you know and your first idea is to clear out as soon as
possible, catch the 9:20 train back to London and swear hard that you have not been near
Warmsley Vale. To catch the train your only chance is to run across country. In doing so you run
unexpectedly into Miss Marchmont and you also realize that you cannot catch the train. You see
the smoke of it in the valley. She too, although you do not know it, has seen the smoke, but she
has not consciously realized that it indicates that you cannot catch the train, and when you tell her
that the time is nine-fifteen she accepts your statement without any doubt.
“To impress on her mind that you do catch the train, you invent a very ingenious scheme. In
fact, you now have to plan an entirely new scheme to divert suspicion from yourself.
“You go back to Furrowbank, letting yourself in quietly with your key and you help yourself
to a scarf of your sister’s, you take one of her lipsticks, and you also proceed to make up your
face in a highly theatrical manner.
“You return to the Stag at a suitable time, impress your personality on the old lady who sits in
the Residents Only room and whose peculiarities are common gossip at the Stag. Then you go up
to No. 5. When you hear her coming to bed, you come out into the passage, then withdraw
hurriedly inside again, and proceed to say loudly, ‘You’d better get out of here, my girl.’”
Poirot paused.
“A very ingenious performance,” he observed.
“Is that true, David?” cried Lynn. “Is it true?”
David was grinning broadly.
“I think a good deal of myself as a female impersonator. Lord, you should have seen that old
gorgon’s face!”
“But how could you be here at ten o’clock and yet telephone to me from London at
eleven?” demanded Lynn perplexedly.
David Hunter bowed to Poirot.
“All explanations by Hercule Poirot,” he remarked. “The man who knows everything. How
did I do it?”
“Very simply,” said Poirot. “You rang up your sister at the flat from the public call box and
gave her certain precise instructions. At eleven- four exactly she put through a toll call to
Warmsley Vale 34. When Miss Marchmont came to the phone the operator verified the number,
then saying no doubt ‘A call from London,’ or ‘Go ahead London,’ something of that
kind?”
Lynn nodded.
“Rosaleen Cloade then replaced the receiver. You,” Poirot turned to David, “carefully
noting the time, dialled 34, got it, pressed Button A, said ‘London wants you’ in a slightly
disguised voice and then spoke. The lapse of a minute or two would be nothing strange in a
telephone call these days, and would only strike Miss Marchmont as a reconnection.”
Lynn said quietly:
“So that’s why you rang me up, David?”
Something in her tone, quiet as it was, made David look at her sharply.
He turned to Poirot and made a gesture of surrender.
“No doubt about it. You do know everything! To tell the truth I was scared stiff. I had to think
up something. After I’d rung Lynn, I walked five miles to Dasleby and went up to London by the
early milk train. Slipped into the flat in time to rumple the bed and have breakfast with Rosaleen.
It never entered my head that the police would think she’d done it.
“And of course I hadn’t the remotest idea who had killed him! I simply couldn’t imagine
who could have wanted to kill him. Absolutely nobody had a motive as far as I could see, except
for myself and Rosaleen.”
“That,” said Poirot, “has been the great difficulty. Motive. You and your sister had a motive
for killing Arden. Every member of the Cloade family had a motive for killing Rosaleen.”
David said sharply:
“She was killed, then? It wasn’t suicide?”
“No. It was a carefully premeditated well-thought-out crime. Morphia was substituted for
bromide in one of her sleeping-powders—one towards the bottom of the box.”
“In the powders.” David frowned. “You don’t mean—you can’t mean Lionel Cloade?”
“Oh, no,” said Poirot. “You see, practically any of the Cloades could have substituted the
morphia. Aunt Kathie could have tampered with the powders before they left the surgery. Rowley
here came up to Furrowbank with butter and eggs for Rosaleen. Mrs. Marchmont came there. So
did Mrs. Jeremy Cloade. Even Lynn Marchmont came. And one and all they had a motive.”
“Lynn didn’t have a motive,” cried David.
“We all had motives,” said Lynn. “That’s what you mean?”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “That is what has made the case difficult. David Hunter and Rosaleen
Cloade had a motive for killing Arden—but they did not kill him. All of you Cloades had a motive
for killing Rosaleen Cloade and yet none of you killed her. This case is, always has been, the
wrong way round. Rosaleen Cloade was killed by the person who had most to lose by her death.”
He turned his head slightly. “You killed her, Mr. Hunter….”
“I?” David cried. “Why on earth should I kill my own sister?”
“You killed her because she wasn’t your sister. Rosaleen Cloade died by enemy action in
London nearly two years ago. The woman you killed was a young Irish housemaid, Eileen
Corrigan, whose photograph I received from Ireland today.”
He drew it from his pocket as he spoke. With lightning swiftness David snatched it from him,
leapt to the door, jumped through it, and banging it behind him, was gone. With a roar of anger
Rowley charged headlong after him.
Poirot and Lynn were left alone.
Lynn cried out, “It’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“Oh, yes, it is true. You saw half the truth once when you fancied David Hunter was not her
brother. Put it the other way and it all falls into shape. This Rosaleen was a Catholic (Underhay’s
wife was not a Catholic), troubled by conscience, wildly devoted to David. Imagine his feelings on
that night of the Blitz, his sister dead, Gordon Cloade dying—all that new life of ease and money
snatched away from him, and then he sees this girl, very much the same age, the only survivor
except for himself, blasted and unconscious. Already no doubt he has made love to her and he has
no doubt he can make her do what he wants.
“He had a way with woman,” Poirot added dryly, without looking at Lynn who flushed.
“He is an opportunist, he snatches his chance of fortune. He identifies her as his sister. She
returns to consciousness to find him at her bedside. He persuades and cajoles her into accepting
the role.
“But imagine their consternation when the first blackmailing letter arrives. All along I have
said to myself, ‘Is Hunter really the type of man to let himself be blackmailed so easily?’ It
seemed, too, that he was actually uncertain whether the man blackmailing him was Underhay or
not. But how could he be uncertain? Rosaleen Cloade could tell him at once if the man were her
husband or not. Why hurry her up to London before she has a chance to catch a glimpse of the
man? Because—there could only be one reason—because he could not risk the man getting a
glimpse of her. If the man was Underhay, he must not discover that Rosaleen Cloade was not
Rosaleen Cloade at all. No, there was only one thing to be done. Pay up enough to keep the
blackmailer quiet, and then—do a flit—go off to America.
“And then, unexpectedly, the blackmailing stranger is murdered—and Major Porter identifies
him as Underhay. Never in his life has David Hunter been in a tighter place! Worse still, the girl
herself is beginning to crack. Her conscience is becoming increasingly active. She is showing
signs of mental breakdown. Sooner or later she will confess, give the whole thing away, render
him liable to criminal prosecution. Moreover, he finds her demands on him increasingly irksome.
He has fallen in love with you. So he decides to cut his losses. Eileen must die. He substitutes
morphia for one of the powders prescribed for her by Dr. Cloade, urges her on to take them every
night, suggests to her fears of the Cloade family. David Hunter will not be suspected since the
death of his sister means that her money passes back to the Cloades.
“That was his trump card: lack of motive. As I told you—this case was always the wrong way
round.”
The door opened and Superintendent Spence came in.
Poirot said sharply, “Eh bien?”
Spence said, “It’s all right. We’ve got him.”
Lynn said in a low voice:
“Did he—say anything?”
“Said he’d had a good run for his money—”
“Funny,” added the Superintendent, “how they always talk at the wrong moment…We
cautioned him, of course. But he said, ‘Cut it out, man. I’m a gambler—but I know when I’ve
lost the last throw.’”
Poirot murmured:
“‘There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune….’
“Yes, the tide sweeps in—but it also ebbs—and may carry you out to sea.”
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