Six

There was no bathing the next morning.

Pamela Lyall, white-faced, clad in a simple dark dress, clutched at Hercule Poirot in the halland drew him into the little writing room.

“It’s horrible!” she said. “Horrible! You said so! You foresaw it! Murder!”

He bent¹ his head gravely.

“Oh!” she cried out. She stamped her foot on the floor. “You should have stopped it!

Somehow! It could have been stopped!”

“How?” asked Hercule Poirot.

That brought her up short for the moment.

“Couldn’t you go to someone—to the police—?”

“And say what? What is there to say—before the event? That someone has murder in theirheart? I tell you, mon enfant, if one human being is determined² to kill another human being—”

“You could warn the victim,” insisted Pamela.

“Sometimes,” said Hercule Poirot, “warnings are useless.”

Pamela said slowly, “You could warn the murderer—show him that you knew what wasintended. . . .”

Poirot nodded appreciatively.

“Yes—a better plan, that. But even then you have to reckon with a criminal’s chief vice³.”

“What is that?”

“Conceit. A criminal never believes that his crime can fail.”

“But it’s absurd—stupid,” cried Pamela. “The whole crime was childish! Why, the policearrested Douglas Gold at once last night.”

“Yes.” He added thoughtfully, “Douglas Gold is a very stupid young man.”

“Incredibly stupid! I hear that they found the rest of the poison—whatever it was—?”

“A form of stropanthin. A heart poison.”

“That they actually found the rest of it in his dinner jacket pocket?”

“Quite true.”

“Incredibly stupid!” said Pamela again. “Perhaps he meant to get rid of it—and the shock ofthe wrong person being poisoned paralysed him. What a scene it would make on the stage. Thelover putting the stropanthin in the husband’s glass and then, just when his attention is elsewhere,the wife drinks it instead . . . Think of the ghastly moment when Douglas Gold turned round andrealized he had killed the woman he loved. . . .”

She gave a little shiver.

“Your triangle. The Eternal Triangle! Who would have thought it would end like this?”

“I was afraid of it,” murmured Poirot.

Pamela turned on him.

“You warned her—Mrs.?Gold. Then why didn’t you warn him as well?”

“You mean, why didn’t I warn Douglas Gold?”

“No. I mean Commander Chantry. You could have told him that he was in danger—after all,he was the real obstacle! I’ve no doubt Douglas Gold relied on being able to bully⁴ his wife intogiving him a divorce—she’s a meek-spirited little woman and terribly fond of him. But Chantry isa mulish sort of devil. He was determined not to give Valentine her freedom.”

Poirot shrugged⁵ his shoulders.

“It would have been no good my speaking to Chantry,” he said.

“Perhaps not,” Pamela admitted. “He’d probably have said he could look after himself andtold you to go to the devil. But I do feel there ought to have been something one could have done.”

“I did think,” said Poirot slowly, “of trying to persuade Valentine Chantry to leave the island,but she would not have believed what I had to tell her. She was far too stupid a woman to take in athing like that. Pauvre femme, her stupidity killed her.”

“I don’t believe it would have been any good if she had left the island,” said Pamela. “Hewould simply have followed her.”

“He?”

“Douglas Gold.”

“You think Douglas Gold would have followed her? Oh, no, mademoiselle, you are wrong—you are completely wrong. You have not yet appreciated the truth of this matter. If ValentineChantry had left the island, her husband would have gone with?her.”

Pamela looked puzzled.

“Well, naturally.”

“And then, you see, the crime would simply have taken place somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand you?”

“I am saying to you that the same crime would have occurred somewhere else—that crimebeing the murder of Valentine Chantry by her husband.”

Pamela stared.

“Are you trying to say that it was Commander Chantry—Tony Chantry—who murderedValentine?”

“Yes. You saw him do it! Douglas Gold brought him his drink. He sat with it in front of him.

When the women came in we all looked across the room, he had the stropanthin ready, he droppedit into the pink gin and presently, courteously⁶, he passed it along to his wife and she drank it.”

“But the packet of stropanthin was found in Douglas Gold’s pocket!”

“A very simple matter to slip it there when we were all crowding round the dying woman.”

It was quite two minutes before Pamela got her breath.

“But I don’t understand a word! The triangle—you said yourself—”

Hercule Poirot nodded his head vigorously.

“I said there was a triangle—yes. But you, you imagined the wrong one. You were deceivedby some very clever acting⁷! You thought, as you were meant to think, that both Tony Chantry andDouglas Gold were in love with Valentine Chantry. You believed, as you were meant to believe,that Douglas Gold, being in love with Valentine Chantry (whose husband refused to divorce her)took the desperate step of administering a powerful heart poison to Chantry and that, by a fatalmistake, Valentine Chantry drank that poison instead. All that is illusion. Chantry has beenmeaning to do away with his wife for some time. He was bored to death with her, I could see thatfrom the first. He married her for her money. Now he wants to marry another woman—so heplanned to get rid of Valentine and keep her money. That entailed⁸ murder.”

“Another woman?”

Poirot said slowly:

“Yes, yes—the little Marjorie Gold. It was the eternal triangle all right! But you saw it thewrong way round. Neither of those two men cared in the least for Valentine Chantry. It was hervanity and Marjorie Gold’s very clever stage managing that made you think they did! A veryclever woman, Mrs.?Gold, and amazingly attractive in her demure⁹ Madonna, poor-little-thing-way! I have known four women criminals of the same type. There was Mrs.?Adams who wasacquitted of murdering her husband, but everybody knows she did it. Mary Parker did away withan aunt, a sweetheart and two brothers before she got a little careless and was caught. Then therewas Mrs.?Rowden, she was hanged all right. Mrs.?Lecray escaped by the skin of her teeth. Thiswoman is exactly the same type. I recognized it as soon as I saw her! That type takes to crime likea duck to water! And a very pretty bit of well-planned work it was. Tell me, what evidence did youever have that Douglas Gold was in love with Valentine Chantry? When you come to think it out,you will realize that there was only Mrs.?Gold’s confidences and Chantry’s jealous bluster¹⁰. Yes?

You see?”

“It’s horrible,” cried Pamela.

“They were a clever pair,” said Poirot with professional detachment. “They planned to ‘meet’

here and stage their crime. That Marjorie Gold, she is a cold-blooded devil! She would have senther poor, innocent fool of a husband to the scaffold without the least remorse¹¹.”

Pamela cried out:

“But he was arrested and taken away by the police last night.”

“Ah,” said Hercule Poirot, “but after that, me, I had a few little words with the police. It istrue that I did not see Chantry put the stropanthin in the glass. I, like everyone else, looked upwhen the ladies came in. But the moment I realized that Valentine Chantry had been poisoned, Iwatched her husband without taking my eyes off him. And so, you see, I actually saw him slip thepacket of stropanthin in Douglas Gold’s coat pocket. . . .”

He added with a grim expression on his face:

“I am a good witness. My name is well-known. The moment the police heard my story theyrealized that it put an entirely¹² different complexion¹³ on the matter.”

“And then?” demanded Pamela, fascinated.

“Eh bien, then they asked Commander Chantry a few questions. He tried to bluster it out, buthe is not really clever, he soon broke down.”

“So Douglas Gold was set at liberty?”

“Yes.”

“And—Marjorie Gold?”

Poirot’s face grew stern.

“I warned her,” he said. “Yes, I warned her . . . Up on the Mount of the Prophet . . . It was theonly chance of averting¹⁴ the crime. I as good as told her that I suspected her. She understood. Butshe believed herself too clever . . . I told her to leave the island if she valued her life. She chose—to remain. . . .”

 

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