“All this meaning—? But pardon, you will have some refreshment? A sirop? Or perhaps the whisky?”
“The whisky is good enough for me.”
A few minutes later he raised his glass, observing:
“Here’s to Hercule Poirot who is always right!”
“No, no, mon ami.”
“Here we had a lovely case of suicide. H.P. says it’s murder—wants it to be murder—and dash it all, it is murder!”
“Ah? So you agree at last?”
“Well, nobody can say I’m pigheaded. I don’t fly in the face of evidence. The trouble was there wasn’t any evidence before.”
“But there is now?”
“Yes, and I’ve come round to make the amend honourable, as you call it, and present the titbit to you on toast, as it were.”
“I am all agog, my good Japp.”
“All right. Here goes. The pistol that Frank Carter tried to shoot Blunt with on Saturday is a twin pistol to the one that killed Morley!”
Poirot stared: “But this is extraordinary!”
“Yes, it makes it look rather black for Master Frank.”
“It is not conclusive.”
“No, but it’s enough to make us reconsider the suicide verdict. They’re a foreign make of pistol and rather an uncommon one at that!”
Hercule Poirot stared. His eyebrows looked like crescent moons. He said at last:
“Frank Carter? No—surely not!”
Japp breathed a sigh of exasperation.
“What’s the matter with you, Poirot? First you will have it that Morley was murdered and that it wasn’t suicide. Then when I come and tell you we’re inclined to come round to your views you hem and ha and don’t seem to like it.”
“You really believe that Morley was murdered by Frank Carter?”
“It fits. Carter had got a grudge against Morley—that we knew all along. He came to Queen Charlotte Street that morning—and he pretended afterwards that he had come along to tell his young woman he’d got a job—but we’ve now discovered that he hadn’t got the job then. He didn’t get it till later in the day. He admits that now. So there’s lie No. 1. He can’t account for where he was at twenty-five past twelve onwards. Says he was walking in the Marylebone Road, but the first thing he can prove is having a drink in a pub at five past one. And the barman says he was in a regular state—his hand shaking and his face as white as a sheet!”
Hercule Poirot sighed and shook his head. He murmured:
“It does not accord with my ideas.”
“What are these ideas of yours?”
“It is very disturbing what you tell me. Very disturbing indeed. Because, you see, if you are right …”
The door opened softly and George murmured deferentially:
“Excuse me, sir, but …”
He got no further. Miss Gladys Nevill thrust him aside and came agitatedly into the room. She was crying.
“Oh, M. Poirot—”
“Here, I’ll be off,” said Japp hurriedly.
He left the room precipitately.
Gladys Nevill paid his back the tribute of a venomous look.
“That’s the man—that horrid Inspector from Scotland Yard—it’s he who has trumped up a whole case against poor Frank.”
“Now, now, you must not agitate yourself.”
“But he has. First they pretend that he tried to murder this Mr. Blunt and not content with that they’ve accused him of murdering poor Mr. Morley.”
Hercule Poirot coughed. He said:
“I was down there, you know, at Exsham, when the shot was fired at Mr. Blunt.”
Gladys Nevill said with a somewhat confusing use of pronouns:
“But even if Frank did—did do a foolish thing like that—and he’s one of those Imperial Shirts, you know—they march with banners and have a ridiculous salute, and of course I suppose Mr. Blunt’s wife was a very notorious Jewess, and they just work up these poor young men—quite harmless ones like Frank—until they think they are doing something wonderful and patriotic.”
“Is that Mr. Carter’s defence?” asked Hercule Poirot.
“Oh no. Frank just swears he didn’t do anything and had never seen the pistol before. I haven’t spoken to him, of course—they wouldn’t let me—but he’s got a solicitor acting for him and he told me what Frank had said. Frank just says it’s all a frame-up.”
Poirot murmured:
“And the solicitor is of opinion that his client had better think of a more plausible story?”
“Lawyers are so difficult. They won’t say anything straight out. But it’s the murder charge I’m worrying about. Oh! M. Poirot, I’m sure Frank couldn’t have killed Mr. Morley. I mean really—he hadn’t any reason to.”
“Is it true,” said Poirot, “that when he came round that morning he had not yet got a job of any kind?”
“Well, really, M. Poirot, I don’t see what difference that makes. Whether he got the job in the morning or the afternoon can’t matter.”
Poirot said:
“But his story was that he came to tell you about his good luck. Now, it seems, he had as yet had no luck. Why, then, did he come?”
“Well, M. Poirot, the poor boy was dispirited and upset, and to tell the truth I believe he’d been drinking a little. Poor Frank has rather a weak head—and the drink upset him and so he felt like—like making a row, and he came round to Queen Charlotte Street to have it out with Mr. Morley, because, you see, Frank is awfully sensitive and it had upset him a lot to feel that Mr. Morley disapproved of him, and was what he called poisoning my mind.”
“So he conceived the idea of making a scene in business hours?”
“Well—yes—I suppose that was his idea. Of course it was very wrong of Frank to think of such a thing.”
Poirot looked thoughtfully at the tearful blonde young woman in front of him. He said:
“Did you know that Frank Carter had a pistol—or a pair of pistols?”
“Oh no, M. Poirot. I swear I didn’t. And I don’t believe it’s true, either.”
Poirot shook his head slowly in a perplexed manner.
“Oh! M. Poirot, do help us. If I could only feel that you were on our side—”
Poirot said:
“I do not take sides. I am on the side only of the truth.”
V
After he had got rid of the girl, Poirot rang up Scotland Yard. Japp had not yet returned but Detective Sergeant Beddoes was obliging and informative.
The police had not as yet found any evidence to prove Frank Carter’s possession of the pistol before the assault at Exsham.
Poirot hung up the receiver thoughtfully. It was a point in Carter’s favour. But so far it was the only one.
He had also learned from Beddoes a few more details as to the statement Frank Carter had made about his employment as gardener at Exsham. He stuck to his story of a Secret Service job. He had been given money in advance and some testimonials as to his gardening abilities and been told to apply to Mr. MacAlister, the head gardener, for the post.
His instructions were to listen to the other gardeners’ conversations and sound them as to their “red” tendencies, and to pretend to be a bit of a “red” himself. He had been interviewed and instructed in his task by a woman who had told him that she was known as Q.H.56, and that he had been recommended to her as a strong anti-communist. She had interviewed him in a dim light and he did not think he would know her again. She was a red-haired lady with a lot of makeup on.
Poirot groaned. The Phillips Oppenheim touch seemed to be reappearing.
He was tempted to consult Mr. Barnes on the subject.
According to Mr. Barnes these things happened.
The last post brought him something which disturbed him more still.
A cheap envelope in an unformed handwriting, postmarked Hertfordshire.
Poirot opened it and read:
Dear Sir,—
Hoping as you will forgive me for troubling you, but I am
very worried and do not know what to do. I do not want to be mixed up with the police in any way. I know that perhaps I ought to have told something I know before, but as they said the master had shot himself it was all right I thought and I wouldn’t have liked to get Miss Nevill’s young man into trouble and never thought really for one moment as he had done it but now I see he has been took up for shooting at a gentleman in the country and so perhaps he isn’t quite all there and I ought to say but I thought I would write to you, you being a friend of the mistress and asking me so particular the other day if there was anything and of course I wish now I had told you then. But I do hope it won’t mean getting mixed up with the police because I shouldn’t like that and my mother wouldn’t like it either. She has always been most particular.
Yours respectfully
Agnes Fletcher.
Poirot murmured:
“I always knew it was something to do with some man. I guessed the wrong man, that is all.”
FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, MAIDS IN THE KITCHEN
I
The interview with Agnes Fletcher took place in Hertford, in a somewhat derelict teashop, for Agnes had been anxious not to tell her story under Miss Morley’s critical eye.
The first quarter of an hour was taken up listening to exactly how particular Agnes’ mother had always been. Also how Agnes’ father, though a proprietor of licensed premises, had never once had any friction with the police, closing time being strictly observed to the second, and indeed Agnes’ father and mother were universally respected and looked up to in Little Darlingham, Gloucestershire, and none of Mrs. Fletcher’s family of six (two having died in infancy) had ever occasioned their parents the least anxiety. And if Agnes, now, were to get mixed up with the police in any way, Mum and Dad would probably die of it, because as she’d been saying, they’d always held their heads high, and never had no trouble of any kind with the police.
After this had been repeated, da capo, and with various embellishments, several times, Agnes drew a little nearer to the subject of the interview.
“I wouldn’t like to say anything to Miss Morley, sir, because it might be, you see, that she’d say as how I ought to have said something before, but me and cook, we talked it over and we didn’t see as it was any business of ours, because we’d read quite clear and plain in the paper as how the master had made a mistake in the drug he was giving and that he’d shot himself and the pistol was in his hands and everything, so it did seem quite clear, didn’t it, sir?”
“When did you begin to feel differently?” Poirot hoped to get a little nearer the promised revelation by an encouraging but not too direct question.
Agnes replied promptly.
“Seeing it in the paper about that Frank Carter—Miss Nevill’s young man as was. When I read as he’d shot at that gentleman where he was gardener, well, I thought, it looks as if he might be queer in the head, because I do know there’s people it takes like that, think they’re being persecuted, or something, and that they’re ringed round by enemies, and in the end it’s dangerous to keep them at home and they have to be took away to the asylum. And I thought that maybe that Frank Carter was like that, because I did remember that he used to go on about Mr. Morley and say as Mr. Morley was against him and trying to separate him from Miss Nevill, but of course she wouldn’t hear a word against him, and quite right too we thought—Emma and me, because you couldn’t deny as Mr. Carter was very nice-looking and quite the gentleman. But, of course, neither of us thought he’d really done anything to Mr. Morley. We just thought it was a bit queer if you know what I mean.”
Poirot said patiently:
“What was queer?”
“It was that morning, sir, the morning Mr. Morley shot himself. I’d been wondering if I dared run down and get the post. The postman had come but that Alfred hadn’t brought up the letters, which he wouldn’t do, not unless there was some for Miss Morley or Mr. Morley, but if it was just for Emma and me he wouldn’t bother to bring them up till lunch time.
“So I went out on the landing and I looked down over the stairs. Miss Morley didn’t like us going down to the hall, not during the master’s business hours, but I thought maybe as I’d see Alfred taking in a patient to the master and I’d call down to him as he came back.”
Agnes gasped, took a deep breath and went on: “And it was then I saw him—that Frank Carter, I mean. Halfway up the stairs he was—our stairs, I mean, above the master’s floor. And he was standing there waiting and looking down—and I’ve come to feel more and more as though there was something queer about it. He seemed to be listening very intent, if you know what I mean?”
“What time was this?”
“It must have been getting on for half past twelve, sir. And just as I was thinking: There now, it’s Frank Carter, and Miss Nevill’s away for the day and won’t he be disappointed, and I was wondering if I ought to run down and tell him because it looked as though that lump of an Alfred had forgot, otherwise I thought he wouldn’t have been waiting for her. And just as I was hesitating, Mr. Carter, he seemed to make up his mind, and he slipped down the stairs very quick and went along the passage towards the master’s surgery, and I thought to myself, the master won’t like that, and I wondered if there was going to be a row, but just then Emma called me, said whatever was I up to? and I went up again and then, afterwards, I heard the master had shot himself and, of course, it was so awful it just drove everything out of my head. But later, when that Police Inspector had gone I said to Emma, I said, I didn’t say anything about Mr. Carter having been up with the master this morning, and she said was he? and I told her, and she said well, perhaps I ought to tell, but anyway I said I’d better wait a bit, and she agreed, because neither of us didn’t want to get Frank Carter into trouble if we could help. And then, when it came to the inquest and it come out that the master had made that mistake in a drug and really had got the wind up and shot himself, quite natural-like—well, then, of course, there was no call to say anything. But reading that piece in the paper two days ago—Oh! it did give me a turn! And I said to myself, ‘If he’s one of those loonies that thinks they’re persecuted and goes round shooting people, well, then maybe he did shoot the master after all!’”
Her eyes, anxious and scared, looked hopefully at Hercule Poirot. He put as much reassurance into his voice as he could.
“You may be sure that you have done absolutely the right thing in telling me, Agnes,” he said.
“Well, I must say, sir, it does take a load off my mind. You see, I’ve kept saying to myself as perhaps I ought to tell. And then, you see, I thought of getting mixed up with the police and what mother would say. She’s always been so particular about us all….”
“Yes, yes,” said Hercule Poirot hastily.
He had had, he felt, as much of Agnes’ mother as he could stand for one afternoon.
II
Poirot called at Scotland Yard and asked for Japp. When he was taken up to the Chief Inspector’s room: “I want to see Carter,” said Hercule Poirot.
Japp shot him a quick, sideways glance.
He said:
“What’s the big idea?”
“You are unwilling?”
Japp shrugged his shoulders. He said:
“Oh, I shan’t make objections. No good if I did. Who’s the Home Secretary’s little pet? You are. Who’s got half the Cabinet in his pocket? You have. Hushing up their scandals for them.”
Poirot’s mind flew for a moment to that case that he had named the Case of the Augean Stables. He murmured, not without complacence:
“It was ingenious, yes? You must admit it. Well imagined, let us say.”
“Nobody but you would ever have thought of such a thing! Sometimes, Poirot, I think you haven’t any scruples at all!”
Poirot’s face became suddenly grave. He said:
“That is not true.”
“Oh, all right, Poirot, I didn’t mean it. But you’re so pleased sometimes with your damned ingenuity. What do you
want to see Carter for? To ask him whether he really murdered Morley?”
To Japp’s surprise, Poirot nodded his head emphatically.
“Yes, my friend, that is exactly the reason.”
“And I suppose you think he’ll tell you if he did?”
Japp laughed as he spoke. But Hercule Poirot remained grave. He said:
“He might tell me—yes.”
Japp looked at him curiously. He said:
“You know, I’ve known you a long time—twenty years? Something like that. But I still don’t always catch on to what you’re driving at. I know you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about young Frank Carter. For some reason or other, you don’t want him to be guilty—”
Hercule Poirot shook his head energetically.
“No, no, there you are wrong. It is the other way about—”
“I thought perhaps it was on account of that girl of his—the blonde piece. You’re a sentimental old buzzard in some ways—”
Poirot was immediately indignant.
“It is not I who am sentimental! That is an English failing! It is in England that they weep over young sweethearts and dying mothers and devoted children. Me, I am logical. If Frank Carter is a killer, then I am certainly not sentimental enough to wish to unite him in marriage to a nice but commonplace girl who, if he is hanged, will forget him in a year or two and find someone else!”
“Then why don’t you want to believe he is guilty?”
“I do want to believe he is guilty.”
“I suppose you mean that you’ve got hold of something which more or less conclusively proves him to be innocent? Why hold it up, then? You ought to play fair with us, Poirot.”
“I am playing fair with you. Presently, very shortly, I will give you the name and address of a witness who will be invaluable to you for the prosecution. Her evidence ought to clinch the case against him.”
“But then—Oh! You’ve got me all tangled up. Why are you so anxious to see him.”
“To satisfy myself,” said Hercule Poirot.
And he would say no more.
III
Frank Carter, haggard, white-faced, still feebly inclined to bluster, looked on his unexpected visitor with unconcealed disfavour. He said rudely: