Hercule Poirot's Casebook (hercule poirot) Read online

  'Because it had probably been already thrown away the day before. The sheet was clean because Barbara hadn't written any letters that day.'

  'That could hardly be the case, mademoiselle. For Mrs Allen was seen going to the post-box that evening. Therefore she must have been writing letters. She could not write downstairs - there were no writing materials. She would be hardly likely to go to your room to write. So, then, what had happened to the sheet of paper on which she had blotted her letters? It is true that people sometimes throw things in the fire instead of the wastepaper basket, but there was only a gas fire in the room. And the fire downstairs had not been alight the previous day, dnce you told me it was all laid ready when you put a match to it.'

  He paused.

  'A curious little problem. I looked everywhere, in the wastepaper baskets, in the dustbin, but I could not find a sheet of used blotting-paper - and that seemed to me very important. It looked as though someone had deliberately taken that sheet of blotting paper away. Why? Because there was writing on it that could easily have been read by holding it up to a mirror.

  'But there was a second curious point about the writing-table.

  Perhaps, Japp, you remember roughly the arrangement of it? Blotter and inkstand in the centre, pen tray to the left, calendar and quill pen to the right. Eh bien? You do not see?

  The quill pen, remember, I examined, it was for show only - it had not been used. Ah! still you do not see? I will say it again.

  Blotter in the centre, pen tray to the left - to the left, Japp. But is it not usual to find a pen tray on the right, convenient to the right hand?.

  'Ah, now it comes to you, does it not? The pen tray on the left - the wrist-watch on the right wrist - the blotting-paper removed - and something else brought into the room - the ashtray with the cigarette ends!

  'That room was fresh and pure smelling, Japp, a room in which the window had been open, not closed all night... Anti I made myself a picture.'

  He spun round and faced Jane.

  'A picture of you, mademoiselle, driving up in your taxi, paying it off, running up the stairs, calling perhaps, 'Barbara'

  - and you open the door and you find your friend there lying dead with the pistol clasped in her hand - the left hand, naturally, since she is left-handed and therefore, too, the bullet has entered on the left ride of the head. There is a note there addressed to you. It tells you what it is that has driven her to take her own life. It was, I fancy, a very moving letter... young, gentle, unhappy woman driven by blackmail to take her life...

  'I think that, almost at once, the idea flashed into your head.

  This was a certain man's doing. Let him be punished - fully and adequately punished! You take the pistol, wipe it and ?!ace it in the right hand. You take the note and you tear off top sheet of the blotting-paper on which the note has been drawn.

  You go down, light the fire and put them both on the flay Then you carry up the ashtray - to further the illusion that people sat there talking - and you also take up a fragment of enamel cuff link that is on the floor. That is a lucky find and you expect it to clinch matters. Then you close the window and lock the door. There must be no suspicion that you have tampered with the room. The police must see it exactly as it is - so you do not seek help in the mews but ring up the police straightaway.

  'And so it goes on. You play your chosen role with judgment and coolness. You refuse at first to say anything but cleverly you suggest doubts of suicide. Later you are quite ready to set us on the trail of Major Eustace...

  'Yes, mademoiselle, it was clever - a very clever murder - for that is what it is. The attempted murder of Major Eustace.'

  Jane Plenderleith sprang to her feet.

  'It wasn't murder - it was justice. That man hounded poor Barbara to her death! She was so sweet and helpless. You see, poor kid, she got involved with a man in India when she first went out. She was only seventeen and he was a married man years older than her. Then she had a baby. She could have put it in a home but she wouldn't hear of that. She went off to some out of the way spot and came back calling herself Mrs Allen.

  Later the child died. She came back here and she fell in love with Charles - that pompous, stuffed owl; she adored him and he took her adoration very complacently. If he had been a different kind of man I'd have advised her to tell him everything. But as it was, I urged her to hold her tongue. After all, nobody knew anything about that business except me.

  'And then that devil Eustace turned up! You know the rest.

  He began to bleed her systematically, but it wasn't till that last evening that she realised that she was exposing Charles too, to the risk of scandal. Once married to Charles, Eustace had got he wanted her - married to a rich man with a horror scandal! When Eustace had gone with the money she it over. Then she came up and wrote a letter to me. She said she loved Charles and couldn't live without him, but that for his own sake she mustn't marry him. She was taking the best way out, she said.'

  Jane flung her head back.

  'Do you wonder I did what I did? And you stand there calling it murder!'

  'Because it is murder,' Poirot's voice was stem. 'Murder can sometimes seem justified, but it is murder all the same. You are truthful and clear-minded - face the truth, mademoiselle!

  Your friend died, in the last resort, because she had not the courage to live. We may sympathize with her. We may pity her.

  But the fact remains - the act was hers - not another.'

  He paused.

  'And you? That man is now in prison, he will serve a sentence for other matters. Do you really wish, of your own volition, to destroy the life - the life, mind - of any human being?'

  She stared at him. Her eyes darkened. Suddenly she muttered:

  'No. You're right. I don't.'

  Then, turning on her heel, she went swiftly from the The outer door banged...

  Japp gave a long - a very prolonged - whistle.

  'Well, I'm damned!' he said.

  Poirot sat down and smiled at him amiably. It was qu: a long time before the silence was broken. Then Japp said:

  'Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to like murder!'

  'Yes, and very cleverly done, too. Nothing emphasized.'

  Japp said suddenly:

  'But the attache-case? Where did that come in?'

  'But, my dear, my very dear friend, I have already told you that it did not come in.'

  'Then why '

  'The golf clubs. The golf clubs, Japp. They were the golf-clubs of a left-handed person. Jane Plenderleith kept her clue at Wentworth. Those were Barbara Allen's clubs. No wonder girl got, as you say, the wind up when we opened at cupboard. Her whole plan might have been ruined. But she is quick, she realized that she had, for one short moment, given herself away. She saw that we saw. So she does the best thing she can think of on the spur of the moment. She tries to focus our attention on the wrong object. She says of the attache-case "That's mine. I - it came back with me this morning. So there can't be anything there." And, as she hoped, away you go on the false trail. For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attache-case as a - what is it - kippered herring?'

  'Red herring. Do you mean that her real object was ?'

  'Consider, my friend. Where is the best place to get rid of a bag of golf clubs? One cannot burn them or put them in a dustbin. If one leaves them somewhere they may be returned to you. Miss Plenderleith took them to a golf course. She leaves them in the clubhouse while she gets a couple of irons from her own bag, and then she goes round without a caddy. Doubtless at judicious intervals she breaks a club in half and throws it into some deep undergrowth, and ends by throwing the empty bag away. If anyone should find a broken golf club here and there it will not create surprise. People have been known to break and throw away all their clulas in a mood of intense exasperation over the game! It is, in fact, that kind of game!

  'But since she realizes that he
r actions may still be a matter of interest, she throws that useful red herring - the attache-case - in a somewhat spectacular manner into the lake - and that, my friend, is the truth of "The Mystery of the Attache-Case."'

  Japp looked at his friend for some moments in silence. Then he rose, clapped him on the shoulder, and burst out laughing.

  'Not so bad for an old dog! Upon my word, you take the cake! Come out and have a spot of lunch?'

  'With pleasure, my friend, but we will not have the cake.

  Indeed, an Omelette aux Champignons, Blanquette de Veau, Petits pois la Francaise, and - to follow - a Baba au Rhum.'

  'Lead me to it,' said Japp.

  TRIANGLE AT RHODES

  Chapter 1

  Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.

  Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood beside her.

  On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.

  ‘I’m so patchy still,’ she murmured regretfully. ‘M. Poirot—would you mind? Just below the right shoulder-blade—I can’t reach to rub it in properly.’

  M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.

  ‘I was right about that woman—the one in the Chanel model—it is Valentine Dacres—Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.’

  ‘Honeymooners?’ murmured Sarah in a stifled voice.

  Miss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner.

  ‘Oh, no—her clothes aren’t new enough. You can always tell brides! Don’t you think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?’

  ‘Not just looking, darling,’ said Sarah sweetly. ‘You ask a lot of questions, too.’

  ‘I haven’t even spoken to the Golds yet,’ said Miss Lyall with dignity. ‘And anyway I don’t see why one shouldn’t be interested in one’s fellow-creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?’

  This time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply.

  Without taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied:

  ‘Ça depend.’

  Pamela was shocked.

  ‘Oh, M. Poirot! I don’t think anything’s so interesting—so incalculable as a human being!’

  ‘Incalculable? That, no.’

  ‘Oh, but they are. Just as you think you’ve got them beautifully taped—they do something completely unexpected.’

  Hercule Poirot shook his head.

  ‘No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caractère. It is in the end monotonous.’

  ‘I don’t agree with you at all!’ said Miss Pamela Lyall.

  She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.

  ‘As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them—what they’re like—what relations they are to each other—what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s—oh, it’s quite thrilling.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘has infinitely more variety.’

  Sarah turned her head sideways and asked:

  ‘You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?’

  ‘Précisément,’ said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.

  ‘What’s that you’re drawing?’ asked Pamela curiously.

  ‘A triangle,’ said Poirot.

  But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.

  ‘Here are the Chantrys,’ she said.

  A woman was coming down the beach—a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half-nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing-dress.

  Pamela sighed.

  ‘Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?’

  But Poirot was looking at her face—the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.

  He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things—for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time—a commander in the navy.

  He it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark—with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him.

  She said:

  ‘Tony darling—my cigarette case…’

  He had it ready for her—lighted her cigarette—helped her to slip the straps of the white bathing-dress from her shoulders. She lay, arms outstretched in the sun. He sat by her like some wild beast that guards its prey.

  Pamela said, her voice just lowered sufficiently:

  ‘You know they interest me frightfully… He’s such a brute! So silent and—sort of glowering. I suppose a woman of her kind likes that. It must be like controlling a tiger! I wonder how long it will last. She gets tired of them very soon, I believe—especially nowadays. All the same, if she tried to get rid of him, I think he might be dangerous.’

  Another couple came down the beach—rather shyly. They were the newcomers of the night before. Mr and Mrs Douglas Gold as Miss Lyall knew from her inspection of the hotel visitors’ book. She knew, too, for such were the Italian regulations—their Christian names and their ages as set down from their passports.

  Mr Douglas Cameron Gold was thirty-one and Mrs Marjorie Emma Gold was thirty-five.

  Miss Lyall’s hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. She, therefore, noting the slight hesitancy and shyness of Mrs Gold’s advance, called out:

  ‘Good morning, isn’t it a lovely day?’

  Mrs Gold was a small woman—rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked. Her husband, on the other hand, was extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid.

  Mrs Gold looked gratefully at Pamela and sat down near her.

  ‘What a lovely shade of brown you are. I feel terribly underdone!’

  ‘One has to take a frightful lot of trouble to brown
evenly,’ sighed Miss Lyall.

  She paused a minute and then went on:

  ‘You’ve only just arrived, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Last night. We came on the Vapo d’Italia boat.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Rhodes before?’

  ‘No. It is lovely, isn’t it?’

  Her husband said:

  ‘Pity it’s such a long way to come.’

  ‘Yes, if it were only nearer England—’

  In a muffled voice Sarah said:

  ‘Yes, but then it would be awful. Rows and rows of people laid out like fish on a slab. Bodies everywhere!’

  ‘That’s true, of course,’ said Douglas Gold. ‘It’s a nuisance the Italian exchange is so absolutely ruinous at present.’

  ‘It does make a difference, doesn’t it?’

  The conversation was running on strictly stereotyped lines. It could hardly have been called brilliant.

  A little way along the beach, Valentine Chantry stirred and sat up. With one hand she held her bathing-dress in position across her breast.

  She yawned, a wide yet delicate cat-like yawn. She glanced casually down the beach. Her eyes slanted past Marjorie Gold—and stayed thoughtfully on the crisp, golden head of Douglas Gold.

  She moved her shoulders sinuously. She spoke and her voice was raised a little higher than it need have been.

  ‘Tony darling—isn’t it divine—this sun? I simply must have been a sun worshipper once—don’t you think so?’

  Her husband grunted something in reply that failed to reach the others. Valentine Chantry went on in that high, drawling voice.

  ‘Just pull that towel a little flatter, will you, darling?’

  She took infinite pains in the resettling of her beautiful body. Douglas Gold was looking now. His eyes were frankly interested.

  Mrs Gold chirped happily in a subdued key to Miss Lyall.

  ‘What a beautiful woman!’

  Pamela, as delighted to give as to receive information, replied in a lower voice:

  ‘That’s Valentine Chantry—you know, who used to be Valentine Dacres—she is rather marvellous, isn’t she? He’s simply crazy about her—won’t let her out of his sight!’