Poirot's Early Cases: 18 Hercule Poirot Mysteries Page 13

  ‘Can a legend saw through an ivy stem?’

  ‘What is that you are saying, madame?’ cried Poirot, an expression of great astonishment on his face.

  ‘I said, can a legend—or a ghost, if you like to call it that—saw through an ivy stem? I’m not saying anything about Cornwall. Any boy might go out too far and get into difficulties—though Ronald could swim when he was four years old. But the ivy’s different. Both the boys were very naughty. They’d discovered they could climb up and down by the ivy. They were always doing it. One day—Gerald was away at the time—Ronald did it once too often, and the ivy gave way and he fell. Fortunately he didn’t damage himself seriously. But I went out and examined the ivy: it was cut through, M. Poirot—deliberately cut through.’

  ‘It is very serious what you are telling me there, madame. You say your younger boy was away from home at the moment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And at the time of the ptomaine poisoning, was he still away?’

  ‘No, they were both there.’

  ‘Curious,’ murmured Poirot. ‘Now, madame, who are the inmates of your establishment?’

  ‘Miss Saunders, the children’s governess, and John Gardiner, my husband’s secretary—’

  Mrs Lemesurier paused, as though slightly embarrassed.

  ‘And who else, madame?’

  ‘Major Roger Lemesurier, whom you also met on that night, I believe, stays with us a good deal.’

  ‘Ah, yes—he is a cousin is he not?’

  ‘A distant cousin. He does not belong to our branch of the family. Still, I suppose now he is my husband’s nearest relative. He is a dear fellow, and we are all very fond of him. The boys are devoted to him.’

  ‘It was not he who taught them to climb up the ivy?’

  ‘It might have been. He incites them to mischief often enough.’

  ‘Madame, I apologize for what I said to you earlier. The danger is real, and I believe that I can be of assistance. I propose that you should invite us both to stay with you. Your husband will not object?’

  ‘Oh no. But he will believe it to be all of no use. It makes me furious the way he just sits around and expects the boy to die.’

  ‘Calm yourself, madame. Let us make our arrangements methodically.’

  III

  Our arrangements were duly made, and the following day saw us flying northward. Poirot was sunk in a reverie. He came out of it, to remark abruptly: ‘It was from a train such as this that Vincent Lemesurier fell?’

  He put a slight accent on the ‘fell’.

  ‘You don’t suspect foul play there, surely?’ I asked.

  ‘Has it struck you, Hastings, that some of the Lemesurier deaths were, shall we say, capable of being arranged? Take that of Vincent, for instance. Then the Eton boy—an accident with a gun is always ambiguous. Supposing this child had fallen from the nursery window and been dashed to death—what more natural and unsuspicious? But why only the one child, Hastings? Who profits by the death of the elder child? His younger brother, a child of seven! Absurd!’

  ‘They mean to do away with the other later,’ I suggested, though with the vaguest ideas as to who ‘they’ were.

  Poirot shook his head as though dissatisfied.

  ‘Ptomaine poisoning,’ he mused. ‘Atropine will produce much the same symptoms. Yes, there is need for our presence.’

  Mrs Lemesurier welcomed us enthusiastically. Then she took us to her husband’s study and left us with him. He had changed a good deal since I saw him last. His shoulders stooped more than ever, and his face had a curious pale grey tinge. He listened while Poirot explained our presence in the house.

  ‘How exactly like Sadie’s practical common sense!’ he said at last. ‘Remain by all means, M. Poirot, and I thank you for coming; but—what is written, is written. The way of the transgressor is hard. We Lemesuriers know—none of us can escape the doom.’

  Poirot mentioned the sawn-through ivy, but Hugo seemed very little impressed.

  ‘Doubtless some careless gardener—yes, yes, there may be an instrument, but the purpose behind is plain; and I will tell you this, M. Poirot, it cannot be long delayed.’

  Poirot looked at him attentively.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I myself am doomed. I went to a doctor last year. I am suffering from an incurable disease—the end cannot be much longer delayed; but before I die, Ronald will be taken. Gerald will inherit.’

  ‘And if anything were to happen to your second son also?’

  ‘Nothing will happen to him; he is not threatened.’

  ‘But if it did?’ persisted Poirot.

  ‘My cousin Roger is the next heir.’

  We were interrupted. A tall man with a good figure and crispy curling auburn hair entered with a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Never mind about those now, Gardiner,’ said Hugo Lemesurier, then he added: ‘My secretary, Mr Gardiner.’

  The secretary bowed, uttered a few pleasant words and then went out. In spite of his good looks, there was something repellent about the man. I said so to Poirot shortly afterward when we were walking round the beautiful old grounds together, and rather to my surprise, he agreed.

  ‘Yes, yes, Hastings, you are right. I do not like him. He is too good-looking. He would be one for the soft job always. Ah, here are the children.’

  Mrs Lemesurier was advancing towards us, her two children beside her. They were fine-looking boys, the younger dark like his mother, the elder with auburn curls. They shook hands prettily enough, and were soon absolutely devoted to Poirot. We were next introduced to Miss Saunders, a nondescript female, who completed the party.

  IV

  For some days we had a pleasant, easy existence—ever vigilant, but without result. The boys led a happy normal life and nothing seemed to be amiss. On the fourth day after our arrival Major Roger Lemesurier came down to stay. He was little changed, still care-free and debonair as of old, with the same habit of treating all things lightly. He was evidently a great favourite with the boys, who greeted his arrival with shrieks of delight and immediately dragged him off to play wild Indians in the garden. I noticed that Poirot followed them unobtrusively.

  V

  On the following day we were all invited to tea, boys included, with Lady Claygate, whose place adjoined that of the Lemesuriers. Mrs Lemesurier suggested that we also should come, but seemed rather relieved when Poirot refused and declared he would much prefer to remain at home.

  Once everyone had started, Poirot got to work. He reminded me of an intelligent terrier. I believe that there was no corner of the house that he left unsearched; yet it was all done so quietly and methodically that no attention was directed to his movements. Clearly, at the end, he remained unsatisfied. We had tea on the terrace with Miss Saunders, who had not been included in the party.

  ‘The boys will enjoy it,’ she murmured in her faded way, ‘though I hope they will behave nicely, and not damage the flower-beds, or go near the bees—’

  Poirot paused in the very act of drinking. He looked like a man who has seen a ghost.

  ‘Bees?’ he demanded in a voice of thunder.

  ‘Yes, M. Poirot, bees. Three hives. Lady Claygate is very proud of her bees—’

  ‘Bees?’ cried Poirot again. Then he sprang from the table and walked up and down the terrace with his hands to his head. I could not imagine why the little man should be so agitated at the mere mention of bees.

  At that moment we heard the car returning. Poirot was on the doorstep as the party alighted.

  ‘Ronald’s been stung,’ cried Gerald excitedly.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Mrs Lemesurier. ‘It hasn’t even swollen. We put ammonia on it.’

  ‘Let me see, my little man,’ said Poirot. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Here, on the side of my neck,’ said Ronald importantly. ‘But it doesn’t hurt. Father said: “Keep still—there’s a bee on you.” And I kept still, and he took it off, but it stung me firs
t, though it didn’t really hurt, only like a pin, and I didn’t cry, because I’m so big and going to school next year.’

  Poirot examined the child’s neck, then drew away again. He took me by the arm and murmured:

  ‘Tonight, mon ami, tonight we have a little affair on! Say nothing—to anyone.’

  He refused to be more communicative, and I went through the evening devoured by curiosity. He retired early and I followed his example. As we went upstairs, he caught me by the arm and delivered his instructions:

  ‘Do not undress. Wait a sufficient time, extinguish your light and join me here.’

  I obeyed, and found him waiting for me when the time came. He enjoined silence on me with a gesture, and we crept quietly along the nursery wing. Ronald occupied a small room of his own. We entered it and took up our position in the darkest corner. The child’s breathing sounded heavy and undisturbed.

  ‘Surely he is sleeping very heavily?’ I whispered.

  Poirot nodded.

  ‘Drugged,’ he murmured.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that he should not cry out at—’

  ‘At what?’ I asked, as Poirot paused.

  ‘At the prick of the hypodermic needle, mon ami! Hush, let us speak no more—not that I expect anything to happen for some time.’

  VI

  But in this Poirot was wrong. Hardly ten minutes had elapsed before the door opened softly, and someone entered the room. I heard a sound of quick hurried breathing. Footsteps moved to the bed, and then there was a sudden click. The light of a little electric lantern fell on the sleeping child—the holder of it was still invisible in the shadow. The figure laid down the lantern. With the right hand it brought forth a syringe; with the left it touched the boy’s neck—

  Poirot and I sprang at the same minute. The lantern rolled to the floor, and we struggled with the intruder in the dark. His strength was extraordinary. At last we overcame him.

  ‘The light, Hastings, I must see his face—though I fear I know only too well whose face it will be.’

  So did I, I thought as I groped for the lantern. For a moment I had suspected the secretary, egged on by my secret dislike of the man, but I felt assured by now that the man who stood to gain by the death of his two childish cousins was the monster we were tracking.

  My foot struck against the lantern. I picked it up and switched on the light. It shone full on the face of—Hugo Lemesurier, the boy’s father!

  The lantern almost dropped from my hand.

  ‘Impossible,’ I murmured hoarsely. ‘Impossible!’

  VII

  Lemesurier was unconscious. Poirot and I between us carried him to his room and laid him on the bed. Poirot bent and gently extricated something from his right hand. He showed it to me. It was a hypodermic syringe. I shuddered.

  ‘What is in it? Poison?’

  ‘Formic acid, I fancy.’

  ‘Formic acid?’

  ‘Yes. Probably obtained by distilling ants. He was a chemist, you remember. Death would have been attributed to the bee sting.’

  ‘My God,’ I muttered. ‘His own son! And you expected this?’

  Poirot nodded gravely.

  ‘Yes. He is insane, of course. I imagine that the family history has become a mania with him. His intense longing to succeed to the estate led him to commit the long series of crimes. Possibly the idea occurred to him first when travelling north that night with Vincent. He couldn’t bear the prediction to be falsified. Ronald’s son was already dead, and Ronald himself was a dying man—they are a weakly lot. He arranged the accident to the gun, and—which I did not suspect until now—contrived the death of his brother John by this same method of injecting formic acid into the jugular vein. His ambition was realized then, and he became the master of the family acres. But his triumph was short-lived—he found that he was suffering from an incurable disease. And he had the madman’s fixed idea—the eldest son of a Lemesurier could not inherit. I suspect that the bathing accident was due to him—he encouraged the child to go out too far. That failing, he sawed through the ivy, and afterwards poisoned the child’s food.’

  ‘Diabolical!’ I murmured with a shiver. ‘And so cleverly planned!’

  ‘Yes, mon ami, there is nothing more amazing than the extraordinary sanity of the insane! Unless it is the extraordinary eccentricity of the sane! I imagine that it is only lately that he has completely gone over the borderline, there was method in his madness to begin with.’

  ‘And to think that I suspected Roger—that splendid fellow.’

  ‘It was the natural assumption, mon ami. We knew that he also travelled north with Vincent that night. We knew, too, that he was the next heir after Hugo and Hugo’s children. But our assumption was not borne out by the facts. The ivy was sawn through when only little Ronald was at home—but it would be to Roger’s interest that both children should perish. In the same way, it was only Ronald’s food that was poisoned. And today when they came home and I found that there was only his father’s word for it that Ronald had been stung, I remembered the other death from a wasp sting—and I knew!’

  VIII

  Hugo Lemesurier died a few months later in the private asylum to which he was removed. His widow was remarried a year later to Mr John Gardiner, the auburn-haired secretary. Ronald inherited the broad acres of his father, and continues to flourish.

  ‘Well, well,’ I remarked to Poirot. ‘Another illusion gone. You have disposed very successfully of the curse of the Lemesuriers.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Poirot very thoughtfully. ‘I wonder very much indeed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mon ami, I will answer you with one significant word—red!’

  ‘Blood?’ I queried, dropping my voice to an awe-stricken whisper.

  ‘Always you have the imagination melodramatic, Hastings! I refer to something much more prosaic—the colour of little Ronald Lemesurier’s hair.’

  The Lost Mine

  I laid down my bank book with a sigh.

  ‘It is a curious thing,’ I observed, ‘but my overdraft never seems to grow any less.’

  ‘And it perturbs you not? Me, if I had an overdraft, never should I close my eyes all night,’ declared Poirot.

  ‘You deal in comfortable balances, I suppose!’ I retorted.

  ‘Four hundred and forty-four pounds, four and fourpence,’ said Poirot with some complacency. ‘A neat figure, is it not?’

  ‘It must be tact on the part of your bank manager. He is evidently acquainted with your passion for symmetrical details. What about investing, say, three hundred of it in the Porcupine oil-fields? Their prospectus, which is advertised in the papers today, says that they will pay one hundred per cent dividends next year.’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Poirot, shaking his head. ‘I like not the sensational. For me the safe, the prudent investment—les rentes, the consols, the—how do you call it?—the conversion.’

  ‘Have you never made a speculative investment?’

  ‘No, mon ami,’ replied Poirot severely. ‘I have not. And the only shares I own which have not what you call the gilded edge are fourteen thousand shares in the Burma Mines Ltd.’

  Poirot paused with an air of waiting to be encouraged to go on.

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  ‘And for them I paid no cash—no, they were the reward of the exercise of my little grey cells. You would like to hear the story? Yes?’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘These mines are situated in the interior of Burma about two hundred miles inland from Rangoon. They were discovered by the Chinese in the fifteenth century and worked down to the time of the Mohammedan Rebellion, being finally abandoned in the year 1868. The Chinese extracted the rich lead-silver ore from the upper part of the ore body, smelting it for the silver alone, and leaving large quantities of rich lead-bearing slag. This, of course, was soon discovered when prospecting work was carried out in Burma, but owing to the fact that the old workings had b
ecome full of loose filling and water, all attempts to find the source of the ore proved fruitless. Many parties were sent out by syndicates, and they dug over a large area, but this rich prize still eluded them. But a representative of one of the syndicates got on the track of a Chinese family who were supposed to have still kept a record of the situation of the mine. The present head of the family was one Wu Ling.’

  ‘What a fascinating page of commercial romance!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Is it not? Ah, mon ami, one can have romance without golden-haired girls of matchless beauty—no, I am wrong; it is auburn hair that so excites you always. You remember—’

  ‘Go on with the story,’ I said hastily.

  ‘Eh bien, my friend, this Wu Ling was approached. He was an estimable merchant, much respected in the province where he lived. He admitted at once that he owned the documents in question, and was perfectly prepared to negotiate for this sale, but he objected to dealing with anyone other than principals. Finally it was arranged that he should journey to England and meet the directors of an important company.

  ‘Wu Ling made the journey to England in the SS Assunta, and the Assunta docked at Southampton on a cold, foggy morning in November. One of the directors, Mr Pearson, went down to Southampton to meet the boat, but owing to the fog, the train down was very much delayed, and by the time he arrived, Wu Ling had disembarked and left by special train for London. Mr Pearson returned to town somewhat annoyed, as he had no idea where the Chinaman proposed to stay. Later in the day, however, the offices of the company were rung up on the telephone. Wu Ling was staying at the Russell Square Hotel. He was feeling somewhat unwell after the voyage, but declared himself perfectly able to attend the board meeting on the following day.

  ‘The meeting of the board took place at eleven o’clock. When half past eleven came, and Wu Ling had not put in an appearance, the secretary rang up the Russell Hotel. In answer to his inquiries, he was told that the Chinaman had gone out with a friend about half past ten. It seemed clear that he had started out with the intention of coming to the meeting, but the morning wore away, and he did not appear. It was, of course, possible that he had lost his way, being unacquainted with London, but at a late hour that night he had not returned to the hotel. Thoroughly alarmed now, Mr Pearson put matters in the hands of the police. On the following day, there was still no trace of the missing man, but towards evening of the day after that again, a body was found in the Thames which proved to be that of the ill-fated Chinaman. Neither on the body, nor in the luggage at the hotel, was there any trace of the papers relating to the mine.