Death in the Clouds hp-12 Read online

  "You'll turn my head, M. Poirot. Good night and thank you for supper. You'll have to stand me another if Norman is sent to prison for blackmail."

  A frown came over Norman 's face at the reminder.

  Poirot bade the two young people good night.

  When he got home he unlocked a drawer and took out a list of eleven names.

  Against four of these names he put a light tick. Then he nodded his head thoughtfully.

  "I think I know," he murmured to himself, "but I have got to be sure. Il faut continuer."

  Chapter 17

  Mr Henry Mitchell was just sitting down to a supper of sausage and mash when a visitor called to see him.

  Somewhat to the steward's astonishment, the visitor in question was the full-mustachioed gentleman who had been one of the passengers on the fatal plane.

  M. Poirot was very affable, very agreeable in his manner. He insisted on Mr Mitchell's getting on with his supper, paid a graceful compliment to Mrs Mitchell, who was standing staring at him open-mouthed.

  He accepted a chair, remarked that it was very warm for the time of year and then gently came round to the purpose of his call.

  "Scotland Yard, I fear, is not making much progress with the case," he said.

  Mitchell shook his head.

  "It was an amazing business, sir – amazing. I don't see what they've got to go on. Why, if none of the people on the plane saw anything, it's going to be difficult for anyone afterwards."

  "Truly, as you say."

  "Terribly worried. Henry's been, over it," put in his wife. "Not able to sleep of nights."

  The steward explained:

  "It's lain on my mind, sir, something terrible. The company had been very fair about it. I must say I was afraid at first I might lose my job."

  "Henry, they couldn't. It would have been cruelly unfair."

  His wife sounded highly indignant. She was a buxom highly complexioned woman with snapping dark eyes.

  "Things don't always happen fairly, Ruth. Still, it turned out better than I thought. They absolved me from blame. But I felt it, if you understand me. I was in charge, as it were."

  "I understand your feelings," said Poirot sympathetically. "But I assure you that you are overconscientious. Nothing that happened was your fault."

  "That's what I say, sir," put in Mrs Mitchell.

  Mitchell shook his head.

  "I ought to have noticed that the lady was dead sooner. If I'd tried to wake her up when I first took round the bills -"

  "It would have made little difference. Death, they think, was very nearly instantaneous."

  "He worries so," said Mrs Mitchell. "I tell him not to bother his head so. Who's to know what reason foreigners have for murdering each other, and if you ask me, I think it's a dirty trick to have done it in a British aeroplane."

  She finished her sentence with an indignant and patriotic snort.

  Mitchell shook his head in a puzzled way.

  "It weighs on me, so to speak. Every time I go on duty I'm in a state. And then the gentleman from Scotland Yard asking me again and again if nothing unusual or sudden occurred on the way over. Makes me feel as though I must have forgotten something, and yet I know I haven't. It was a most uneventful voyage in every way until – until it happened."

  "Blowpipes and darts – heathen, I call it," said Mrs Mitchell.

  "You are right," said Poirot, addressing her with a flattering air of being struck by her remarks. "Not so is an English murder committed."

  "You're right, sir."

  "You know, Mrs Mitchell, I can almost guess what part of England you come from?"

  "Dorset, sir. Not far from Bridport. That's my home."

  "Exactly," said Poirot. "A lovely part of the world."

  "It is that. London isn't a patch on Dorset. My folk have been settled at Dorset for over two hundred years, and I've got Dorset in the blood, as you might say."

  "Yes, indeed." He turned to the steward again. "There's one thing I'd like to ask you, Mitchell."

  The man's brow contracted.

  "I've told all that I know; indeed I have, sir?"

  "Yes, yes, this is a very trifling matter. I only wondered if anything on the table – Madame Giselle's table, I mean – was disarranged?"

  "You mean when – when I found her?"

  "Yes. The spoons and forks, the saltcellar – anything like that?"

  The man shook his head.

  "There wasn't anything of that kind on the tables. Everything was cleared away, but the coffee cups. I didn't notice anything myself. I shouldn't, though. I was much too flustered. But the police would know that, sir; they searched the plane through and through."

  "Ah, well," said Poirot, "it is no matter. Sometime I must have a word with your colleague Davis."

  "He's on the early 8:45 a.m. service now, sir."

  "Has this business upset him much?"

  "Oh, well, sir, you see, he's only a young fellow. If you ask me, he's almost enjoyed it all. The excitement! And everyone standing him drinks and wanting to hear about it."

  "Has he, perhaps, a young lady?" asked Poirot. "Doubtless his connection with the crime would be very thrilling to her."

  "He's courting old Johnson's daughter at the Crown and Feathers," said Mrs Mitchell. "But she's a sensible girl; got her head screwed on the right way. She doesn't approve of being mixed up with a murder."

  "A very sound point of view," said Poirot, rising. "Well, thank you, Mr Mitchell – and you, Mrs Mitchell – and I beg of you, my friend, do not let this weigh upon your mind."

  When he had departed, Mitchell said: "The thick heads in the jury at the inquest thought he'd done it. But if you ask me, he's secret service."

  "If you ask me," said Mrs Mitchell, "there's Bolshies at the back of it."

  Poirot had said that he must have a word with the other steward, Davis, sometime. As a matter of fact, he had it not many hours later, in the bar of the Crown and Feathers.

  He asked Davis the same question he had asked Mitchell.

  "Nothing disarranged, no, sir. You mean upset? That kind of thing?"

  "I mean – well, shall we say something missing from the table, or something that would not usually be there?"

  Davis said slowly:

  "There was something. I noticed it when I was clearing up after the police had done with the place. But I don't suppose that it's the sort of thing you mean. It's only that the dead lady had two coffee spoons in her saucer. It does sometimes happen when we're serving in a hurry. I noticed it because there's a superstition about that; they say two spoons in a saucer means a wedding."

  "Was there a spoon missing from anyone else's saucer?"

  "No, sir, not that I noticed. Mitchell or I must have taken the cup and saucer along that way – as I say, one does sometimes, what with the hurry and all. I laid two sets of fish knives and forks only a week ago. On the whole, it's better than laying the table short, for then you have to interrupt yourself and go and fetch the extra knife or whatever it is you've forgotten."

  Poirot asked one more question – a somewhat jocular one:

  "What do you think of French girls, Davis?"

  "English is good enough for me, sir."

  And he grinned at a plump fair-haired girl behind the bar.

  Chapter 18

  Mr James Ryder was rather surprised when a card bearing the name of M. Hercule Poirot was brought to him.

  He knew that the name was familiar but for the moment he could not remember why. Then he said to himself:

  "Oh, that fellow!" And told the clerk to show the visitor in.

  M. Hercule Poirot was looking very jaunty. In one hand he carried a cane. He had a flower in his buttonhole.

  "You will forgive my troubling you, I trust," said Poirot. "It is this affair of the death of Madame Giselle."

  "Yes?" said Mr Ryder. "Well, what about it? Sit down, won't you? Have a cigar?"

  "I thank you, no. I smoke always my own cigarettes. Perhaps y
ou will accept one?"

  Ryder regarded Poirot's tiny cigarettes with a somewhat dubious eye.

  "Think I'll have one of my own, if it's all the same to you. Might swallow one of those by mistake." He laughed heartily.

  "The inspector was round here a few days ago," said Mr Ryder, when he had induced his lighter to work. "Nosey, that's what those fellows are. Can't mind their own business."

  "They have, I suppose, to get information," said Poirot mildly.

  "They needn't be so offensive about it," said Mr Ryder bitterly. "A man's got his feelings and his business reputation to think about?"

  "You are, perhaps, a little oversensitive."

  "I'm in a delicate position, I am," said Mr Ryder. "Sitting where I did – just in front of her – well, it looks fishy, I suppose. I can't help where I sat. If I'd known that woman was going to be murdered, I wouldn't have come by that plane at all. I don't know, though, perhaps I would."

  He looked thoughtful for a moment.

  "Has good come out of evil," asked Poirot, smiling.

  "It's funny, your saying that. It has and it hasn't, in a manner of speaking. I mean I've had a lot of worry. I've been badgered. Things have been insinuated. And why me – that's what I say. Why don't they go and worry that Doctor Hubbard – Bryant, I mean. Doctors are the people who can get hold of highfaluting undetectable poisons. How'd I get hold of snake juice? I ask you!"

  "You were saying," said Poirot, "that although you had been put to a lot of inconvenience -"

  "Ah, yes, there was a bright side to the picture. I don't mind telling you I cleaned up a tidy little sum from the papers. Eyewitness stuff – though there was more of the reporter's imagination than of my eyesight; but that's neither here nor there."

  "It is interesting," said Poirot, "how a crime affects the lives of people who are quite outside it. Take yourself, for example; you make suddenly a quite unexpected sum of money – a sum of money perhaps particularly welcome at the moment."

  "Money's always welcome," said Mr Ryder.

  He eyed Poirot sharply.

  "Sometimes the need of it is imperative. For that reason men embezzle, they make fraudulent entries -" he waved his hands – "all sorts of complications arise."

  "Well, don't let's get gloomy about it," said Mr Ryder.

  "True. Why dwell on the dark side of the picture? This money was grateful to you, since you failed to raise a loan in Paris."

  "How the devil did you know that?" asked Mr Ryder angrily.

  Hercule Poirot smiled.

  "At any rate, it is true."

  "It's true enough. But I don't particularly want it to get about."

  "I will be discretion itself, I assure you."

  "It's odd," mused Mr Ryder, "how small a sum will sometimes put a man in Queer Street. Just a small sum of ready money to tide him over a crisis. And if he can't get hold of that infinitesimal sum, to hell with his credit. Yes, it's odd. Money's odd. Credit's odd. Come to that, life is odd!"

  "Very true."

  "By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?"

  "It is a little delicate. It has come to my ears – in the course of my profession, you understand – that in spite of your denials, you did have dealings with this woman Giselle."

  "Who says so? It's a lie – a damned lie – I never saw the woman!"

  "Dear me, that is very curious!"

  "Curious! It's a damned libel."

  Poirot looked at him thoughtfully.

  "Ah," he said. "I must look into the matter."

  "What do you mean? What are you getting at?"

  Poirot shook his head.

  "Do not enrage yourself. There must be a mistake."

  "I should think there was. Catch me getting myself mixed with these high-toned society money lenders. Society women with gambling debts – that's their sort."

  Poirot rose.

  "I must apologize for having been misinformed." He paused at the door. "By the way, just as a matter of curiosity, what made you call Doctor Bryant, Doctor Hubbard just now?"

  "Blessed if I know. Let me see. Oh, yes, I think it must have been the flute. The nursery rime, you know. Old Mother Hubbard's dog: 'But when she came back he was playing the flute.' Odd thing, how you mix up names."

  "Ah, yes, the flute. These things interest me, you understand, psychologically."

  Mr Ryder snorted at the word "psychologically." It savored to him of what he called that tom-fool business, psychoanalysis.

  He looked at Poirot with suspicion.

  Chapter 19

  The Countess of Horbury sat in her bedroom at 115 Grosvenor Square in front of her toilet table. Gold brushes and boxes, jars of face cream, boxes of powder, dainty luxury all around her. But in the midst of the luxury. Cicely Horbury sat with dry lips and a face on which the rouge showed up in unbecoming patches on her cheeks.

  She read the letter for the fourth time.

  The Countess of Horbury,

  Dear Madam: Re Madame Giselle, deceased.

  I am the holder of certain documents formerly in the possession of the deceased lady. If you or Mr Raymond Barraclough are interested in the matter, I should be happy to call upon you with a view to discussing the affair.

  Or perhaps you would prefer me to deal with your husband in the matter?

  Yours truly,

  John Robinson.

  Stupid, to read the same thing over and over again. As though the words might alter their meaning.

  She picked up the envelope – two envelopes – the first with Personal on it. The second with Private and Very Confidential.

  Private and Very Confidential.

  The beast – the beast.

  And that lying old Frenchwoman who had sworn that "All arrangements were made" to protect clients in case of her own sudden demise.

  Damn her.

  Life was hell – hell!

  "Oh, God, my nerves," thought Cicely. "It isn't fair. It isn't fair."

  Her shaking hand went out to a gold-topped bottle.

  "It will steady me. Pull me together."

  She snuffed the stuff up her nose.

  There. Now she could think!

  What to do?

  See the man, of course. Though where she could raise any money – perhaps a lucky flutter at that place in Carios Street -

  But time enough to think of that later. See the man; find out what he knows.

  She went over to the writing table, dashed off in her big unformed handwriting:

  The Countess of Horbury presents her compliments to Mr John Robinson and will see him if he calls at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.

  "Will I do?" asked Norman.

  He flushed a little under Poirot's startled gaze.

  "Name of a name," said Hercule Poirot, "what kind of a comedy is it that you are playing?"

  Norman Gale flushed even more deeply.

  He mumbled, "You said a slight disguise would be as well."

  Poirot sighed. Then he took the young man by the arm and marched him to the looking-glass.

  "Regard yourself," he said. "That is all I ask of you – regard yourself! What do you think you are? A Santa Claus dressed up to amuse the children? I agree that your beard is not white – no, it is black; the color for villains. But what a beard – a beard that screams to heaven! A cheap beard, my friend, and most imperfectly and amateurishly attached! Then there are your eyebrows – but it is that you have the mania for false hair? The spirit gum, one smells it several yards away, and if you think that anyone will fail to perceive that you have a piece of sticking plaster attached to a tooth, you are mistaken. My friend, it is not your metier – decidedly not – to play the part."

  "I acted in amateur theatricals a good deal at one time," said Norman Gale stiffly.

  "I can hardly believe it. At any rate, I presume they did not let you indulge in your own ideas of make-up. Even behind the footlights your appearance would be singularly unconvincing. In Grosvenor Square in broad daylight -"
/>   Poirot gave an eloquent shrug of the shoulders by way of finishing the sentence.

  "No, mon ami," he said. "You are a blackmailer, not a comedian. I want her ladyship to fear you, not to die of laughing when she sees you. I observe that I wound you by what I am saying. I regret, but it is a moment when only the truth will serve. Take this, and this -" he pressed various jars upon him. "Go into the bathroom and let us have an end of what you call in this country the fool-tommery."

  Crushed, Norman Gale obeyed. When he emerged a quarter of an hour later, his face a vivid shade of brick red, Poirot gave him a nod of approval.

  "Très bien. The farce is over. The serious business begins. I will permit you to have a small mustache. But I will, if you please, attach it to you myself… There… And now we will part the hair differently… So. That is quite enough. Now let me see if you at least know your lines."

  He listened with attention, then nodded.

  "That is good. En avant and good luck to you."

  "I devoutly hope so. I shall probably find an enraged husband and a couple of policemen."

  Poirot reassured him:

  "Have no anxiety. All will march to a marvel."

  "So you say," muttered Norman rebelliously.

  With his spirits at zero, he departed on his distasteful mission.

  At Grosvenor Square he was shown into a small room on the first floor. There, after a minute or two, Lady Horbury came to him.

  Norman braced himself. He must not – positively must not – show that he was new to this business.

  "Mr Robinson?" said Cicely.

  "At your service," said Norman, and bowed.

  "Damn it all! Just like a shopwalker," he thought disgustedly. "That's fright."

  "I had your letter," said Cicely.

  Norman pulled himself together. "The old fool said I couldn't act," he said to himself with a mental grin.

  Aloud he said rather insolently:

  "Quite so. Well, what about it, Lady Horbury?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Come, come. Must we really go into details? Everyone knows how pleasant a – well, call it a weekend at the seaside – can be, but husbands seldom agree. I think you know, Lady Horbury, just exactly what the evidence consists of. Wonderful woman, old Giselle. Always had the goods. Hotel evidence, and so on, is quite first class. Now the question is who wants it most – you or Lord Horbury? That's the question."