Sad Cypress Read online

  She stopped.

  “But later, when we went back into the morning room, she was dying….”

  She stopped. Poirot was staring at her very intently. She flushed and said:

  “Will you ask me—again—did I kill Mary Gerrard?”

  Poirot rose to his feet. He said quickly:

  “I shall ask you—nothing. There are things I do not want to know….”

  Twelve

  Dr. Lord met the train at the station as requested.

  Hercule Poirot alighted from it. He looked very Londonified and was wearing pointed patent leather shoes.

  Peter Lord scrutinized his face anxiously, but Hercule Poirot was giving nothing away.

  Peter Lord said:

  “I’ve done my best to get answers to your questions. First, Mary Gerrard left here for London on July 10th. Second, I haven’t got a housekeeper—a couple of giggling girls run my house. I think you must mean Mrs. Slattery, who was Ransome’s (my predecessor’s) housekeeper. I can take you to her this morning if you like. I’ve arranged that she shall be in.”

  Poirot said:

  “Yes, I think it would be as well if I saw her first.”

  “Then you said you wanted to go to Hunterbury, I could come with you there. It beats me why you haven’t been there already. I can’t think why you wouldn’t go when you were down here before. I should have thought the first thing to be done in a case like this was to visit the place where the crime took place.”

  Holding his head a little on one side, Hercule Poirot inquired:

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Peter Lord was rather disconcerted by the question. “Isn’t it the usual thing to do?”

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “One does not practise detection with a textbook! One uses one’s natural intelligence.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “You might find a clue of some sort there.”

  Poirot sighed:

  “You read too much detective fiction. Your police force in this country is quite admirable. I have no doubt that they searched the house and grounds most carefully.”

  “For evidence against Elinor Carlisle—not for evidence in her favour.”

  Poirot sighed:

  “My dear friend, it is not a monster—this police force! Elinor Carlisle was arrested because sufficient evidence was found to make out a case against her—a very strong case, I may say. It was useless for me to go over ground when the police had gone over it already.”

  “But you do want to go there now?” objected Peter.

  Hercule Poirot nodded his head. He said:

  “Yes—now it is necessary. Because now I know exactly what I am looking for. One must understand with the cells of one’s brain before one uses one’s eyes.”

  “Then you do think there might be—something—there still?”

  Poirot said gently:

  “I have a little idea we shall find something—yes.”

  “Something to prove Elinor’s innocence?”

  “Ah, I did not say that.”

  Peter Lord stopped dead.

  “You don’t mean you still think she’s guilty?”

  Poirot said gravely:

  “You must wait, my friend, before you get an answer to that question.”

  II

  Poirot lunched with the doctor in a pleasant square room with a window open on to the garden.

  Lord said:

  “Did you get what you wanted out of old Slattery?”

  Poirot nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you want with her?”

  “Gossip! Talk about old days. Some crimes have their roots in the past. I think this one had.”

  Peter Lord said irritably:

  “I don’t understand a word you are talking about.”

  Poirot smiled. He said:

  “This fish is deliciously fresh.”

  Lord said impatiently:

  “I dare say. I caught it myself before breakfast this morning. Look here, Poirot, am I to have any idea what you’re driving at? Why keep me in the dark?”

  The other shook his head.

  “Because as yet there is no light. I am always brought up short by the fact that there was no one who had any reason to kill Mary Gerrard—except Elinor Carlisle.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “You can’t be sure of that. She’d been abroad for some time, remember.”

  “Yes, yes, I have made the inquiries.”

  “You’ve been to Germany yourself?”

  “Myself, no.” With a slight chuckle he added: “I have my spies!”

  “Can you depend on other people?”

  “Certainly. It is not for me to run here and there, doing amateurishly the things that for a small sum someone else can do with professional skill. I can assure you, mon cher, I have several irons on the fire. I have some useful assistants—one of them a former burglar.”

  “What do you use him for?”

  “The last thing I have used him for was a very thorough search of Mr. Welman’s flat.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  Poirot said:

  “One always likes to know exactly what lies have been told one.”

  “Did Welman tell you a lie?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Who else has lied to you?”

  “Everybody, I think: Nurse O’Brien romantically; Nurse Hopkins stubbornly; Mrs. Bishop venomously. You yourself—”

  “Good God!” Peter Lord interrupted him unceremoniously. “You don’t think I’ve lied to you, do you?”

  “Not yet,” Poirot admitted.

  Dr. Lord sank back in his chair. He said:

  “You’re a disbelieving sort of fellow, Poirot.”

  Then he said:

  “If you’ve finished, shall we set off for Hunterbury? I’ve got some patients to see later, and then there’s the surgery.”

  “I am at your disposal, my friend.”

  They set off on foot, entering the grounds by the back drive. Halfway up it they met a tall, good-looking young fellow wheeling a barrow. He touched his cap respectfully to Dr. Lord.

  “Good morning, Horlick. This is Horlick, the gardener, Poirot. He was working here that morning.”

  Horlick said:

  “Yes, sir, I was. I saw Miss Elinor that morning and talked to her.”

  Poirot asked:

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She told me the house was as good as sold, and that rather took me aback, sir; but Miss Elinor said as how she’d speak for me to Major Somervell, and that maybe he’d keep me on—if he didn’t think me too young, perhaps, as head—seeing as how I’d had good training under Mr. Stephens, here.”

  Dr. Lord said:

  “Did she seem much the same as usual, Horlick?”

  “Why, yes, sir, except that she looked a bit excited like—and as though she had something on her mind.”

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “Did you know Mary Gerrard?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. But not very well.”

  Poirot said:

  “What was she like?”

  Horlick looked puzzled.

  “Like sir? Do you mean to look at?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, what kind of a girl was she?”

  “Oh, well, sir, she was a very superior sort of a girl. Nice spoken and all that. Thought a lot of herself, I should say. You see, old Mrs. Welman had made a lot of fuss over her. Made her father wild, that did. He was like a bear with a sore head about it.”

  Poirot said:

  “By all that I’ve heard, he had not the best of tempers, that old one?”

  “No, indeed, he hadn’t. Always grumbling, and crusty as they make them. Seldom had a civil word for you.”

  Poirot said:

  “You were here on that morning. Whereabouts were you working?”

  “Mostly in the kitchen garden, sir.”

  “You cannot see the house from there?”

&nb
sp; “No, sir.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “If anybody had come up to the house—up to the pantry window—you wouldn’t have seen them?”

  “No, I wouldn’t, sir.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “When did you go to your dinner?”

  “One o’clock, sir.”

  “And you didn’t see anything—any man hanging about—or a car outside—anything like that?”

  The man’s eyebrows rose in slight surprise.

  “Outside the back gate, sir? There was your car there—nobody else’s.”

  Peter Lord cried:

  “My car: It wasn’t my car! I was over Withenbury direction that morning. Didn’t get back till after two.”

  Horlick looked puzzled.

  “I made sure it was your car, sir,” he said doubtfully.

  Peter Lord said quickly:

  “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Good morning, Horlick.”

  He and Poirot moved on. Horlick stared after them for a minute or two, then slowly resumed his progress with the wheelbarrow.

  Peter Lord said softly—but with great excitement:

  “Something—at last. Whose car was it standing in the lane that morning?”

  Poirot said:

  “What make is your car, my friend?”

  “A Ford ten—sea-green. They’re pretty common, of course.”

  “And you are sure that it was not yours? You haven’t mistaken the day?”

  “Absolutely certain. I was over at Withenbury, came back late, snatched a bit of lunch, and then the call came through about Mary Gerrard and I rushed over.”

  Poirot said softly:

  “Then it would seem, my friend, that we have come upon something tangible at last.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “Someone was here that morning…someone who was not Elinor Carlisle, nor Mary Gerrard, nor Nurse Hopkins….”

  Poirot said:

  “This is very interesting. Come, let us make our investigations. Let us see, for instance, supposing a man (or woman) were to wish to approach the house unseen, how they would set about it.”

  Halfway along the drive a path branched off through some shrubbery. They took this and at a certain turn in it Peter Lord clutched Poirot’s arm, pointing to a window.

  He said:

  “That’s the window of the pantry where Elinor Carlisle was cutting the sandwiches.”

  Poirot murmured:

  “And from here, anyone could see her cutting them. The window was open, if I remember rightly?”

  Peter Lord said:

  “It was wide open. It was a hot day, remember.”

  Hercule Poirot said musingly:

  “Then if anyone wished to watch unseen what was going on, somewhere about here would be a good spot.”

  The two men cast about. Peter Lord said:

  “There’s a place here—behind these bushes. Some stuff’s been trampled down here. It’s grown up again now, but you can see plainly enough.”

  Poirot joined him. He said thoughtfully:

  “Yes, this is a good place. It is concealed from the path, and that opening in the shrubs gives one a good view of the window. Now, what did he do, our friend who stood here? Did he perhaps smoke?”

  They bent down, examining the ground and pushing aside the leaves and branches.

  Suddenly Hercule Poirot uttered a grunt.

  Peter Lord straightened up from his own search.

  “What is it?”

  “A matchbox, my friend. An empty matchbox, trodden heavily into the ground, sodden and decayed.”

  With care and delicacy he salved the object. He displayed it at last on a sheet of notepaper taken from his pocket.

  Peter Lord said:

  “It’s foreign. My god! German matches!”

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “And Mary Gerrard had recently come from Germany!”

  Peter Lord said exultantly:

  “We’ve got something now! You can’t deny it.”

  Hercule Poirot said slowly:

  “Perhaps….”

  “But, damn it all, man. Who on earth round here would have had foreign matches?”

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “I know—I know.”

  His eyes, perplexed eyes, went to the gap in the bushes and the view of the window.

  He said:

  “It is not quite so simple as you think. There is one great difficulty. Do you not see it yourself?”

  “What? Tell me.”

  Poirot sighed.

  “If you do not see for yourself… But come, let us go on.”

  They went on to the house. Peter Lord unlocked the back door with a key.

  He led the way through the scullery to the kitchen, through that, along a passage where there was a cloakroom on one side and the butler’s pantry on the other. The two men looked round the pantry.

  It had the usual cupboards with sliding glass doors for glass and china. There was a gas ring and two kettles and canisters marked Tea and Coffee on a shelf above. There was a sink and draining board and a papier-mâché washing-up bowl. In front of the window was a table.

  Peter Lord said:

  “It was on this table that Elinor Carlisle cut the sandwiches. The fragment of the morphine label was found in this crack in the floor under the sink.”

  Poirot said thoughtfully:

  “The police are careful searchers. They do not miss much.”

  Peter Lord said violently:

  “There’s no evidence that Elinor ever handled that tube! I tell you, someone was watching her from the shrubbery outside. She went down to the Lodge and he saw his chance and slipped in, uncorked the tube, crushed some tablets of morphine to powder and put them into the top sandwich.

  He never noticed that he’d torn a bit off the label of the tube, and that it had fluttered down the crack. He hurried away, started up his car and went off again.”

  Poirot sighed.

  “And still you do not see! It is extraordinary how dense an intelligent man can be.”

  Peter Lord demanded angrily:

  “Do you mean to say that you don’t believe someone stood in those bushes watching the window?”

  Poirot said:

  “Yes, I believe that….”

  “Then we’ve got to find whoever it was!”

  Poirot murmured:

  “We shall not have to look far, I fancy.”

  “Do you mean you know?”

  “I have a very shrewd idea.”

  Peter Lord said slowly:

  “Then your minions who made inquiries in Germany did bring you something….”

  Hercule Poirot said, tapping his forehead:

  “My friend, it is all here, in my head… Come, let us look over the house.”

  III

  They stood at last in the room where Mary Gerrard had died.

  The house had a strange atmosphere in it: it seemed alive with memories and forebodings.

  Peter Lord flung up one of the windows.

  He said with a slight shiver:

  “This place feels like a tomb….”

  Poirot said:

  “If walls could speak… It is all here, is it not, here in the house—the beginning of the whole story.”

  He paused and then said softly:

  “It was here in this room that Mary Gerrard died.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “They found her sitting in that chair by the window….”

  Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully:

  “A young girl—beautiful—romantic? Did she scheme and intrigue? Was she a superior person who gave herself airs? Was she gentle and sweet, with no thought of intrigue…just a young thing beginning life…a girl like a flower?…”

  “Whatever she was,” said Peter Lord, “someone wished her dead.”

  Hercule Poirot murmured:

  “I wonder….”

  Lord stared at him.

  “What do you mean?”

&nbs
p; Poirot shook his head.

  “Not yet.”

  He turned about.

  “We have been all through the house. We have seen all that there is to be seen here. Let us go down to the Lodge.”

  Here again all was in order: the rooms dusty, but neat and emptied of personal possessions. The two men stayed only a few minutes. As they came out into the sun, Poirot touched the leaves of a pillar rose growing up a trellis. It was pink and sweet-scented.

  He murmured:

  “Do you know the name of this rose? It is Zephyrine Drouhin, my friend.”

  Peter Lord said irritably:

  “What of it?”

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “When I saw Elinor Carlisle, she spoke to me of roses. It was then that I began to see—not daylight, but the little glimpse of light that one gets in a train when one is about to come out of a tunnel. It is not so much daylight, but the promise of daylight.”

  Peter Lord said harshly:

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She told me of her childhood, of playing here in this garden, and of how she and Roderick Welman were on different sides. They were enemies, for he preferred the white rose of York—cold and austere—and she, so she told me, loved red roses, the red rose of Lancaster. Red roses that have scent and colour and passion and warmth. And that, my friend, is the difference between Elinor Carlisle and Roderick Welman.”

  Peter Lord said:

  “Does that explain—anything?”

  Poirot said:

  “It explains Elinor Carlisle—who is passionate and proud and who loved desperately a man who was incapable of loving her….”

  Peter Lord said:

  “I don’t understand you….”

  Poirot said:

  “But I understand her… I understand both of them. Now my friend, we will go back once more to that little clearing in the shrubbery.”

  They went there in silence. Peter Lord’s freckled face was troubled and angry.

  When they came to the spot, Poirot stood motionless for some time, and Peter Lord watched him.

  Then suddenly the little detective gave a vexed sigh.

  He said:

  “It is so simple, really. Do you not see, my friend, the fatal fallacy in your reasoning? According to your theory someone, a man, presumably, who had known Mary Gerrard in Germany came here intent on killing her. But look, my friend, look! Use the two eyes of your body, since the eyes of the mind do not seem to serve you. What do you see from here: a window, is it not? And at that window—a girl. A girl cutting sandwiches. That is to say, Elinor Carlisle. But think for a minute of this: What on earth was to tell the watching man that those sandwiches were going to be offered to Mary Gerrard? No one knew that but Elinor Carlisle—herself—nobody! Not even Mary Gerrard, nor Nurse Hopkins.