Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Read online

  ‘It’s true,’ I said slowly, ‘that I didn’t see his face. But it was his hair all right, and that slight limp –’

  ‘Anyone could limp, mon Dieu!’

  I looked at him, startled. ‘Do you mean to suggest, Poirot, that it wasn’t Norton that I saw?’

  ‘I am not suggesting anything of the kind. I am merely annoyed by the unscientific reasons you give for saying it was Norton. No, no, I do not for one minute suggest that it was not Norton. It would be difficult for it to be anyone else, for every man here is tall – very much taller than he was – and enfin

  you cannot disguise height – that, no. Norton was only five foot five, I should say. Tout de même, it is like a conjuring trick, is it not? He goes into his room, locks the door, puts the key in his pocket, and is found shot with the pistol in his hand and the key still in his pocket.’

  ‘Then you don’t believe,’ I said, ‘that he shot himself ?’

  Slowly Poirot shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Norton did not shoot himself. He was deliberately killed.’

  IV

  I went downstairs in a daze. The thing was so inexplicable I may be forgiven, I hope, for not seeing the next inevitable step. I was dazed. My mind was not working properly.

  And yet it was so logical. Norton had been killed – why? To prevent, or so I believed, his telling what he had seen.

  But he had confided that knowledge to one other person.

  So that person, too, was in danger . . .

  And was not only in danger, but was helpless.

  I should have known.

  I should have foreseen . . .

  ‘Cher ami!’ Poirot had said to me as I left the room.

  They were the last words I was ever to hear him say. For when Curtiss came to attend to his master he found that master dead . . .

  Chapter 18

  I

  I don’t want to write about it at all.

  I want, you see, to think about it as little as possible. Hercule Poirot was dead – and with him died a good part of Arthur Hastings.

  I will give you the bare facts without embroidery. It is all I can bear to do.

  He died, they said, of natural causes. That is to say he died of a heart attack. It was the way, so Franklin said, that he had expected him to go. Doubtless the shock of Norton’s death brought one on. By some oversight, it seems, the amyl nitrate ampoules were not by his bed.

  Was it an oversight? Did someone deliberately remove them? No, it must have been something more than that. X could not count on Poirot’s having a heart attack.

  For, you see, I refuse to believe that Poirot’s death was natural. He was killed, as Norton was killed, as Barbara Franklin was killed. And I don’t know why they were killed – and I don’t know who killed them!

  There was an inquest on Norton and a verdict of suicide. The only point of doubt was raised by the surgeon who said it was unusual for a man to shoot himself in the exact centre of his forehead. But that was the only shadow of doubt. The whole thing was so plain. The door locked on the inside, the key in the dead man’s pocket, the windows closely shuttered, the pistol in his hand. Norton had complained of headaches, it seemed, and some of his investments had been doing badly lately. Hardly reasons for suicide, but they had to put forward something.

  The pistol was apparently his own. It had been seen lying on his dressing-table twice by the housemaid during his stay at Styles. So that was that. Another crime beautifully stage-managed and as usual with no alternative solution.

  In the duel between Poirot and X, X had won.

  It was now up to me.

  I went to Poirot’s room and took away the despatch box.

  I knew that he had made me his executor, so I had a perfect right to do so. The key was round his neck.

  In my own room I opened the box.

  And at once I had a shock. The dossiers of X’s cases were gone. I had seen them there only a day or two previously when Poirot unlocked it. That was proof, if I had been needing it, that X had been at work. Either Poirot had destroyed those papers himself (most unlikely) or else X had done so.

  X. X. That damned fiend X.

  But the case was not empty. I remembered Poirot’s promise that I should find other indications which X would not know about.

  Were these the indications?

  There was a copy of one of Shakespeare’s plays, Othello, in a small cheap edition. The other book was the play John Fergueson by St John Ervine. There was a marker in it at the third act.

  I stared at the two books blankly.

  Here were the clues that Poirot had left for me – and they meant nothing to me at all!

  What could they mean?

  The only thing I could think of was a code of some kind. A word code based on the plays.

  But if so, how was I to get at it?

  There were no words, no letters, underlined anywhere. I tried gentle heat with no result.

  I read the third act of John Fergueson carefully through. A most admirable and thrilling scene where the ‘wanting’ Clutie John sits and talks, and which ends with the younger Fergueson going out to seek for the man who has wronged his sister. Masterly character drawing – but I could hardly think that Poirot had left them to improve my taste in literature!

  And then, as I turned the leaves of the book over, a slip of paper fell out. It bore a phrase in Poirot’s handwriting.

  ‘Talk to my valet George.’

  Well, here was something. Possibly the key to the code – if code it was – had been left with George. I must get hold of his address and go to see him.

  But first there was the sad business of burying my dear friend.

  Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last.

  Judith was very kind to me in these days.

  She spent a lot of time with me and helped to make all the arrangements. She was gentle and sympathetic. Elizabeth Cole and Boyd Carrington were very kind too.

  Elizabeth Cole was less affected by Norton’s death than I should have thought. If she felt any deep grief she kept it to herself.

  And so it was all ended . . .

  II

  Yes, I must put it down.

  It must be said.

  The funeral was over. I was sitting with Judith, trying to make a few sketchy plans for the future.

  She said then: ‘But you see, dear, I shan’t be here.’

  ‘Not here?’

  ‘I shan’t be in England.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘I haven’t liked to tell you before, Father. I didn’t want to make things worse for you. But you’ve got to know now. I hope you won’t mind too much. I’m going to Africa, you see, with Dr Franklin.’

  I burst out at that. It was impossible. She couldn’t do a thing like that. Everyone would be bound to talk. To be an assistant to him in England and especially when his wife was alive was one thing, but to go abroad with him to Africa was another. It was impossible and I was going to forbid it absolutely. Judith must not do such a thing!

  She didn’t interrupt. She let me finish. She smiled very faintly.

  ‘But, dearest,’ she said, ‘I’m not going as his assistant. I’m going as his wife.’

  It hit me between the eyes.

  I said – or rather stammered: ‘Al – Allerton?’

  She looked faintly amused. ‘There was never anything in that. I would have told you so if you hadn’t made me so angry. Besides, I wanted you to think, well – what you did think. I didn’t want you to know it was – John.’

  ‘But I saw him kiss you one night – on the terrace.’ She said impatiently: ‘Oh, I dare say. I was miserable that night. These things happen. Surely you know that?’

  I said: ‘You can’t marry Franklin yet – so soon.’

  ‘Yes, I can. I want to go out with him, and you’ve just said yourself it’s easier. We’ve nothing to wait for – now.’

  Judith and Franklin. Franklin
and Judith.

  Do you understand the thoughts that came into my mind – the thoughts that had lain under the surface for some time?

  Judith with a bottle in her hand, Judith with her young passionate voice declaring that useless lives should go to make way for useful ones – Judith whom I loved and whom Poirot also had loved. Those two people that Norton had seen – had they been Judith and Franklin? But if so – if so – no, that couldn’t be true. Not Judith. Franklin, perhaps – a strange man, a ruthless man, a man who if he made up his mind to murder, might murder again and again.

  Poirot had been willing to consult Franklin.

  Why? What had he said to him that morning?

  But not Judith. Not my lovely grave young Judith. And yet how strange Poirot had looked. How those words had rung out: ‘You may prefer to say “Ring down the curtain” . . .’

  And suddenly a fresh idea struck me. Monstrous! Impossible! Was the whole story of X a fabrication? Had Poirot come to Styles because he feared a tragedy in the Franklin ménage? Had he come to watch over Judith? Was that why he had resolutely told me nothing? Because the whole story of X was a fabrication, a smoke-screen?

  Was the whole heart of the tragedy Judith, my daughter?

  Othello!It was Othello I had taken from the bookcase that night when Mrs Franklin had died. Was that the clue?

  Judith that night looking, so someone had said, like her namesake before she cut off the head of Holofernes. Judith – with death in her heart?

  Chapter 19

  I am writing this in Eastbourne.

  I came to Eastbourne to see George, formerly Poirot’s valet.

  George had been with Poirot many years. He was a competent matter-of-fact man, with absolutely no imagination. He always stated things literally and took them at their face value.

  Well, I went to see him. I told him about Poirot’s death and George reacted as George would react. He was distressed and grieved and managed very nearly to conceal the fact.

  Then I said: ‘He left you, did he not, a message for me?’

  George said at once: ‘For you, sir? No, not that I am aware of.’

  I was surprised. I pressed him, but he was quite definite.

  I said at last: ‘My mistake, I suppose. Well, that’s that. I wish you had been with him at the end.’

  ‘I wish so, too, sir.’

  ‘Still I suppose if your father was ill you had to come to him.’

  George looked at me in a very curious manner. He said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir, I don’t quite understand you.’

  ‘You had to leave in order to look after your father, isn’t that right?’

  ‘I didn’t wish to leave, sir. M. Poirot sent me away.’

  ‘Sent you away?’ I stared. ‘I don’t mean, sir, that he discharged me. The understanding was that I was to return to his service later. But I left by his wish, and he arranged for suitable remuneration whilst I was here with my old father.’

  ‘But why, George, why?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask?’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t think it was my place to do so. M. Poirot always had his ideas, sir. A very clever gentleman, I always understood, sir, and very much respected.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I murmured abstractedly.

  ‘Very particular about his clothes, he was – though given to having them rather foreign and fancy if you know what I mean. But that, of course, is understandable as he was a foreign gentleman. His hair, too, and his moustache.’

  ‘Ah, those famous moustaches.’ I felt a twinge of pain as I remembered his pride in them.

  ‘Very particular about his moustache, he was,’ went on George. ‘Not very fashionable the way he wore it, but it suited him, sir, if you know what I mean.’

  I said I did know. Then I murmured delicately: ‘I suppose he dyed it as well as his hair?’

  ‘He did – er – touch up his moustache a little – but not his hair – not of late years.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘It was as black as a raven – looked quite like a wig it was so unnatural.’

  George coughed apologetically. ‘Excuse me, sir, it was a wig. M. Poirot’s hair came out a good deal lately, so he took to a wig.’

  I thought how odd it was that a valet knew more about a man than his closest friend did.

  I went back to the question that puzzled me.

  ‘But have you really no idea why M. Poirot sent you away as he did? Think, man, think.’

  George endeavoured to do so, but he was clearly not very good at thinking.

  ‘I can only suggest, sir,’ he said at last, ‘that he discharged me because he wanted to engage Curtiss.’

  ‘Curtiss? Why should he want to engage Curtiss?’

  George coughed again. ‘Well, sir, I really cannot say. He did not seem to me, when I saw him, as a – excuse me – particularly bright specimen, sir. He was strong physically, of course, but I should hardly have thought that he was quite the class M. Poirot would have liked. He’d been assistant in a mental home at one time, I believe.’

  I stared at George.

  Curtiss!

  Was that the reason why Poirot had insisted on telling me so little? Curtiss, the one man I had never considered! Yes, and Poirot was content to have it so, to have me combing the guests at Styles for the mysterious X. But X was not a guest.

  Curtiss!

  One-time assistant in a mental home. And hadn’t I read somewhere that people who have been patients in mental homes and asylums sometimes remain or go back there as assistants?

  A queer, dumb, stupid-looking man – a man who might kill for some strange warped reason of his own . . .

  And if so – if so . . .

  Why, then a great cloud would roll away from me! Curtiss . . . ?

  Postscript

  Note by Captain Arthur Hastings: The following manuscript came into my possession four months after the death of my friend Hercule Poirot. I received a communication from a firm of lawyers asking me to call at their office. There ‘in accordance with the instructions of their client, the late M. Hercule Poirot’, they handed me a sealed packet. I reproduce its contents here.

  Manuscript written by Hercule Poirot:

  ‘Mon cher ami,

  ‘I shall have been dead four months when you read these words. I have debated long whether or not to write down what is written here, and I have decided that it is necessary for someone to know the truth about the second “Affaire Styles”. Also I hazard a conjecture that by the time you read this you will have evolved the most preposterous theories – and possibly may be giving pain to yourself.

  ‘But let me say this: You should, mon ami, have easily been able to arrive at the truth. I saw to it that you had every indication. If you have not, it is because, as always, you have far too beautiful and trusting a nature. A la fin comme au commencement.

  ‘But you should know, at least, who killed Norton – even if you are still in the dark as to who killed Barbara Franklin. The latter may be a shock to you.

  ‘To begin with, as you know, I sent for you. I told you that I needed you. That was true. I told you that I wanted you to be my ears and my eyes. That again was true, very true – if not in the sense that you understood it! You were to see what I wanted you to see and hear what I wanted you to hear.

  ‘You complained, cher ami, that I was “unfair” in my presentation of this case. I withheld from you knowledge that I had myself. That is to say, I refused to tell you the identity of X. That is quite true. I had to do so – though not for the reasons that I advanced. You will see the reason presently.

  ‘And now let us examine this matter of X. I showed you the résumé of the various cases. I pointed out to you that in each separate case it seemed quite clear that the person accused, or suspected, had actually committed the crimes in question, that there was no alternate solution. And I then proceeded to the second important fact – that in each case X had been either on the scene or clos
ely involved. You then jumped to a deduction that was, paradoxically, both true and false. You said that X had committed all the murders.

  ‘But, my friend, the circumstances were such that in each case (or very nearly) only the accused person could have done the crime. On the other hand, if so, how account for X? Apart from a person connected with the police force or with, say, a firm of criminal lawyers, it is not reasonable for any man or woman to be involved in five murder cases. It does not, you comprehend, happen! Never, never does it occur that someone says confidentially: “Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve actually known five murderers!” No, no, mon ami, it is not possible, that. So we get the curious result that we have here a case of catalysis – a reaction between two substances that takes place only in the presence of a third substance, that third substance apparently taking no part in the reaction and remaining unchanged. That is the position. It means that where X was present, crimes took place – but X did not actively take part in these crimes.

  ‘An extraordinary, an abnormal situation! And I saw that I had come across at last, at the end of my career, the perfect criminal, the criminal who had invented such a technique that he could never be convicted of crime.

  ‘It was amazing. But it was not new. There were parallels. And here comes in the first of the “clues” I left you. The play of Othello. For there, magnificently delineated, we have the original X. Iago is the perfect murderer. The deaths of Desdemona, of Cassio – indeed of Othello himself – are all Iago’s crimes, planned by him, carried out by him. And he remains outside the circle, untouched by suspicion – or could have done so. For your great Shakespeare, my friend, had to deal with the dilemma that his own art had brought about. To unmask Iago he had to resort to the clumsiest of devices – the handkerchief – a piece of work not at all in keeping with Iago’s general technique and a blunder of which one feels certain he would not have been guilty.

  ‘Yes, there is there the perfection of the art of murder. Not even a word of direct suggestion. He is always holding back others from violence, refuting with horror suspicions that have not been entertained until he mentions them!