Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Read online

  ‘And the same technique is seen in the brilliant third act of John Fergueson, where the “half-witted” Clutie John induces others to kill the man that he himself hates. It is a wonderful piece of psychological suggestion.

  ‘Now you must realize this, Hastings. Everyone is a potential murderer. In everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill – though not the will to kill. How often have you not felt or heard others say: “She made me so furious I felt I could have killed her!” “I could have killed B. for saying so and so!” “I was so angry I could have murdered him!” And all those statements are literally true. Your mind at such moments is quite clear. You would like to kill so and so. But you do not do it. Your will has to assent to your desire. In young children, the brake is as yet acting imperfectly. I have known a child, annoyed by its kitten, say “Keep still or I’ll hit you on the head and kill you” and actually do so – to be stunned and horrified a moment later when it realizes that the kitten’s life will not return – because, you see, really the child loves that kitten dearly. So then, we are all potential murderers. And the art of X was this, not to suggest the desire, but to break down the normal decent resistance. It was an art perfected by long practice. X knew the exact word, the exact phrase, the intonation even to suggest and to bring cumulative pressure on a weak spot! It could be done. It was done without the victim ever suspecting. It was not hypnotism – hypnotism would not have been successful. It was something more insidious, more deadly. It was a marshalling of the forces of a human being to widen a breach instead of repairing it. It called on the best in a man and set it in alliance with the worst.

  ‘You should know, Hastings – for it happened to you . . .

  ‘So now, perhaps, you begin to see what some of my remarks, that annoyed and confused you, really meant. When I spoke of a crime to be committed, I was not always referring to the same crime. I told you that I was at Styles for a purpose. I was there, I said, because a crime was going to be committed. You were surprised at my certainty on that point. But I was able to be certain – for the crime, you see, was to be committed by myself . . .

  ‘Yes, my friend – it is odd – and laughable – and terrible! I, who do not approve of murder – I, who value human life – have ended my career by committing murder. Perhaps it is because I have been too self-righteous, too conscious of rectitude, that this terrible dilemma had to come to me. For you see, Hastings, there are two sides to it. It is my work in life to save the innocent – to prevent murder – and this – this is the only way I can do it! Make no mistake, X could not be touched by the law. He was safe. By no ingenuity that I could think of could he be defeated any other way.

  ‘And yet, my friend, I was reluctant. I saw what had to be done – but I could not bring myself to do it. I was like Hamlet – eternally putting off the evil day . . . And then the next attempt happened – the attempt on Mrs Luttrell.

  ‘I had been curious, Hastings, to see if your well-known flair for the obvious would work. It did. Your very first reaction was a mild suspicion of Norton. And you were quite right. Norton was the man. You had no reason for your belief – except the perfectly sound if slightly half-hearted suggestion that he was insignificant. There, I think, you came very close to the truth.

  ‘I have considered his life history with some care. He was the only son of a masterful and bossy woman. He seems to have had at no time any gift for asserting himself or for impressing his personality on other people. He has always been slightly lame and was unable to take part in games at school.

  ‘One of the most significant things you told me was a remark about him having been laughed at at school for nearly being sick when seeing a dead rabbit. There, I think, was an incident that may have left a deep impression on him. He disliked blood and violence and his prestige suffered in consequence. Subconsciously, I should say, he has waited to redeem himself by being bold and ruthless.

  ‘I should imagine that he began to discover quite young his own power for influencing people. He was a good listener, he had a quiet sympathetic personality. People liked him without, at the same time, noticing him very much. He resented this – and then made use of it. He discovered how ridiculously easy it was, by using the correct words and supplying the correct stimuli, to influence his fellow creatures. The only thing necessary was to understand them – to penetrate their thoughts, their secret reactions and wishes.

  ‘Can you realize, Hastings, that such a discovery might feed a sense of power? Here was he, Stephen Norton whom everyone liked and despised, and he would make people do things they didn’t want to do – or (mark this) thought they did not want to do.

  ‘I can visualize him, developing this hobby of his . . . And little by little developing a morbid taste for violence at second-hand. The violence for which he lacked physical stamina and for the lack of which he had been derided.

  ‘Yes, his hobby grows and grows until it comes to be a passion, a necessity! It was a drug, Hastings – a drug that induced craving as surely as opium or cocaine might have done.

  ‘Norton, the gentle-hearted, loving man, was a secret sadist. He was an addict of pain, of mental torture. There has been an epidemic of that in the world of late years – L’appétit vient en mangeant.

  ‘It fed two lusts, the lust of the sadist and the lust of power. He, Norton, had the keys of life and of death.

  ‘Like any other drug slave, he had to have his supply of the drug. He found victim after victim. I have no doubt there have been more cases than the five I actually tracked down. In each of those he played the same part. He knew Etherington, he stayed one summer in the village where Riggs lived and drank with Riggs in the local pub. On a cruise he met the girl Freda Clay and encouraged and played upon her half-formed conviction that if her old aunt died it would be really a good thing – a release for Auntie and a life of financial ease and pleasure for herself. He was a friend of the Litchfields, and when talking to him, Margaret Litchfield saw herself in the light of a heroine delivering her sisters from their life sentence of imprisonment. But I do not believe, Hastings, that any of these people would have done what they did – but for Norton’s influence.

  ‘And now we come to the events at Styles. I had been on Norton’s tracks for some time. He became acquainted with the Franklins and at once I scented danger. You must understand that even Norton has to have a nucleus on which to work. You can only develop a thing of which the seed is already present. In Othello, for instance, I have always been of the belief that already present in Othello’s mind was the conviction (possibly correct) that Desdemona’s love for him was the passionate unbalanced hero-worship of a young girl for a famous warrior and not the balanced love of a woman for Othello the man. He may have realized that Cassio was her true mate and that in time she would come to realize the fact.

  ‘The Franklins presented a most agreeable prospect to our Norton. All kinds of possibilities! You have doubtless realized by now, Hastings, (what anyone of sense could have seen perfectly plainly all along) that Franklin was in love with Judith and she with him. His brusqueness, his habit of never looking at her, of forsaking any attempt at courtesy, ought to have told you that the man was head over ears in love with her. But Franklin is a man of great strength of character and also of great rectitude. His speech is brutally unsentimental, but he is a man of very definite standards. In his code a man sticks to the wife he has chosen.

  ‘Judith, as I should have thought even you could have seen, was deeply and unhappily in love with him. She thought you had grasped the fact that day you found her in the rose garden. Hence her furious outburst. Characters like hers cannot stand any expression of pity or sympathy. It was like touching a raw wound.

  ‘Then she discovered that you thought it was Allerton she cared for. She let you think so, thereby shielding herself from clumsy sympathy and from a further probing of the wound. She flirted with Allerton as a kind of desperate solace. She knew exactly the type of man he was. He amused her and distracted her, b
ut she never had the least feeling for him.

  ‘Norton, of course, knew exactly how the wind lay. He saw possibilities in the Franklin trio. I may say that he started first on Franklin, but drew a complete blank. Franklin is the one type of man who is quite immune from Norton’s type of insidious suggestion. Franklin has a clear-cut, black and white mind, with an exact knowledge of his own feeling – and a complete disregard for outside pressure. Moreover the great passion of his life is his work. His absorption in it makes him far less vulnerable.

  ‘With Judith, Norton was far more successful. He played very cleverly on the theme of useless lives. It was an article of faith with Judith – and the fact that her secret desires were in accordance with it was a fact that she ignored stridently whilst Norton knew it to be an ally. He was very clever about it – taking himself the opposite point of view, gently ridiculing the idea that she would ever have the nerve to do such a decisive action. “It is the kind of thing that all young people say – but never do!” Such an old cheap jibe – and how often it works, Hastings! So vulnerable they are, these children! So ready, though they do not recognize it that way, to take a dare!

  ‘And with the useless Barbara out of the way, then the road is clear for Franklin and Judith. That was never said – that was never allowed to come into the open. It was stressed that the personal angle had nothing to do with it – nothing at all. For if Judith once recognized that it had, she would have reacted violently. But with a murder addict so far advanced as Norton, one iron in the fire is not enough. He sees opportunities for pleasure everywhere. He found one in the Luttrells.

  ‘Cast your mind back, Hastings. Remember the very first evening you played bridge. Norton’s remarks to you afterwards, uttered so loud that you were afraid Colonel Luttrell would hear. Of course! Norton meant him to hear! He never lost an opportunity of underlining it, rubbing it in – And finally his efforts culminated in success. It happened under your nose, Hastings, and you never saw how it was done. The foundations were already laid – the increasing sense of a burden borne, of shame at the figure he cut in front of other men, in a deep growing resentment against his wife.

  ‘Remember exactly what happened. Norton says he is thirsty. (Did he know Mrs Luttrell is in the house and will come upon the scene?) The Colonel reacts immediately as the open-handed host which he is by nature. He offers drinks. He goes to get them. You are all sitting outside the window. His wife arrives – there is the inevitable scene, which he knows is being overheard. He comes out. It might have been glossed over by a good pretence – Boyd Carrington could have done it well. (He has a certain amount of worldly wisdom and a tactful manner, though otherwise he is one of the most pompous and boring individuals that I have ever come across! Just the sort of man you would admire!) You yourself could have acquitted yourself not too badly. But Norton rushes into speech, heavily, fatuously, underlining tact until it screams to Heaven and makes things much worse. He babbles of bridge (more recalled humiliations), talks aimlessly of shooting incidents. And prompt on his cue, just as Norton intended, that old woolly-headed ass Boyd Carrington comes out with his story of an Irish batman who shot his brother – a story, Hastings, that Norton told to Boyd Carrington, knowing quite well that the old fool would bring it out as his own whenever suitably prompted. You see, the supreme suggestion will not come from Norton. Mon Dieu, non!

  ‘It is all set, then. The cumulative effect. The breaking point. Affronted in his instincts as a host, shamed before his fellow men, writhing under the knowledge that they are quite convinced he has not got the guts to do anything but submit meekly to bullying – and then the key words of escape. The rook rifle, accidents – man who shot his brother – and suddenly, bobbing up, his wife’s head . . . “quite safe – an accident . . . I’ll show them . . . I’ll show her . . . damn her! I wish she was dead . . . she shall be dead!”

  ‘He did not kill her, Hastings. Myself, I think that, even as he fired, instinctively he missed because he wanted to miss. And afterwards – afterwards the evil spell was broken. She was his wife, the woman he loved in spite of everything.

  ‘One of Norton’s crimes that did not quite come off.

  ‘Ah, but his next attempt! Do you realize, Hastings, that it was you who came next? Throw your mind back – recall everything. You, my honest, kindly Hastings! He found every weak spot in your mind – yes, and every decent and conscientious one, too.

  ‘Allerton is the type of man you instinctively dislike and fear. He is the type of man that you think ought to be abolished. And everything you heard about him and thought about him was true. Norton tells you a certain story about him – an entirely true story as far as the facts go. (Though actually the girl concerned was a neurotic type and came of poor stock.)

  ‘It appeals to your conventional and somewhat old-fashioned instincts. This man is the villain, the seducer, the man who ruins girls and drives them to suicide! Norton induces Boyd Carrington to tackle you also. You are impelled to “speak to Judith”. Judith, as could be predicted, immediately responds by saying she will do as she chooses with her life. That makes you believe the worst.

  ‘See now the different stops on which Norton plays. Your love for your child. The intense old-fashioned sense of responsibility that a man like you feels for his children. The slight self-importance of your nature: “I must do something. It all depends on me.” Your feeling of helplessness owing to the lack of your wife’s wise judgement. Your loyalty – I must not fail her. And, on the baser side, your vanity – through association with me you have learned all the tricks of the trade! And lastly, that inner feeling which most men have about their daughters – the unreasoning jealousy and dislike for the man who takes her away from him. Norton played, Hastings, like a virtuoso on all these themes. And you responded.

  ‘You accept things too easily at their face value. You always have done. You accepted quite easily the fact that it was Judith to whom Allerton was talking in the summer-house. Yet you did not see her, you did not even hear her speak. And incredibly, even the next morning, you still thought it was Judith. You rejoiced because she had “changed her mind”.

  ‘But if you had taken the trouble to examine the facts you would have discovered at once that there had never been any question of Judith going up to London that day! And you failed to make another most obvious inference. There was someone who was going off for the day – and who was furious at not being able to do so. Nurse Craven. Allerton is not a man who confines himself to the pursuit of one woman! His affair with Nurse Craven had progressed much farther than the mere flirtation he was having with Judith.

  ‘No, stage-management again by Norton. ‘You saw Allerton and Judith kiss. Then Norton shoves you back round the corner. He doubtless knows quite well that Allerton is going to meet Nurse Craven in the summer-house. After a little argument he lets you go but still accompanies you. The sentence you overhear Allerton speaking is magnifi-cent for his purpose and he swiftly drags you away before you have a chance to discover that the woman is not Judith!

  ‘Yes, the virtuoso! And your reaction is immediate, complete on all those themes! You responded. You made up your mind to do murder.

  ‘But fortunately, Hastings, you had a friend whose brain still functioned. And not only his brain!

  ‘I said at the beginning of this that if you have not arrived at the truth it is because you have too trusting a nature. You believe what is said to you. You believed what I said to you . . .

  ‘Yet it was all very easy for you to discover the truth. I had sent George away – why? I had replaced him with a less experienced and clearly much less intelligent man – why? I was not being attended by a doctor – I who have always been careful about my health – I would not hear of seeing one – why?

  ‘Do you see now why you were necessary to me at Styles? I had to have someone who accepted what I said without question. You accepted my statement that I came back from Egypt much worse than when I went. I did not. I came back very much better!
You could have found out the fact if you had taken the trouble. But no, you believed. I sent away George because I could not have succeeded in making him think that I had suddenly lost all power in my limbs. George is extremely intelligent about what he sees. He would have known that I was shamming.

  ‘Do you understand, Hastings? All the time that I was pretending to be helpless, and deceiving Curtiss, I was not helpless at all. I could walk – with a limp.

  ‘I heard you come up that evening. I heard you hesitate and then go into Allerton’s room. And at once I was on the alert. I was already much exercised about your state of mind.

  ‘I did not delay. I was alone. Curtiss had gone down to supper. I slipped out of my room and across the passage. I heard you in Allerton’s bathroom. And promptly, my friend, in the manner you so much deplore, I dropped to my knees and looked through the keyhole of the bathroom door. One could see through it, fortunately, as there is a bolt and not a key on the inside.

  ‘I perceived your manipulations with the sleeping tablets. I realized what your idea was.

  ‘And so, my friend, I acted. I went back to my room. I made my preparations. When Curtiss came up I sent him to fetch you. You came, yawning and explaining that you had a headache. I made at once the big fuss – urged remedies on you. For the sake of peace you consented to drink a cup of chocolate. You gulped it down quickly so as to get away quicker. But I, too, my friend, have some sleeping tablets.

  ‘And so, you slept – slept until morning when you awoke your own sane self and were horrified at what you had so nearly done.

  ‘You were safe now – one does not attempt these things twice – not when one has relapsed into sanity.

  ‘But it decided me, Hastings! For whatever I might not know about other people did not apply to you. You are not a murderer, Hastings! But you might have been hanged for one – for a murder committed by another man who in the eyes of the law would be guiltless.