Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Read online

  ‘You, my good, my honest, my oh so honourable Hastings – so kindly, so conscientious – so innocent!

  ‘Yes, I must act. I knew that my time was short – and for that I was glad. For the worst part of murder, Hastings, is its effect on the murderer. I, Hercule Poirot, might come to believe myself divinely appointed to deal out death to all and sundry . . . But mercifully there would not be time for that to happen. The end would come soon. And I was afraid that Norton might succeed with someone who was unutterably dear to both of us. I am talking of your daughter . . .

  ‘And now we come to the death of Barbara Franklin. Whatever your ideas may be on the subject, Hastings, I do not think you have once suspected the truth.

  ‘For you see, Hastings, you killed Barbara Franklin.

  ‘Mais oui, you did!

  ‘There was, you see, yet another angle to the triangle. One that I did not fully take into account. As it happened, Norton’s tactics there were unseen and unheard by either of us. But I have no doubt that he employed them . . .

  ‘Did it ever enter your mind to wonder, Hastings, why Mrs Franklin was willing to come to Styles? It is not, when you think of it, at all her line of country. She likes comfort, good food and above all social contacts. Styles is not gay; it is not well run; it is in the dead country. And yet it was Mrs Franklin who insisted on spending the summer there.

  ‘Yes, there was a third angle. Boyd Carrington. Mrs Franklin was a disappointed woman. That was at the root of her neurotic illness. She was ambitious both socially and financially. She married Franklin because she expected him to have a brilliant career.

  ‘He was brilliant but not in her way. His brilliance would never bring him newspaper notoriety, or a Harley Street reputation. He would be known to half a dozen men of his own profession and would publish articles in learned journals. The outside world would not hear of him – and he would certainly not make money.

  ‘And here is Boyd Carrington – home from the East – just come into a baronetcy and money, and Boyd Carrington has always felt tenderly sentimental towards the pretty seventeen-year-old girl he nearly asked to marry him. He is going to Styles, he suggests the Franklins come too – and Barbara comes.

  ‘How maddening it is for her! Obviously she has lost none of her old charm for this rich attractive man, but he is old-fashioned – not the type of man to suggest divorce. And John Franklin, too, has no use for divorce. If John Franklin were to die, then she could be Lady Boyd Carrington – and oh what a wonderful life that would be!

  ‘Norton, I think, found her only too ready a tool.

  ‘It was all too obvious, Hastings, when you come to think of it. Those first few tentative attempts at establishing how fond she was of her husband. She overdid it a little – murmuring about “ending it all” because she was a drag on him.

  ‘And then an entirely new line. Her fears that Franklin might experiment upon himself.

  ‘It ought to have been so obvious to us, Hastings! She was preparing us for John Franklin to die of physostigmine poisoning. No question, you see, of anyone trying to poison him – oh no – just pure scientific research. He takes the harmless alkaloid, and it turns out to be harmful after all.

  ‘The only thing was it was a little too swift. You told me that she was not pleased to find Boyd Carrington having his fortune told by Nurse Craven. Nurse Craven was an attractive young woman with a keen eye for men. She had had a try at Dr Franklin and had not met with success. (Hence her dislike for Judith.) She is carrying on with Allerton, but she knows quite well he is not serious. Inevitable that she should cast her eye on the rich and still attractive Sir William – and Sir William was, perhaps, only too ready to be attracted. He had already noticed Nurse Craven as a healthy, good-looking girl.

  ‘Barbara Franklin has a fright and decides to act quickly. The sooner she is a pathetic, charming and not inconsolable widow the better.

  ‘And so, after a morning of nerves, she sets the scene.

  ‘Do you know, mon ami, I have some respect for the Calabar bean. This time, you see, it worked. It spared the innocent and slew the guilty.

  ‘Mrs Franklin asks you all up to her room. She makes coffee with much fuss and display. As you tell me, her own coffee is beside her, her husband’s on the other side of the bookcase-table.

  ‘And then there are the shooting stars and everyone goes out and only you, my friend, are left, you and your crossword puzzle and your memories – and to hide emotion you swing round the bookcase to find a quotation in Shakespeare.

  ‘And so they come back and Mrs Franklin drinks the coffee full of the Calabar bean alkaloids that were meant for dear scientific John, and John Franklin drinks the nice plain cup of coffee that was meant for clever Mrs Franklin.

  ‘But you will see, Hastings, if you think a minute, that although I realized what had happened, I saw that there was only one thing to be done. I could not prove what had happened. And if Mrs Franklin’s death was thought to be anything but suicide suspicion would inevitably fall on either Franklin or Judith. On two people who were utterly and completely innocent. So I did what I had a perfect right to do, laid stress on and put conviction into, my repetition of Mrs Franklin’s extremely unconvincing remarks on the subject of putting an end to herself.

  ‘I could do it – and I was probably the only person who could. For you see my statement carried weight. I am a man experienced in the matter of committing murder – if I am convinced it is suicide, well, then, it will be accepted as suicide.

  ‘It puzzled you, I could see, and you were not pleased. But mercifully you did not suspect the true danger.

  ‘But will you think of it after I am gone? Will it come into your mind, lying there like some dark serpent that now and then raises its head and says: “Suppose Judith . . . ?”

  ‘It may do. And therefore I am writing this. You must know the truth.

  ‘There was one person whom the verdict of suicide did not satisfy. Norton. He was balked, you see, of his pound of flesh. As I say, he is a sadist. He wants the whole gamut of emotion, suspicion, fear, the coils of the law. He was deprived of all that. The murder he had arranged had gone awry.

  ‘But presently he saw what one may call a way of recouping himself. He began to throw out hints. Earlier on he had pretended to see something through his glasses. Actually he intended to convey the exact impression that he did convey – namely that he saw Allerton and Judith in some compromising attitude. But not having said anything definite, he could use that incident in a different way.

  ‘Supposing, for instance, that he says he saw Franklin and Judith. That will open up an interesting new angle of the suicide case! It may, perhaps, throw doubts on whether it was suicide . . .

  ‘So, mon ami, I decided that what had to be done must be done at once. I arranged that you should bring him to my room that night . . .

  ‘I will tell you exactly what happened. Norton, no doubt, would have been delighted to tell me his arranged story. I gave him no time. I told him, clearly and definitely, all that I knew about him.

  ‘He did not deny it. No, mon ami, he sat back in his chair and smirked. Mais oui, there is no other word for it, he smirked. He asked me what I thought I was going to do about this amusing idea of mine. I told him that I proposed to execute him.

  ‘“Ah,” he said, “I see. The dagger or the cup of poison?”

  ‘We were about to have chocolate together at the time. He has a sweet tooth, M. Norton.

  ‘“The simplest,” I said, “would be the cup of poison.”

  ‘And I handed him the cup of chocolate I had just poured out.

  ‘“In that case,” he said, “would you mind my drinking from your cup instead of from mine?”

  ‘I said, “Not at all.” In effect, it was quite immaterial. As I have said, I, too, take the sleeping tablets. The only thing is that since I have been taking them every night for a considerable period, I have acquired a certain tolerance, and a dose that would send M. Norton to sleep would
have very little effect upon me. The dose was in the chocolate itself. We both had the same. His portion took effect in due course, mine had little effect upon me, especially when counteracted with a dose of my strychnine tonic.

  ‘And so to the last chapter. When Norton was asleep I got him into my wheeled chair – fairly easy, it has many types of mechanism – and wheeled him back in it to its usual place in the window embrasure behind the curtains.

  ‘Curtiss then “put me to bed”. When everything was quiet I wheeled Norton to his room. It remained, then, to avail myself of the eyes and ears of my excellent friend Hastings.

  ‘You may not have realized it, but I wear a wig, Hastings. You will realize even less that I wear a false moustache. (Even George does not know that!) I pretended to burn it by accident soon after Curtiss came, and at once had my hairdresser make me a replica.

  ‘I put on Norton’s dressing-gown, ruffled up my grey hair on end, and came down the passage and rapped on your door. Presently you came and looked with sleepy eyes into the passage. You saw Norton leave the bathroom and limp across the passage into his own room. You heard him turn the key in the lock on the inside.

  ‘I then replaced the dressing-gown on Norton, laid him on his bed, and shot him with a small pistol that I acquired abroad and which I have kept carefully locked up except for two occasions when (nobody being about) I have put it ostentatiously on Norton’s dressing-table, he himself being well away somewhere that morning.

  ‘Then I left the room after putting the key in Norton’s pocket. I myself locked the door from the outside with the duplicate key which I have possessed for some time. I wheeled the chair back to my room.

  ‘Since then I have been writing this explanation.

  ‘I am very tired – and the exertions I have been through have strained me a good deal. It will not, I think, be long before . . .

  ‘There are one or two things I would like to stress.

  ‘Norton’s were the perfect crimes.

  ‘Mine was not. It was not intended to be.

  ‘The easiest way and the best way for me to have killed him was to have done so quite openly – to have had, shall we say, an accident with my little pistol. I should have professed dismay, regret – a most unfortunate accident. They would have said, “Old ga ga, didn’t realize it was loaded – ce pauvre vieux.”

  ‘I did not choose to do that.

  ‘I will tell you why.

  ‘It is because, Hastings, I chose to be “sporting”.

  ‘Mais oui, sporting! I am doing all the things that so often you have reproached me with not doing. I am playing fair with you. I am giving you a run for your money. I am playing the game. You have every chance to discover the truth.

  ‘In case you disbelieve me let me enumerate all the clues.

  ‘The keys.

  ‘You know, for I have told you so, that Norton arrived here after I did. You know, for you have been told, that I changed my room after I got here. You know, for again it has been told to you, that since I have been at Styles the key of my room disappeared and I had another made.

  ‘Therefore when you ask yourself who could have killed Norton? Who could have shot and still have left the room (apparently) locked on the inside since the key is in Norton’s pocket? –

  ‘The answer is “Hercule Poirot, who since he has been here has possessed duplicate keys of one of the rooms.”

  ‘The man you saw in the passage.

  ‘I myself asked you if you were sure the man you saw in the passage was Norton. You were startled. You asked me if I intended to suggest it was not Norton. I replied, truthfully, that I did not at all intend to suggest it was not Norton. (Naturally, since I had taken a good deal of trouble to suggest it was Norton.) I then brought up the question of height. All the men, I said, were much taller than Norton. But there was a man who was shorter than Norton – Hercule Poirot. And it is comparatively easy with raised heels or elevators in the shoes to add to one’s height.

  ‘You were under the impression that I was a helpless invalid. But why? Only because I said so. And I had sent away George. That was my last indication to you, “Go and talk to George.”

  ‘Othello and Clutie John show you that X was Norton.

  ‘Then who could have killed Norton?

  ‘Only Hercule Poirot.

  ‘And once you suspected that, everything would have fallen into place, the things I had said and done, my inexplicable reticence. Evidence from the doctors in Egypt, from my own doctor in London, that I was not incapable of walking about. The evidence of George as to my wearing a wig. The fact which I was unable to disguise, and which you ought to have noticed, that I limp much more than Norton does.

  ‘And last of all, the pistol shot. My one weakness. I should, I am aware, have shot him through the temple. I could not bring myself to produce an effect so lopsided, so haphazard. No, I shot him symmetrically, in the exact centre of the forehead . . .

  ‘Oh, Hastings, Hastings, that should have told you the truth.

  ‘But perhaps, after all, you have suspected the truth? Perhaps when you read this, you already know.

  ‘But somehow I do not think so . . .

  ‘No, you are too trusting . . .

  ‘You have too beautiful a nature . . .

  ‘What shall I say more to you? Both Franklin and Judith, I think you will find, knew the truth although they will not have told it to you. They will be happy together, those two. They will be poor and innumerable tropical insects will bite them and strange fevers will attack them – but we all have our own ideas of the perfect life, have we not?

  ‘And you, my poor lonely Hastings? Ah, my heart bleeds for you, dear friend. Will you, for the last time, take the advice of your old Poirot?

  ‘After you have read this, take a train or a car or a series of buses and go to find Elizabeth Cole who is also Elizabeth Litchfield. Let her read this, or tell her what is in it. Tell her that you, too, might have done what her sister Margaret did – only for Margaret Litchfield there was no watchful Poirot at hand. Take the nightmare away from her, show her that her father was killed, not by his daughter, but by that kind sympathetic family friend, that “honest Iago” Stephen Norton.

  ‘For it is not right, my friend, that a woman like that, still young, still attractive, should refuse life because she believes herself to be tainted. No, it is not right. Tell her so, you, my friend, who are yourself still not unattractive to women . . .

  ‘Eh bien, I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No – I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands . . .

  ‘But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.

  ‘By taking Norton’s life, I have saved other lives – innocent lives. But still I do not know . . . It is perhaps right that I should not know. I have always been so sure – too sure . . .

  ‘But now I am very humble and I say like a little child “I do not know . . .”

  ‘Goodbye, cher ami. I have moved the amyl nitrate ampoules away from beside my bed. I prefer to leave myself in the hands of the bon Dieu. May his punishment, or his mercy, be swift!

  ‘We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here – and our last . . .

  ‘They were good days.

  ‘Yes, they have been good days . . .’

  (End of Hercule Poirot’s manuscript.)

  Final note by Captain Arthur Hastings: I have finished reading . . . I cannot believe it all yet . . . But he is right. I should have known. I should have known when I saw the bullet hole so symmetrically in the middle of the forehead.

  Queer – it’s just come to me – the thought in the back of my mind that morning.

  The mark on Norton’s forehead – it was like the brand of Cain . . .

  E-Book Extras


  The Poirots

  Essay by Charles Osborne

  The Poirots

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles; The Murder on the Links; Poirot Investigates; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; The Big Four; The Mystery of the Blue Train; Black Coffee; Peril at End House; Lord Edgware Dies; Murder on the Orient Express; Three-Act Tragedy; Death in the Clouds; The ABC Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia; Cards on the Table; Murder in the Mews; Dumb Witness; Death on the Nile; Appointment with Death; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas; Sad Cypress; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe; Evil Under the Sun; Five Little Pigs; The Hollow; The Labours of Hercules; Taken at the Flood; Mrs McGinty’s Dead; After the Funeral; Hickory Dickory Dock; Dead Man’s Folly; Cat Among the Pigeons; The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding; The Clocks; Third Girl; Hallowe’en Party; Elephants Can Remember; Poirot’s Early Cases; Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

  Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the ‘country-place’ of John’s autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe — she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man twenty years her junior. When Emily’s sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.

  Of note: Written in 1916, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie’s first published work. Six houses rejected the novel before it was finally published — after puzzling over it for eighteen months before deciding to go ahead — by The Bodley Head.

  Times Literary Supplement: ‘Almost too ingenious ... very clearly and brightly told.’

  2. The Murder on the Links (1923)

  “For God’s sake, come!” But by the time Hercule Poirot can respond to Monsieur Renauld’s plea, the millionaire is already dead — stabbed in the back, and lying in a freshly dug grave on the golf course adjoining his estate. There is no lack of suspects: his wife, whose dagger did the deed; his embittered son; Renauld’s mistress — and each feels deserving of the dead man’s fortune. The police think they’ve found the culprit. Poirot has his doubts. And the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse complicates matters considerably. (However, on a bright note, Captain Arthur Hastings does meet his future wife.)