Murder in the Mews Page 19

  Colonel Bury moved forward a little.

  “Vanda—my dear.”

  She smiled up at him, then put up her hand. He took it in his. She said softly: “You are such a comfort, Ned.”

  Ruth said sharply:

  “Are we to understand, M. Poirot, that you have definitely ascertained the cause of my father’s suicide?”

  Poirot shook his head.

  “No, madame.”

  “Then what is all this rigmarole about?”

  Poirot said quietly:

  “I do not know the cause of Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore’s suicide, because Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore did not commit suicide. He did not kill himself. He was killed. . . .”

  “Killed?” Several voices echoed the word. Startled faces were turned in Poirot’s direction. Lady Chevenix-Gore looked up, said, “Killed? Oh, no!” and gently shook her head.

  “Killed, did you say?” It was Hugo who spoke now. “Impossible. There was no one in the room when we broke in. The window was fastened. The door was locked on the inside, and the key was in my uncle’s pocket. How could he have been killed?”

  “Nevertheless, he was killed.”

  “And the murderer escaped through the keyhole, I suppose?” said Colonel Bury sceptically. “Or flew up the chimney?”

  “The murderer,” said Poirot, “went out through the window. I will show you how.”

  He repeated his manoeuvres with the window.

  “You see?” he said. “That was how it was done! From the first I could not consider it likely that Sir Gervase had committed suicide. He had pronounced egomania, and such a man does not kill himself.

  “And there were other things! Apparently, just before his death, Sir Gervase had sat down at his desk, scrawled the word SORRY on a sheet of notepaper and had then shot himself. But before this last action he had, for some reason or other altered the position of his chair, turning it so that it was sideways to the desk. Why? There must be some reason. I began to see light when I found, sticking to the base of a heavy bronze statuette, a tiny sliver of looking glass. . . .

  “I asked myself, how does a sliver of broken looking glass come to be there?—and an answer suggested itself to me. The mirror had been broken, not by a bullet, but by being struck with the heavy bronze figure. That mirror had been broken deliberately.

  “But why? I returned to the desk and looked down at the chair. Yes, I saw now. It was all wrong. No suicide would turn his chair round, lean over the edge of it, and then shoot himself. The whole thing was arranged. The suicide was a fake!

  “And now I come to something very important. The evidence of Miss Cardwell. Miss Cardwell said that she hurried downstairs last night because she thought that the second gong had sounded. That is to say, she thought that she had already heard the first gong.

  “Now observe, if Sir Gervase was sitting at his desk in the normal fashion when he was shot, where would the bullet go? Travelling in a straight line, it would pass through the door, if the door were open, and finally hit the gong!

  “You see now the importance of Miss Cardwell’s statement? No one else heard the first gong, but, then, her room is situated immediately above this one, and she was in the best position for hearing it. It would consist of only one single note, remember.

  “There could be no question of Sir Gervase’s shooting himself. A dead man cannot get up, shut the door, lock it and arrange himself in a convenient position! Somebody else was concerned, and therefore it was not suicide, but murder. Someone whose presence was easily accepted by Sir Gervase, stood by his side talking to him. Sir Gervase was busy writing, perhaps. The murderer brings the pistol up to the right side of his head and fires. The deed is done! Then quick, to work! The murderer slips on gloves. The door is locked, the key put in Sir Gervase’s pocket. But supposing that one loud note of the gong has been heard? Then it will be realized that the door was open, not shut, when the shot was fired. So the chair is turned, the body rearranged, the dead man’s fingers pressed on the pistol, the mirror deliberately smashed. Then the murderer goes out through the window, jars it shut, steps, not on the grass, but in the flower bed where footprints can be smoothed out afterwards; then round the side of the house and into the drawing room.”

  He paused and said:

  “There was only one person who was out in the garden when the shot was fired. That same person left her footprints in the flower bed and her fingerprints on the outside of the window.”

  He came towards Ruth.

  “And there was a motive, wasn’t there? Your father had learnt of your secret marriage. He was preparing to disinherit you.”

  “It’s a lie!” Ruth’s voice came scornful and clear. “There’s not a word of truth in your story. It’s a lie from start to finish!”

  “The proofs against you are very strong, madame. A jury may believe you. It may not!”

  “She won’t have to face a jury.”

  The others turned—startled. Miss Lingard was on her feet. Her face altered. She was trembling all over.

  “I shot him. I admit it! I had my reason. I—I’ve been waiting for some time. M. Poirot is quite right. I followed him in here. I had taken the pistol out of the drawer earlier. I stood beside him talking about the book—and I shot him. That was just after eight. The bullet struck the gong. I never dreamt it would pass right through his head like that. There wasn’t time to go out and look for it. I locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Then I swung the chair round, smashed the mirror, and, after scrawling “Sorry” on a piece of paper, I went out through the window and shut it the way M. Poirot showed you. I stepped in the flower bed, but I smoothed out the footprints with a little rake I had put there ready. Then I went round to the drawing room. I had left the window open. I didn’t know Ruth had gone out through it. She must have come round the front of the house while I went round the back. I had to put the rake away, you see, in a shed. I waited in the drawing room till I heard someone coming downstairs and Snell going to the gong, and then—”

  She looked at Poirot.

  “You don’t know what I did then?”

  “Oh yes, I do. I found the bag in the wastepaper basket. It was very clever, that idea of yours. You did what children love to do. You blew up the bag and then hit it. It made a satisfactory big bang. You threw the bag into the wastepaper basket and rushed out into the hall. You had established the time of the suicide—and an alibi for yourself. But there was still one thing that worried you. You had not had time to pick up the bullet. It must be somewhere near the gong. It was essential that the bullet should be found in the study somewhere near the mirror. I didn’t know when you had the idea of taking Colonel Bury’s pencil—”

  “It was just then,” said Miss Lingard. “When we all came in from the hall. I was surprised to see Ruth in the room. I realized she must have come from the garden through the window. Then I noticed Colonel Bury’s pencil lying on the bridge table. I slipped it into my bag. If, later, anyone saw me pick up the bullet, I could pretend it was the pencil. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think anyone saw me pick up the bullet. I dropped it by the mirror while you were looking at the body. When you tackled me on the subject, I was very glad I had thought of the pencil.”

  “Yes, that was clever. It confused me completely.”

  “I was afraid someone must hear the real shot, but I knew everyone was dressing for dinner, and would be shut away in their rooms. The servants were in their quarters. Miss Cardwell was the only one at all likely to hear it, and she would probably think it was a backfire. What she did hear was the gong. I thought—I thought everything had gone without a hitch. . . .”

  Mr. Forbes said slowly in his precise tones:

  “This is a most extraordinary story. There seems no motive—”

  Miss Lingard said clearly: “There was a motive. . . .”

  She added fiercely:

  “Go on, ring up the police! What are you waiting for?”

  Poirot said gently:

&nbs
p; “Will you all please leave the room? Mr. Forbes, ring up Major Riddle. I will stay here till he comes.”

  Slowly, one by one, the family filed out of the room. Puzzled, uncomprehending, shocked, they cast abashed glances at the trim, upright figure with its neatly-parted grey hair.

  Ruth was the last to go. She stood, hesitating in the doorway.

  “I don’t understand.” She spoke angrily, defiantly, accusing Poirot. “Just now, you thought I had done it.”

  “No, no,” Poirot shook his head. “No, I never thought that.”

  Ruth went out slowly.

  Poirot was left with the little middle-aged prim woman who had just confessed to a cleverly-planned and cold-blooded murder.

  “No,” said Miss Lingard. “You didn’t think she had done it. You accused her to make me speak. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Poirot bowed his head.

  “While we’re waiting,” said Miss Lingard in a conversational tone, “you might tell me what made you suspect me.”

  “Several things. To begin with, your account of Sir Gervase. A proud man like Sir Gervase would never speak disparagingly of his nephew to an outsider, especially someone in your position. You wanted to strengthen the theory of suicide. You also went out of your way to suggest that the cause of the suicide was some dishonourable trouble connected with Hugo Trent. That, again, was a thing Sir Gervase would never have admitted to a stranger. Then there was the object you picked up in the hall, and the very significant fact that you did not mention that Ruth, when she entered the drawing room, did so from the garden. And then I found the paper bag—a most unlikely object to find in the wastepaper basket in the drawing room of a house like Hamborough Close! You were the only person who had been in the drawing room when the ‘shot’ was heard. The paper bag trick was one that would suggest itself to a woman—an ingenious homemade device. So everything fitted in. The endeavour to throw suspicion on Hugo, and to keep it away from Ruth. The mechanism of crime—and its motive.”

  The little grey-haired woman stirred.

  “You know the motive?”

  “I think so. Ruth’s happiness—that was the motive! I fancy that you had seen her with John Lake—you knew how it was with them. And then with your easy access to Sir Gervase’s papers, you came across the draft of his new will—Ruth disinherited unless she married Hugo Trent. That decided you to take the law into your own hands, using the fact that Sir Gervase had previously written to me. You probably saw a copy of that letter. What muddled feeling of suspicion and fear had caused him to write originally, I do not know. He must have suspected either Burrows or Lake of systematically robbing him. His uncertainty regarding Ruth’s feelings made him seek a private investigation. You used that fact and deliberately set the stage for suicide, backing it up by your account of his being very distressed over something connected with Hugo Trent. You sent a telegram to me and reported Sir Gervase as having said I should arrive ‘too late.’ ”

  Miss Lingard said fiercely:

  “Gervase Chevenix-Gore was a bully, a snob and a windbag! I wasn’t going to have him ruin Ruth’s happiness.”

  Poirot said gently:

  “Ruth is your daughter?”

  “Yes—she is my daughter—I’ve often—thought about her. When I heard Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore wanted someone to help him with a family history, I jumped at the chance. I was curious to see my—my girl. I knew Lady Chevenix-Gore wouldn’t recognize me. It was years ago—I was young and pretty then, and I changed my name after that time. Besides Lady Chevenix-Gore is too vague to know anything definitely. I liked her, but I hated the Chevenix-Gore family. They treated me like dirt. And here was Gervase going to ruin Ruth’s life with pride and snobbery. But I determined that she should be happy. And she will be happy—if she never knows about me!”

  It was a plea—not a question.

  Poirot bent his head gently.

  “No one shall know from me.”

  Miss Lingard said quietly:

  “Thank you.”

  III

  Later, when the police had come and gone, Poirot found Ruth Lake with her husband in the garden.

  She said challengingly:

  “Did you really think that I had done it, M. Poirot?”

  “I knew, madame, that you could not have done it—because of the michaelmas daisies.”

  “The michaelmas daisies? I don’t understand.”

  “Madame, there were four footprints and four footprints only in the border. But if you had been picking flowers there would have been many more. That meant that between your first visit and your second, someone had smoothed all those footsteps away. That could only have been done by the guilty person, and since your footprints had not been removed, you were not the guilty person. You were automatically cleared.”

  Ruth’s face lightened.

  “Oh, I see. You know—I suppose it’s dreadful, but I feel rather sorry for that poor woman. After all, she did confess rather than let me be arrested—or at any rate, that is what she thought. That was—rather noble in a way. I hate to think of her going through a trial for murder.”

  Poirot said gently:

  “Do not distress yourself. It will not come to that. The doctor, he tells me that she has serious heart trouble. She will not live many weeks.”

  “I’m glad of that.” Ruth picked an autumn crocus and pressed it idly against her cheek.

  “Poor woman. I wonder why she did it. . . .”

  TRIANGLE AT RHODES

  One

  Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.

  Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood be-

  side her.

  On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.

  “I’m so patchy still,” she murmured regretfully. “M. Poirot—would you mind? Just below the right shoulder blade—I can’t reach to rub it in properly.”

  M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.

  “I was right about that woman—the one in the Chanel model—it is Valentine Dacres—Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.”

  “Honeymooners?” murmured Sarah in a stifled voice.

  Miss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner.

  “Oh, no—her clothes aren’t new enough. You can always tell brides! Don’t you think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?”

  “Not just looking, darling,” said Sarah sweetly. “You ask a lot of questions, too.”

  “I haven’t even spoken to the Golds yet,” said Miss Lyall with dignity. “And anyway I don’t see why one shouldn’t be interested in one’s fellow creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?”

  This time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply.

  Without taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied:

  “Ça depend.”

  Pamela was shocked.

&n
bsp; “Oh, M. Poirot! I don’t think anything’s so interesting—so incalculable as a human being!”

  “Incalculable? That, no.”

  “Oh, but they are. Just as you think you’ve got them beautifully taped—they do something completely unexpected.”

  Hercule Poirot shook his head.

  “No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caractère. It is in the end monotonous.”

  “I don’t agree with you at all!” said Miss Pamela Lyall.

  She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.

  “As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them—what they’re like—what relations they are to each other—what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s—oh, it’s quite thrilling.”

  “Hardly that,” said Hercule Poirot. “Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,” he added thoughtfully, “has infinitely more variety.”

  Sarah turned her head sideways and asked:

  “You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?”

  “Précisément,” said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.

  “What’s that you’re drawing?” asked Pamela curiously.

  “A triangle,” said Poirot.

  But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.

  “Here are the Chantrys,” she said.

  A woman was coming down the beach—a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing dress.

  Pamela sighed.

  “Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?”

  But Poirot was looking at her face—the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.

  He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things—for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time—a commander in the navy.