Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories Read online

  “No?” There was a hint of mockery in Poirot’s smile. He continued quietly, his eyes shining with the green light I had learned to recognize so well: “There was a curtain in this little supper room, was there not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “With a space behind it sufficient to conceal a man?”

  “Yes—in fact, there’s a small recess, but how you knew about it—you haven’t been to the place, have you, Monsieur Poirot?”

  “No, my good Japp, I supplied the curtain from my brain. Without it, the drama is not reasonable. And always one must be reasonable. But tell me, did they not send for a doctor?”

  “At once, of course. But there was nothing to be done. Death must have been instantaneous.”

  Poirot nodded rather impatiently.

  “Yes, yes, I understand. This doctor, now, he gave evidence at the inquest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say nothing of any unusual symptom—was there nothing about the appearance of the body which struck him as being abnormal?”

  Japp stared hard at the little man.

  “Yes, Monsieur Poirot. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but he did mention that there was a tension and stiffness about the limbs which he was quite at a loss to account for.”

  “Aha!” said Poirot. “Aha! Mon Dieu! Japp, that gives one to think, does it not?”

  I saw that it had certainly not given Japp to think.

  “If you’re thinking of poison, monsieur, who on earth would poison a man first and then stick a knife into him?”

  “In truth that would be ridiculous,” agreed Poirot placidly.

  “Now is there anything you want to see, monsieur? If you’d like to examine the room where the body was found—”

  Poirot waved his hand.

  “Not in the least. You have told me the only thing that interests me—Lord Cronshaw’s views on the subject of drug taking.”

  “Then there’s nothing you want to see?”

  “Just one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “The set of china figures from which the costumes were copied.”

  Japp stared.

  “Well, you’re a funny one!”

  “You can manage that for me?”

  “Come round to Berkeley Square now if you like. Mr. Beltane—or His Lordship, as I should say now—won’t object.”

  II

  We set off at once in a taxi. The new Lord Cronshaw was not at home, but at Japp’s request we were shown into the “china room,” where the gems of the collection were kept. Japp looked round him rather helplessly.

  “I don’t see how you’ll ever find the ones you want, monsieur.”

  But Poirot had already drawn a chair in front of the mantelpiece and was hopping up upon it like a nimble robin. Above the mirror, on a small shelf to themselves, stood six china figures. Poirot examined them minutely, making a few comments to us as he did so.

  “Les voilà! The old Italian Comedy. Three pairs! Harlequin and Columbine, Pierrot and Pierrette—very dainty in white and green—and Punchinello and Pulcinella in mauve and yellow. Very elaborate, the costume of Punchinello—ruffles and frills, a hump, a high hat. Yes, as I thought, very elaborate.”

  He replaced the figures carefully, and jumped down.

  Japp looked unsatisfied, but as Poirot had clearly no intention of explaining anything, the detective put the best face he could upon the matter. As we were preparing to leave, the master of the house came in, and Japp performed the necessary introductions.

  The sixth Viscount Cronshaw was a man of about fifty, suave in manner, with a handsome, dissolute face. Evidently an elderly roué, with the languid manner of a poseur. I took an instant dislike to him. He greeted us graciously enough, declaring he had heard great accounts of Poirot’s skill, and placing himself at our disposal in every way.

  “The police are doing all they can, I know,” Poirot said.

  “But I much fear the mystery of my nephew’s death will never be cleared up. The whole thing seems utterly mysterious.”

  Poirot was watching him keenly. “Your nephew had no enemies that you know of?”

  “None whatever. I am sure of that.” He paused, and then went on: “If there are any questions you would like to ask—”

  “Only one.” Poirot’s voice was serious. “The costumes—they were reproduced exactly from your figurines?”

  “To the smallest detail.”

  “Thank you, milor’. That is all I wanted to be sure of. I wish you good day.”

  “And what next?” inquired Japp as we hurried down the street. “I’ve got to report at the Yard, you know.”

  “Bien! I will not detain you. I have one other little matter to attend to, and then—”

  “Yes?”

  “The case will be complete.”

  “What? You don’t mean it! You know who killed Lord Cronshaw?”

  “Parfaitement.”

  “Who was it? Eustace Beltane?”

  “Ah, mon ami, you know my little weakness! Always I have a desire to keep the threads in my own hands up to the last minute. But have no fear. I will reveal all when the time comes. I want no credit—the affair shall be yours, on the condition that you permit me to play out the dénouement my own way.”

  “That’s fair enough,” said Japp. “That is, if the dénouement ever comes! But I say, you are an oyster, aren’t you?” Poirot smiled. “Well, so long. I’m off to the Yard.”

  He strode off down the steet, and Poirot hailed a passing taxi.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked in lively curiosity.

  “To Chelsea to see the Davidsons.”

  He gave the address to the driver.

  “What do you think of the new Lord Cronshaw?” I asked.

  “What says my good friend Hastings?”

  “I distrust him instinctively.”

  “You think he is the ‘wicked uncle’ of the storybooks, eh?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Me, I think he was most amiable towards us,” said Poirot noncommittally.

  “Because he had his reasons!”

  Poirot looked at me, shook his head sadly, and murmured something that sounded like: “No method.”

  III

  The Davidsons lived on the third floor of a block of “mansion” flats. Mr. Davidson was out, we were told, but Mrs. Davidson was at home. We were ushered into a long, low room with garish Oriental hangings. The air felt close and oppressive, and there was an overpowering fragrance of joss sticks. Mrs. Davidson came to us almost immediately, a small, fair creature whose fragility would have seemed pathetic and appealing had it not been for the rather shrewd and calculating gleam in her light blue eyes.

  Poirot explained our connection with the case, and she shook her head sadly.

  “Poor Cronch—and poor Coco too! We were both so fond of her, and her death has been a terrible grief to us. What is it you want to ask me? Must I really go over all that dreadful evening again?”

  “Oh, madame, believe me, I would not harass your feelings unnecessarily. Indeed, Inspector Japp has told me all that is needful. I only wish to see the costume you wore at the ball that night.”

  The lady looked somewhat surprised, and Poirot continued smoothly: “You comprehend, madame, that I work on the system of my country. There we always ‘reconstruct’ the crime. It is possible that I may have an actual représentation, and if so, you understand, the costumes would be important.”

  Mrs. Davidson still looked a bit doubtful.

  “I’ve heard of reconstructing a crime, of course,” she said. “But I didn’t know you were so particular about details. But I’ll fetch the dress now.”

  She left the room and returned almost immediately with a dainty wisp of white satin and green. Poirot took it from her and examined it, handing it back with a bow.

  “Merci, madame! I see you have had the misfortune to lose one of your green pompons, the one on the shoulder here.”

 
“Yes, it got torn off at the ball. I picked it up and gave it to poor Lord Cronshaw to keep for me.”

  “That was after supper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not long before the tragedy, perhaps?”

  A faint look of alarm came into Mrs. Davidson’s pale eyes, and she replied quickly: “Oh no—long before that. Quite soon after supper, in fact.”

  “I see. Well, that is all. I will not derange you further. Bonjour, madame.”

  “Well,” I said as we emerged from the building, “that explains the mystery of the green pompon.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “You saw me examine the dress, Hastings?”

  “Yes?”

  “Eh bien, the pompon that was missing had not been wrenched off, as the lady said. On the contrary, it had been cut off, my friend, cut off with scissors. The threads were all quite even.”

  “Dear me!” I exclaimed. “This becomes more and more involved.”

  “On the contrary,” replied Poirot placidly, “it becomes more and more simple.”

  “Poirot,” I cried, “one day I shall murder you! Your habit of finding everything perfectly simple is aggravating to the last degree!”

  “But when I explain, mon ami, is it not always perfectly simple?”

  “Yes; that is the annoying part of it! I feel then that I could have done it myself.”

  “And so you could, Hastings, so you could. If you would but take the trouble of arranging your ideas! Without method—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said hastily, for I knew Poirot’s eloquence when started on his favourite theme only too well. “Tell me, what do we do next? Are you really going to reconstruct the crime?”

  “Hardly that. Shall we say that the drama is over, but that I propose to add a—harlequinade?”

  IV

  The following Tuesday was fixed upon by Poirot as the day for this mysterious performance. The preparations greatly intrigued me. A white screen was erected at one side of the room, flanked by heavy curtains at either side. A man with some lighting apparatus arrived next, and finally a group of members of the theatrical profession, who disappeared into Poirot’s bedroom, which had been rigged up as a temporary dressing room.

  Shortly before eight, Japp arrived, in no very cheerful mood. I gathered that the official detective hardly approved of Poirot’s plan.

  “Bit melodramatic, like all his ideas. But there, it can do no harm, and as he says, it might save us a good bit of trouble. He’s been very smart over the case. I was on the same scent myself, of course—” I felt instinctively that Japp was straining the truth here—“but there, I promised to let him play the thing out his own way. Ah! Here is the crowd.”

  His Lordship arrived first, escorting Mrs. Mallaby, whom I had not as yet seen. She was a pretty, dark-haired woman, and appeared perceptibly nervous. The Davidsons followed. Chris Davidson also I saw for the first time. He was handsome enough in a rather obvious style, tall and dark, with the easy grace of the actor.

  Poirot had arranged seats for the party facing the screen. This was illuminated by a bright light. Poirot switched out the other lights so that the room was in darkness except for the screen. Poirot’s voice rose out of the gloom.

  “Messieurs, mesdames, a word of explanation. Six figures in turn will pass across the screen. They are familiar to you. Pierrot and his Pierrette; Punchinello the buffoon, and elegant Pulcinella; beautiful Columbine, lightly dancing, Harlequin, the sprite, invisible to man!”

  With these words of introduction, the show began. In turn each figure that Poirot had mentioned bounded before the screen, stayed there a moment poised, and then vanished. The lights went up, and a sigh of relief went round. Everyone had been nervous, fearing they knew not what. It seemed to me that the proceedings had gone singularly flat. If the criminal was among us, and Poirot expected him to break down at the mere sight of a familiar figure the device had failed signally—as it was almost bound to do. Poirot, however, appeared not a whit discomposed. He stepped forward, beaming.

  “Now, messieurs and mesdames, will you be so good as to tell me, one at a time, what it is that we have just seen? Will you begin, milor’?”

  The gentleman looked rather puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

  “Just tell me what we have been seeing.”

  “I—er—well, I should say we have seen six figures passing in front of a screen and dressed to represent the personages in the old Italian Comedy, or—er—ourselves the other night.”

  “Never mind the other night, milor’,” broke in Poirot. “The first part of your speech was what I wanted. Madame, you agree with Milor’ Cronshaw?”

  He had turned as he spoke to Mrs. Mallaby.

  “I—er—yes, of course.”

  “You agree that you have seen six figures representing the Italian Comedy?”

  “Why, certainly.”

  “Monsieur Davidson? You too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Madame?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hastings? Japp? Yes? You are all in accord?”

  He looked around upon us; his face grew rather pale, and his eyes were green as any cat’s.

  “And yet—you are all wrong! Your eyes have lied to you—as they lied to you on the night of the Victory Ball. To ‘see’ things with your eyes, as they say, is not always to see the truth. One must see with the eyes of the mind; one must employ the little cells of grey! Know, then, that tonight and on the night of the Victory Ball, you saw not six figures but five! See!”

  The lights went out again. A figure bounded in front of the screen—Pierrot!

  “Who is that?” demanded Poirot. “Is it Pierrot?”

  “Yes,” we all cried.

  “Look again!”

  With a swift movement the man divested himself of his loose Pierrot garb. There in the limelight stood glittering Harlequin! At the same moment there was a cry and an overturned chair.

  “Curse you,” snarled Davidson’s voice. “Curse you! How did you guess?”

  Then came the clink of handcuffs and Japp’s calm official voice. “I arrest you, Christopher Davidson—charge of murdering Viscount Cronshaw—anything you say will be used in evidence against you.”

  V

  It was a quarter of an hour later. A recherché little supper had appeared; and Poirot, beaming all over his face, was dispensing hospitality and answering our eager questions.

  “It was all very simple. The circumstances in which the green pompon was found suggested at once that it had been torn from the costume of the murderer. I dismissed Pierrette from my mind (since it takes considerable strength to drive a table-knife home) and fixed upon Pierrot as the criminal. But Pierrot left the ball nearly two hours before the murder was committed. So he must either have returned to the ball later to kill Lord Cronshaw, or—eh bien, he must have killed him before he left! Was that impossible? Who had seen Lord Cronshaw after supper that evening? Only Mrs. Davidson, whose statement, I suspected, was a deliberate fabrication uttered with the object of accounting for the missing pompon, which, of course, she cut from her own dress to replace the one missing on her husband’s costume. But then, Harlequin, who was seen in the box at one-thirty, must have been an impersonation. For a moment, earlier, I had considered the possibility of Mr. Beltane being the guilty party. But with his elaborate costume, it was clearly impossible that he could have doubled the roles of Punchinello and Harlequin. On the other hand, to Davidson, a young man of about the same height as the murdered man and an actor by profession, the thing was simplicity itself.

  “But one thing worried me. Surely a doctor could not fail to perceive the difference between a man who had been dead two hours and one who had been dead ten minutes! Eh bien, the doctor did perceive it! But he was not taken to the body and asked, ‘How long has this man been dead?’ On the contrary, he was informed that the man had been seen alive ten minutes ago, and so he merely commented at th
e inquest on the abnormal stiffening of the limbs for which he was quite unable to account!

  “All was now marching famously for my theory. Davidson had killed Lord Cronshaw immediately after supper, when, as you remember, he was seen to draw him back into the supper room. Then he departed with Miss Courtenay, left her at the door of her flat (instead of going in and trying to pacify her as he affirmed) and returned posthaste to the Colossus—but as Harlequin, not Pierrot—a simple transformation effected by removing his outer costume.”

  VI

  The uncle of the dead man leaned forward, his eyes perplexed.

  “But if so, he must have come to the ball prepared to kill his victim. What earthly motive could he have had? The motive, that’s what I can’t get.”

  “Ah! There we come to the second tragedy—that of Miss Courtenay. There was one simple point which everyone overlooked. Miss Courtenay died of cocaine poisoning—but her supply of the drug was in the enamel box which was found on Lord Cronshaw’s body. Where, then, did she obtain the dose which killed her? Only one person could have supplied her with it—Davidson. And that explains everything. It accounts for her friendship with the Davidsons and her demand that Davidson should escort her home. Lord Cronshaw, who was almost fanatically opposed to drug taking, discovered that she was addicted to cocaine, and suspected that Davidson supplied her with it. Davidson doubtless denied this, but Lord Cronshaw determined to get the truth from Miss Courtenay at the ball. He could forgive the wretched girl, but he would certainly have no mercy on the man who made a living by trafficking in drugs. Exposure and ruin confronted Davidson. He went to the ball determined that Cronshaw’s silence must be obtained at any cost.”

  “Was Coco’s death an accident, then?”

  “I suspect that it was an accident cleverly engineered by Davidson. She was furiously angry with Cronshaw, first for his reproaches, and secondly for taking her cocaine from her. Davidson supplied her with more, and probably suggested her augmenting the dose as a defiance to ‘old Cronch!’ ”

  “One other thing,” I said. “The recess and the curtain? How did you know about them?”