Poirot's Early Cases: 18 Hercule Poirot Mysteries Page 20

  ‘Looks like it. At any rate, if there’s anyone else in the flat they’re keeping jolly quiet.’

  ‘What do we do next?’ asked Jimmy. ‘Run out and get a policeman or ring up from Pat’s flat?’

  ‘I should think ringing up would be best. Come on, we might as well go out the front door. We can’t spend the whole night going up and down in that evil-smelling lift.’

  Jimmy agreed. Just as they were passing through the door he hesitated. ‘Look here; do you think one of us ought to stay—just to keep an eye on things—till the police come?’

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right. If you’ll stay I’ll run up and telephone.’

  He ran quickly up the stairs and rang the bell of the flat above. Pat came to open it, a very pretty Pat with a flushed face and a cooking apron on. Her eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘You? But how—Donovan, what is it? Is anything the matter?’

  He took both her hands in his. ‘It’s all right, Pat—only we’ve made a rather unpleasant discovery in the flat below. A woman—dead.’

  ‘Oh!’ She gave a little gasp. ‘How horrible. Has she had a fit or something?’

  ‘No. It looks—well—it looks rather as though she had been murdered.’

  ‘Oh, Donovan!’

  ‘I know. It’s pretty beastly.’

  Her hands were still in his. She had left them there—was even clinging to him. Darling Pat—how he loved her. Did she care at all for him? Sometimes he thought she did. Sometimes he was afraid that Jimmy Faulkener—remembrances of Jimmy waiting patiently below made him start guiltily.

  ‘Pat, dear, we must telephone to the police.’

  ‘Monsieur is right,’ said a voice behind him. ‘And in the meantime, while we are waiting their arrival, perhaps I can be of some slight assistance.’

  They had been standing in the doorway of the flat, and now they peered out on the landing. A figure was standing on the stairs a little way above them. It moved down and into their range of vision.

  They stood staring at the little man with a very fierce moustache and an egg-shaped head. He wore a resplendent dressing-gown and embroidered slippers. He bowed gallantly to Patricia.

  ‘Mademoiselle!’ he said. ‘I am, as perhaps you know, the tenant of the flat above. I like to be up high—in the air—the view over London. I take the flat in the name of Mr O’Connor. But I am not an Irishman. I have another name. That is why I venture to put myself at your service. Permit me.’ With a flourish he pulled out a card and handed it to Pat. She read it.

  ‘M. Hercule Poirot. Oh!’ She caught her breath.

  ‘The M. Poirot! The great detective? And you will really help?’

  ‘That is my intention, mademoiselle. I nearly offered my help earlier in the evening.’

  Pat looked puzzled.

  ‘I heard you discussing how to gain admission to your flat. Me, I am very clever at picking locks. I could, without doubt, have opened your door for you, but I hesitated to suggest it. You would have had the grave suspicions of me.’

  Pat laughed.

  ‘Now, monsieur,’ said Poirot to Donovan. ‘Go in, I pray of you, and telephone to the police. I will descend to the flat below.’

  Pat came down the stairs with him. They found Jimmy on guard, and Pat explained Poirot’s presence. Jimmy, in his turn, explained to Poirot his and Donovan’s adventures. The detective listened attentively.

  ‘The lift door was unbolted, you say? You emerged into the kitchen, but the light it would not turn on.’

  He directed his footsteps to the kitchen as he spoke. His fingers pressed the switch.

  ‘Tiens! Voilà ce qui est curieux!’ he said as the light flashed on. ‘It functions perfectly now. I wonder—’ He held up a finger to ensure silence and listened. A faint sound broke the stillness—the sound of an unmistakable snore. ‘Ah!’ said Poirot. ‘La chambre de domestique.’

  He tiptoed across the kitchen into a little pantry, out of which led a door. He opened the door and switched on the light. The room was the kind of dog kennel designed by the builders of flats to accommodate a human being. The floor space was almost entirely occupied by the bed. In the bed was a rosy-cheeked girl lying on her back with her mouth wide open, snoring placidly.

  Poirot switched off the light and beat a retreat.

  ‘She will not wake,’ he said. ‘We will let her sleep till the police come.’

  He went back to the sitting-room. Donovan had joined them.

  ‘The police will be here almost immediately, they say,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We are to touch nothing.’

  Poirot nodded. ‘We will not touch,’ he said. ‘We will look, that is all.’

  He moved into the room. Mildred had come down with Donovan, and all four young people stood in the doorway and watched him with breathless interest.

  ‘What I can’t understand, sir, is this,’ said Donovan. ‘I never went near the window—how did the blood come on my hand?’

  ‘My young friend, the answer to that stares you in the face. Of what colour is the tablecloth? Red, is it not? and doubtless you did put your hand on the table.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Is that—? He stopped.

  Poirot nodded. He was bending over the table. He indicated with his hand a dark patch on the red.

  ‘It was here that the crime was committed,’ he said solemnly. ‘The body was moved afterwards.’

  Then he stood upright and looked slowly round the room. He did not move, he handled nothing, but nevertheless the four watching felt as though every object in that rather frowsty place gave up its secret to his observant eye.

  Hercule Poirot nodded his head as though satisfied. A little sigh escaped him. ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘You see what?’ asked Donovan curiously.

  ‘I see,’ said Poirot, ‘what you doubtless felt—that the room is overfull of furniture.’

  Donovan smiled ruefully. ‘I did go barging about a bit,’ he confessed. ‘Of course, everything was in a different place to Pat’s room, and I couldn’t make it out.’

  ‘Not everything,’ said Poirot.

  Donovan looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘I mean,’ said Poirot apologetically, ‘that certain things are always fixed. In a block of flats the door, the window, the fireplace—they are in the same place in the rooms which are below each other.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather splitting hairs?’ asked Mildred. She was looking at Poirot with faint disapproval.

  ‘One should always speak with absolute accuracy. That is a little—how do you say?—fad of mine.’

  There was the noise of footsteps on the stairs, and three men came in. They were a police inspector, a constable, and the divisional surgeon. The inspector recognized Poirot and greeted him in an almost reverential manner. Then he turned to the others.

  ‘I shall want statements from everyone,’ he began, ‘but in the first place—’

  Poirot interrupted. ‘A little suggestion. We will go back to the flat upstairs and mademoiselle here shall do what she was planning to do—make us an omelette. Me, I have a passion for the omelettes. Then, M. l’Inspecteur, when you have finished here, you will mount to us and ask questions at your leisure.’

  It was arranged accordingly, and Poirot went up with them.

  ‘M. Poirot,’ said Pat, ‘I think you’re a perfect dear. And you shall have a lovely omelette. I really make omelettes frightfully well.’

  ‘That is good. Once, mademoiselle, I loved a beautiful young English girl, who resembled you greatly—but alas!—she could not cook. So perhaps everything was for the best.’

  There was a faint sadness in his voice, and Jimmy Faulkener looked at him curiously.

  Once in the flat, however, he exerted himself to please and amuse. The grim tragedy below was almost forgotten.

  The omelette had been consumed and duly praised by the time that Inspector Rice’s footsteps were heard. He came in accompanied by the doctor, having left the constable below.

  ‘Wel
l, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said. ‘It all seems clear and above-board—not much in your line, though we may find it hard to catch the man. I’d just like to hear how the discovery came to be made.’

  Donovan and Jimmy between them recounted the happenings of the evening. The inspector turned reproachfully to Pat.

  ‘You shouldn’t leave your lift door unbolted, miss. You really shouldn’t.’

  ‘I shan’t again,’ said Pat, with a shiver. ‘Somebody might come in and murder me like that poor woman below.’

  ‘Ah, but they didn’t come in that way, though,’ said the inspector.

  ‘You will recount to us what you have discovered, yes?’ said Poirot.

  ‘I don’t know as I ought to—but seeing it’s you, M. Poirot—’

  ‘Précisément,’ said Poirot. ‘And these young people—they will be discreet.’

  ‘The newspapers will get hold of it, anyway, soon enough,’ said the inspector. ‘There’s no real secret about the matter. Well, the dead woman’s Mrs Grant, all right. I had the porter up to identify her. Woman of about thirty-five. She was sitting at the table, and she was shot with an automatic pistol of small calibre, probably by someone sitting opposite her at table. She fell forward, and that’s how the bloodstain came on the table.’

  ‘But wouldn’t someone have heard the shot?’ asked Mildred.

  ‘The pistol was fitted with a silencer. No, you wouldn’t hear anything. By the way, did you hear the screech the maid let out when we told her her mistress was dead? No. Well, that just shows how unlikely it was that anyone would hear the other.’

  ‘Has the maid no story to tell?’ asked Poirot.

  ‘It was her evening out. She’s got her own key. She came in about ten o’clock. Everything was quiet. She thought her mistress had gone to bed.’

  ‘She did not look in the sitting-room, then?’

  ‘Yes, she took the letters in there which had come by the evening post, but she saw nothing unusual—any more than Mr Faulkener and Mr Bailey did. You see, the murderer had concealed the body rather neatly behind the curtains.’

  ‘But it was a curious thing to do, don’t you think?’

  Poirot’s voice was very gentle, yet it held something that made the inspector look up quickly.

  ‘Didn’t want the crime discovered till he’d had time to make his getaway.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps—but continue with what you were saying.’

  ‘The maid went out at five o’clock. The doctor here puts the time of death as—roughly—about four to five hours ago. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  The doctor, who was a man of few words, contented himself with jerking his head affirmatively.

  ‘It’s a quarter to twelve now. The actual time can, I think, be narrowed down to a fairly definite hour.’

  He took out a crumpled sheet of paper.

  ‘We found this in the pocket of the dead woman’s dress. You needn’t be afraid of handling it. There are no fingerprints on it.’

  Poirot smoothed out the sheet. Across it some words were printed in small, prim capitals.

  I WILL COME TO SEE YOU THIS EVENING AT HALF PAST SEVEN.

  J.F.

  ‘A compromising document to leave behind,’ commented Poirot, as he handed it back.

  ‘Well, he didn’t know she’d got it in her pocket,’ said the inspector. ‘He probably thought she’d destroyed it. We’ve evidence that he was a careful man, though. The pistol she was shot with we found under the body—and there again no fingerprints. They’d been wiped off very carefully with a silk handkerchief.’

  ‘How do you know,’ said Poirot, ‘that it was a silk handkerchief?’

  ‘Because we found it,’ said the inspector triumphantly. ‘At the last, as he was drawing the curtains, he must have let it fall unnoticed.’

  He handed across a big white silk handkerchief—a good-quality handkerchief. It did not need the inspector’s finger to draw Poirot’s attention to the mark on it in the centre. It was neatly marked and quite legible. Poirot read the name out.

  ‘John Fraser.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said the inspector. ‘John Fraser—J.F. in the note. We know the name of the man we have to look for, and I dare say when we find out a little about the dead woman, and her relations come forward, we shall soon get a line on him.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Poirot. ‘No, mon cher, somehow I do not think he will be easy to find, your John Fraser. He is a strange man—careful, since he marks his handkerchiefs and wipes the pistol with which he has committed the crime—yet careless since he loses his handkerchief and does not search for a letter that might incriminate him.’

  ‘Flurried, that’s what he was,’ said the inspector.

  ‘It is possible,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, it is possible. And he was not seen entering the building?’

  ‘There are all sorts of people going in and out all the time. These are big blocks. I suppose none of you—’ he addressed the four collectively—‘saw anyone coming out of the flat?’

  Pat shook her head. ‘We went out earlier—about seven o’clock.’

  ‘I see.’ The inspector rose. Poirot accompanied him to the door.

  ‘As a little favour, may I examine the flat below?’

  ‘Why, certainly, M. Poirot. I know what they think of you at headquarters. I’ll leave you a key. I’ve got two. It will be empty. The maid cleared out to some relatives, too scared to stay there alone.’

  ‘I thank you,’ said M. Poirot. He went back into the flat, thoughtful.

  ‘You’re not satisfied, M. Poirot?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘No,’ said Poirot. ‘I am not satisfied.’

  Donovan looked at him curiously. ‘What is it that—well, worries you?’

  Poirot did not answer. He remained silent for a minute or two, frowning, as though in thought, then he made a sudden impatient movement of the shoulders.

  ‘I will say good night to you, mademoiselle. You must be tired. You have had much cooking to do—eh?’

  Pat laughed. ‘Only the omelette. I didn’t do dinner. Donovan and Jimmy came and called for us, and we went out to a little place in Soho.’

  ‘And then without doubt, you went to a theatre?’

  ‘Yes. The Brown Eyes of Caroline.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Poirot. ‘It should have been blue eyes—the blue eyes of mademoiselle.’

  He made a sentimental gesture, and then once more wished Pat good night, also Mildred, who was staying the night by special request, as Pat admitted frankly that she would get the horrors if left alone on this particular night.

  The two young men accompanied Poirot. When the door was shut, and they were preparing to say goodbye to him on the landing, Poirot forestalled them.

  ‘My young friends, you heard me say I was not satisfied? Eh bien, it is true—I am not. I go now to make some little investigations of my own. You would like to accompany me—yes?’

  An eager assent greeted this proposal. Poirot led the way to the flat below and inserted the key the inspector had given him in the lock. On entering, he did not, as the others had expected, enter the sitting-room. Instead he went straight to the kitchen. In a little recess which served as a scullery a big iron bin was standing. Poirot uncovered this and, doubling himself up, began to rootle in it with the energy of a ferocious terrier.

  Both Jimmy and Donovan stared at him in amazement.

  Suddenly with a cry of triumph he emerged. In his hand he held aloft a small stoppered bottle.

  ‘Voilà!’ he said. ‘I find what I seek.’ He sniffed at it delicately. ‘Alas! I am enrhumé—I have the cold in the head.’

  Donovan took the bottle from him and sniffed in his turn, but could smell nothing. He took out the stopper and held the bottle to his nose before Poirot’s warning cry could stop him.

  Immediately he fell like a log. Poirot, by springing forward, partly broke his fall.

  ‘Imbecile!’ he cried. ‘The idea. To remove the stopper in that foolhardy manner! Did he no
t observe how delicately I handled it? Monsieur—Faulkener—is it not? Will you be so good as to get me a little brandy? I observed a decanter in the sitting-room.’

  Jimmy hurried off, but by the time he returned, Donovan was sitting up and declaring himself quite all right again. He had to listen to a short lecture from Poirot on the necessity of caution in sniffing at possibly poisonous substances.

  ‘I think I’ll be off home,’ said Donovan, rising shakily to his feet. ‘That is, if I can’t be any more use here. I feel a bit wonky still.’

  ‘Assuredly,’ said Poirot. ‘That is the best thing you can do. M. Faulkener, attend me here a little minute. I will return on the instant.’

  He accompanied Donovan to the door and beyond. They remained outside on the landing talking for some minutes. When Poirot at last re-entered the flat he found Jimmy standing in the sitting-room gazing round him with puzzled eyes.

  ‘Well, M. Poirot,’ he said, ‘what next?’

  ‘There is nothing next. The case is finished.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know everything—now.’

  Jimmy stared at him. ‘That little bottle you found?’

  ‘Exactly. That little bottle.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘I can’t make head or tail of it. For some reason or other I can see you are dissatisfied with the evidence against this John Fraser, whoever he may be.’

  ‘Whoever he may be,’ repeated Poirot softly. ‘If he is anyone at all—well, I shall be surprised.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He is a name—that is all—a name carefully marked on a handkerchief!’

  ‘And the letter?’

  ‘Did you notice that it was printed? Now, why? I will tell you. Handwriting might be recognized, and a typewritten letter is more easily traced than you would imagine—but if a real John Fraser wrote that letter those two points would not have appealed to him! No, it was written on purpose, and put in the dead woman’s pocket for us to find. There is no such person as John Fraser.’

  Jimmy looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘And so,’ went on Poirot, ‘I went back to the point that first struck me. You heard me say that certain things in a room were always in the same place under given circumstances. I gave three instances. I might have mentioned a fourth—the electric-light switch, my friend.’