The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding Page 21

  ‘And so we come to this afternoon. The opportunity for which Mr Cornworthy has been waiting arrives. There are two witnesses on the landing to swear that no one goes in or out of Benedict Farley’s room. Cornworthy waits until a particularly heavy batch of traffic is about to pass. Then he leans out of his window, and with the lazy-tongs which he has purloined from the desk next door he holds an object against the window of that room. Benedict Farley comes to the window. Cornworthy snatches back the tongs and as Farley leans out, and the lorries are passing outside, Cornworthy shoots him with the revolver that he has ready. There is a blank wall opposite, remember. There can be no witness of the crime. Cornworthy waits for over half an hour, then gathers up some papers, conceals the lazy-tongs and the revolver between them and goes out on to the landing and into the next room. He replaces the tongs on the desk, lays down the revolver after pressing the dead man’s fingers on it, and hurries out with the news of Mr Farley’s “suicide”.

  ‘He arranges that the letter to me shall be found and that I shall arrive with my story – the story I heard from Mr Farley’s own lips – of his extraordinary “dream” – the strange compulsion he felt to kill himself ! A few credulous people will discuss the hypnotism theory – but the main result will be to confirm without a doubt that the actual hand that held the revolver was Benedict Farley’s own.’

  Hercule Poirot’s eyes went to the widow’s face – he noted with satisfaction the dismay – the ashy pallor – the blind fear . . .

  ‘And in due course,’ he finished gently, ‘the happy ending would have been achieved. A quarter of a million and two hearts that beat as one . . .’

  II

  John Stillingfleet, MD, and Hercule Poirot walked along the side of Northway House. On their right was the towering wall of the factory. Above them, on their left, were the windows of Benedict Farley’s and Hugo Cornworthy’s rooms. Hercule Poirot stopped and picked up a small object – a black stuffed cat.

  ‘Voilà,’ he said. ‘That is what Cornworthy held in the lazy-tongs against Farley’s window. You remember, he hated cats? Naturally he rushed to the window.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t Cornworthy come out and pick it up after he’d dropped it?’

  ‘How could he? To do so would have been definitely suspicious. After all, if this object were found what would anyone think – that some child had wandered round here and dropped it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stillingfleet with a sigh. ‘That’s probably what the ordinary person would have thought. But not good old Hercule! D’you know, old horse, up to the very last minute I thought you were leading up to some subtle theory of high-falutin’ psychological “suggested” murder? I bet those two thought so too! Nasty bit of goods, the Farley. Goodness, how she cracked! Cornworthy might have got away with it if she hadn’t had hysterics and tried to spoil your beauty by going for you with her nails. I only got her off you just in time.’

  He paused a minute and then said:

  ‘I rather like the girl. Grit, you know, and brains. I suppose I’d be thought to be a fortune hunter if I had a shot at her . . . ?’

  ‘You are too late, my friend. There is already someone sur le tapis. Her father’s death has opened the way to happiness.’

  ‘Take it all round, she had a pretty good motive for bumping off the unpleasant parent.’

  ‘Motive and opportunity are not enough,’ said Poirot. ‘There must also be the criminal temperament!’

  ‘I wonder if you’ll ever commit a crime, Poirot?’ said Stillingfleet. ‘I bet you could get away with it all right. As a matter of fact, it would be too easy for you – I mean the thing would be off as definitely too unsporting.’

  ‘That,’ said Poirot, ‘is a typical English idea.’

  Greenshaw’s Folly

  I

  The two men rounded the corner of the shrubbery.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Raymond West. ‘That’s it.’

  Horace Bindler took a deep, appreciative breath.

  ‘But my dear,’ he cried, ‘how wonderful.’ His voice rose in a high screech of æsthetic delight, then deepened in reverent awe. ‘It’s unbelievable. Out of this world! A period piece of the best.’

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ said Raymond West, complacently.

  ‘Like it? My dear –’ Words failed Horace. He unbuckled the strap of his camera and got busy. ‘This will be one of the gems of my collection,’ he said happily. ‘I do think, don’t you, that it’s rather amusing to have a collection of monstrosities? The idea came to me one night seven years ago in my bath. My last real gem was in the Campo Santo at Genoa, but I really think this beats it. What’s it called?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ said Raymond.

  ‘I suppose it’s got a name?’

  ‘It must have. But the fact is that it’s never referred to round here as anything but Greenshaw’s Folly.’

  ‘Greenshaw being the man who built it?’

  ‘Yes. In eighteen-sixty or seventy or thereabouts. The local success story of the time. Barefoot boy who had risen to immense prosperity. Local opinion is divided as to why he built this house, whether it was sheer exuberance of wealth or whether it was done to impress his creditors. If the latter, it didn’t impress them. He either went bankrupt or the next thing to it. Hence the name, Greenshaw’s Folly.’

  Horace’s camera clicked. ‘There,’ he said in a satisfied voice. ‘Remind me to show you No. 310 in my collection. A really incredible marble mantelpiece in the Italian manner.’ He added, looking at the house, ‘I can’t conceive of how Mr Greenshaw thought of it all.’

  ‘Rather obvious in some ways,’ said Raymond. ‘He had visited the châteaux of the Loire, don’t you think? Those turrets. And then, rather unfortunately, he seems to have travelled in the Orient. The influence of the Taj Mahal is unmistakable. I rather like the Moorish wing,’ he added, ‘and the traces of a Venetian palace.’

  ‘One wonders how he ever got hold of an architect to carry out these ideas.’

  Raymond shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘No difficulty about that, I expect,’ he said. ‘Probably the architect retired with a good income for life while poor old Greenshaw went bankrupt.’

  ‘Could we look at it from the other side?’ asked Horace, ‘or are we trespassing!’

  ‘We’re trespassing all right,’ said Raymond, ‘but I don’t think it will matter.’

  He turned towards the corner of the house and Horace skipped after him.

  ‘But who lives here, my dear? Orphans or holiday visitors? It can’t be a school. No playing-fields or brisk efficiency.’

  ‘Oh, a Greenshaw lives here still,’ said Raymond over his shoulder. ‘The house itself didn’t go in the crash. Old Greenshaw’s son inherited it. He was a bit of a miser and lived here in a corner of it. Never spent a penny. Probably never had a penny to spend. His daughter lives here now. Old lady – very eccentric.’

  As he spoke Raymond was congratulating himself on having thought of Greenshaw’s Folly as a means of entertaining his guest. These literary critics always professed themselves as longing for a week-end in the country, and were wont to find the country extremely boring when they got there. Tomorrow there would be the Sunday papers, and for today Raymond West congratulated himself on suggesting a visit to Greenshaw’s Folly to enrich Horace Bindler’s well-known collection of monstrosities.

  They turned the corner of the house and came out on a neglected lawn. In one corner of it was a large artificial rockery, and bending over it was a figure at sight of which Horace clutched Raymond delightedly by the arm.

  ‘My dear,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see what she’s got on? A sprigged print dress. Just like a house-maid – when there were housemaids. One of my most cherished memories is staying at a house in the country when I was quite a boy where a real housemaid called you in the morning, all crackling in a print dress and a cap. Yes, my boy, really – a cap. Muslin with streamers. No, perhaps it was the parlour-maid
who had the streamers. But anyway she was a real housemaid and she brought in an enormous brass can of hot water. What an exciting day we’re having.’

  The figure in the print dress had straightened up and had turned towards them, trowel in hand. She was a sufficiently startling figure. Unkempt locks of iron-grey fell wispily on her shoulders, a straw hat rather like the hats that horses wear in Italy was crammed down on her head. The coloured print dress she wore fell nearly to her ankles. Out of a weatherbeaten, not too clean face, shrewd eyes surveyed them appraisingly.

  ‘I must apologize for trespassing, Miss Greenshaw,’ said Raymond West, as he advanced towards her, ‘but Mr Horace Bindler who is staying with me –’

  Horace bowed and removed his hat.

  ‘– is most interested in – er – ancient history and – er – fine buildings.’

  Raymond West spoke with the ease of a well-known author who knows that he is a celebrity, that he can venture where other people may not.

  Miss Greenshaw looked up at the sprawling exuberance behind her.

  ‘It is a fine house,’ she said appreciatively. ‘My grandfather built it – before my time, of course. He is reported as having said that he wished to astonish the natives.’

  ‘I’ll say he did that, ma’am,’ said Horace Bindler.

  ‘Mr Bindler is the well-known literary critic,’ said Raymond West.

  Miss Greenshaw had clearly no reverence for literary critics. She remained unimpressed.

  ‘I consider it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, referring to the house, ‘as a monument to my grandfather’s genius. Silly fools come here, and ask me why I don’t sell it and go and live in a flat. What would I do in a flat? It’s my home and I live in it,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘Always have lived here.’ She considered, brooding over the past. ‘There were three of us. Laura married the curate. Papa wouldn’t give her any money, said clergymen ought to be unworldly. She died, having a baby. Baby died too. Nettie ran away with the riding master. Papa cut her out of his will, of course. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but no good. Don’t think Nettie was happy with him. Anyway, she didn’t live long. They had a son. He writes to me sometimes, but of course he isn’t a Greenshaw. I ’m the last of the Greenshaws.’ She drew up her bent shoulders with a certain pride, and readjusted the rakish angle of the straw hat. Then, turning, she said sharply,

  ‘Yes, Mrs Cresswell, what is it?’

  Approaching them from the house was a figure that, seen side by side with Miss Greenshaw, seemed ludicrously dissimilar. Mrs Cresswell had a marvellously dressed head of well-blued hair towering upwards in meticulously arranged curls and rolls. It was as though she had dressed her head to go as a French marquise to a fancy dress party. The rest of her middle-aged person was dressed in what ought to have been rustling black silk but was actually one of the shinier varieties of black rayon. Although she was not a large woman, she had a well-developed and sumptuous bust. Her voice when she spoke, was unexpectedly deep. She spoke with exquisite diction, only a slight hesitation over words beginning with ‘h’ and the final pronunciation of them with an exaggerated aspirate gave rise to a suspicion that at some remote period in her youth she might have had trouble over dropping her h’s.

  ‘The fish, madam,’ said Mrs Cresswell, ‘the slice of cod. It has not arrived. I have asked Alfred to go down for it and he refuses to do so.’

  Rather unexpectedly, Miss Greenshaw gave a cackle of laughter.

  ‘Refuses, does he?’

  ‘Alfred, madam, has been most disobliging.’

  Miss Greenshaw raised two earth-stained fingers to her lips, suddenly produced an ear-splitting whistle and at the same time yelled:

  ‘Alfred. Alfred, come here.’

  Round the corner of the house a young man appeared in answer to the summons, carrying a spade in his hand. He had a bold, handsome face and as he drew near he cast an unmistakably malevolent glance towards Mrs Cresswell.

  ‘You wanted me, miss?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Alfred. I hear you’ve refused to go down for the fish. What about it, eh?’

  Alfred spoke in a surly voice.

  ‘I’ll go down for it if you wants it, miss. You’ve only got to say.’

  ‘I do want it. I want it for my supper.’

  ‘Right you are, miss. I’ll go right away.’

  He threw an insolent glance at Mrs Cresswell, who flushed and murmured below her breath:

  ‘Really! It’s unsupportable.’

  ‘Now that I think of it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, ‘a couple of strange visitors are just what we need aren’t they, Mrs Cresswell?’

  Mrs Cresswell looked puzzled.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam –’

  ‘For you-know-what,’ said Miss Greenshaw, nodding her head. ‘Beneficiary to a will mustn’t witness it. That’s right, isn’t it?’ She appealed to Raymond West.

  ‘Quite correct,’ said Raymond.

  ‘I know enough law to know that,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘And you two are men of standing.’

  She flung down her trowel on her weeding-basket. ‘Would you mind coming up to the library with me?’

  ‘Delighted,’ said Horace eagerly.

  She led the way through french windows and through a vast yellow and gold drawing-room with faded brocade on the walls and dust covers arranged over the furniture, then through a large dim hall, up a staircase and into a room on the first floor.

  ‘My grandfather’s library,’ she announced.

  Horace looked round the room with acute pleasure. It was a room, from his point of view, quite full of monstrosities. The heads of sphinxes appeared on the most unlikely pieces of furniture, there was a colossal bronze representing, he thought, Paul and Virginia, and a vast bronze clock with classical motifs of which he longed to take a photograph.

  ‘A fine lot of books,’ said Miss Greenshaw.

  Raymond was already looking at the books. From what he could see from a cursory glance there was no book here of any real interest or, indeed, any book which appeared to have been read. They were all superbly bound sets of the classics as supplied ninety years ago for furnishing a gentleman’s library. Some novels of a bygone period were included. But they too showed little signs of having been read.

  Miss Greenshaw was fumbling in the drawers of a vast desk. Finally she pulled out a parchment document.

  ‘My will,’ she explained. ‘Got to leave your money to someone – or so they say. If I died without a will I suppose that son of a horse-coper would get it. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but a rogue if there ever was one. Don’t see why his son should inherit this place. No,’ she went on, as though answering some unspoken objection, ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving it to Cresswell.’

  ‘Your housekeeper?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve explained it to her. I make a will leaving her all I’ve got and then I don’t need to pay her any wages. Saves me a lot in current expenses, and it keeps her up to the mark. No giving me notice and walking off at any minute. Very la-di-dah and all that, isn’t she? But her father was a working plumber in a very small way. She’s nothing to give herself airs about.’

  She had by now unfolded the parchment. Picking up a pen she dipped it in the inkstand and wrote her signature, Katherine Dorothy Greenshaw.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen me sign it, and then you two sign it, and that makes it legal.’

  She handed the pen to Raymond West. He hesitated a moment, feeling an unexpected repulsion to what he was asked to do. Then he quickly scrawled the well-known signature, for which his morning’s mail usually brought at least six demands a day.

  Horace took the pen from him and added his own minute signature.

  ‘That’s done,’ said Miss Greenshaw.

  She moved across to the bookcase and stood looking at them uncertainly, then she opened a glass door, took out a book and slipped the folded parchment inside.

  ‘I’ve my own places for keeping things,’ she said.

  �
�Lady Audley’s Secret,’ Raymond West remarked, catching sight of the title as she replaced the book.

  Miss Greenshaw gave another cackle of laughter.

  ‘Best-seller in its day,’ she remarked. ‘Not like your books, eh?’

  She gave Raymond a sudden friendly nudge in the ribs. Raymond was rather surprised that she even knew he wrote books. Although Raymond West was quite a name in literature, he could hardly be described as a best-seller. Though softening a little with the advent of middle-age, his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life.

  ‘I wonder,’ Horace demanded breathlessly, ‘if I might just take a photograph of the clock?’

  ‘By all means,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘It came, I believe, from the Paris exhibition.’

  ‘Very probably,’ said Horace. He took his picture.

  ‘This room’s not been used much since my grand-father’s time,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘This desk’s full of old diaries of his. Interesting, I should think. I haven’t the eyesight to read them myself. I’d like to get them published, but I suppose one would have to work on them a good deal.’

  ‘You could engage someone to do that,’ said Raymond West.

  ‘Could I really? It’s an idea, you know. I’ll think about it.’

  Raymond West glanced at his watch.

  ‘We mustn’t trespass on your kindness any longer,’ he said.

  ‘Pleased to have seen you,’ said Miss Greenshaw graciously. ‘Thought you were the policeman when I heard you coming round the corner of the house.’

  ‘Why a policeman?’ demanded Horace, who never minded asking questions.

  Miss Greenshaw responded unexpectedly.

  ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,’ she carolled, and with this example of Victorian wit, nudged Horace in the ribs and roared with laughter.

  ‘It’s been a wonderful afternoon,’ sighed Horace as they walked home. ‘Really, that place has everything. The only thing the library needs is a body. Those old-fashioned detective stories about murder in the library – that’s just the kind of library I’m sure the authors had in mind.’