Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly Read online

Suspects

  Estella da Costa – a beautiful and mysterious woman

  Colonel Blunt – the local Squire

  Samuel Fischer – a blackmailer

  Joan Blunt – Colonel Blunt’s daughter

  Peter Gaye – a young Atom Scientist

  Miss Willing – the housekeeper

  Quiett – a butler

  Esteban Perenna – an uninvited guest

  Weapons

  A length of clothes line

  Tunisian dagger

  Weedkiller

  Bow and arrow

  Army rifle

  Bronze statuette

  Captain Warborough explained:

  ‘Everyone gets a notebook and pencil to copy down the clues and then on the back of your entry card you fill in your solution –’

  Solution:

  By whom committed?

  For what motive?

  By what method?

  Time and Place.

  Reasons for arriving at your conclusions.

  ‘The first clue’s a photograph. Every starter gets one.’

  Poirot took the small snapshot from him and studied it with a frown. Then he turned it upside down. Warborough laughed.

  ‘Ingenious bit of trick photography,’ he said. ‘Quite simple when you know what it is.’

  ‘Some kind of a barred window?’

  Warborough laughed.

  ‘Looks a bit like it. No, it’s a section of a tennis net.’

  ‘Ah! Yes – I see it could be that now.’

  ‘So much depends on how you look at it, eh? laughed Warborough.

  ‘As you say.’ Poirot repeated the words meditatively. ‘The way you look at a thing …’

  He listened with only half his attention to Warborough’s exposition of Mrs. Oliver’s subtleties. When he left the library, Miss Brewis accosted him.

  ‘Ah, there you are, M. Poirot. I want to show you your room.’

  She led him up the staircase and along a passage to a big airy room looking out over the river.

  ‘There is a bathroom just opposite. Sir George talks of adding more bathrooms, but to do so would sadly impair the proportions of the rooms. I hope you’ll find everything comfortable.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Poirot swept an appreciative eye over the small bookstand, the reading lamp and the box labelled Biscuits by the bedside. ‘You seem, in this house, to have everything organised to perfection. Am I to congratulate you, or my charming hostess?’

  ‘Lady Stubbs’s time is fully taken up in being charming,’ said Miss Brewis, a slightly acid note in her voice.

  ‘A very decorative young woman,’ mused Poirot.

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘But in other respects is she not, perhaps –’ he broke off. ‘Pardon. I am indiscreet. I comment on something I ought not, perhaps, to mention.’

  Miss Brewis gave him a steady look. She said drily, ‘Lady Stubbs knows perfectly well exactly what she is doing. Besides being, as you said, a very decorative young woman, she is also a very shrewd one.’

  She had turned away and left the room before Poirot’s eyebrows had fully risen in surprise. So that was what the efficient Miss Brewis thought, was it? Or had she merely said so for some reason of her own? And why had she made such a statement to him – to a newcomer? Because he was a newcomer, perhaps, and also because he was a foreigner? As Hercule Poirot had discovered by experience, there were many English people who considered that what one said to foreigners didn’t count!

  He frowned perplexedly, staring absentmindedly out of the window as he did so. Lady Stubbs came out of the house with Mrs. Folliat and they stood for a moment or two by the big magnolia tree. Then Mrs. Folliat nodded a goodbye, and trotted off down the drive. Lady Stubbs stood watching her for a moment, then absent-mindedly pulled off a magnolia flower, smelt it and began slowly to walk down the path that led through the trees to the river. She looked just once over her shoulder before she disappeared from sight. From behind the magnolia tree Michael Weyman came quietly into view, paused a moment and then followed the tall slim figure down into the trees.

  A good-looking and dynamic young man, Poirot thought, with a more attractive personality, no doubt, than that of Sir George Stubbs …

  But if so, what of it? Such patterns formed themselves eternally through life. Rich middle-aged unattractive husband, young and beautiful wife with or without sufficient mental development, attractive and susceptible young man. What was there in that to make Mrs. Oliver utter a peremptory summons through the telephone? Mrs. Oliver, no doubt, had a vivid imagination, but –

  ‘But after all,’ murmured Hercule Poirot to himself, ‘I am not a consultant in adultery – or in incipient adultery.’

  It occurred to him that he should, perhaps, have paid more attention to the details of Mrs. Oliver’s Murder Hunt.

  ‘The time is short – short,’ he murmured to himself. As yet I know nothing – Is there something wrong here, as Mrs. Oliver believes? I am inclined to think there is. But what? Who is there who could enlighten me?’

  After a moment’s reflection he seized his hat (Poirot never risked going out in the evening air with uncovered head), and hurried out of his room and down the stairs. He heard afar the dictatorial baying of Mrs. Masterton’s deep voice. Nearer at hand, Sir George’s voice rose with an amorous intonation.

  ‘Damned becoming that yashmak thing. Wish I had you in my harem, Peggy. I shall come and have my fortune told a good deal tomorrow. What’ll you tell me, eh?’

  There was a slight scuffle and Peggy Legge’s voice said breathlessly, ‘George, you mustn’t.’

  Poirot raised his eyebrows, and slipped out of a conveniently adjacent side door. He set off at top speed down a back drive which his sense of locality enabled him to predict would at some point join the front drive.

  His manoeuvre was successful and enabled him – panting very slightly – to come up beside Mrs. Folliat and relieve her in a gallant manner of her gardening basket.

  ‘You permit, Madame?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. But it’s not heavy.’

  ‘Allow me to carry it for you to your home. You live near here?’

  ‘I actually live in the lodge by the front gate. Sir George very kindly rents it to me.’

  The lodge by the front gate of her former home. How did she really feel about that, Poirot wondered.

  Her composure was so absolute that he had no clue to her feelings. He changed the subject by observing:

  ‘Lady Stubbs is much younger than her husband.’

  ‘Twenty-three years younger, to be exact.’

  ‘Physically she is very attractive.’

  Mrs. Folliat said quietly, ‘Hattie is a dear good child.’

  It was not an answer he had expected. Mrs. Folliat went on:

  ‘I know her very well, you see. For a short time she was under my care.’

  ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘How should you? It is in a way a sad story. Her people had estates, sugar estates, in the West Indies. As a result of an earthquake, the house there was burned down and her parents and brothers and sisters all lost their lives. Hattie herself was at a convent in Paris and was thus suddenly left without any near relatives. It was considered advisable by the executors that Hattie should be taken out in London society for a season. I accepted the charge of her.’ Mrs. Folliat added with a dry smile, ‘I can smarten myself up on occasions and naturally I had the necessary connections.’

  ‘Naturally, Madame, I understand that.’

  ‘I was going through a difficult time. My husband died just before the outbreak of war. My eldest son who was in the Navy went down with his ship, my younger son in the Army was killed in Italy. I had not very much to occupy my mind. I was left badly off. The house was put up for sale. I was glad of the distraction of having someone young to look after and take about. I became very fond of Hattie, all the more so, perhaps, because I soon realised that she was – shall we say
– not fully capable of fending for herself? Understand me, M. Poirot, Hattie is not mentally deficient, but she is what country folk describe as “simple”. She is easily imposed upon, over docile, completely open to suggestion. Fortunately there was practically no money – if she had been an heiress the position might have been one of much greater difficulty. She was attractive to men and being of an affectionate nature was easily attracted and influenced – she had to be looked after. When, after the final winding up of her parents’ estate, it was discovered that the plantation was destroyed and there were more debts than assets, I could only be thankful that a man such as Sir George Stubbs had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her.’

  ‘Possibly – yes – it was a solution.’

  ‘Sir George,’ said Mrs. Folliat, ‘though he is a self made man and – let us face it – a complete vulgarian, is both kindly and decent, besides being extremely wealthy. I don’t think he would ever ask for mental companionship from a wife. Hattie is everything he wants. She displays clothes and jewels to perfection, is affectionate and willing, and is completely happy. I confess that I am very thankful that that is so, for I admit that I deliberately influenced her to accept him. If it had turned out badly –’ her voice faltered a little, ‘it would have been my fault for urging her to marry a man years older than herself. You see, as I told you, Hattie is completely suggestible. Anyone she is with at the time can dominate her.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Poirot approvingly, ‘that you made there a most prudent arrangement for her. I am not, like the English, romantic. To arrange a good marriage, one must take more than romance into consideration.’

  He added:

  ‘And as for this place here, it is a most beautiful spot. Quite, as the saying goes, out of this world.’

  ‘Since it had to be sold,’ said Mrs. Folliat, ‘I am glad that Sir George bought it. It was requisitioned during the war and afterwards it might have been bought and made into a guest house or a school, the rooms cut up and partitioned, distorted out of their natural beauty. Our neighbours, the Sandbournes, at Upper Greenshore, had to sell their place and it is now a Youth Hostel. One is glad that young people should enjoy themselves – and fortunately the house was late Victorian, and of no great architectural merit, so that the alterations do not matter. I’m afraid some of the young people trespass on our grounds. It makes Sir George very angry, and it’s true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about – they come through here trying to get a short cut to the Ferry across the river.’

  They were standing now by the front gate. The lodge, a small white one-storeyed building, lay a little back from the drive with a small railed garden round it.

  Mrs. Folliat took back her basket from Poirot with a word of thanks.

  ‘I was always very fond of the lodge,’ she said. ‘Dear old Meldrum, our head gardener for thirty years, used to live there. I much prefer it to the top cottage, though that has been enlarged and modernised by Sir George. It had to be; we’ve got quite a young man as head gardener with a young wife – and they must have electric irons and modern cookers and all that. One must go with the times’ she sighed. ‘There is hardly a person left on the estate from the old days – all new faces.’

  ‘I am glad, Madame,’ said Poirot, ‘that you at least have found a haven.’

  ‘You know those lines of Spenser’s? “Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please …”’

  She paused and said without any change of tone, ‘It’s a very wicked world, M. Poirot. And there are very wicked people in the world. You probably know that as well as I do. I don’t say so before the younger people, it might discourage them, but it’s true … Yes, it’s a very wicked world …’

  She gave him a little nod, then turned and went into the Lodge. Poirot stood still, staring at the shut door.

  IV

  In a mood of exploration Poirot went through the front gate and down the steep twisty road that presently emerged on a small quay. A large bell with a chain had a notice upon it to ‘Ring for the Ferry.’ There were various boats moored by the side of the quay. A very old man with rheumy eyes, who had been leaning against a bollard, came shuffling towards Poirot.

  ‘Du ee want the ferry, sir?’

  ‘I thank you, no. I have just come down from Greenshore House for a little walk.’

  ‘Ah, ’tis up at Greenshore yu are? Worked there as a boy, I did, and my son, he was head gardner there. But I did use to look after the boats. Old Mr. Folliat, he was fair mazed about boats. Sail in all weathers, he would. The Major, now, his son, he didn’t care for sailing. Horses, that’s all he cared about. And a pretty packet went on ’em. That and the bottle – had a hard time with him, his wife did. Yu’ve seen her, maybe – lives at the Lodge now, she du.’

  ‘Yes, I have just left her there now.’

  ‘Her be a Folliat, tu, second cousin from over Tiverton way. A great one for the garden, she was, all them there flowering shrubs she had put in. Even when it was took over during the war, and the two young gentlemen was gone to the war, she still looked after they shrubs and kept ’em from being over-run.’

  ‘It was hard on her, both her sons being killed.’

  ‘Ah, she’ve had a hard life, she have, what with this and that. Trouble with her husband, and trouble with the young gentlemen, tu. Not Mr. Henry. He was as nice a young gentleman as yu could wish, took after his grandfather, fond of sailing and went into the Navy as a matter of course, but Mr. James, he caused her a lot of trouble. Debts and women it were, and then, too, he were real wild in his temper. Born one of they as can’t go straight. But the war suited him, as yu might say – give him his chance. Ah! There’s many who can’t go straight in peace who dies bravely in war.’

  ‘So now,’ said Poirot, ‘there are no more Folliats at Greenshore.’

  The old man’s flow of talk died abruptly.

  ‘Just as yu say, sir.’

  Poirot looked curiously at the old man.

  ‘Instead you have Sir George Stubbs. What is thought locally of him?’

  ‘Us understands,’ said the old man, ‘that he be powerful rich.’

  His tone sounded dry and almost amused.

  ‘And his wife?’

  ‘Ah, she’s a fine lady from London, she is. No use for gardens, not her. They du say, too, as her du be wanting up here.’

  He tapped his temple significantly.

  ‘Not as her isn’t always very nice spoken and friendly. Come here over a year ago, they did. Bought the place and had it all done up like new. I remember as though ’twere yesterday them arriving. Arrived in the evening, they did, day after the worst gale as I ever remember. Trees down right and left – one down across the drive and us had to get it sawn away in a hurry to get the drive clear. And the big oak up along, that come down and brought a lot of others down with it, made a rare mess, it did.’

  ‘Ah, yes, where the Folly stands now?’

  The old man turned aside and spat disgustedly.

  ‘Folly ’tis called and Folly ’tis – new-fangled nonsense. Never was no Folly in the old Folliats’ time. Her ladyship’s idea that Folly was. Put up not three weeks after they first come, and I’ve no doubt she talked Sir George into it. Rare silly it looks stuck up there among the trees, like a heathen temple. A nice summerhouse now, made rustic like with stained glass – I’d have nothing against that.’

  Poirot smiled faintly.

  ‘The London ladies,’ he said, ‘they must have their fancies. It is sad that the day of the Folliats is over.’

  ‘Don’t ee never believe that, sir.’ The old man gave a wheezy chuckle. ‘Always be Folliats at Greenshore.’

  ‘But the house belongs to Sir George Stubbs.’

  ‘That’s as may be – but there’s still a Folliat here. Rare and cunning the Folliats are!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The old man gave him a sly sideways glance.
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  ‘Mrs. Folliat be living up tu Lodge, bain’t she?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Poirot slowly. ‘Mrs. Folliat is living at the Lodge and the world is very wicked, and all the people in it are very wicked.’

  The old man stared at him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yu’ve got something there, maybe.’

  He shuffled away again.

  ‘But what have I got?’ Poirot asked himself with irritation as he slowly walked up the hill back to the house.

  V

  Poirot came down to breakfast on the following morning at nine-thirty. Breakfast was served in pre-war fashion. A row of hot dishes on an electric heater. Sir George was eating a full-sized Englishman’s breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and kidneys. Mrs. Oliver and Miss Brewis had a modified version of the same. Michael Weyman was eating a plateful of cold ham. Only Lady Stubbs was unheedful of the fleshpots and was nibbling thin toast and sipping black coffee.

  The post had just arrived. Miss Brewis had an enormous pile of letters in front of her which she was rapidly sorting into piles. Any of Sir George’s marked Personal she passed over to him. The others she opened and sorted into categories.

  Lady Stubbs had three letters. She opened what were clearly a couple of bills and tossed them aside. Then she opened the third letter and said suddenly and clearly, ‘Oh!’

  The exclamation was so startled that all heads turned towards her.

  ‘It’s from Paul,’ she said. ‘My cousin Paul. He’s coming here in a yacht.’

  ‘Let’s see, Hattie.’ Sir George held out his hand. She passed the letter down the table. He smoothed out the sheet and read.

  ‘Who’s this Paul Lopez? A cousin, you say?’

  ‘I think so. A second cousin. I do not remember him very well – hardly at all. He was –’

  ‘Yes, my dear?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘It does not matter. It is all a long time ago. I was a little girl.’

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t remember him very well. But we must make him welcome, of course,’ said Sir George heartily. ‘Pity in a way it’s the Fête today, but we’ll ask him to dinner. Perhaps we could put him up for a night or two – show him something of the country?’