Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Read online

  ‘You obstinate old devil,’ I said. ‘I’ve a good mind to –’

  I broke off as there was a tap on the door. Poirot called, ‘Come in,’ and my daughter Judith entered.

  I should like to describe Judith, but I’ve always been a poor hand at descriptions.

  Judith is tall, she holds her head high, she has level dark brows, and a very lovely line of cheek and jaw, severe in its austerity. She is grave and slightly scornful, and to my mind there has always hung about her a suggestion of tragedy.

  Judith didn’t come and kiss me – she is not that kind. She just smiled at me and said, ‘Hullo, Father.’

  Her smile was shy and a little embarrassed, but it made me feel that in spite of her undemonstrativeness she was pleased to see me.

  ‘Well,’ I said, feeling foolish as I so often do with the younger generation, ‘I’ve got here.’

  ‘Very clever of you, darling,’ said Judith.

  ‘I describe to him,’ said Poirot, ‘the cooking.’

  ‘Is it very bad?’ asked Judith.

  ‘You should not have to ask that, my child. Is it that you think of nothing but the test tubes and the microscopes? Your middle finger it is stained with methylene blue. It is not a good thing for your husband if you take no interest in his stomach.’

  ‘I dare say I shan’t have a husband.’

  ‘Certainly you will have a husband. What did the bon Dieu create you for?’

  ‘Many things, I hope,’ said Judith.

  ‘Le mariage first of all.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Judith. ‘You will find me a nice husband and I will look after his stomach very carefully.’

  ‘She laughs at me,’ said Poirot. ‘Some day she will know how wise old men are.’

  There was another tap on the door and Dr Franklin entered. He was a tall, angular young man of thirty-five, with a decided jaw, reddish hair, and bright blue eyes. He was the most ungainly man I had ever known, and was always knocking into things in an absentminded way.

  He cannoned into the screen round Poirot’s chair, and half turning his head murmured ‘I beg your pardon’ to it automatically.

  I wanted to laugh, but Judith, I noted, remained quite grave. I suppose she was quite used to that sort of thing.

  ‘You remember my father,’ said Judith.

  Dr Franklin started, shied nervously, screwed up his eyes and peered at me, then stuck out a hand, saying awkwardly: ‘Of course, of course, how are you? I heard you were coming down.’ He turned to Judith. ‘I say, do you think we need change? If not we might go on a bit after dinner. If we got a few more of those slides prepared –’

  ‘No,’ said Judith. ‘I want to talk to my father.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, of course.’ Suddenly he smiled, an apologetic, boyish smile. ‘I am sorry – I get so awfully wrapped up in a thing. It’s quite unpardonable – makes me so selfish. Do forgive me.’

  The clock struck and Franklin glanced at it hurriedly.

  ‘Good Lord, is it as late as that? I shall get into trouble. Promised Barbara I’d read to her before dinner.’

  He grinned at us both and hurried out, colliding with the door post as he went.

  ‘How is Mrs Franklin?’ I asked.

  ‘The same and rather more so,’ said Judith.

  ‘It’s very sad her being such an invalid,’ I said.

  ‘It’s maddening for a doctor,’ said Judith. ‘Doctors like healthy people.’

  ‘How hard you young people are!’ I exclaimed.

  Judith said coldly: ‘I was just stating a fact.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Poirot, ‘the good doctor hurries to read to her.’

  ‘Very stupid,’ said Judith. ‘That nurse of hers can read to her perfectly well if she wants to be read to. Personally I should loathe anyone reading aloud to me.’

  ‘Well, well, tastes differ,’ I said.

  ‘She’s a very stupid woman,’ said Judith.

  ‘Now there, mon enfant,’ said Poirot, ‘I do not agree with you.’

  ‘She never reads anything but the cheapest kind of novel. She takes no interest in his work. She doesn’t keep abreast of current thought. She just talks about her health to everyone who will listen.’

  ‘I still maintain, said Poirot, ‘that she uses her grey cells in ways that you, my child, know nothing about.’

  ‘She’s a very feminine sort of woman,’ said Judith. ‘She coos and purrs. I expect you like ’em like that, Uncle Hercule.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘He likes them large and flamboyant and Russian for choice.’

  ‘So that is how you give me away, Hastings? Your father, Judith, has always had a penchant for auburn hair. It has landed him in trouble many a time.’

  Judith smiled at us both indulgently. She said: ‘What a funny couple you are.’

  She turned away and I rose.

  ‘I must get unpacked, and I might have a bath before dinner.’

  Poirot pressed a little bell within reach of his hand and a minute or two later his valet attendant entered. I was surprised to find that the man was a stranger.

  ‘Why! Where’s George?’

  Poirot’s valet George had been with him for many years.

  ‘George has returned to his family. His father is ill. I hope he will come back to me some time. In the meantime –’ he smiled at the new valet – ‘Curtiss looks after me.’

  Curtiss smiled back respectfully. He was a big man with a bovine, rather stupid, face.

  As I went out of the door I noted that Poirot was carefully locking up the despatch case with the papers inside it.

  My mind in a whirl I crossed the passage to my own room.

  Chapter 4

  I went down to dinner that night feeling that the whole of life had become suddenly unreal.

  Once or twice, while dressing, I had asked myself if possibly Poirot had imagined the whole thing. After all, the dear old chap was an old man now and sadly broken in health. He himself might declare his brain was as sound as ever – but in point of fact, was it? His whole life had been spent in tracking down crime. Would it really be surprising if, in the end, he was to fancy crimes where no crimes were? His enforced inaction must have fretted him sorely. What more likely than that he should invent for himself a new manhunt? Wishful thinking – a perfectly reasonable neurosis. He had selected a number of publicly reported happenings, and had read into them something that was not there – a shadowy figure behind them, a mad mass murderer. In all probability Mrs Etherington had really killed her husband, the labourer had shot his wife, a young woman had given her old aunt an overdose of morphia, a jealous wife had polished off her husband as she had threatened to do, and a crazy spinster had really committed the murder for which she had subsequently given herself up. In fact these crimes were exactly what they seemed!

  Against that view (surely the common-sense one) I could only set my own inherent belief in Poirot’s acumen.

  Poirot said that a murder had been arranged. For the second time Styles was to house a crime.

  Time would prove or disprove that assertion, but if it were true, it behoved us to forestall that happening.

  And Poirot knew the identity of the murderer which I did not.

  The more I thought about that, the more annoyed I became! Really, frankly, it was damned cheek of Poirot! He wanted my co-operation and yet he refused to take me into his confidence!

  Why? There was the reason he gave – surely a most inadequate one! I was tired of this silly joking about my ‘speaking countenance’. I could keep a secret as well as anyone. Poirot had always persisted in the humiliating belief that I am a transparent character and that anyone can read what is passing in my mind. He tries to soften the blow sometimes by attributing it to my beautiful and honest character which abhors all form of deceit!

  Of course, I reflected, if the whole thing was a chimera of Poirot’s imagination, his reticence was easily explained.

  I had come to no conclusion by the time
the gong sounded, and I went down to dinner with an open mind, but with an alert eye, for the detection of Poirot’s mythical X.

  For the moment I would accept everything that Poirot had said as gospel truth. There was a person under this roof who had already killed five times and who was preparing to kill again. Who was it?

  In the drawing-room before we went in to dinner I was introduced to Miss Cole and Major Allerton. The former was a tall, still handsome woman of thirty-three or four. Major Allerton I instinctively disliked. He was a good-looking man in the early forties, broad-shouldered, bronzed of face, with an easy way of talking, most of what he said holding a double implication. He had the pouches under his eyes that come with a dissipated way of life. I suspected him of racketing around, of gambling, of drinking hard, and of being first and last a womanizer.

  Old Colonel Luttrell, I saw, did not much like him either, and Boyd Carrington was also rather stiff in his manner towards him. Allerton’s success was with the women of the party. Mrs Luttrell twittered to him delightedly, whilst he flattered her lazily and with a hardly concealed impertinence. I was also annoyed to see that Judith, too, seemed to enjoy his company and was exerting herself far more than usual to talk to him. Why the worst type of man can always be relied upon to please and interest the nicest of women has long been a problem beyond me. I knew instinctively that Allerton was a rotter – and nine men out of ten would have agreed with me. Whereas nine women or possibly the whole ten would have fallen for him immediately.

  As we sat down at the dinner table and plates of white gluey liquid were set before us, I let my eyes rove round the table whilst I summed up the possibilities.

  If Poirot were right, and retained his clearness of brain unimpaired, one of these people was a dangerous murderer – and probably a lunatic as well.

  Poirot had not actually said so, but I presumed that X was probably a man. Which of these men was it likely to be?

  Surely not old Colonel Luttrell, with his indecision, and his general air of feebleness. Norton, the man I had met rushing out of the house with field-glasses? It seemed unlikely. He appeared to be a pleasant fellow, rather ineffective and lacking in vitality. Of course, I told myself, many murderers have been small insignificant men – driven to assert themselves by crime for that very reason. They resented being passed over and ignored. Norton might be a murderer of this type. But there was his fondness for birds. I have always believed that a love of nature was essentially a healthy sign in a man.

  Boyd Carrington? Out of the question. A man with a name known all over the world. A fine sportsman, an administrator, a man universally liked and looked up to. Franklin I also dismissed. I knew how Judith respected and admired him.

  Major Allerton now. I dwelt on him appraisingly. A nasty fellow if I ever saw one! The sort of fellow who would skin his grandmother. And all glossed over with this superficial charm of manner. He was talking now – telling a story of his own discomfiture and making everybody laugh with his rueful appreciation of a joke at his expense.

  If Allerton was X, I decided, his crimes had been committed for profit in some way.

  It was true that Poirot had not definitely said that X was a man. I considered Miss Cole as a possibility. Her movements were restless and jerky – obviously a woman of nerves. Handsome in a hag-ridden kind of way. Still, she looked normal enough. She, Mrs Luttrell and Judith were the only women at the dinner table. Mrs Franklin was having dinner upstairs in her room, and the nurse who attended to her had her meals after us.

  After dinner I was standing by the drawing-room window looking out into the garden and thinking back to the time when I had seen Cynthia Murdoch, a young girl with auburn hair, run across that lawn. How charming she had looked in her white overall . . .

  Lost in thoughts of the past, I started when Judith passed her arm through mine and led me with her out of the window on to the terrace.

  She said abruptly: ‘What’s the matter?’

  I was startled. ‘The matter? What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve been so queer all through the evening. Why were you staring at everyone at dinner?’

  I was annoyed. I had had no idea I had allowed my thoughts so much sway over me.

  ‘Was I? I suppose I was thinking of the past. Seeing ghosts perhaps.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course you stayed here, didn’t you, when you were a young man? An old lady was murdered here, or something?’

  ‘Poisoned with strychnine.’

  ‘What was she like? Nice or nasty?’

  I considered the question.

  ‘She was a very kind woman,’ I said slowly. ‘Generous. Gave a lot to charity.’

  ‘Oh, that kind of generosity.’

  Judith’s voice sounded faintly scornful. Then she asked a curious question: ‘Were people – happy here?’

  No, they had not been happy. That, at least, I knew. I said slowly: ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they felt like prisoners. Mrs Inglethorp, you see, had all the money – and – doled it out. Her stepchildren could have no life of their own.’

  I heard Judith take a sharp breath. The hand on my arm tightened.

  ‘That’s wicked – wicked. An abuse of power. It shouldn’t be allowed. Old people, sick people, they shouldn’t have the power to hold up the lives of the young and strong. To keep them tied down, fretting, wasting their power and energy that could be used – that’s needed. It’s just selfishness.’

  ‘The old,’ I said drily, ‘have not got a monopoly of that quality.’

  ‘Oh, I know, Father, you think the young are selfish. So we are, perhaps, but it’s a clean selfishness. At least we only want to do what we want ourselves, we don’t want everybody else to do what we want, we don’t want to make slaves of other people.’

  ‘No, you just trample them down if they happen to be in your way.’

  Judith squeezed my arm. She said: ‘Don’t be so bitter! I don’t really do much trampling – and you’ve never tried to dictate our lives to any of us. We are grateful for that.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I said honestly, ‘that I’d have liked to, though. It was your mother who insisted you should be allowed to make your own mistakes.’

  Judith gave my arm another quick squeeze. She said: ‘I know. You’d have liked to fuss over us like a hen! I do hate fuss. I won’t stand it. But you do agree with me, don’t you, about useful lives being sacrificed to useless ones?’

  ‘It does sometimes happen,’ I admitted. ‘But there’s no need for drastic measures . . . It’s up to anybody just to walk out, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but is it? Is it?’

  Her tone was so vehement that I looked at her in some astonishment. It was too dark to see her face clearly. She went on, her voice low and troubled: ‘There’s so much – it’s difficult – financial considerations, a sense of responsibility, reluctance to hurt someone you’ve been fond of – all those things, and some people are so unscrupulous – they know just how to play on all those feelings. Some people – some people are like leeches!’

  ‘My dear Judith,’ I exclaimed, taken aback by the positive fury of her tone.

  She seemed to realize that she had been over-vehement, for she laughed, and withdrew her arm from mine.

  ‘Was I sounding very intense? It’s a matter I feel rather hotly about. You see, I’ve known a case . . . An old brute. And when someone was brave enough to – to cut the knot and set the people she loved free, they called her mad. Mad? It was the sanest thing anyone could do – and the bravest!’

  A horrible qualm passed over me. Where, not long ago, had I heard something like that?

  ‘Judith,’ I said sharply. ‘Of what case are you talking?’

  ‘Oh, nobody you know. Some friends of the Franklins. Old man called Litchfield. He was quite rich and practically starved his wretched daughters – never let them see anyone, or go out. He was mad really, but not sufficiently so in the medical sense.’

  ‘And t
he eldest daughter murdered him,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I expect you read about it? I suppose you would call it murder – but it wasn’t done from personal motives. Margaret Litchfield went straight to the police and gave herself up. I think she was very brave. I wouldn’t have had the courage.’

  ‘The courage to give yourself up or the courage to commit murder?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ I said severely, ‘and I don’t like to hear you talking of murder as justified in certain cases.’ I paused, and added: ‘What did Dr Franklin think?’

  ‘Thought it served him right,’ said Judith. ‘You know, Father, some people really ask to be murdered.’

  ‘I won’t have you talking like this, Judith. Who’s been putting these ideas into your head?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you that it’s all pernicious nonsense.’

  ‘I see. We’ll leave it at that.’ She paused. ‘I came really to give you a message from Mrs Franklin. She’d like to see you if you don’t mind coming up to her bedroom.’

  ‘I shall be delighted. I’m so sorry she was feeling too ill to come down to dinner.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Judith unfeelingly. ‘She just likes making a fuss.’

  The young are very unsympathetic.

  Chapter 5

  I had only met Mrs Franklin once before. She was a woman about thirty – of what I should describe as the madonna type. Big brown eyes, hair parted in the centre, and a long gentle face. She was very slender and her skin had a transparent fragility.

  She was lying on a day bed, propped up with pillows, and wearing a very dainty negligee of white and pale blue.

  Franklin and Boyd Carrington were there drinking coffee. Mrs Franklin welcomed me with an outstretched hand and a smile.

  ‘How glad I am you’ve come, Captain Hastings. It will be so nice for Judith. The child has really been working far too hard.’

  ‘She looks very well on it,’ I said as I took the fragile little hand in mine.

  Barbara Franklin sighed. ‘Yes, she’s lucky. How I envy her. I don’t believe really that she knows what ill health is. What do you think, Nurse? Oh! Let me introduce you. This is Nurse Craven who’s so terribly, terribly good to me. I don’t know what I should do without her. She treats me just like a baby.’