The Labours of Hercules Read online

  Poirot said:

  “You are too kind.”

  “What put you on to it? Gossip?”

  “As you say—Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.”

  The following day Poirot once more took a train to Market Loughborough.

  Market Loughborough was buzzing like a beehive. It had buzzed mildly ever since the exhumation proceedings.

  Now that the findings of the autopsy had leaked out, excitement had reached fever heat.

  Poirot had been at the inn for about an hour and had just finished a hearty lunch of steak and kidney pudding washed down by beer when word was brought to him that a lady was waiting to see him.

  It was Nurse Harrison. Her face was white and haggard.

  She came straight to Poirot.

  “Is this true? Is this really true, M. Poirot?”

  He put her gently into a chair.

  “Yes. More than sufficient arsenic to cause death has been found.”

  Nurse Harrison cried:

  “I never thought—I never for one moment thought—” and burst into tears.

  Poirot said gently:

  “The truth had to come out, you know.”

  She sobbed.

  “Will they hang him?”

  Poirot said:

  “A lot has to be proved still. Opportunity—access to poison—the vehicle in which it was administered.”

  “But supposing, M. Poirot, that he had nothing to do with it—nothing at all.”

  “In that case,” Poirot shrugged his shoulders, “he will be acquitted.”

  Nurse Harrison said slowly:

  “There is something—something that, I suppose, I ought to have told you before—but I didn’t think that there was really anything in it. It was just queer.”

  “I knew there was something,” said Poirot. “You had better tell it to me now.”

  “It isn’t much. It’s just that one day when I went down to the dispensary for something, Jean Moncrieffe was doing something rather—odd.”

  “Yes?”

  “It sounds so silly. It’s only that she was filling up her powder compact—a pink enamel one—”

  “Yes?”

  “But she wasn’t filling it up with powder—with face powder, I mean. She was tipping something into it from one of the bottles out of the poison cupboard. When she saw me she started and shut up the compact and whipped it into her bag—and put back the bottle quickly into the cupboard so that I couldn’t see what it was. I daresay it doesn’t mean anything—but now that I know that Mrs. Oldfield really was poisoned—” She broke off.

  Poirot said: “You will excuse me?”

  He went out and telephoned to Detective Sergeant Grey of the Berkshire Police.

  Hercule Poirot came back and he and Nurse Harrison sat in silence.

  Poirot was seeing the face of a girl with red hair and hearing a clear hard voice say: “I don’t agree.” Jean Moncrieffe had not wanted an autopsy. She had given a plausible enough excuse, but the fact remained. A competent girl—efficient—resolute. In love with a man who was tied to a complaining invalid wife, who might easily live for years since, according to Nurse Harrison, she had very little the matter with her.

  Hercule Poirot sighed.

  Nurse Harrison said:

  “What are you thinking of?”

  Poirot answered:

  “The pity of things. . . .”

  Nurse Harrison said:

  “I don’t believe for a minute he knew anything about it.”

  Poirot said:

  “No. I am sure he did not.”

  The door opened and Detective Sergeant Grey came in. He had something in his hand, wrapped in a silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it and set it carefully down. It was a bright rose pink enamel compact.

  Nurse Harrison said:

  “That’s the one I saw.”

  Grey said:

  “Found it pushed right to the back of Miss Moncrieffe’s bureau drawer. Inside a handkerchief sachet. As far as I can see there are no fingerprints on it, but I’ll be careful.”

  With the handkerchief over his hand he pressed the spring. The case flew open. Grey said:

  “This stuff isn’t face powder.”

  He dipped a finger and tasted it gingerly on the tip of his tongue.

  “No particular taste.”

  Poirot said:

  “White arsenic does not taste.”

  Grey said:

  “It will be analysed at once.” He looked at Nurse Harrison. “You can swear to this being the same case?”

  “Yes. I’m positive. That’s the case I saw Miss Moncrieffe with in the dispensary about a week before Mrs. Oldfield’s death.”

  Sergeant Grey sighed. He looked at Poirot and nodded. The latter rang the bell.

  “Send my servant here, please.”

  George, the perfect valet, discreet, unobtrusive, entered and looked inquiringly at his master.

  Hercule Poirot said:

  “You have identified this powder compact, Miss Harrison, as one you saw in the possession of Miss Moncrieffe over a year ago. Would you be surprised to learn that this particular case was sold by Messrs Woolworth only a few weeks ago and that, moreover, it is of a pattern and colour that has only been manufactured for the last three

  months?”

  Nurse Harrison gasped. She stared at Poirot, her eyes round and dark. Poirot said:

  “Have you seen this compact before, Georges?”

  George stepped forward:

  “Yes, sir. I observed this person, Nurse Harrison, purchase it at Woolworth’s on Friday the 18th. Pursuant to your instructions I followed this lady whenever she went out. She took a bus over to Darnington on the day I have mentioned and purchased this compact. She took it home with her. Later, the same day, she came to the house in which Miss Moncrieffe lodges. Acting as by your instructions, I was already in the house. I observed her go into Miss Moncrieffe’s bedroom and hide this in the back of the bureau drawer. I had a good view through the crack of the door. She then left the house believing herself unobserved. I may say that no one locks their front doors down here and it was dusk.”

  Poirot said to Nurse Harrison, and his voice was hard and venomous:

  “Can you explain these facts, Nurse Harrison? I think not. There was no arsenic in that box when it left Messrs Woolworth, but there was when it left Miss Bristow’s house.” He added softly, “It was unwise of you to keep a supply of arsenic in your possession.”

  Nurse Harrison buried her face in her hands. She said in a low dull voice:

  “It’s true—it’s all true . . . I killed her. And all for nothing—

  nothing . . . I was mad.”

  VII

  Jean Moncrieffe said:

  “I must ask you to forgive me, M. Poirot. I have been so angry with you—so terribly angry with you. It seemed to me that you were making everything so much worse.”

  Poirot said with a smile:

  “So I was to begin with. It is like in the old legend of the Lernean Hydra. Every time a head was cut off, two heads grew in its place. So, to begin with, the rumours grew and multiplied. But you see my task, like that of my namesake Hercules, was to reach the first—the original head. Who had started this rumour? It did not take me long to discover that the originator of the story was Nurse Harrison. I went to see her. She appeared to be a very nice woman—intelligent and sympathetic. But almost at once she made a bad mistake—she repeated to me a conversation which she had overheard taking place between you and the doctor, and that conversation, you see, was all wrong. It was psychologically most unlikely. If you and the doctor had planned together to kill Mrs. Oldfield, you are both of you far too intelligent and level-headed to hold such a conversation in a room with an open door, easily overheard by someone on the stairs or someone in the kitchen. Moreover, the words attributed to you did not fit in at all with your mental makeup. They were the words of a much older woman and of one of a quite different type. They were words such
as would be imagined by Nurse Harrison as being used by herself in like

  circumstances.

  “I had, up to then, regarded the whole matter as fairly simple. Nurse Harrison, I realized, was a fairly young and still handsome woman—she had been thrown closely with Doctor Oldfield for nearly three years—the doctor had been very fond of her and grateful to her for her tact and sympathy. She had formed the impression that if Mrs. Oldfield died, the doctor would probably ask her to marry him. Instead of that, after Mrs. Oldfield’s death, she learns that Doctor Oldfield is in love with you. Straightaway, driven by anger and jealousy, she starts spreading the rumour that Doctor Oldfield has poisoned his wife.

  “That, as I say, was how I had visualized the position at first. It was a case of a jealous woman and a lying rumour. But the old trite phrase ‘no smoke without fire’ recurred to me significantly. I wondered if Nurse Harrison had done more than spread a rumour. Certain things she said rang strangely. She told me that Mrs. Oldfield’s illness was largely imaginary—that she did not really suffer much pain. But the doctor himself had been in no doubt about the reality of his wife’s suffering. He had not been surprised by her death. He had called in another doctor shortly before her death and the other doctor had realized the gravity of her condition. Tentatively I brought forward the suggestion of exhumation . . . Nurse Harrison was at first frightened out of her wits by the idea. Then, almost at once, her jealousy and hatred took command of her. Let them find arsenic—no suspicion would attach to her. It would be the doctor and Jean Moncrieffe who would

  suffer.

  “There was only one hope. To make Nurse Harrison overreach herself. If there were a chance that Jean Moncrieffe would escape, I fancied that Nurse Harrison would strain every nerve to involve her in the crime. I gave instructions to my faithful Georges—the most unobtrusive of men whom she did not know by sight. He was to follow her closely. And so—all ended well.”

  Jean Moncrieffe said:

  “You’ve been wonderful.”

  Dr. Oldfield chimed in. He said:

  “Yes, indeed. I can never thank you enough. What a blind fool I was!”

  Poirot asked curiously:

  “Were you as blind, Mademoiselle?”

  Jean Moncrieffe said slowly:

  “I have been terribly worried. You see, the arsenic in the poison cupboard didn’t tally. . . .”

  Oldfield cried:

  “Jean—you didn’t think—?”

  “No, no—not you. What I did think was that Mrs. Oldfield had somehow or other got hold of it—and that she was taking it so as to make herself ill and get sympathy and that she had inadvertently taken too much. But I was afraid that if there was an autopsy and arsenic was found, they would never consider that theory and would leap to the conclusion that you’d done it. That’s why I never said anything about the missing arsenic. I even cooked the poison book! But the last person I would ever have suspected was Nurse Harrison.”

  Oldfield said:

  “I too. She was such a gentle womanly creature. Like a Madonna.”

  Poirot said sadly:

  “Yes, she would have made, probably, a good wife and mother . . . Her emotions were just a little too strong for her.” He sighed and murmured once more under his breath:

  “The pity of it.”

  Then he smiled at the happy-looking middle-aged man and the eager-faced girl opposite him. He said to himself:

  “These two have come out of its shadow into the sun . . . and I—I have performed the second Labor of Hercules.”

  Three

  THE ARCADIAN DEER

  Hercule Poirot stamped his feet, seeking to warm them. He blew upon his fingers. Flakes of snow melted and dripped from the corners of his moustache.

  There was a knock at the door and a chambermaid appeared. She was a slow-breathing thickset country girl and she stared with a good deal of curiosity at Hercule Poirot. It was possible that she had not seen anything quite like him before.

  She asked: “Did you ring?”

  “I did. Will you be so good as to light a fire?”

  She went out and came back again immediately with paper and sticks. She knelt down in front of the big Victorian grate and began to lay a fire.

  Hercule Poirot continued to stamp his feet, swing his arms and blow on his fingers.

  He was annoyed. His car—an expensive Messarro Gratz—had not behaved with that mechanical perfection which he expected of a car. His chauffeur, a young man who enjoyed a handsome salary, had not succeeded in putting things right. The car had staged a final refusal in a secondary road a mile and a half from anywhere with a fall of snow beginning. Hercule Poirot, wearing his usual smart patent leather shoes, had been forced to walk that mile and a half to reach the riverside village of Hartly Dene—a village which, though showing every sign of animation in summertime, was completely moribund in winter. The Black Swan had registered something like dismay at the arrival of a guest. The landlord had been almost eloquent as he pointed out that the local garage could supply a car in which the gentleman could continue his journey.

  Hercule Poirot repudiated the suggestion. His Latin thrift was offended. Hire a car? He already had a car—a large car—an expensive car. In that car and no other he proposed to continue his journey back to town. And in any case, even if repairs to it could be quickly effected, he was not going on in this snow until next morning. He demanded a room, a fire and a meal. Sighing, the landlord showed him to the room, sent the maid to supply the fire and then retired to discuss with his wife the problem of the meal.

  An hour later, his feet stretched out towards the comforting blaze, Hercule Poirot reflected leniently on the dinner he had just eaten. True, the steak had been both tough and full of gristle, the brussels sprouts had been large, pale, and definitely watery, the potatoes had had hearts of stone. Nor was there much to be said for the portion of stewed apple and custard which had followed. The cheese had been hard, and the biscuits soft. Nevertheless, thought Hercule Poirot, looking graciously at the leaping flames, and sipping delicately at a cup of liquid mud euphemistically called coffee, it was better to be full than empty, and after tramping snowbound lanes in patent leather shoes, to sit in front of a fire was Paradise!

  There was a knock on the door and the chambermaid appeared.

  “Please, sir, the man from the garage is here and would like to see you.”

  Hercule Poirot replied amiably:

  “Let him mount.”

  The girl giggled and retired. Poirot reflected kindly that her account of him to her friends would provide entertainment for many winter days to come.

  There was another knock—a different knock—and Poirot called:

  “Come in.”

  He looked up with approval at the young man who entered and stood there looking ill at ease, twisting his cap in his hands.

  Here, he thought, was one of the handsomest specimens of humanity he had ever seen, a simple young man with the outward semblance of a Greek god.

  The young man said in a low husky voice:

  “About the car, sir, we’ve brought it in. And we’ve got at the trouble. It’s a matter of an hour’s work or so.”

  Poirot said:

  “What is wrong with it?”

  The young man plunged eagerly into technical details. Poirot nodded his head gently, but he was not listening. Perfect physique was a thing he admired greatly. There were, he considered, too many rats in spectacles about. He said to himself approvingly: “Yes, a Greek god—a young shepherd in Arcady.”

  The young man stopped abruptly. It was then that Hercule Poirot’s brows knitted themselves for a second. His first reaction had been æsthetic, his second mental. His eyes narrowed themselves curiously, as he looked up.

  He said:

  “I comprehend. Yes, I comprehend.” He paused and then added: “My chauffeur, he has already told me that which you have just said.”

  He saw the flush that came to the other’s cheek, saw the fingers gr
ip the cap nervously.

  The young man stammered:

  “Yes—er—yes, sir. I know.”

  Hercule Poirot went on smoothly:

  “But you thought that you would also come and tell me yourself?”

  “Er—yes, sir, I thought I’d better.”

  “That,” said Hercule Poirot, “was very conscientious of you. Thank you.”

  There was a faint but unmistakable note of dismissal in the last words but he did not expect the other to go and he was right. The young man did not move.

  His fingers moved convulsively, crushing the tweed cap, and he said in a still lower embarrassed voice:

  “Er—excuse me, sir—but it’s true, isn’t it, that you’re the detective gentleman—you’re Mr. Hercules Pwarrit?” He said the name very carefully.

  Poirot said: “That is so.”

  Red crept up the young man’s face. He said:

  “I read a piece about you in the paper.”

  “Yes?”

  The boy was now scarlet. There was distress in his eyes—distress and appeal. Hercule Poirot came to his aid. He said gently:

  “Yes? What is it you want to ask me?”

  The words came with a rush now.

  “I’m afraid you may think it’s awful cheek of me, sir. But your coming here by chance like this—well, it’s too good to be missed. Having read about you and the clever things you’ve done. Anyway, I said as after all I might as well ask you. There’s no harm in asking, is there?”

  Hercule Poirot shook his head. He said:

  “You want my help in some way?”

  The other nodded. He said, his voice husky and embarrassed:

  “It’s—it’s about a young lady. If—if you could find her for me.”

  “Find her? Has she disappeared, then?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  Hercule Poirot sat up in his chair. He said sharply:

  “I could help you, perhaps, yes. But the proper people for you to go to are the police. It is their job and they have far more resources at their disposal than I have.”

  The boy shuffled his feet. He said awkwardly:

  “I couldn’t do that, sir. It’s not like that at all. It’s all rather peculiar, so to speak.”

  Hercule Poirot stared at him. Then he indicated a chair.