Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly Read online

  IX

  Hercule Poirot paused a moment at the big wrought iron gates. He looked ahead of him along the curving drive. Golden-brown leaves fluttered down from the trees. Near at hand the grassy bank was covered with little mauve cyclamen.

  Poirot sighed. The beauty of Greenshore appealed to him. Then he turned aside and rapped gently on the door of the little white plastered Lodge.

  After a few moments’ delay he heard footsteps inside, slow hesitant footsteps. The door was opened by Mrs. Folliat. He was not startled this time to see how old and frail she looked.

  She said, ‘M. Poirot? You?’ and drew back.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She led the way and he followed her into a small sitting room. There were some delicate Chelsea figures on the mantelpiece, a couple of chairs covered in exquisite petit point, and a Derby tea service was on the small table. A chosen few of the treasures of the past were here with the old lady who had outlived her kindred.

  She offered Poirot tea which he refused. Then she asked in a quiet voice:

  ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘I think you can guess, Madame.’

  Her answer was oblique.

  ‘I am very tired,’ she said.

  ‘I know. There have now been three deaths, Hattie Stubbs, Marlene Tucker, old Merdle.’

  She said sharply:

  ‘Merdle? That was an accident. He fell from the quay. He was very old, half blind, and he’d been drinking in the pub.’

  ‘I do not think it was an accident. Merdle knew too much.’

  ‘What did he know?’

  ‘He recognised a face, or a way of walking, or a manner. I talked to him one day when I was here before. He told me something about the Folliat family – about your father-in-law and your husband, and your sons who were killed in the war. Only they were not both killed, were they? Your son Henry went down with his ship, but your second son, James, was not killed. He deserted. He was reported at first, perhaps, Missing believed killed, and later you told everyone that he was killed. It was nobody’s business to disbelieve that statement. Why should they?’

  Poirot paused and then went on:

  ‘Do not imagine I have no sympathy for you, Madame. Life has been hard for you, I know. You can have no real illusions about your younger son, but he was still your son, and you loved him. You did all you could to give him a new life. You had the charge of a young girl, a subnormal but very rich girl. Oh yes, she was rich. But you gave out that she was poor, that you had advised her to marry a rich man many years older than herself. Why should anybody disbelieve your story? Again, it was nobody’s business. Her parents and near relatives had been killed. She was at a convent in Paris and a firm of French lawyers acted as instructed by lawyers in San Miguel. On her marriage, she assumed control of her own fortune. She was, as you have told me, docile, affectionate, suggestible. Everything her husband asked her to sign, she signed. Securities were probably changed and re-sold many times, but in the end the desired financial result was reached. Sir George Stubbs, the new personality assumed by your son, was a rich man and his wife was a pauper. It is no legal offence to call yourself “Sir”. A title creates confidence – it suggests, if not birth, then certainly riches. And rich Sir George Stubbs, older and changed in appearance and having grown a beard, bought Greenshore House and came to live where he belonged. There was nobody left after the devastation of war who was likely to have recognised him, but old Merdle did. He kept the knowledge to himself, but when he said to me slyly that there would always be Folliats at Greenshore House, that was his private joke.

  ‘So all turned out well, or so you thought. Your plan, as I believe, stopped there. You had provided your son with wealth, his ancestral home, and though his wife was subnormal she was a beautiful and docile girl, and you hoped he would be kind to her and that she would be happy.’

  Mrs. Folliat said in a low voice:

  ‘That’s how I thought it would be – I would look after Hattie and care for her. I never dreamed –’

  ‘You never dreamed – and your son carefully did not tell you, that at the time of the marriage he was already married.

  ‘Oh, yes – we have searched the records for what we knew must exist. Your son had married a girl in Trieste, half Italian, half Yogoslavian, and she had no mind to be parted from him, nor for that matter had he any intention of being parted from her. He accepted the marriage with Hattie as a means to wealth, but in his own mind he knew from the beginning what he intended to do.’

  ‘No, no, I do not believe that! I cannot believe it … It was that woman – that wicked creature.’

  Poirot went on inexorably:

  ‘He meant murder. Hattie had no relations, few friends. Immediately on their return to England, he brought her here. And that was when Hattie Stubbs died. On the day of the Fête the real Lady Stubbs had been dead eighteen months – he killed her the actual evening of their arrival here. The servants hardly saw her that first evening, and the woman they saw the next morning was not Hattie, but his Italian wife made up as Hattie and behaving roughly much as Hattie behaved. There again it might have ended. The false Hattie would have lived out her life successfully as Lady Stubbs – gradually allowing her mental powers to improve owing to what would vaguely be called “new treatment.” The secretary, Miss Brewis, already realised that there was very little wrong with Lady Stubbs’ mental processes and that a lot of her half-wittedness was put on.

  ‘But then a totally unforeseen thing happened. A cousin of Hattie’s wrote that he was coming to England on a yachting trip, and although that cousin had not seen her for many years, he would not be likely to be deceived by an impostor.

  ‘There might have been several different ways of meeting the situation, though if Paul Lopez remained long in England it would be almost impossible for “Hattie” to avoid meeting him. But another complication occurred. Old Merdle, growing garrulous, used to chatter to his granddaughter. She was probably the only person who listened to him, and even she thought him “batty” and paid very little serious attention when he talked about having seen a woman’s body long ago in the wood, and about Mr. James being Sir George Stubbs. She was slightly subnormal herself, but she had perhaps sufficient curiosity to hint at various things to “Sir George”. In doing that, she signed her own death warrant. The husband and wife worked out a scheme whereby Marlene should be killed and “Lady Stubbs” disappear in conditions which should throw vague suspicion on Paul Lopez.

  ‘To do this, “Hattie” assumed a second personality, or rather reverted to her own personality. With Sir George’s connivance, it was easy to double the parts. She arrived at the Youth Hostel in the role of an Italian girl student, went out alone for a walk – and – became Lady Stubbs. After dinner, Lady Stubbs went to bed early, slipped out and returned to the Hostel, spent the night there, rose early, went out, and was once more Lady Stubbs at the breakfast table! Back to her bedroom with a headache until the afternoon, but, again with Sir George’s help, she staged a trespassing act in company with a girl who was also at the Hostel. The changes of costume were not difficult – shorts and a shirt under one of the elaborate dresses Lady Stubbs wore. Heavy white make-up for Hattie, a big Coolie hat that shielded her face; a gay peasant scarf, big spectacles and some bronze-red hair for the Italian girl hiker. I saw them both – and never dreamed they were the same person. It was “Lady Stubbs” who slipped away from the Fête, went to the isolated boathouse and strangled the unsuspecting Marlene. She threw her hat into the river, packed up her Ascot frock and high heeled shoes in a rucksack she had concealed earlier near the boathouse. Then, back to the Fête as the Italian girl, joining up with her casual acquaintance, the Dutch girl, doing a few shows together, then, as she had previously announced to her companion, she leaves by the local bus, an inconspicuous figure. There are forty and fifty visitors each day at the Youth Hostel. They arouse no interest or speculation. Then back to London, to await quiet
ly a suitable time to “meet” Sir George, and eventually to marry him when he can at last presume his wife’s death.’

  There was a long pause. Then Mrs. Folliat drew herself up in her chair. Her voice had the coldness of ice.

  ‘What a very fantastic story, M. Poirot,’ she said. ‘I can assure you there has never been more than one Lady Stubbs. Poor Hattie has always been – poor Hattie.’

  Poirot rose to his feet and going to the window, opened it.

  ‘Listen, Madame. What do you hear?’

  ‘I am a little deaf. What should I hear?’

  ‘The blows of a pick axe … They are breaking up the concrete foundation of the Folly. What a good place to bury a body – where a tree has been uprooted and the earth is already disturbed. Then, a little later, to make all safe, concrete over the ground where the body lies, and on the concrete, erect a Folly …’ He added gently, ‘Sir George’s Folly …’

  A long shuddering sigh escaped Mrs. Folliat.

  ‘Such a beautiful place,’ said Poirot. ‘Only one thing evil … The man who owns it …’

  ‘I know.’ Her words came hoarsely. ‘I have always known. Even as a child he frightened me … Ruthless … Without pity … And without conscience … But he was my son and I loved him … I should have spoken out after Hattie’s death … But he was my son – how could I be the one to give him up? And so, because of my silence – that poor silly child was killed … And after her death, old Merdle … Where would it have ended?’

  ‘With a murderer it does not end,’ said Poirot.

  She bowed her head. For a moment or two she stayed so, her hands covering her eyes.

  Then Mrs. Folliat of Greenshore, daughter of a long line of soldiers, drew herself erect. She looked straight at Poirot and her voice was formal and remote.

  ‘Thank you, M. Poirot,’ she said, ‘for coming to tell me yourself of all this. Will you leave me now? There are some things that one has to face quite alone …’

  About the Author

  AGATHA CHRISTIE is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976.

  www.AgathaChristie.com

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  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly © Mathew Prichard 2013

  Foreword from Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks © John Curran 2009

  AGATHA CHRISTIE® and POIROT® are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. All rights reserved.

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

  Ebook Edition © November 2013

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  EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062334466

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