Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot 12)

‘There is just a chance that the murderer might have been able to pick it up unobserved.’

‘Bryant?’

‘Bryant or another.’

‘H’m—rather risky.’

Fournier disagreed.

‘You think so now,’ he said, ‘because you know that it is murder. But when a lady dies suddenly of heart failure, if a man is to drop his handkerchief and stoop to pick it up, who will notice the action or think twice about it?’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Japp. ‘Well, I fancy Bryant is definitely on the list of suspects. He could lean his head round the corner of his seat and do the blowpipe act—again diagonally across the car. But why nobody saw him—! However, I won’t go into that again. Whoever did it wasn’t seen!’

‘And for that, I fancy, there must be a reason,’ said Fournier. ‘A reason that, by all I have heard,’ he smiled, ‘will appeal to M. Poirot. I mean a psychological reason.’

‘Continue, my friend,’ said Po

irot. ‘It is interesting what you say there.’

‘Supposing,’ said Fournier, ‘that when travelling in a train you were to pass a house in flames. Everyone’s eyes would at once be drawn to the window. Everyone would have their attention fixed on a certain point. A man in such a moment might whip out a dagger and stab a man, and nobody would see him do it.’

‘That is true,’ said Poirot. ‘I remember a case in which I was concerned—a case of poison, where that very point arose. There was, as you call it, a psychological moment. If we discover that there was such a moment during the journey of the Prometheus—’

‘We ought to find that out by questioning the stewards and the passengers,’ said Japp.

‘True. But if there was such a psychological moment, it must follow logically that the cause of that moment must have originated with the murderer. He must have been able to produce the particular effect that caused that moment.’

‘Perfectly, perfectly,’ said the Frenchman.

‘Well, we’ll note down that as a point for questions,’ said Japp. ‘I’m coming now to seat No. 8—Daniel Michael Clancy.’

Japp spoke the name with a certain amount of relish.

‘In my opinion he’s the most likely suspect we’ve got. What’s easier than for a mystery author to fake up an interest in snake venom and get some unsuspecting scientific chemist to let him handle the stuff? Don’t forget he went down past Giselle’s seat—the only one of the passengers who did.’

‘I assure you, my friend,’ said Poirot, ‘that I have not forgotten that point.’

He spoke with emphasis.

Japp went on:

‘He could have used that blowpipe from fairly close quarters without any need of a “psychological moment”, as you call it. And he stood quite a respectable chance of getting away with it. Remember, he knows all about blowpipes—he said so.’

‘Which makes one pause, perhaps.’

‘Sheer artfulness,’ said Japp. ‘And as to this blowpipe he produced today, who is to say that it’s the one he bought two years ago? The whole thing looks very fishy to me. I don’t think it’s healthy for a man to be always brooding over crime and detective stories, reading up all sorts of cases. It puts ideas into his head.’

‘It is certainly necessary for a writer to have ideas in his head,’ agreed Poirot.

Japp returned to his plan of the plane.

‘No. 4 was Ryder—the seat slap in front of the dead woman. Don’t think he did it. But we can’t leave him out. He went to the toilet. He could have taken a pot shot on the way back from fairly close quarters; the only thing is he’d be right up against the archaeologist fellows when he did so. They’d notice it—couldn’t help it.’

Poirot shook his head thoughtfully.

‘You are not, perhaps, acquainted with many archaeologists? If these two were having a really absorbing discussion on some point at issue—eh bien, my friend, their concentration would be such that they would be quite blind and deaf to the outside world. They would be existing, you see, in five thousand or so BC. Nineteen hundred and thirty-five AD would have been non-existent for them.’

Japp looked a little sceptical.