Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot 12)

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Has good come out of evil?’ asked Poirot, smiling.

‘It’s funny your saying that. It has, and it hasn’t, in a manner of speaking. I mean I’ve had a lot of worry. I’ve been badgered. Things have been insinuated. And why me? That’s what I say. Why don’t they go and worry that Dr Hubbard—Bryant, I mean. Doctors are the people who can get hold of high-falutin’ undetectable poisons. How’d I get hold of snake juice? I ask you!’

‘You were saying,’ said Poirot, ‘that although you had been put to a lot of inconvenience—?’

‘Ah, yes, there was a bright side to the picture. I don’t mind telling you I cleaned up a tidy little sum from the papers. Eyewitness stuff—though there was more of the reporter’s imagination than of my eyesight; but that’s neither here nor there.’

‘It is interesting,’ said Poirot, ‘how a crime affects the lives of people who are quite outside it. Take yourself, for example—you make suddenly a quite unexpected sum of money—a sum of money perhaps particularly welcome at the moment.’

‘Money’s always welcome,’ said Mr Ryder.

He eyed Poirot sharply.

‘Sometimes the need of it is imperative. For that reason men embezzle—they make fraudulent entries—’ He waved his hands. ‘All sorts of complications arise.’

‘Well, don’t let’s get gloomy about it,’ said Mr Ryder.

‘True. Why dwell on the dark side of the picture? This money was grateful to you—since you failed to raise a loan in Paris—’

‘How the devil did you know that?’ asked Mr Ryder angrily.

Hercule Poirot smiled.

‘At any rate it is true.’

‘It’s true enough, but I don’t particularly want it to get about.’

‘I will be discretion itself, I assure you.’

‘It’s odd,’ mused Mr Ryder, ‘how small a sum will sometimes put a man in Queer Street. Just a small sum of ready money to tide him over a crisis—and if he can’t get hold of that infinitesimal sum, to hell with his credit. Yes, it’s damned odd. Money’s odd. Credit’s odd. Come to that, life is odd!’

‘Very true.’

‘By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘It is a little delicate. It has come to my ears—in the course of my profession, you understand—that in spite of your denials you did have dealings with this woman Giselle.’

‘Who says so? It’s a lie! I never saw the woman.’

‘Dear me, that is very curious!’

‘Curious! It’s damned libel.’

Poirot looked at him thoughtfully.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I must look into the matter.’

‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?’

Poirot shook his head.

‘Do not enrage yourself; there must be—a mistake.’

‘I should think there was. Catch me getting myself mixed up with these high-toned Society moneylenders. Society woman with gambling debts—that’s their sort.’

Poirot rose.