Murder in the Mews (Hercule Poirot 18)

Japp advanced towards him. Hercule Poirot sent a quick searching glance round the room.

It was much larger than the room they had just quitted. It had a built-out bay window, and whereas the other room had been a bedroom pure

and simple, this was emphatically a bedroom disguised as a sitting room.

The walls were silver and the ceiling emerald green. There were curtains of a modernistic pattern in silver and green. There was a divan covered with a shimmering emerald green silk quilt and numbers of gold and silver cushions. There was a tall antique walnut bureau, a walnut tallboy, and several modern chairs of gleaming chromium. On a low glass table there was a big ashtray full of cigarette stubs.

Delicately Hercule Poirot sniffed the air. Then he joined Japp where the latter stood looking down at the body.

In a heap on the floor, lying as she had fallen from one of the chromium chairs, was the body of a young woman of perhaps twenty-seven. She had fair hair and delicate features. There was very little makeup on the face. It was a pretty, wistful, perhaps slightly stupid face. On the left side of the head was a mass of congealed blood. The fingers of the right hand were clasped round a small pistol. The woman was dressed in a simple frock of dark green high to the neck.

“Well, Brett, what’s the trouble?”

Japp was looking down also at the huddled figure.

“Position’s all right,” said the doctor. “If she shot herself she’d probably have slipped from the chair into just that position. The door was locked and the window was fastened on the inside.”

“That’s all right, you say. Then what’s wrong?”

“Take a look at the pistol. I haven’t handled it—waiting for the fingerprint men. But you can see quite well what I mean.”

Together Poirot and Japp knelt down and examined the pistol closely.

“I see what you mean,” said Japp rising. “It’s in the curve of her hand. It looks as though she’s holding it—but as a matter of fact she isn’t holding it. Anything else?”

“Plenty. She’s got the pistol in her right hand. Now take a look at the wound. The pistol was held close to the head just above the left ear—the left ear, mark you.”

“H’m,” said Japp. “That does seem to settle it. She couldn’t hold a pistol and fire it in that position with her right hand?”

“Plumb impossible, I should say. You might get your arm round but I doubt if you could fire the shot.”

“That seems pretty obvious then. Someone else shot her and tried to make it look like suicide. What about the locked door and window, though?”

Inspector Jameson answered this.

“Window was closed and bolted, sir, but although the door was locked we haven’t been able to find the key.”

Japp nodded.

“Yes, that was a bad break. Whoever did it locked the door when he left and hoped the absence of the key wouldn’t be noticed.”

Poirot murmured:

“C’est bête, ça!”

“Oh, come now, Poirot, old man, you mustn’t judge everybody else by the light of your shining intellect! As a matter of fact that’s the sort of little detail that’s quite apt to be overlooked. Door’s locked. People break in. Woman found dead—pistol in her hand—clear case of suicide—she locked herself in to do it. They don’t go hunting about for keys. As a matter of fact, Miss Plenderleith’s sending for the police was lucky. She might have got one or two of the chauffeurs to come and burst in the door—and then the key question would have been overlooked altogether.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true,” said Hercule Poirot. “It would have been many people’s natural reaction. The police, they are the last resource, are they not?”

He was still staring down at the body.

“Anything strike you?” Japp asked.

The question was careless but his eyes were keen and attentive.

Hercule Poirot shook his head slowly.

“I was looking at her wristwatch.”