Appointment With Death (Hercule Poirot 19)

‘Take from my list of specified facts points three and four. Mrs Boynton took definite pleasure in keeping her family from enjoying themselves with other people. Mrs Boynton, on the afternoon in question, encouraged her family to go away and leave her.

‘These two facts, they contradict each other flatly! Why, on this particular afternoon, should Mrs Boynton suddenly display a complete reversal of her usual policy? Was it that she felt a sudden warmth of the heart—an instinct of benevolence? That, it seems to me from all I have heard, was extremely unlikely! Yet there must have been a reason. What was that reason?

‘Let us examine closely the character of Mrs Boynton. There have been many different accounts of her. She was a tyrannical old martinet—she was a mental sadist—she was an incarnation of evil—she was crazy. Which of these views is the true one?

‘I think myself that Sarah King came nearest to the truth when in a flash of inspiration in Jerusalem she saw the old lady as intensely pathetic. But not only pathetic—futile!

‘Let us, if we can, think ourselves into the mental condition of Mrs Boynton. A human creature born with immense ambition, with a yearning to dominate and to impress her personality on other people. She neither sublimated that intense craving for power—nor did she seek to master it—no, mesdames and messieurs—she fed it! But in the end—listen well to this—in the end what did it amount to? She was not a great power! She was not feared and hated over a wide area! She was the petty tyrant of one isolated family! And as Dr Gerard said to me—she became bored like any other old lady with her hobby and she sought to extend her activities and to amuse herself by making her dominance more precarious! But that led to an entirely different aspect of the case! By coming abroad, she realized for the first time how extremely insignificant she was!

‘And now we come directly to point number ten—the words spoken to Sarah King in Jerusalem. Sarah King, you see, had put her finger on the truth. She had revealed fully and uncompromisingly the pitiful futility of Mrs Boynton’s scheme of existence! And now listen very carefully—all of you—to what her exact words to Miss King were. Miss King has said that Mrs Boynton spoke “so malevolently—not even looking at me”. And this is what she actually said, “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.”

‘Those words made a great impression on Miss King. Their extraordinary intensity and the loud hoarse tone in which they were uttered! So strong was the impression that they left on her mind that I think she quite failed to realize their extraordinary significance!

‘Do you see that significance, any of you?’ He waited a minute. ‘It seems not…But, mes amis, does it escape you that those words were not a reasonable answer at all to what Miss King had just been saying? “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” It does not make sense! If she had said, “I never forget impertinence”—something of that kind—but no—a face is what she said…

‘Ah!’ cried Poirot, beating his hands together. ‘But it leaps to the eye! Those words, ostensibly spoken to Miss King, were not meant for Miss King at all! They were addressed to someone else standing behind Miss King.’

He paused, noting their expressions.

‘Yes, it leaps to the eye! That was, I tell you, a psychological moment in Mrs Boynton’s life! She had been exposed to herself by an intelligent young woman! She was full of baffled fury—and at that moment she recognized someone—a face from the past—a victim delivered into her hands!

‘We are back, you see, at the outsider! And now the meaning of Mrs Boynton’s unexpected amiability on the afternoon of her death is clear. She wanted to get rid of her family because—to use a vulgarity—she had other fish to fry! She wanted the field left clear for an interview with a new victim…

‘Now, from that new standpoint, let us consider the events of the afternoon! The Boynton family go off. Mrs Boynton sits up by her cave. Now let us consider very carefully the evidence of Lady Westholme and Miss Pierce. The latter is an unreliable witness, she is unobservant and very suggestible. Lady Westholme, on the other hand, is perfectly clear as to her facts and meticulously observant. Both ladies agree on one fact! An Arab, one of the servants, approaches Mrs Boynton, angers her in some way and retires hastily. Lady Westholme stated definitely that the servant had first been into the tent occupied by Ginevra Boynton, but you may remember that Dr Gerard’s tent was next door to Ginevra’s. It is possible that it was Dr Gerard’s tent the Arab entered…’

Colonel Carbury said: ‘D’you mean to tell me that one of those Bedouin fellows of mine murdered an old lady by sticking her with a hypodermic? Fantastic!’

‘Wait, Colonel Carbury, I have not yet finished. Let us agree that the Arab might have come from Dr Gerard’s tent and not Ginevra Boynton’s. What is the next thing? Both ladies agree that they could not see his face clearly enough to identify him and that they did not hear what was said. That is understandable. The distance between the marquee and the ledge was about two hundred yards. Lady Westholme gave a clear description of the man otherwise, describing in detail his ragged breeches and the untidiness with which his puttees were rolled.’

Poirot leaned forward.

‘And that, my friends, was very odd indeed! Because if she could not see his face or hear what was said, she could not possibly have noticed the state of his breeches and puttees! Not at two hundred yards!

‘It was an error, that, you see! It suggested a curious idea to me. Why insist so on the ragged breeches and untidy puttees? Could it be because the breeches were not torn and the puttees were non-existent? Lady Westholme and Miss Pierce both saw the man—but from where they were sitting they could not see each other. That is shown by the fact that Lady Westholme came to see if Miss Pierce was awake and found her sitting in the entrance of her tent.’

‘Good lord,’ said Col

onel Carbury, suddenly sitting up very straight. ‘Are you suggesting—?’

‘I am suggesting that, having ascertained just what Miss Pierce (the only witness likely to be awake) was doing, Lady Westholme returned to her tent, put on her riding breeches, boots and khaki-coloured coat, made herself an Arab head-dress with her checked duster and a skein of knitting-wool and that, thus attired, she went boldly up to Dr Gerard’s tent, looked in his medicine chest, selected a suitable drug, took the hypodermic, filled it and went boldly up to her victim.

‘Mrs Boynton may have been dozing. Lady Westholme was quick. She caught her by the wrist and injected the stuff. Mrs Boynton half cried out—tried to rise—then sank back. The “Arab” hurried away with every evidence of being ashamed and abashed. Mrs Boynton shook her stick, tried to rise, then fell back into her chair.

‘Five minutes later Lady Westholme rejoins Miss Pierce and comments on the scene she has just witnessed, impressing her own version of it on the other. Then they go for a walk, pausing below the ledge where Lady Westholme shouts up to the old lady. She receives no answer. Mrs Boynton is dead—but she remarks to Miss Pierce, “Very rude just to snort at us like that!” Miss Pierce accepts the suggestion—she has often heard Mrs Boynton receive a remark with a snort—she will swear quite sincerely if necessary that she actually heard it. Lady Westholme has sat on committees often enough with women of Miss Pierce’s type to know exactly how her own eminence and masterful personality can influence them. The only point where her plan went astray was the replacing of the syringe. Dr Gerard returning so soon upset her scheme. She hoped he might not have noticed its absence, or might think he had overlooked it, and she put it back during the night.’

He stopped.

Sarah said: ‘But why? Why should Lady Westholme want to kill old Mrs Boynton?’

‘Did you not tell me that Lady Westholme had been quite near you in Jerusalem when you spoke to Mrs Boynton? It was to Lady Westholme that Mrs Boynton’s words were addressed. “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” Put that with the fact that Mrs Boynton had been a wardress in a prison and you can get a very shrewd idea of the truth. Lord Westholme met his wife on a voyage back from America. Lady Westholme before her marriage had been a criminal and had served a prison sentence.

‘You see the terrible dilemma she was in? Her career, her ambitions, her social position—all at stake! What the crime was for which she served a sentence in prison we do not yet know (though we soon shall), but it must have been one that would effectually blast her political career if it was made public. And remember this, Mrs Boynton was not an ordinary blackmailer. She did not want money. She wanted the pleasure of torturing her victim for a while and then she would have enjoyed revealing the truth in the most spectacular fashion! No, while Mrs Boynton lived, Lady Westholme was not safe. She obeyed Mrs Boynton’s instructions to meet her at Petra (I thought it strange all along that a woman with such a sense of her own importance as Lady Westholme should have preferred to travel as a mere tourist), but in her own mind she was doubtless revolving ways and means of murder. She saw her chance and carried it out boldly. She only made two slips. One was to say a little too much—the description of the torn breeches—which first drew my attention to her, and the other was when she mistook Dr Gerard’s tent and looked first into the one where Ginevra was lying half asleep. Hence the girl’s story—half make-believe, half true—of a sheikh in disguise. She put it the wrong way round, obeying her instinct to distort the truth by making it more dramatic, but the indication was quite significant enough for me.’

He paused.

‘But we shall soon know. I obtained Lady Westholme’s fingerprints today without her being aware of the fact. If these are sent to the prison where Mrs Boynton was once a wardress, we shall soon know the truth when they are compared with the files.’

He stopped.