Lord Edgware Dies (Hercule Poirot 9)

“Certainly not. Jane Wilkinson’s features are quite unique. It was her.”

Japp threw a glance at Poirot as much as to say: “You see.”

“Had Lord Edgware any enemies?” asked Poirot suddenly.

“Nonsense,” said Miss Carroll.

“How do you mean—nonsense, Mademoiselle?”

“Enemies! People in these days don’t have enemies. Not English people!”

“Yet Lord Edgware was murdered.”

“That was his wife,” said Miss Carroll.

“A wife is not an enemy—no?”

“I’m sure it was a most extraordinary thing to happen. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening—I mean to anyone in our class of life.”

It was clearly Miss Carroll’s idea that murders were only committed by drunken members of the lower classes.

“How many keys are there to the front door?”

“Two,” replied Miss Carroll promptly. “Lord Edgware always carried one. The other was kept in the drawer in the hall, so that anybody who was going to be late in could take it. There was a third one, but Captain Marsh lost it. Very careless.”

“Did Captain Marsh come much to the house?”

“He used to live here until three years ago.”

“Why did he leave?” asked Japp.

“I don’t know. He couldn’t get on with his uncle, I suppose.”

“I think you know a little more than that, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot gently.

She darted a quick glance at him.

“I am not one to gossip, M. Poirot.”

“But you can tell us the truth concerning the rumours of a serious disagreement between Lord Edgware and his nephew.”

“It wasn’t so serious as all that. Lord Edgware was a difficult man to get on with.”

“Even you found that?”

“I’m not speaking of myself. I never had any disagreement with Lord Edgware. He always found me perfectly reliable.”

“But as regards Captain Marsh—”

Poirot stuck to it, gently continuing to goad her into further revelations.

Miss Carroll shrugged her shoulders.

“He was extravagant. Got into debt. There was some other trouble—I don’t know exactly what. They quarrelled. Lord Edgware forbade him the house. That’s all.”

Her mouth closed firmly. Evidently she intended to say no more.

The room we had inteviewed her in was on the first floor. As we left it, Poirot took me by the arm.

“A little minute. Remain here if you will, Hastings. I am going down with Japp. Watch till we have gone into the library, then join us there.”

I have long ago given up asking Poirot questions beginning “Why?” Like the Light Brigade “Mine not to reason why, mine but to do or die,” though fortunately it has not yet come to dying! I thought that possibly he suspected the butler of spying on him and wanted to know if such were really the case.

I took up my stand looking over the banisters. Poirot and Japp went first to the front door—out of my sight. Then they reappeared walking slowly along the hall. I followed their backs with my eye until they had gone into the library. I waited a minute or two in case the butler appeared, but there was no sign of anyone, so I ran down the stairs and joined them.

The body had, of course, been removed. The curtains were drawn and the electric light was on. Poirot and Japp were standing in the middle of the room looking round them.

“Nothing here,” Japp was saying.

And Poirot replied with a smile:

“Alas! not the cigarette ash—nor the footprint—nor a lady’s glove—nor even a lingering perfume! Nothing that the detective of fiction so conveniently finds.”

“The police are always made out to be as blind as bats in detective stories,” said Japp with a grin.

“I found a clue once,” said Poirot dreamily. “But since it was four feet long instead of four centimetres no one would believe in it.”

I remembered the circumstance and laughed. Then I remembered my mission.

“It’s all right, Poirot,” I said. “I watched, but no one was spying upon you as far as I could see.”

“The eyes of my friend Hastings,” said Poirot in a kind of gentle mockery. “Tell me, my friend, did you notice the rose between my lips?”

“The rose between your lips?” I asked in astonishment. Japp turned aside spluttering with laughter.

“You’ll be the death of me, M. Poirot,” he said. “The death of me. A rose. What next?”

“I had the fancy to pretend I was Carmen,” said Poirot quite undisturbed.

I wondered if they were going mad or if I was.

“You did not observe it, Hastings?” There was reproach in Poirot’s voice.

“No,” I said, staring. “But then I couldn’t see your face.”

“No matter.” He shook his head gently.

Were they making fun of me?

“Well,” said Japp. “No more to do here, I fancy. I’d like to see the daughter again if I could. She was too upset before for me to get anything out of her.”

He rang the bell for the butler.

“Ask Miss Marsh if I can see her for a few moments?”

The man departed. It was not he, however, but Miss Carroll who entered the room a few minutes later.

“Geraldine is asleep,” she said. “She’s had a terrible shock, poor child. After you left I gave her something to make her sleep and she’s fast asleep now. In an hour or two, perhaps.”

Japp agreed.

“In any case there’s nothing she can tell you that I can’t,” said Miss Carroll firmly.

“What is your opinion of the butler?” asked Poirot.

“I don’t like him much and that’s a fact,” replied Miss Carroll. “But I can’t tell you why.”

We had reached the front door.

“It was up there that you stood, was it not, last night, Mademoiselle?” said Poirot suddenly, pointing with his hands up the stairs.

“Yes. Why?”

“And you saw Lady Edgware go along the hall into the study?”

“Yes.”

“And you saw her face distinctly?”

“Certainly.”

“But you could not have seen her face, Mademoiselle. You can

only have seen the back of her head from where you were standing.”

Miss Carroll flushed angrily. She seemed taken aback.

“Back of her head, her voice, her walk! It’s all the same thing. Absolutely unmistakable! I tell you I know it was Jane Wilkinson—a thoroughly bad woman if there ever was one.”

And turning away she flounced upstairs.

Eight

POSSIBILITIES

Japp had to leave us. Poirot and I turned into Regent’s Park and found a quiet seat.

“I see the point of your rose between the lips now,” I said, laughing. “At the moment I thought you had gone mad.”

He nodded without smiling.

“You observe, Hastings, that the secretary is a dangerous witness, dangerous because inaccurate. You notice that she stated positively that she saw the visitor’s face? At the time I thought that impossible. Coming from the study—yes, but not going to the study. So I made my little experiment which resulted as I thought, and then sprung my trap upon her. She immediately changed her ground.”

“Her belief was quite unaltered, though,” I argued. “And after all, a voice and a walk are just as unmistakable.”

“No, no.”

“Why, Poirot, I think a voice and the general gait are about the most characteristic things about a person.”

“I agree. And therefore they are the most easily counterfeited.”

“You think—”

“Cast your mind back a few days. Do you remember one evening as we sat in the stalls of a theatre—”

“Carlotta Adams? Ah! but then she is a genius.”

“A well-known person is not so difficult to mimic. But I agree she has unusual gifts. I believe she could carry a thing through without the aid of footlights and distance—”

A sudden thought flashed into my mind.

“Poirot,” I cried. “You don’t think that possibly—no, that would be too much of a coincidence.”

“It depends how you look at it, Hastings. Regarded from one angle it would be no coincidence at all.”