Lord Edgware Dies (Hercule Poirot 9)

I’ll tell you all about it next week—whether I’m spotted or not. But anyway, Lucie darling, whether I succeed or fail, I’m to have the ten thousand dollars. Oh! Lucie, little sister, what that’s going to mean to us. No time for more—just going off to do my “hoax.” Lots and lots and lots of love, little sister mine.

Yours,

Carlotta.

Poirot laid down the letter. It had touched him, I could see.

Japp, however, reacted in quite a different way.

“We’ve got him,” said Japp exultantly.

“Yes,” said Poirot.

His voice sounded strangely flat.

Japp looked at him curiously.

“What is it, M. Poirot?”

“Nothing,” said Poirot. “It is not, somehow, just as I thought. That is all.”

He looked acutely unhappy.

“But still it must be so,” he said as though to himself. “Yes, it must be so.”

“Of course it is so. Why, you’ve said so all along!”

“No, no. You misunderstand me.”

“Didn’t you say there was someone back of all this who got the girl into doing it innocently?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, what more do you want?”

Poirot sighed and said nothing.

“You are an odd sort of cove. Nothing ever satisfies you. I say, it was a piece of luck the girl wrote this letter.”

Poirot agreed with more vigour than he had yet shown.

“Mais oui, that is what the murderer did not expect. When Miss Adams accepted that ten thousand dollars she signed her death warrant. The murderer thought he had taken all precautions—and yet in sheer innocence she outwitted him. The dead speak. Yes, sometimes the dead speak.”

“I never thought she’d done it off her own bat,” said Japp unblushingly.

“No, no,” said Poirot absently.

“Well, I must get on with things.”

“You are going to arrest Captain Marsh—Lord Edgware, I mean?”

“Why not? The case against him seems proved up to the hilt.”

“True.”

“You seem very despondent about it, M. Poirot. The truth is, you like things to be difficult. Here’s your own theory proved and even that does not satisfy you. Can you see any flaw in the evidence we’ve got?”

Poirot shook his head.

“Whether Miss Marsh was accessory or not, I don’t know,” said Japp. “Seems as though she must have known about it, going there with him from the opera. If she wasn’t, why did he take her? Well, we’ll hear what they’ve both got to say.”

“May I be present?”

Poirot spoke almost humbly.

“Certainly you can. I owe the idea to you!”

He picked up the telegram on the table.

I drew Poirot aside.

“What is the matter, Poirot?”

“I am very unhappy, Hastings. This seems the plain sailing and the aboveboard. But there is something wrong. Somewhere or other, Hastings, there is a fact that escapes us. It all fits together, it is as I imagined it, and yet, my friend, there is something wrong.”

He looked at me piteously.

I was at a loss what to say.

Twenty-one

RONALD’S STORY

I found it hard to understand Poirot’s attitude. Surely this was what he had predicted all along?

All the way to Regent Gate, he sat perplexed and frowning, paying no attention to Japp’s self-congratulations.

He came out of his reverie at last with a sigh.

“At all events,” he murmured, “we can see what he has to say.”

“Next to nothing if he’s wise,” said Japp. “There’s any amount of men that have hanged themselves by being too eager to make a statement. Well, no one can say as we don’t warn them! It’s all fair and aboveboard. And the more guilty they are, the more anxious they are to pipe up and tell you the lies they’ve thought out to meet the case. They don’t know that you should always submit your lies to a solicitor first.”

He sighed and said:

“Solicitors and coroners are the worst enemies of the police. Again and again I’ve had a perfectly clear case messed up by the Coroner fooling about and letting the guilty party get away with it. Lawyers you can’t object to so much, I suppose. They’re paid for their artfulness and twisting things this way and that.”

On arrival at Regent Gate we found that our quarry was at home. The family were still at the luncheon table. Japp proffered a request to speak to Lord Edgware privately. We were shown into the library.

In a minute or two the young man came to us. There was an easy smile on his face which changed a little as he cast a quick glance over us. His lips tightened.

“Hello, Inspector,” he said. “What’s all this about?”

Japp said his little piece in the classic fashion.

“So that’s it, is it?” said Ronald.

He drew a chair towards him and sat down. He pulled out a cigarette case.

“I think, Inspector, I’d like to make a statement.”

“That’s as you please, my lord.”

“Meaning that it’s damned foolish on my part. All the same, I think I will. ‘Having no reason to fear the truth,’ as the heroes in books always say.”

Japp said nothing. His face remained expressionless.

“There’s a nice handy table and chair,” went on the young man. “Your minion can sit down and take it all down in shorthand.”

I don’t think that Japp was used to having his arrangements made for him so thoughtfully. Lord Edgware’s suggestion was adopted.

“To begin with,” said the young man. “Having some grains of intelligence, I strongly suspect that my beautiful alibi has bust. Gone up in smoke. Exit the useful Dortheimers. Taxi driver, I suppose?”

“We know all about your movements on that night,” said Japp woodenly.

“I have the greatest admiration for Scotland Yard. All the same, you know, if I had really been planning a deed of violence I shouldn’t have hired a taxi and driven straight to the place and kept the fellow waiting. Have you thought of that? Ah! I see M. Poirot has.”

“It had occurred to me, yes,” said Poirot.

“Such is not the manner of premeditated crime,” said Ronald. “Put on a red moustache and horn-rimmed glasses and drive to the next street and pay the man off. Take the tube—well—well, I won’t go into it all. My Counsel, at a fee of several thousand guineas, will do it better than I can. Of course, I see the answer. Crime was a sudden impulse. There was I, waiting in the cab, etc., etc. It occurs to me, “Now, my boy, up and doing.”

“Well, I’m going to tell you the truth. I was in a hole for money. That’s been pretty clear, I think. It was rather a desperate business. I had to get it by the next day or drop out of things. I tried my uncle. He’d no love for me, but I thought he might care for the honour of his name. Middle-aged men sometimes do. My uncle proved to be lamentably modern in his cynical indifference.