Lord Edgware Dies (Hercule Poirot 9)

“Well—it looked like just having to grin and bear it. I was going to try and have a shot at borrowing from Dortheimer, but I knew there wasn’t a hope. And marry his daughter I couldn’t. She’s much too sensible a girl to take me, anyway. Then, by chance, I met my cousin at the opera. I don’t often come across her, but she was always a decent kid when I lived in the house. I found myself telling her all about it. She’d heard something from her father anyway. Then she showed her mettle. She suggested I should take her pearls. They’d belonged to her mother.”

He paused. There was something like real emotion, I think, in his voice. Or else he suggested it better than I could have believed possible.

“Well—I accepted the blessed child’s offer. I could raise the money I wanted on them, and I swore I’d turn to and redeem them even if it meant working to manage it. But the pearls were at home in Regent Gate. We decided that the best thing to do would be to go and fetch them at once. We jumped in a taxi

and off we went.

“We made the fellow stop on the opposite side of the street in case anyone should hear the taxi draw up at the door. Geraldine got out and went across the road. She had her latchkey with her. She would go in quietly, get the pearls and bring them out to me. She didn’t expect to meet anyone except, possibly, a servant. Miss Carroll, my uncle’s secretary, usually went to bed at half past nine. He, himself, would probably be in the library.

“So off Dina went. I stood on the pavement smoking a cigarette. Every now and then I looked over towards the house to see if she was coming. And now I come to that part of the story that you may believe or not as you like. A man passed me on the sidewalk. I turned to look after him. To my surprise he went up the steps and let himself in to No. 17. At least I thought it was No. 17, but, of course, I was some distance away. That surprised me very much for two reasons. One was that the man had let himself in with a key, and the second was that I thought I recognized in him a certain well-known actor.

“I was so surprised that I determined to look into matters. I happened to have my own key of No. 17 in my pocket. I’d lost it or thought I’d lost it three years ago, had come across it unexpectedly a day or two ago and had been meaning to give it back to my uncle this morning. However, in the heat of our discussion, it had slipped my memory. I had transferred it with the other contents of my pockets when I changed.

“Telling the taxi man to wait, I strode hurriedly along the pavement, crossed the road, went up the steps of No. 17, and opened the door with my key. The hall was empty. There was no sign of any visitor having just entered. I stood for a minute looking about me. Then I went towards the library door. Perhaps the man was in with my uncle. If so, I should hear the murmur of voices. I stood outside the library door, but I heard nothing.

“I suddenly felt I had made the most abject fool of myself. Of course the man must have gone into some other house—the house beyond, probably. Regent Gate is rather dimly lighted at night. I felt an absolute idiot. What on earth had possessed me to follow the fellow, I could not think. It had landed me here, and a pretty fool I should look if my uncle were to come suddenly out of the library and find me. I should get Geraldine into trouble and altogether the fat would be in the fire. All because something in the man’s manner had made me imagine that he was doing something that he didn’t want known. Luckily no one caught me. I must get out of it as soon as I could.

“I tiptoed back towards the front door and at the same moment Geraldine came down the stairs with the pearls in her hand.

“She was very startled at seeing me, of course. I got her out of the house, and then explained.”

He paused.

“We hurried back to the opera. Got there just as the curtain was going up. No one suspected that we’d left it. It was a hot night and several people went outside to get a breath of air.”

He paused.

“I know what you’ll say: Why didn’t I tell you this right away? And now I put it to you: Would you, with a motive for murder sticking out a yard, admit lightheartedly that you’d actually been at the place the murder was committed on the night in question?

“Frankly, I funked it! Even if we were believed, it was going to be a lot of worry for me and for Geraldine. We’d nothing to do with the murder, we’d seen nothing, we’d heard nothing. Obviously, I thought, Aunt Jane had done it. Well, why bring myself in? I told you about the quarrel and my lack of money because I knew you’d ferret it out, and if I’d tried to conceal all that you’d be much more suspicious and you’d probably examine that alibi much more closely. As it was, I thought that if I bucked enough about it it would almost hypnotize you into thinking it all right. The Dortheimers were, I know, honestly convinced that I’d been at Covent Garden all the time. That I spent one interval with my cousin wouldn’t strike them as suspicious. And she could always say she’d been with me there and that we hadn’t left the place.”

“Miss Marsh agreed to this—concealment?”

“Yes. Soon as I got the news, I got on to her and cautioned her for her life not to say anything about her excursion here last night. She’d been with me and I’d been with her during the last interval at Covent Garden. We’d talked in the street a little, that was all. She understood and she quite agreed.”

He paused.

“I know it looks bad—coming out with this afterwards. But the story’s true enough. I can give you the name and address of the man who let me have the cash on Geraldine’s pearls this morning. And if you ask her, she’ll confirm every word I’ve told you.”

He sat back in his chair and looked at Japp.

Japp continued to look expressionless.

“You say you thought Jane Wilkinson had committed the murder, Lord Edgware?” he said.

“Well, wouldn’t you have thought so? After the butler’s story?”

“What about your wager with Miss Adams?”

“Wager with Miss Adams? With Carlotta Adams, do you mean? What has she got to do with it?”

“Do you deny that you offered her the sum of ten thousand dollars to impersonate Miss Jane Wilkinson at the house that night?”

Ronald stared.

“Offered her ten thousand dollars? Nonsense. Someone’s been pulling your leg. I haven’t got ten thousand dollars to offer. You’ve got hold of a mare’s nest. Does she say so? Oh! Dash it all—I forgot, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Poirot quietly. “She is dead.”

Ronald turned his eyes from one to the other of us. He had been debonair before. Now his face had whitened. His eyes looked frightened.

“I don’t understand all this,” he said. “It’s true what I told you. I suppose you don’t believe me—any of you.”

And then, to my amazement, Poirot stepped forward.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe you.”

Twenty-two

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF HERCULE POIROT

We were in our rooms.

“What on earth—” I began.

Poirot stopped me with a gesture more extravagant than any gesture I had ever seen him make. Both arms whirled in the air.

“I implore you, Hastings! Not now. Not now.”

And upon that he seized his hat, clapped it on his head as though he had never heard of order and method, and rushed headlong from the room. He had not returned when, about an hour later, Japp appeared.

“Little man gone out?” he inquired.

I nodded.

Japp sank into a seat. He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. The day was warm.

“What the devil took him?” he inquired. “I can tell you, Captain Hastings, you could have knocked me down with a feather when he stepped up to the man and said: ‘I believe you.’ For all the world as though he were acting in a romantic melodrama. It beats me.”

It beat me also, and I said so.

“And then he marches out of the house,” said Japp.

“What did he say about it to you?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Nothing at all?”

“Absolutely nothing. When I was going to speak to him he waved me aside. I thought it best to leave him alone. When we got back here I started to question him. He waved his arms, seized his hat and rushed out again.”

We looked at each other. Japp tapped his forehead significantly.

“Must be,” he said.

For once I was disposed to agree. Japp had often suggested before that Poirot was what he called “touched.” In those cases he had simply not understood what Poirot was driving at. Here, I was forced to confess, I could not understand Poirot’s attitude. If not touched, he was, at any rate, suspiciously changeable. Here was his own private theory triumphantly confirmed and straight away he went back on it.

It was enough to dismay and distress his warmest supporters. I shook my head in a discouraged fashion.

“He’s always been what I call peculiar,” said Japp. “Got his own particular angle of looking at things—and a very

queer one it is. He’s a kind of genius, I admit that. But they always say that geniuses are very near the borderline and liable to slip over any minute. He’s always been fond of having things difficult. A straightforward case is never good enough for him. No, it’s got to be tortuous. He’s got away from real life. He plays a game of his own. It’s like an old lady playing at patience. If it doesn’t come out, she cheats. Well, it’s the other way round with him. If it’s coming out too easily, he cheats to make it more difficult! That’s the way I look at it.”

I found it difficult to answer him. I, also, found Poirot’s behaviour unaccountable. And since I was very attached to my strange little friend, it worried me more than I cared to express.

In the middle of a gloomy silence, Poirot walked into the room.

He was, I was thankful to see, quite calm now.

Very carefully he removed his hat, placed it with his stick on the table, and sat down in his accustomed chair.

“So you are here, my good Japp. I am glad. It was on my mind that I must see you as soon as possible.”

Japp looked at him without replying. He saw that this was only the beginning. He waited for Poirot to explain himself.

This my friend did, speaking slowly and carefully.

“Ecoutez, Japp. We are wrong. We are all wrong. It is grievous to admit it, but we have made a mistake.”