Lord Edgware Dies (Hercule Poirot 9)

“Ancient history, I imagine. Can’t a girl have a souvenir six months ago without its having something to do with this crime? We must have a sense of proportion.”

“Six months ago,” murmured Poirot, a sudden light in his eyes. “Dieu, que je suis bête!”

“What’s he saying?” inquired Japp of me.

“Listen.” Poirot rose and tapped Japp on the chest.

“Why does Miss Adams’ maid not recognize that box? Why does Miss Driver not recognize it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Because the box was new! It had only just been given to her. Paris, November—that is all very well—doubtless that is the date of which the box is to be a souvenir. But it was given to her now, not then. It has just been bought! Only just been bought! Investigate that, I implore you, my good Japp. It is a chance, decidedly a chance. It was bought not here, but abroad. Probably Paris. If it had been bought here, some jeweller would have come forward. It has been photographed and described in the papers. Yes, yes, Paris. Possibly some other foreign town, but I think Paris. Find out, I implore you. Make the inquiries. I want—I so badly want—to know who is this mysterious D.”

“It will do no harm,” said Japp good-naturedly. “Can’t say I’m very excited about it myself. But I’ll do what I can. The more we know the better.”

Nodding cheerfully to us he departed.

Twenty-three

THE LETTER

“And now,” said Poirot, “we will go out to lunch.”

He put his hand through my arm. He was smiling at me.

“I have hope,” he explained.

I was glad to see him restored to his old self, though I was none the less convinced myself of young Ronald’s guilt. I fancied that Poirot himself had perhaps come round to this view, convinced by Japp’s arguments. The search for the purchaser of the box was, perhaps, a last sally to save his face.

We went amicably to lunch together.

Somewhat to my amusement at a table the other side of the room, I saw Bryan Martin and Jenny Driver lunching together. Remembering what Japp had said, I suspected a possible romance.

They saw us and Jenny waved a hand.

When we were sipping coffee, Jenny left her escort and came over to our table. She looked as vivid and dynamic as ever.

“May I sit and talk to you a minute, M. Poirot?”

“Assuredly, Mademoiselle. I am charmed to see you. Will not M. Martin join us also?”

“I told him not to. You see, I wanted to talk to you about Carlotta.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle?”

“You wanted to get a line on to some man friend of hers. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking and thinking. Sometimes you can’t get at things straightaway. To get them clear you’ve got to think back—remember a lot of little words and phrases that perhaps you didn’t pay attention to at the time. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. Thinking and thinking—and remembering just what she said. And I’ve come to a certain conclusion.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle?”

“I think the man that she cared about—or was beginning to care about—was Ronald Marsh—you know, the one who has just succeeded to the title.”

“What makes you think it was he, Mademoiselle?”

“Well, for one thing, Carlotta was speaking in a general sort of way one day. About a man having hard luck, and how it might affect character. That a man might be a decent sort really and yet go down the hill. More sinned against then sinning—you know the idea. The first thing a woman kids herself with when she’s getting soft about a man. I’ve heard the old wheeze so often! Carlotta had plenty of sense, yet here she was coming out with this stuff just like a complete ass who knew nothing of life. ‘Hello,’ I said to myself. ‘Something’s up.’ She didn’t mention a name—it was all general. But almost immediately after that she began to speak of Ronald Marsh and that she thought he’d been badly treated. She was very impersonal and offhand about it. I didn’t connect the two things at the time. But now—I wonder. It seems to me that it was Ronald she meant. What do you think, M. Poirot?”

Her face looked earnestly up into his.

“I think, Mademoiselle, that you have perhaps given me some very valuable information.”

“Good.” Jenny clapped her hands.

Poirot looked kindly at her.

“Perhaps you have not heard—the gentleman of whom you speak, Ronald Marsh—Lord Edgware—has just been arrested.”

“Oh!” Her mouth flew open in surprise. “Then my bit of thinking comes rather late in the day.”

“It is never too late,” said Poirot. “Not with me, you understand. Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

She left us to return to Bryan Martin.

“There, Poirot,” I said. “Surely that shakes your belief.”

“No, Hastings. On the contrary—it strengthens it.”

Despite that valiant assertion I believed myself that secretly he had weakened.

During the days that followed he never once mentioned the Edgware case. If I spoke of it, he answered monosyllabically and without interest. In other words, he had washed his hands of it. Whatever he had had lingering in his fantastic brain, he had now been forced to admit that it had not materialized—that his first conception of the case had been the true one and that Ronald Marsh was only too truly accused of the crime. Only, being Poirot, he could not admit openly that such was the case! Therefore he pretended to have lost interest.

Such, as I say, was my interpretation of his attitude. It seemed borne out by the facts. He took no faintest interest in the police court proceedings, which in any case were purely formal. He busied himself with other cases and, as I say, he displayed no interest when the subject was mentioned.

It was nearly a fortnight later than the events mentioned in my last chapter when I came to realize that my interpretation of his attitude was entirely wrong.

It was breakfast time. The usual heavy pile of letters lay by Poirot’s plate. He sorted through them with nimble fingers. Then he uttered a quick exclamation of pleasure and picked up a letter with an American stamp on it.

He opened it with his little letter opener. I looked on with interest since he seemed so moved to pleasure about it. There was a letter and a fairly thick enclosure.

Poirot read the former through twice, then he looked up.

“Would you like to see this, Hastings?”

I took it from him. It ran as follows:

Dear M. Poirot,—I was much touched by your kind—your very kind letter. I have been feeling so bewildered by everything. Apart from my terrible grief, I have been so affronted by the things that seem to have been hinted about Carlotta—the dearest, sweetest sister that a girl ever had. No, M. Poirot, she did not take drugs. I’m sure of it. She had a horror of that kind of thing. I’ve often heard her say so. If she played a part in that poor man’

s death, it was an entirely innocent one—but of course her letter to me proves that. I am sending you the actual letter itself since you ask me to do so. I hate parting with the last letter she ever wrote, but I know you will take care of it and let me have it back, and if it helps you to clear up some of the mystery about her death, as you say it may do—why, then, of course it must go to you.

You ask whether Carlotta mentioned any friend specially in her letters. She mentioned a great many people, of course, but nobody in a very outstanding way. Bryan Martin whom we used to know years ago, a girl called Jenny Driver, and a Captain Ronald Marsh were, I think, the ones she saw most of.

I wish I could think of something to help you. You write so kindly and with such understanding, and you seem to realize what Carlotta and I were to each other.

Gratefully yours,

Lucie Adams

P.S. An officer has just been here for the letter. I told him that I had already mailed it to you. This, of course, was not true, but I felt somehow or other that it was important you should see it first. It seems Scotland Yard need it as evidence, against the murderer. You will take it to them. But, oh! please be sure they let you have it back again some day. You see, it is Carlotta’s last words to me.

“So you wrote yourself to her,” I remarked as I laid the letter down. “Why did you do that, Poirot? And why did you ask for the original of Carlotta Adams’ letter?”

He was bending over the enclosed sheets of the letter I mentioned.

“In verity I could not say, Hastings—unless it is that I hoped against hope that the original letter might in some way explain the inexplicable.”

“I don’t see how you can get away from the text of that letter. Carlotta Adams gave it herself to the maid to post. There was no hocus pocus about it. And certainly it reads as a perfectly genuine ordinary epistle.”

Poirot sighed.

“I know. I know. And that is what makes it so difficult. Because, Hastings, as it stands, that letter is impossible.”

“Nonsense.”

“Si, si, it is so. See you, as I have reasoned it out, certain things must be—they follow each other with method and order in an understandable fashion. But then comes this letter. It does not accord. Who, then, is wrong? Hercule Poirot or the letter?”