The A.B.C. Murders (Hercule Poirot 13)

“Alas! I have shocked you. First my inertia—and then my views.”

I shook my head without replying.

“All the same,” said Poirot after a minute or two. “I have one project that will please you—since it is active and not passive. Also, it will entail a lot of conversation and practically no thought.”

I did not quite like his tone.

“What is it?” I asked cautiously.

“The extraction from the friends, relations and servants of the victims of all they know.”

“Do you suspect them of keeping things back, then?”

“Not intentionally. But telling everything you know always implies selection. If I were to say to you, recount me your day yesterday, you would perhaps reply: ‘I rose at nine, I breakfasted at half past, I had eggs and bacon and coffee, I went to my club, etc.’ You would not include: ‘I tore my nail and had to cut it. I rang for shaving water. I spilt a little coffee on the tablecloth. I brushed my hat and put it on.’ One cannot tell everything. Therefore one selects. At the time of a murder people select what they think is important. But quite

frequently they think wrong!”

“And how is one to get at the right things?”

“Simply, as I said just now, by conversation. By talking! By discussing a certain happening, or a certain person, or a certain day, over and over again, extra details are bound to arise.”

“What kind of details?”

“Naturally that I do not know or I should not want to find out. But enough time has passed now for ordinary things to reassume their value. It is against all mathematical laws that in three cases of murder there is no single fact nor sentence with a bearing on the case. Some trivial happening, some trivial remark there must be which would be a pointer! It is looking for the needle in the haystack, I grant—but in the haystack there is a needle—of that I am convinced!”

It seemed to me extremely vague and hazy.

“You do not see it? Your wits are not so sharp as those of a mere servant girl.”

He tossed me over a letter. It was neatly written in a sloping board-school hand.

“Dear Sir,—I hope you will forgive the liberty I take in writing to you. I have been thinking a lot since these awful two murders like poor auntie’s. It seems as though we’re all in the same boat, as it were. I saw the young lady’s picture in the paper, the young lady, I mean, that is the sister of the young lady that was killed at Bexhill. I made so bold as to write to her and tell her I was coming to London to get a place and asked if I could come to her or her mother as I said two heads might be better than one and I would not want much wages, but only to find out who this awful fiend is and perhaps we might get at it better if we could say what we knew something might come of it.

“The young lady wrote very nicely and said as how she worked in an office and lived in a hostel, but she suggested I might write to you and she said she’d been thinking something of the same kind as I had. And she said we were in the same trouble and we ought to stand together. So I am writing, sir, to say I am coming to London and this is my address.

“Hoping I am not troubling you, Yours respectfully,

“Mary Drower.”

“Mary Drower,” said Poirot, “is a very intelligent girl.”

He picked up another letter.

“Read this.”

It was a line from Franklin Clarke, saying that he was coming to London and would call upon Poirot the following day if not inconvenient.

“Do not despair, mon ami,” said Poirot. “Action is about to begin.”

Eighteen

POIROT MAKES A SPEECH

Franklin Clarke arrived at three o’clock on the following afternoon and came straight to the point without beating about the bush.

“M. Poirot,” he said, “I’m not satisfied.”

“No, Mr. Clarke?”