“I’ve no doubt that Crome is a very efficient officer, but, frankly, he puts my back up. That air of his of knowing best! I hinted something of what I had in mind to your friend here when he was down at Churston, but I’ve had all my brother’s affairs to settle up and I haven’t been free until now. My idea is, M. Poirot, that we oughtn’t to let the grass grow under our feet—”
“Just what Hastings is always saying!”
“—but go right ahead. We’ve got to get ready for the next crime.”
“So you think there will be a next crime?”
“Don’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well, then. I want to get organized.”
“Tell me your idea exactly?”
“I propose, M. Poirot, a kind of special legion—to work under your orders—composed of the friends and relatives of the murdered people.”
“Une bonne idée.”
“I’m glad you approve. By putting our heads together I feel we might get at something. Also, when the next warning comes, by being on the spot, one of us might—I don’t say it’s probable—but we might recognize some person as having been near the scene of a previous crime.”
“I see your idea, and I approve, but you must remember, Mr. Clarke, the relations and friends of the other victims are hardly in your sphere of life. They are employed persons and though they might be given a short vacation—”
Franklin Clarke interrupted.
“That’s just it. I’m the only person in a position to foot the bill. Not that I’m particularly well off myself, but my brother died a rich man and it will eventually come to me. I propose, as I say, to enrol a special legion, the members to be paid for their services at the same rate as they get habitually, with, of course, the additional expenses.”
“Who do you propose should form this legion?”
“I’ve been into that. As a matter of fact, I wrote to Miss Megan Barnard—indeed, this is partly her idea. I suggest myself, Miss Barnard, Mr. Donald Fraser, who was engaged to the dead girl. Then there is a niece of the Andover woman—Miss Barnard knows her address. I don’t think the husband would be of any use to us—I hear he’s usually drunk. I also think the Barnards—the father and mother—are a bit old for active campaigning.”
“Nobody else?”
“Well—er—Miss Grey.”
He flushed slightly as he spoke the name.
“Oh! Miss Grey?”
Nobody in the world could put a gentle nuance of irony into a couple of words better than Poirot. About thirty-five years fell away from Franklin Clarke. He looked suddenly like a shy schoolboy.
“Yes. You see, Miss Grey was with my brother for over two years. She knows the countryside and the people round, and everything. I’ve been away for a year and a half.”
Poirot took pity on him and turned the conversation.
“You have been in the East? In China?”
“Yes. I had a kind of roving commission to purchase things for my brother.”
“Very interesting it must have been. Eh bien, Mr. Clarke, I approve very highly of your idea. I was saying to Hastings only yesterday that a rapprochement of the people concerned was needed. It is necessary to pool reminiscences, to compare notes—enfin to talk the thing over—to talk—to talk—and again to talk. Out of some innocent phrase may come enlightenment.”
A few days later the “Special Legion” met at Poirot’s rooms.
As they sat round looking obediently towards Poirot, who had his place, like the chairman at a board meeting, at the head of the table, I myself passed them, as it were, in review, confirming or revising my first impressions of them.
The three girls were all of them striking-looking—the extraordinary fair beauty of Thora Grey, the dark intensity of Megan Barnard, with her strange Red Indian immobility of face—Mary Drower, neatly dressed in a black coat and skirt, with her pretty, intelligent face. Of the two men, Franklin Clarke, big, bronzed and talkative, Donald Fraser, self-contained and quiet, made an interesting contrast to each other.
Poirot, unable, of course, to resist the occasion, made a little speech.