Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)

“Let’s stop playing the fool,” she said. “It’s just possible that you might be useful to me, M. Hercule Poirot.”

“Delighted, mademoiselle—and how?”

Between two puffs of cigarette smoke she said very quietly and evenly:

“Tell me how to break that will.”

“Surely a lawyer—”

“Yes, a lawyer, perhaps—if I knew the right lawyer. But the only lawyers I know are respectable men! Their advice is that the will holds good in law and that any attempts to contest it will be useless expense.”

“But you do not believe them.”

“I believe there is always a way to do things—if you don’t mind being unscrupulous and are prepared to pay. Well, I am prepared to pay.”

“And you take it for granted that I am prepared to be unscrupulous if I am paid?”

“I’ve found that to be true of most people! I don’t see why you should be an exception. People always protest about their honesty and their rectitude to begin with, of course.”

“Just so, that is part of the game, eh? But what, given that I was prepared to be—unscrupulous—do you think I could do?”

“I don’t know. But you’re a clever man. Everyone knows that. You could think out some scheme.”

“Such as?”

Theresa Arundell shrugged her shoulders.

“That’s your business. Steal the will and substitute a forgery… Kidnap the Lawson and frighten her into saying she bullied Aunt Emily into making it. Produce a later will made on old Emily’s deathbed.”

“Your fertile imagination takes my breath away, mademoiselle!”

“Well, what is your answer? I’ve been frank enough. If it’s righteous refusal, there’s the door.”

“It is not righteous refusal—yet—” said Poirot.

Theresa Arundell laughed. She looked at me.

“Your friend,” she observed, “looks shocked. Shall we send him out to chase himself round the block?”

Poirot addressed himself to me with some slight irritation.

“Control, I pray of you, your beautiful and upright nature, Hastings. I demand pardon for my friend, mademoiselle. He is, as you have perceived, honest. But he is also faithful. His loyalty to myself is absolute. In any case, let me emphasize this point”—he looked at her very hard—“whatever we are about to do will be strictly within the law.”

She raised her eyebrows slightly.

“The law,” said Poirot thoughtfully, “has a lot of latitude.”

“I see,” she smiled faintly. “All right, we’ll let that be understood. Do you want to discuss your share of the booty—if there turns out to be any booty?”

“That, also, can be understood. Some nice little pickings—that is all I ask?”

“Done,” said Theresa.

Poirot leant forward.

“Now listen, mademoiselle, usually—in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred cases, shall we say, I am on the side of the law. The hundredth—well, the hundredth is different. For one thing, it is usually much more lucrative… But it has to be done very quietly, you understand—very, very quietly. My reputation, it must not suffer. I have to be careful.”

Theresa Arundell nodded.