Perhaps, after all, it would be more relaxing to listen to Harry describing how he had removed the dead leopard’s brain.
I was saved by Joseph Scotcher, who had been wheeled over to me by Sophie Bourlet. “You must be Catchpool,” said Scotcher warmly. “I have so looked forward to meeting you.” He extended a hand, and I shook it as gently as I could. His voice was more robust than his outward appearance had led me to expect. “You seem surprised that I know who you are. I have heard of you, of course. The Bloxham Hotel murders in London, February of this year.”
I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. Poor Scotcher; he could not have known his words would have this effect.
“Sorry, I have neglected to introduce myself: Joseph Scotcher. And this is the light of my life—my nurse, friend and good luck charm, Sophie Bourlet. It is thanks to her and her alone that I am still here. A patient who has Sophie to look after him scarcely needs medicine.” At these lavish compliments, the nurse looked overcome by emotion, and had to turn away. She loves him, I thought. She loves him and she cannot bear it.
Scotcher said, “Cunningly, Sophie keeps me alive by refusing to become my wife.” He winked at me. “You see, I can’t possibly die until she has agreed.”
Sophie turned back to face me with pink spots on her cheeks and her sensible smile restored. “Pay no attention, Mr. Catchpool,” she said. “The truth is that Joseph has never asked me to marry him. Not once.”
Scotcher laughed. “Only because if I were to go down on one knee, it is unlikely I should be able to rise again. It’s easy for the sun, but not so easy for me in my condition.”
“Rising or setting, Joseph, you shine more brightly than the sun ever could.”
“See what I mean, Catchpool? She is worth staying for, even though I have to contend with what I like to call my deviled kidneys.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Sophie. She walked over to the writing desk, sat down at it and busied herself with the papers she had put there earlier.
“What a selfish oaf I am!” Scotcher declared. “You don’t want to talk about my kidneys, and I should far rather talk about you than about myself. It must be terribly difficult for you.” He nodded in the direction of Poirot. “I was sorry to see the newspapers ridicule you so cruelly. It was almost as if they didn’t notice the part you played in wrapping up that nasty Bloxham affair. I hope you don’t object to the mention of it?”
“Not at all,” I was obliged to say.
“I read all about it, you see. The whole story. I found it fascinating—and without your brilliant deduction in the graveyard, the case might never have been solved. It seems to me that everybody missed that aspect of the matter.”
“They did, rather,” I mumbled.
Scotcher had left me with no alternative: I was forced to think once again about the killings that were known at the time—and doubtless always would be—as the Monogram Murders. The case had been solved most ingeniously by Poirot, but it had also attracted much unfortunate publicity—unfortunate if you were me, at any rate. Poirot came out of it all very well, but I was not so lucky. Newspapermen had accused me of being inadequate as a detective and relying too much on Poirot to get me out of a tight spot. Naively, I had made some remarks when interviewed that were a little too honest, about how I would have been lost without Poirot’s help, and these had appeared in the papers. A few letters were published asking why Edward Catchpool was employed by Scotland Yard if he couldn’t handle the work without bringing in a friend of his who was not even a policeman. In short, I became an object of ridicule for a few weeks, until everybody forgot about me.
Since then—as I found myself telling Joseph Scotcher, who seemed truly to care about my predicament—my work had brought me into contact with another murder case, one that I was ultimately unable to solve, but this time I was praised for doing everything I could, and doggedly pursuing the elusive truth. I was astonished to read in the letters pages of the newspapers that I was a plucky hero; no one could have been braver or more conscientious than I had been—that was the general consensus.
I drew the only possible conclusion: that I was better off failing alone than succeeding with the help of Hercule Poirot. That was why I had been avoiding him (I refrained from sharing this particular revelation with Joseph Scotcher): because I could not trust myself not to ask for help with the murder I had failed to solve. There was simply no way to explain this to Poirot that would not lead to him demanding to know all the details.
“I’m sure many people noticed the shoddy way the newspapers treated you and thought it was jolly unfair,” said Scotcher. “Indeed, I wish I had written a letter to the Times to that effect. I meant to, but—”
“You must concentrate on looking after yourself and not worry about me,” I told him.
“Well, you should know that I admire you inordinately,” he said with a smile. “I could never have slotted that piece of the puzzle into place the way you did. It would not have occurred to me, nor to most people. You evidently have an extraordinary mind. Poirot too, of course.”
Embarrassed, I thanked him. I knew that my mind was nothing special and that Poirot would have solved the Bloxham Hotel murders with or without my solitary moment of insight, but I was nevertheless greatly heartened by Scotcher’s kind words. That he was dying made it all the more touching, somehow. I don’t mind admitting that I was quite overcome.
A hush began to spread across the room, like a flood of silence. I turned and saw that Hatton the butler was standing in the doorway, looking as if there was something important that he must on no account tell us. “Oh!” declared Lady Playford, who was standing with Sophie next to the writing desk. “Hatton has come to announce—or to hear me announce—that dinner is about to be served. Thank you, Hatton.”
The butler looked mortified to be accused of almost saying something to so many people. He gave a small bow and withdrew.
As everyone moved towards the door, I hung back. Once I was alone in the room, I made for the writing desk. The pages laid upon it were handwritten and almost illegible, but I did see what I thought was “Shrimp” in several places. There were two inks, blue and red: red circles around blue words. It seemed that Sophie was indeed doing some secretarial work for Lady Playford.
I read a line that seemed to say “Shrimp a patch sever ration and the parasols.” Or was it “parasite”?
I gave up and went in search of dinner.
5
Tears Before Dinner
I emerged from the drawing room with not the faintest idea of where to go, though distant voices coming from a certain direction gave me a clue. I was about to follow the sound of laughter and chatter when I heard, from the other side of the house, a more disturbing noise: loud sobbing.
I stopped, wondering what was the best thing to do. I was famished after my long journey, having been offered nothing since I arrived, but I did not feel I could ignore a display of distress so close to where I stood. Scotcher’s kind words to me in the drawing room—and the knowledge that he, a complete stranger, held me in such high regard and that therefore there might be other strangers out there who did not think too badly of me—had made me feel altogether jollier and more buoyant than I had for a considerable time. I was determined to hunt down and be similarly kind to whomever was crying so piteously.
Sighing, I went in search of the sobber and soon found her. It was the maid, Phyllis—the poor unfortunate described by Claudia as scatter-witted. She was sitting on the staircase, rubbing at her tears with her sleeve.
“Here,” I said, passing her a clean handkerchief. “It can’t be all that bad, surely.”
She looked up at me doubtfully. “She says it’s for me own good. Yells at me morning to night, she does—for me own good! I’ve had enough of me own good, if that’s what it is! I want to go home!”
“Are you new here, then?” I asked her.
“No. Been here four years. She’s worse every year! Every day, I sometimes think.
”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Cook. ‘Get out of my kitchen!’ she screams, when I’ve done nothing wrong. I can’t help it, I says to her—I try, but I can’t help it!”
“Oh dear. Well, look—”
“And then she comes after me, as if I’ve run away instead of been thrown out by her! ‘Where the blazes have you got to, girl? Dinner won’t serve itself!’ She’ll be after me any second now, you watch!”
Was Phyllis supposed to be serving our dinner, then? She did not seem in a fit state to do so. This alarmed me more than her tears and tirades. I was starting to feel light-headed from hunger.
“I would have run away by now if it weren’t for Joseph!” Phyllis declared.
“Joseph Scotcher?”
She nodded. “D’you know about him, Mr. . . . ?”
“Catchpool. Know what about him? Do you mean his state of health?”
“He hasn’t long. Crying shame, I call it.”
“Indeed.”
“He’s the only one as cares about me. Why can’t one of the others die? One of them as never so much as looks at me.”
“I say, steady on. You really ought not to—”
“Nasty snooty-nosed Claudia or bossy Dorro—they all look past me like I don’t exist, or talk to me like I’m dirt on their shoes! I swear it, once Joseph’s gone, I’ll be gone too. I couldn’t stay here without him. He says to me all the time, he says, ‘Phyllis, you have great strength and beauty inside you. Silly old Brigid’s not half the woman you are.’ That’s Cook, that is—he calls her Brigid, which is her name. ‘She’s not a patch on you, Phyllis,’ he says to me. He says, ‘That’s why she needs to shout and you don’t.’ It’s the weakest as have to shout the loudest, make others suffer, he says.”
“I expect there is some truth in that.”
Phyllis giggled.
“Did I say something funny?” I asked.
“Not you. Joseph. He says to me, he says, ‘Phyllis, I don’t have a kitchen, but if I ever do, if I am ever the proud owner of a kitchen . . .’—because that’s how he talks! Oh, it makes me laugh, the way he says things. And, d’you know, I think that pompous Randall Kimpton copies him, the way he comes out with things, but he’s not got Joseph’s charm and he’ll never have it, no matter how he tries. ‘If I am ever the proud owner of a kitchen,’ Joseph says to me, he says, ‘I hereby solemnly swear that I shall never throw you out of it. On the contrary, I should want you to be in it all of the time and not least because I cannot so much as poach an egg!’ See what I mean? He’s so kind, is Joseph. I only stay for him.”
Joseph Scotcher appeared to know precisely what to say in order to make others feel better. It was jolly decent of him to take the trouble, I thought—with strangers like me who happened to be visiting; with the servants.
As for Phyllis’s contention that Randall Kimpton had it in mind to copy Scotcher, I found that rather puzzling. Kimpton struck me as very much himself and the sort of purposeful, fully formed chap who had always been that same self. From what little I had seen of him, I could not imagine him changing course for anybody. Well, perhaps for his beloved Claudia—but certainly not for Joseph Scotcher. Still, I had to concede that Phyllis probably knew both men far better than I did.
I wondered how many ripples of discomfort at Lillieoak Scotcher had been skillfully smoothing away since he had arrived. How would the other inhabitants of the house manage after his death?
Some people were more virtuous and self-sacrificing than others, there was no doubt about it. Claudia Playford, for instance, struck me as a woman who would do and say nothing for the benefit of anyone but herself.
At that moment the floor beneath me started to shake. Phyllis leapt to her feet. “She’s coming!” she whispered, frantic. “Don’t say I’ve told you anything or she’ll have my guts for garters!”
A short, compact barrel of a woman came into view, stomping towards us. She had a red face and curly iron-gray hair that formed a stiff sort of circle around her head, like a wire crown.
“There you are!” She wiped her chunky red hands on her apron. “I’ve got better things to do than run around looking for you! Do you think the dinner’s going to grow legs and walk to the dining room on its own? Do you?”
“No, Cook.”
“‘No, Cook’! Then get in there and serve it like a good girl!”
Phyllis scuttled away. I tried to make my escape at the same time, but Brigid moved to block my way. After looking me up and down for a few seconds, she said, “Meeting with the likes of you, bottom of the stairs when there’s no one about—just what that girl needs! On and on she goes about that Scotcher fellow—wasting her time, whichever way you slice it—but next time, not when I’m trying to get dinner started, if you don’t mind.”
I think my mouth might well have fallen open.
Before I could protest, Brigid was marching away at speed, shaking the ground as she went.
6
The Announcement
I had expected to be last to the dining room, but I arrived to find everybody speculating about what had become of Athelinda Playford. Her place at the head of the table was unoccupied. “Were you not with her?” Dorro Playford demanded of me, as if I jolly well ought to have been. I told her that I had been talking to Phyllis and had not seen Lady Playford.
“Dorro, stop being a harridan,” said Randall Kimpton as I sat down between Orville Rolfe and Sophie Bourlet. “Piece of advice, Catchpool: never answer one of Dorro’s questions—she will quickly come up with another nineteen at least. Whistle and look the other way. It’s the only sensible approach.”
I took a sip from my water glass to avoid having to respond. I would have reached for one of the wineglasses, but they had not yet been filled.
“Well, I would like to know where she has disappeared to!” A flush had spread across Dorro’s cheeks. “Was she not only just with us? We were all in the drawing room together. She was there. You all saw her! And I didn’t notice her go anywhere else. Did anybody?”
Still looking at me, Kimpton said loudly out of one side of his mouth, “Do not answer, I warn you.”
The door opened and Lady Playford entered the room with her hair in a different arrangement from before—one I could not begin to describe if I tried for a hundred years. She looked as elegant as the room we were in, which was perfectly square with a high ceiling and red and gold curtains and chandeliers. It was considerably more aesthetically pleasing than the drawing room. This must have been intended by the architect as the main room of the house, I thought. I wondered if Lady Playford agreed.
Harry waited until his mother was halfway to the table before saying, “Look, here she is! Hello, old girl.”
“Yes. Here she is,” said Claudia. “Isn’t it fortunate that nobody panicked?”
“Panic?” Lady Playford laughed. “Who would panic, and why?”
“I simply wanted to know where you had got to,” Dorro said stiffly. “Dinner is delayed, and we have had no explanation.”
“Well, that’s easy enough,” said Lady Playford. “The cause of the delay is what it always is: Brigid and Phyllis have had another pointless squabble. I heard the distant and sadly familiar sound of a mewling maid and, since I knew it would mean no food for the foreseeable future, I took the opportunity to do something different with my hair. It was too tight before.”
“Then why wear it in that style in the first place?”
“Is that another question, Dorro?” said Kimpton. “You know, I might keep a tally tonight. And every night. How else will we know when you set a new record?”
Dorro said quietly, “One day, Randall, you will learn that being foul and being amusing are not the same thing.”
“Come now, let us not carp at one another,” said Joseph Scotcher. “We have guests, after all—some who have not visited Lillieoak before. Monsieur Poirot, Mr. Catchpool, I do hope you are enjoying your stay so far.”
I made the appropria
te response. I certainly was not bored at Lillieoak, and I was pleased to encounter Poirot again now that I was over the shock of it, but was I enjoying this evening? I felt as if I would have had to stand outside myself and watch for clues in order to attempt an accurate answer.
Poirot replied to the effect that he was having the most wonderful time, and it was not every day that one received an invitation from a famous writer.
Lady Playford said, “I cannot abide the word ‘famous.’”
“She prefers ‘popular,’ ‘esteemed,’ ‘acclaimed’ or ‘renowned,’” said Kimpton. “Don’t you, Athie?”
“I am certain that all of those adjectives apply.” Poirot smiled.
“I prefer a simpler one,” said Scotcher.
“Is that because using long words aggravates your kidneys?” Claudia asked him.
What an unpleasant remark! I thought. Vicious, really. Astonishingly, no one reacted to it at all.
“I prefer the adjective ‘best,’” Scotcher went on as if nothing had happened, looking at Lady Playford.
“Oh, Joseph!” She pretended to scold him, but it was plain to see that she was delighted by the compliment.
I was startled to find Claudia staring at me. The longer she did so, the more I felt as if I had unwittingly fallen into a dangerous machine and might never climb out. She said, “Joseph has told us all that he does not wish to be treated as an invalid. Therefore, I treat him as I treat everybody else.”
“Yes, appallingly,” said Kimpton with a grin. “Sorry, dearest one—you know I don’t mean a word of it. And your treatment of me is exemplary, so who am I to complain?”
Claudia smiled coquettishly at him.
I made up my mind: no, I was not enjoying myself.
While Scotcher explained to Poirot that it was an honor for a humble man like himself to be secretary to the great Athelinda Playford, Claudia rather pointedly started a conversation of her own with Kimpton. Dorro took the opportunity to berate Harry for having failed to intercede on her behalf when Kimpton had attacked her—“Steady on, old girl! Hardly an attack, eh? Little bit of harmless teasing!”—and soon we were not one large group but many small ones, all conducting separate conversations.
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