Closed Casket

by Sophie Hannah

  I soon forgot about his excessively whiskered face when he told me that his brother, Joseph, was dying, and that what he wanted most in the world was my forgiveness. He should not have allowed his friendship with Iris to develop in the way that it had, knowing she was mine, or almost mine.

  I asked if it was his kidneys. The brother told me that it was. I asked how much time Scotcher had left and the answer was, ‘Months. A year at the outside.’

  I can honestly say that for the first and last time in my life, I did not know what to do. I had been wrong about Scotcher, I realized—gravely wrong; I must have been. Filial loyalty was one thing, but surely no man of honor would agree to tell a stranger that his brother was dying if it were not so.

  But, wait (I argued with myself)—that was a feeble contention if ever I had heard one. If one Scotcher brother could be a shameless blackguard, why could not another be cut from the same cloth? I soon saw that my theory did not hold water.

  As I was pondering all this, Blake Scotcher started to speak more quickly. This is odd, I thought to myself.

  I am trying to tell the story exactly as it happened to me, but it’s very hard. I must try, though.

  It was as if something had suddenly made Brother Blake nervous, but what could it have been? Was it that I appeared to be thinking a little too long and hard? Was it that he had come to meet me assuming that I would rush with him to Scotcher’s bedside, crying, ‘All is forgiven,’ and I was showing no sign of doing so?

  ‘If you cannot bring yourself to pay Joseph a visit, would you consider writing him a letter?’ asked Brother Blake, who appeared to be in more of a hurry with each word he spoke. ‘I hesitate to ask, but it would mean so much to him. Even if you do not feel able to say that you forgive him—you might simply wish him a peaceful passage from this world to the next. Only if you were to feel comfortable doing so, of course. Here, take my card. You may send your letter to me and I will see that Joseph gets it.’

  And with that Blake Scotcher was gone—if he was ever there in the first place. Which of course he was not!

  Don’t look at me like that, gentlemen. If I had told you too soon, I would have undermined the dramatic impact of the story. I wanted you to experience the incident as I did. Imagine my shock when Brother Blake handed me his card and his sleeve rode up his arm a little to reveal a wrist and lower forearm that were a quite different color from his hands, neck and face. The beard, the dark skin and the coarse voice were a reasonable disguise, but as I sat at the table and went over everything that had happened, I became absolutely convinced that the man who had just left Queen’s Lane Coffee House was not Blake Scotcher, but his devious older brother—Fake Blake, as I have thought of him since, with great affection.

  The eyes, the bony frame, the shape of the neck . . . Oh, yes, it was Scotcher all right! Joseph Scotcher. I would have suspected it much sooner than I did, were it not for the fact that only one in ten thousand men would consider impersonating his brother in order to lend credence to a fabricated tale of his own imminent demise.

  I heard some months later that Iris had married a chap by the name of Gillow, Percival Gillow—an insalubrious cove by all accounts, a violent drunkard, never too far away from destitution. No doubt Gillow had found a way to engage Iris’s sympathy, as Scotcher had.

  Iris wrote to me once more after her marriage, asking if we could meet. She had something she needed to discuss with me, she said. Once again, I did not reply. Two weeks after her letter arrived, I heard news of her death. She had fallen under the wheels of a train in London. Her husband had been with her at the scene of the crime—or the accident, depending on your point of view. There was talk of Gillow having pushed her, but the police decided finally that there was no case for him to answer. Mr. Gillow is presently an inmate at the workhouse in Abingdon, near Oxford. Charming place, I am sure!

  Well, that concludes my sorry tale. It won’t have escaped your notice that I fairly stand out as the only body on the premises whose possible reasons for wanting to murder Joseph Scotcher could make a bumper edition of some sort.

  I did not, however, kill the scoundrel. Neither did Claudia—which means Sophie Bourlet lied. In my book, that makes her the murderer! It’s dashed peculiar, though—she was about to marry Scotcher and become, in due course, an exceedingly wealthy woman. Now that he’s dead, everything once again goes to Harry and Claudia, and Sophie will get nothing. Yet if she is innocent, why did she lie and blame Claudia?

  Dashed peculiar—that’s what it is.”

  28

  A Possible Arrest

  The following day, Inspector Conree and Sergeant O’Dwyer arrived at Lillieoak a little before nine in the morning. Poirot and I were summoned by Hatton—not to a room where the four of us might talk, but to the front door. Inspector Conree was apparently intent on conducting the conversation on the doorstep.

  “I am here to inform you both, as a courtesy, that I will shortly be making an arrest for the murder of Joseph Scotcher,” he said.

  Poirot straightened his back and moved forward. Conree retreated, looking down at his feet as if to check that the desired distance between himself and Poirot had been preserved to the inch.

  “You think, then, that Sophie Bourlet is guilty of this crime?” Poirot asked.

  “I do,” said Conree. “I have from the start.”

  “Inspector, if I might make a request,” said Poirot. “I strongly believe that the nurse is innocent. Soon I hope to know for certain. I entreat you, therefore—”

  “You are going to ask me not to arrest her,” said Conree.

  “Yes—at least not yet.”

  “If you had listened patiently instead of interrupting me, you would know by now that I am not here to arrest Miss Bourlet.”

  “You are not?” Poirot looked at me, understandably puzzled. “You said that you were here to make an arrest, Inspector. I assumed—”

  “Your assumption was incorrect. I am here to arrest Miss Claudia Playford.”

  “What?” I said. “But you just said that you suspect Sophie Bourlet.”

  Conree nodded to O’Dwyer, who said, “There is no proof that Miss Bourlet harmed Scotcher. In the case of Miss Claudia, we have the evidence we need to make an arrest.”

  “What evidence?” Poirot spluttered. “There is no evidence against Claudia Playford!”

  I stood close behind him, fearing he might keel over, ready to catch him if he did.

  “There is the testimony of Sophie Bourlet, who says that she saw Claudia Playford battering the head of Mr. Scotcher with the club, and that she heard the man beg for his life, to no avail,” said O’Dwyer.

  “Nom d’un nom d’un nom!” Poirot turned to Conree. “Inspector, please explain this nonsense!”

  “I am not obliged to explain myself to you, Mr. Poirot. I am in charge of this investigation. You are merely a guest in the house where the murder took place. The same goes for your friend Catchpool.”

  I said to O’Dwyer, “Sophie might have witnessed the clubbing, but we know that was not the murder. Scotcher died from strychnine poisoning at least forty minutes earlier. So even if Sophie Bourlet saw Claudia Playford smash up his head—”

  “Inspector, I implore you,” said Poirot. “Think before you act. Whyever would you arrest a woman whom you believe to be innocent of murder, based on an account given by the woman you suspect is the real killer? Nothing has ever made less sense to me!”

  “Claudia Playford is the daughter of a viscount and the sister of a viscount,” said Conree.

  “She is—and when you first came to Lillieoak, this same fact was the reason you gave for why you were not going to arrest her. You said, ‘I have no intention of arresting the daughter of Viscount Guy Playford simply because a nurse of no particular distinction has made a wild accusation against her.’ Yet now you propose to do that very thing!”

  “Now is not the same as then,” said Conree. “If we arrest Claudia Playford, things will start to happen, and
soon enough we will know who we’re after. O’Dwyer agrees with me that this is the correct course of action.”

  “I do,” the sergeant confirmed. “The way I see it is this: Sophie Bourlet may well be a liar, and maybe a killer too—but she says she saw Miss Claudia going at Mr. Scotcher with the club. And no one else has come forward to say that they saw anybody other than Claudia Playford carrying out that brutal attack, now, have they? So if anyone at all was seen doing it, it was Miss Claudia. I hope you follow me?”

  “Sergeant, I hope very much that I do not,” said Poirot. He turned to me with a weary look in his eye. I understood what he wanted from me—to take over. This was something I could take care of on his behalf. No displays of brilliance were needed, only the relaying of what ought already to have been logically evident.

  “You are on the verge of making a grave error,” I told the two gardaí. “First, you assume that the person who assaulted Scotcher with the club must also have been his poisoner, but there is no reason to assume that. In a case as distinctive as this one, it is impossible to make such an inference, not without knowing the motive—or both motives, come to think of it. Why did someone want Scotcher dead? And why did someone then, after he was dead, want it to look as if he was killed in a different way—bludgeoned, not poisoned? We could well be talking about two different people. I should say we probably are! And as for your point, O’Dwyer, about no one but Claudia Playford having been seen attacking Scotcher in the parlor with a club, well, that could be argued in quite the opposite way!

  “Listen: nobody else has been accused of clubbing Scotcher, nor allegedly witnessed in the act. That means everyone else might or might not have done it. Meanwhile, Claudia Playford features in a story in which she did it, but we know that other parts of that story are entirely untrue. Scotcher cannot have begged for his life; he was already dead. If Sophie’s account is the truth, how on earth did Claudia Playford get to the landing outside Lady Playford’s study without being seen running upstairs? Why were there no traces of blood on the white dressing gown that Sophie claims Claudia wore to attack Scotcher?”

  I paused for breath, then said, “Claudia Playford, gentlemen, is the only person who features in a story about her bludgeoning Scotcher that we know to be full of lies. Can you truly not see that this makes her less likely than anyone to be the killer?”

  “Catchpool is right, Inspector,” Poirot said solemnly. “Please do not make this arrest. I know considerably more now than I knew before the inquest—the little gray cells of Poirot, they are always busy!—but still I have not assembled the full picture. I need to make a journey to England. There are people I must speak to urgently, and Catchpool also—he has many pressing questions to ask of those at Lillieoak in my absence.

  “When I return to Clonakilty, if I have had good luck on my travels, I will know everything. Please, Inspector . . . allow me a few days, and make no arrests until I return. Action without proper foundation could be catastrophic.”

  “England?” Conree growled. “On no account! I forbid it!”

  It was the first I had heard, too, about a trip to England; I could only assume Poirot had made some progress in his deliberations since the day before. Ah, well—I would miss him at Lillieoak, but if it was necessary for him to go then I would simply have to soldier on without him for a few days.

  Poirot produced a rather sharp-edged smile for Conree, by way of retaliation. “Inspector, for how long do you intend to keep this . . . restriction in place? You surely do not suspect me, Hercule Poirot, of murder? Bien! I wish only to be of assistance in this matter. If you order me not to go, I will not go!”

  “Inspector Conree, I’m afraid I shall have to contradict my good friend,” I said. “If he wishes to go to England, then go he must. Poirot is not one to dash about the place and tire himself out unnecessarily. He prefers to solve whatever is his case of the moment by sitting in a comfortable armchair and giving it thorough consideration. I assure you, he would not conceive of making the journey to England if it were not absolutely necessary. Since he is too polite to lay out the facts, allow me to do so: if you prevent him from going, he will be unable to obtain vital information. Joseph Scotcher’s murder will remain unsolved and you will return, disappointed, to Dublin, where you will no doubt face the even greater disappointment of your superior officers. Will they look favorably upon your efforts, do you think, when they learn that you refused the help of Hercule Poirot? Or would you rather return triumphant to Dublin, able to say that you enlisted the help of the great Belgian detective and that your faith in him was thoroughly vindicated?”

  Conree ground his chin against the collar of his shirt. “Very well,” he said tightly after a moment or two. “You may go, Poirot.”

  “Merci, Inspector.” He was gazing fondly at me as he said it.

  Conree caught the look, and said, “But don’t come crying to me when you fail and we end up arresting Claudia Playford for murder! The tactics that you have employed today ought to be beneath you, Poirot. I warn you—they will not work on me again.”

  “To which tactics do you refer?” I asked with a deliberate and cool formality. “We have used nothing more than reason and solid good sense.”

  “It is useless to argue with him, Catchpool,” Poirot murmured as Conree and O’Dwyer climbed back into the car that had brought them to Lillieoak. “Good sense appears the most underhand of tactics to a man who has no reserves of his own to draw upon.”

  29

  The Grubber

  Late the following afternoon, I received a telephone call.

  “It is I, Catchpool—your friend Hercule Poirot.”

  “No need for such a formal introduction, Poirot. I recognized your voice immediately. Besides, an uncharacteristically garrulous Hatton told me it was you when he summoned me to the telephone. How is England treating you?”

  “Better now that I have been moved to a more suitable room in the hotel and I have un sirop beside me. The first room that they tried to put me in was not well appointed. Usually I would not complain about disadvantageous accommodation—”

  “Of course you would not.” I smiled to myself. “I can imagine you doing no such thing.”

  “—but having come today from the grubber, it was important to me to make myself comfortable.” The down-at-heel colloquialism combined with Poirot’s impeccable European accent made me laugh. He sounded as if he was trying it out to see if a chap of his sort could get away with saying it more regularly.

  “The grubber? You mean the workhouse? Which workhouse, and what on earth were you doing there?”

  “That I will tell you in a moment—but first I should like to ask what you are doing, Catchpool. What have you done since I left Lillieoak?”

  “Me. Well . . . not an awful lot, really. I had a rather wonderful sleep this afternoon after lunch. It was most refreshing. Aside from that . . . I have tried to keep myself to myself. It’s not very jolly around here without you to brighten up the place. When are you coming back?”

  “I knew it! Stop at once the keeping of yourself to yourself! Do the opposite. Find occasions to start conversations with people—the servants too. Talk, listen, and notice what is said to you, every word. The more people talk, the more they reveal. You cannot waste the opportunity, Catchpool. Me, I do not waste a moment. I have been talking, and listening.”

  “At the grubber, you mean?”

  “Yes. The one at Abingdon, in Oxford. It is presently the home of Percival Gillow, the widower of Iris Gillow. I had a very interesting conversation with him about the death of his wife. Once I am finished in Oxford—which is not quite yet—I will travel to Malmesbury.”

  “Malmesbury? Why on earth . . . ?”

  “It is the birthplace of Thomas Hobbes—did you know that, Catchpool? The author of Leviathan.”

  I had not known. “And what has Leviathan to do with the murder of Joseph Scotcher?” I asked.

  “Nothing at all. Though there is, as it happens, a
work of literature about which one might say the opposite. Oh, yes.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Poirot?”

  “All in good time, mon ami. Let me first tell you about Mr. Gillow.”

  I pulled a chair over to near the telephone and sat down to listen to the story.

  Percy Gillow had apparently found the presence of a man of Poirot’s class and elegance at the workhouse as comical as I did. He had chuckled when his unlikely-looking visitor was brought to the small, narrow room that was his, and said, “Don’t much see your kind in here. Sure you didn’t get lost on yer way to yer tea party?”

  “I have come to speak to you, monsieur. I hope you do not mind?”

  “I don’t. Seems as you do, is all. Looking at the walls, weren’t you? Bit of paint’s all they need. There’s not much room here, but it’s enough. Food’s better’n it used to be. And they take us to the picture house once a week—bet you didn’t know, did you?”

  “It sounds most agreeable. Monsieur . . . you married a girl by the name of Iris Morphet?”

  “I did.” Gillow sounded pleasantly surprised that Poirot, ignorant of workhouse outings as he was, should turn out to know anything at all. “I married her, all right. I was a gentleman then, like you—no, you won’t believe it, but it’s true. I fit in wherever I find myself—that’s the secret. That’s how to play it. Funny, you asking about Iris. She died. Never wanted to marry me in the first place, she didn’t.”

  “Why do you say that she did not want to marry you?”

  “She loved another man: Randall Kimpton. Won’t never forget that name. She’d let him go—gone off with some wrong ’un who’d talked a pretty tale—and couldn’t get the right one back. So she picked another wrong ’un: Percival Gillow Esquire!” He grinned broadly, revealing cracked and blackened teeth, and pulled a small snuffbox with a jeweled lid out of a pocket. His fingertips were the same color as the box’s contents.