Murder on the Links hp-2

by Agatha Christie

  As we walked, taking the way he had indicated I recounted all I knew. Poirot listened attentively.

  'The dagger was in the wound, you say? That is curious. You are sure it was the same one?'

  'Absolutely certain. That's what makes it so impossible.'

  'Nothing is impossible. There may have been two daggers.'

  I raised my eyebrows. 'Surely that is in the highest degree unlikely? It would be a most extraordinary coincidence.'

  'You speak as usual, without reflection, Hastings. In some cases two identical weapons could be highly improbable. But not here. This particular weapon was a war souvenir which was made to Jack Renauld's orders. It is really highly unlikely, when you come to think of it, that he should have had only one made. Very probably he would have another for his own use.'

  'But nobody has mentioned such a thing,' I objected.

  A hint of the lecturer crept into Poirot's tone.

  'My friend, in working upon a case, one does not take into account only the things that are "mentioned". There is no reason to mention many things which may be important. Equally, there is often an excellent reason for not mentioning them. You can take your choice of the two motives.'

  I was silent, impressed in spite of myself. Another few minutes brought us to the famous shed. We found all our friends there, and after an interchange of polite amenities, Poirot began his task.

  Having watched Giraud at work, I was keenly interested.

  Poirot bestowed but a cursory glance on the surroundings. The only thing he examined was the ragged coat and trousers by the door. A disdainful smile rose to Giraud's lips, and, as though noting it, Poirot flung the bundle down again.

  'Old clothes of the gardener's?' he queried.

  'Exactly,' said Giraud.

  Poirot knelt down by the body. His fingers were rapid but methodical. He examined the texture of the clothes, and satisfied himself that there were no marks on them. The boots he subjected to special care, also the dirty and broken fingernails. While examining the latter he threw a quick question at Giraud.

  'You saw them?'

  'Yes, I saw them,' replied the other. His face remained inscrutable.

  Suddenly Poirot stiffened.

  'Dr. Durand!'

  'Yes?' The doctor came forward.

  'There is foam on the lips. You observed it?'

  'I didn't notice it, I must admit.'

  'But you observe it now?'

  'Oh, certainly.'

  Poirot again shot a question at Giraud. 'You noticed it without doubt?'

  The other did not reply. Poirot proceeded. The dagger had been withdrawn from the wound. It was in a glass jar by the side of the body. Poirot examined its then he studied the wound closely. When he looked up his eyes were shining.

  'It is a strange wound this! It has not bled. There is no stain on the clothes. The blade of the dagger is slightly discoloured, that is all. What do you think monsieur?'

  'I can only say that it is most abnormal.'

  'It is not abnormal at all. It is most simple. The man was stabbed after he was already dead.' And stilling the clamour of voices that arose with a wave of his hand, Poirot turned to Giraud and added: 'M. Giraud agrees with me do you not, monsieur?'

  Whatever Giraud's real belief, he accepted the position without moving a muscle. Calmly and almost scornfully he said: 'Certainly I agree.'

  The murmur of surprise and interest broke out again.

  'But what an idea!' cried M. Hautet. 'To stab a man after he is dead! Barbaric! Unheard of! Some unappeasable hate perhaps.'

  'No,' said Polrot. 'I should fancy it was done quite cold-bloodedly-to create an impression.'

  'What impression?'

  'The impression it nearly did create,' returned Poirot oracularly.

  M. Bex had been thinking. 'How, then, was the man killed?'

  'He was not killed. He died. He died, if I am not much mistaken of an epileptic fit!'

  This statement of Poiot's again aroused considerable excitement. Dr. Durand knelt down again, and made a searching examination. At last he came to his feet.

  'Monsieur Poirot, I am inclined to believe that you are correct in your assertion. The incontrovertible fact that the man had been stabbed distracted my attention from any other indications.'

  Poirot was the hero of the hour. The examining magistrate was profuse in compliments. Poirot responded fully, and then excused himself on the pretext that neither he nor I had yet lunched and that he wished to repair the ravages of the journey. As we were about to leave the shed, Giraud approached us.

  'One other thing Monsieur Poirot,' he said in his suave mocking voice. 'We found this coiled round the handle of the dagger-a woman's hair.'

  'Ah!' said Poirot. 'A woman's hair? What woman's, I wonder?'

  'I wonder also,' said Giraud. Then with a bow he left us.

  'He was insistent the good Giraud,' said Poirot thoughtfully, as we walked towards the hotel. 'I wonder in what direction he hopes to mislead me? A woman's hair-hm!'

  We lunched heartily, but I found Poirot somewhat distracted and inattentive. Afterwards we went up to our sitting room and there I begged him to tell me something of his mysterious journey to Paris.

  'Willingly, my friend. I went to Paris to find this,' and he took from his pocket a small faded newspaper cutting.

  It was the reproduction of a woman's photograph, He handed it to me. I uttered an exclamation.

  'You recognize it my friend?'

  I nodded. Although the photo obviously dated from very many years hack, and the hair was dressed in a different style, the likeness was unmistakable.

  'Madame Daubreuil!' I exclaimed.

  Poirot shook his head with a smile. 'Not quite correct my friend. She did not call herself by that name in those days. That is a picture of the notorious Madame Beroldy!'

  Madame Beroldy! In a flash the whole thing came back to me. The murder trial that had evoked such worldwide interest.

  The Beroldy Case.

  Chapter 16. The Beroldy Case

  SOME twenty years or so before the opening of the present story, Monsieur Arnold Beroldy, a native of Lyons, arrived in Paris accompanied by his pretty wife and their little daughter, a mere babe. Monsieur Beroldy was a junior partner in a firm of wine merchants, a stout middle-aged man, fond of the good things of life, devoted to his charming wife, and altogether unremarkable in every way. The firm in which Monsieur Beroldy was a partner was a small one and, although doing well, it did not yield a large income to the junior partner. The Beroldys had a small apartment and lived in a very modest fashion to begin with. But, unremarkable though Monsieur Beroldy might be, his wife was plentifully gilded with the brush of Romance.

  Young and good-looking, and gifted with a singular charm of manner, Madame Beroldy at once created a stir in the quarter, especially when it began to be whispered that some interesting mystery surrounded her birth. It was rumoured that she was the illegitimate daughter of a Russian Grand Duke. Others asserted that it was an Austrian Archduke, and that the union was legal, though morganatic. But all stories agreed upon one point, that Jeanne Beroldy was the centre of an interesting mystery.

  Among the friends and acquaintances of the Beroldys was a young lawyer, Georges Conneau. It was soon evident that the fascinating Jeanne had completely enslaved his heart. Madame Beroldy encouraged the young man in a discreet fashion, but always being careful to affirm her complete devotion to her middle-aged husband. Nevertheless many spiteful persons did not hesitate to declare that young Conneau was her lover-and not the only one!

  When the Beroldys had been in Paris about three months another personage came upon the scene. This was Mr. Hiram P. Trapp, a native of the United States, and extremely wealthy. Introduced to the charming and mysterious Madame Beroldy, he fell a prompt victim to her fascinations. His admiration was obvious, though strictly respectful.

  About this time, Madame Beroldy became more outspoken in her confidences. To several friends, she decl
ared herself greatly worried on her husband's behalf. She explained that he had been drawn into several schemes of a political nature, and also referred, to some important papers that had been entrusted to him for safekeeping and which concerned a 'secret' of far-reaching European importance.

  They had been entrusted to his custody to throw pursuers off the track, but Madame Beroldy was nervous, having recognized several important members of the Revolutionary Circle in Paris.

  On the 28thday of November the blow fell. The woman who came daily to clean and cook for the Beroldys was surprised to find the door of the apartment standing wide open.

  Hearing faint moans issuing from the bedroom, she went in.

  A terrible sight met her eyes. Madame Beroldy lay on the floor bound hand and foot, uttering feeble moans, having managed to free her mouth from a gag. On the bed was Monsieur Beroldy, lying in a pool of blood, with a knife driven through his heart.

  Madame Beroldy's story was clear enough. Suddenly awakened from sleep, she had discerned two masked men bending over her. Stifling her cries, they had bound and gagged her. They had then demanded of Monsieur Beroldy the famous 'secret'.

  But the intrepid wine merchant refused point-blank to accede to their request. Angered by his refusal, one of the men impulsively stabbed him through the heart. With the dead man's keys, they had opened the safe in the corner, and had carried away with them a mass of papers. Both men were heavily bearded, and had worn masks, but Madame Beroldy declared positively that they were Russians.

  The affair created an immense sensation. Time went on, and the mysterious bearded men were never traced. And then, just as public interest was beginning to die down, a startling development occurred: Madame Beroldy was arrested and charged with the murder of her husband.

  The trial, when it came on, aroused widespread interest.

  The youth and beauty of the accused, and her mysterious story, were sufficient to make of it a cause célèbre.

  It was proved beyond doubt that Jeanne Beroldy's parents were a highly respectable and prosaic couple, fruit merchants who lived on the outskirts of Lyons. The Russian Grand Duke, the court intrigues, and the political schemes-all the stories were traced back to the lady herself! Remorselessly, the whole story of her life was laid bare. The motive for the murder was found in Mr. Hiram P. Trapp. Mr. Trapp did his best, but, endlessly and agilely cross-questioned, he was forced to admit that he loved the lady, and that, had she been free, he would have asked her to be his wife. The fact that the relations between them were admittedly platonic strengthened the case against the accused. Debarred from becoming his mistress by the simple honourable nature of the man, Jeanne Beroldy had conceived the monstrous project of ridding herself of her elderly, undistinguished husband and becoming the wife of the rich Mr. Trapp.

  Throughout, Madame Beroldy confronted her accusers with complete sang-froid and self-possession. Her story never varied. She continued to declare strenuously that she was of royal birth and that she had been substituted for the daughter of the fruit-seller at an early age. Absurd and completely unsubstantiated as these statements were, a great number of people believed implicitly in their truth.

  But the prosecution was implacable. It denounced the masked 'Russians' as a myth, and asserted that the crime had been committed by Madame Beroldy and her lover, Georges Conneau. A warrant was issued for the arrest of the latter, but he had wisely disappeared. Evidence showed that the bonds which secured Madame Beroldy were so loose that she could easily have freed herself.

  And then, towards the close of the trial, a letter, posted in Paris, was sent to the Public Prosecutor. It was from Georges Conneau and, without revealing his whereabouts, it contained a full confession of the crime. He declared that he had indeed struck the fatal blow at Madame Beroldy's instigation. The crime had been planned between them. Believing that her husband ill-treated her, and maddened by his own passion for her, a passion which he believed her to return, he had planned the crime and struck the fatal blow that should free the woman he loved from a hateful bondage.

  Now, for the first time, he learnt of Mr. Hiram P. Trapp, and realized that the woman he loved had betrayed him! Not for his sake did she wish to be free, but in order to marry the wealthy American. She had used him as a cat's paw, and now, in his jealous rage, he turned and denounced her, declaring that throughout he had acted at her instigation.

  And then Madame Beroldy proved herself the remarkable woman she undoubtedly was. Without hesitation, she dropped her previous defence, and admitted that the 'Russians' were a pure invention on her part. The real murderer was Georges Couneau. Maddened by passion, he had committed the crime, vowing that if she did not keep silence he would exact a terrible vengeance from her. Terrified by his threats, she had consented-also fearing it likely that if she told the truth she might be accused of conniving at the crime, but she had steadfastly refused to have anything more to do with her husband's murderer, and it was in revenge for this attitude on her part that he had written this letter accusing her.

  She swore solemnly that she had had nothing to do with the planning of the crimes that she had awoken on that memorable night to find Georges Conneau standing over her the with the bloodstained knife in his hand.

  It was a touch-and-go affair. Madame Beroldy's story was hardly credible. But her address to the jury was a masterpiece.

  The tears streaming down her face, she spoke of her child of her woman's honour-of her desire to keep her reputation untarnished for the child's sake. She admitted that, Georges Conneau having been her lover, she might perhaps be held morally responsible for the crime but, before God, nothing more! She knew that she had committed a grave fault in not denouncing Conneau to the law but she declared in a broken voice that that was a thing no woman could have done. She had loved him! Could she let her hand be the one to send him to the guillotine? She had been guilty of much but she was innocent of the terrible crime imputed to her.

  However that may have been, her eloquence and personality won the day. Madame Beroldy, amidst a scene of unparalleled excitement, was acquitted.

  Despite the utmost endeavours of the police, Georges Conneau was never traced. As for Madame Beroldy, nothing more was heard of her. Taking the child with her, she left Paris to begin a new life.

  Chapter 17. We Make Further Investigations

  I have set down the Beroldy case in full. Of course all the details did not present themselves to my memory as I have recounted them here. Nevertheless, I recalled the case fairly accurately. It had attracted a great deal of interest at the time, and had been fully reported by the English papers, so that it did not need much effort of memory on my part to recollect the salient details.

  Just for the moment, in my excitement, it seemed to clear up the whole matter. I admit that I am impulsive, and Poirot deplores my custom of jumping to conclusions, but I think I had some excuse in this instance. The remarkable way in which this discovery justified Poirot's point of view struck me at once.

  'Poirot,' I said 'I congratulate you. I see everything now.'

  Poirot lit one of his little cigarettes with his usual precision. Then he looked up.

  'And since you see everything now, mon ami, what exactly is it that you see?'

  'Why, that it was Madame Daubreuil-Beroldy-who murdered Mr. Renauld. The similarity of the two cases proves that beyond a doubt.'

  'Then you consider that Madame Beroldy was wrongly acquitted? That in actual fact she was guilty of connivance in her husband's murder?'

  I opened my eyes wide.

  'Of course! Don't you?'

  Poirot walked to the end of the room, absentmindedly straightened a chair, and then said thoughtfully: 'Yes that is my opinion. But there is no "of course" about it, my friend. Technically speaking, Madame Beroldy is innocent.'

  'Of that crime, perhaps. But not of this.'

  Poirot sat down again, and regarded me, his thoughtful air more marked than ever.

  'So it is definitely your opinion, Hastin
gs, that Madame Daubreuil murdered Monsieur Renauld?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  He shot the question at me with such suddenness that I was taken aback.

  'Why?' I stammered. 'Why? Oh, because-' I came to a stop.

  Poirot nodded his head at me. 'You see, you come to a stumbling-block at once. Why should Madame Daubreuil (I shall call her that for clearness' sake) murder Monsieur Renauld? We can find no shadow of a motive. She does not benefit by his death; considered as either mistress or blackmailer she stands to lose. You cannot have a murder without motive. The first crime was different-there we had a rich lover waiting to step into her husband's shoes.'

  'Money is not the only motive for murder,' I objected.

  'True,' agreed Polrot placidly. 'There are two others, the crime passionnel is one. And there is the third rare motive, murder for an idea which implies some form of mental derangement on the part of the murderer. Homicidal mania and religious fanaticism belong to that class. We can rule it out here.'

  'But what about the passion? Can you rule that out? If Madame Daubreuil was Renauld's mistress, if she found that his affection was cooling, or if her jealousy was aroused in any way, might she not have struck him down in a moment of anger?'

  Poirot shook his head.

  'If-I say if, you note-Madame Daubreuil was Renauld's mistress, he had not had time to tire of her. And in any case you mistake her character. She is a woman who can simulate great emotional stress. She is a magnificent actress. But, looked at dispassionately, her life disproves her appearance. Throughout, if we examine it, she has been cold-blooded and calculating in her motives and actions. It was not to link her life with that of her young lover that she connived at her husband's murder. The rich American, for whom she probably did not care a button, was her objective.'

  'If she committed a crime, she would always do so for gain. Here there was no gain. Besides, how do you account for the digging of the grave? That was a man's work.'

  'She might have had an accomplice,' I suggested, unwilling to relinquish my belief.