The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘So whoever gave it to her is what makes it significant? Her relationship with the giver of the gift?’

  Poirot shook his head and said, ‘I owe a debt of gratitude to our old friend Michael Gathercole. If it were not for the initials of his name, that book would have made no impression on you. But thanks to his initials being the same and the ‘Gather’ in his family name, c’est parfait.’ He did a little bounce on his heels.

  ‘What is perfect?’ I asked.

  ‘The precise way in which events unfold and provide us with the most wonderful opportunity,’ Poirot answered enigmatically.

  At that moment an American voice said, ‘’S’cuse me, gentlemen. Moysiers Poy-row and Catchpool?’ I turned to find a tall, thin man in a long overcoat standing behind me. It was hard to make out his age. He might have been elderly or as young as forty. He had skin as smooth as if it had been gone over with a steam-iron and thick white hair that jutted out at odd angles. He made me think of a hedgehog, though he was the opposite of small and round—an elongated hedgehog. Anyone making a satirical sketch of him would certainly show his nose as ending in a sharp point, though in reality it did not.

  We shook his hand.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen. I’m Godfrey Laviolette. I can’t tell you how thrilled Sidney and I are to have you here. We’ve been bursting with excitement, I can tell you. Follow me—the car’s over here. I’ll bet you’re both looking forward to filling your bellies! Nothing like a cold wind to sharpen the appetite, eh? Well, we’ll have dinner, and then …’ He broke off and laughed. ‘I said to Sidney, the ladies will have to pardon us gentlemen this evening after dinner. Our conversation’s bound to bore them to sleep. They don’t understand our passion for our little baby. They say things like, “It’s only a game,” but we know different—right, gentlemen? With me and Sidney and the two of you all being just nuts about Peepers, we’re going to have ourselves a ball!’

  So the ‘little baby’ Laviolette had referred to was that wretched game. A groan rose up inside me but I managed to swallow it before it did any damage to our cover story. Did my supposed business interest in the potential of Peepers necessarily imply that I was ‘just nuts’ about it? Shouldn’t a businessman have a more detached attitude to a prospective investment? It would have been useful to have more precise instructions from Poirot about the part I was supposed to be playing.

  Laviolette drove us along a series of wide roads. It was dark and there were trees everywhere, so we were not able to get a good look at the Kingfisher Hill houses, though the distribution of illuminated windows told me that each of these buildings was much larger and had more space around it than the houses I was used to seeing in London. The effect, as we drove along, was attractive in an unreal sort of way: small and large rectangles of golden light that seemed to dangle from tree branches in the distance or balance upon them.

  Godfrey Laviolette had embarked upon the story of his long association with Sidney Devonport. He had prefaced this narration by informing us that, when Peepers had overtaken chess as the most celebrated board game in the world, everyone would clamour to know how its two inventors had first met. It was a complicated tale that centred around an elemental metal called vanadium that was readily available in southern Africa. This chemical element had made the fortunes of both Sidney Devonport and Godfrey Laviolette some twenty years ago. Laviolette explained—and managed to do so without sounding boastful—that he and Sidney Devonport had both more than tripled their wealth since their vanadium-finding days, and without doing a day’s work.

  ‘You did not suffer in the recent calamity that befell the stock market?’ Poirot asked.

  ‘No, Moysier Poy-row, happily we did not. We are cautious men, Sidney and I. We share an appetite not only for board games but also for small and measured risks. We have never gone crazy in the way that other fellows do. We prefer the slow and steady approach. And this might amuse you: we also share a taste in houses! Sidney’s house here, where we’re going now–my wife Verna and I used to own it! We sold it to Sidney and Lilian. They were looking at a different house and were nearly ready to sign on the dotted line when we said, “Hey, why not buy ours? We’ve been thinking of selling.” So they did!’

  ‘You did not like living here?’ Poirot asked him.

  ‘Oh, we loved it at first,’ Laviolette said. ‘Tell me, gentlemen, how do you find the Kingfisher Hill Estate so far? I know it’s dark and you can’t see much, but are you getting a feel for the place? Paradise, right? You can’t see it now but over there, that’s where the Victor Marklew swimming pool is. Sublime! Oh, we’re in paradise, all right—and that’s the very reason that Verna and I decided to sell up and move on. There’s nothing worse than living in paradise and knowing that one day it’s bound to change for the worse. It kind of became my motto, if you want to know: never let anybody ruin your paradise. Not if you can help it. Sadly, a lot of the time people can’t help it. But oftentimes, they can!’ He seemed unsure of whether he wanted to put forward a message of hope or one of despair.

  ‘Has the Kingfisher Hill Estate deteriorated since you sold your house?’ said Poirot.

  ‘Now there’s a fascinating question, Moysier Poy-row. Oh, yes, a fascinating question. Oh, boy! Let’s just say that I think it has, and my wife Verna agrees, and we’re glad we don’t own property here any more. Don’t tell Sidney and Lilian I said that, will you? I wouldn’t want them to think they’d ended up the worse off for our little deal.’ He laughed. ‘They would disagree with me, anyhow. We’re persnickety about different things, Sidney and me—very different things. Sometimes he loves the things I hate and I love the things he hates. It’s why we work so well together on Peepers: two completely different minds. It means we end up not missing any of the angles, if you follow me.’

  Silently I begged him not to give us the specifics of either his own approach to the game or Sidney Devonport’s.

  ‘The funny thing is, Verna and I are here all the time now, staying as guests in the house we used to own, visiting our good friends! And you know what amuses me? I can enjoy Kingfisher Hill again now in a way that I couldn’t in the months before we sold the house to Sidney and Lilian. Now that I’m only a guest and there’s nothing here that’s mine, I don’t worry about my paradise being ruined. I can enjoy what there is to be enjoyed without any anxiety.’

  ‘What were you afraid would happen?’ I asked. ‘Were houses here being sold to the wrong sort of people?’

  Godfrey Laviolette laughed loudly. ‘Who are the wrong sort of people, Mr Catchpool?’

  ‘In my estimation? Well … criminals and people of unsavoury character. I assumed that because of the exclusive nature of the estate, the walls and the gates—’

  ‘You assumed that I must believe in right and wrong sorts of people? Oh, no, not me! You want to know what I think? I don’t think you can divide people into categories like that. People do it all the time, sure, but it leads to lazy thinking. If you want to get anywhere, you need to pay attention to the particular man—and you’d be wise to pay more attention to who he wants to be in the future than to who he’s been in the past. Even criminals must not all be tarred with the same brush.’ Godfrey Laviolette warmed to his theme. ‘Some deny their crimes to their dying day, while others confess and try to make good.’

  I reflected that, if Godfrey Laviolette was determined to believe only in independent people and not in collections or sorts of people, then it was no wonder that he had sold his house at Kingfisher Hill. Having neighbours in a place like this struck me as significantly different from living on an ordinary street. If you were closeted away behind high walls together, and all sharing the same swimming pool, tennis facilities and golf course … well, even with 900 or more acres in which to spread out, that might create a feeling of communality that some would find oppressive. I knew that I personally would dislike the ‘club’ flavour of this sort of estate and the sense of shared identity that went with it.

&nbs
p; After about ten minutes of driving, Godfrey Laviolette took us through another set of gates. A squat, heavy-set mansion with nothing graceful about its design loomed at the end of a straight driveway. Two sturdy lamp-posts stood on either side of it. There was something vaguely threatening about the arrangement, as if the two posts were henchmen ready to intervene on behalf of the house if necessary.

  As we drove closer, I saw that the building was not one big, square block of stone, as it had at first appeared. Rather, it had a more layered structure, like a square with a wider rectangle behind it, and a third and even wider rectangle behind that.

  ‘Home at last!’ said our driver. ‘Welcome to Little Key. Or as I probably should have said: “Former home at last”.’

  I made suitably amused noises, while Poirot made no effort to laugh or smile. Laviolette said, ‘Gentlemen, I will admit it: I make that joke whenever I come here, whether I’m alone or in company. I need to work on some more original material—don’t you think so, Moysier Poy-row?’

  ‘The name of the house is Little Key?’ Poirot asked. ‘That is an interesting name.’

  ‘It is—but I can’t take credit for it. When Verna and I lived here the place was called Kingfisher’s Rest. The new name is much more intriguing, don’t you think? Little Key—now there’s a house name with an atmosphere.’

  ‘So, la famille Devonport—’

  ‘It comes from a quote from a story by Charles Dickens, or so I’m told: “a very little key will open a very heavy door”, and I don’t mind telling you, Moysier Poy-row, the door of this house sure is heavy! Say, do me a favour: don’t mention the change of name to Sidney. Or to Lilian.’

  ‘Do you mean to suggest that M. and Mme Devonport do not know the name of their own house?’ said Poirot. ‘Surely it was they who changed the name to Little Key, after they bought the house from you.’

  His eminently reasonable enquiry received no response; at that moment the front door opened and a barrel-shaped man with a broad smile on his face was striding towards us. ‘Ah, here comes Sidney!’ said Godfrey Laviolette. I could not tell if I was imagining it, but it seemed to me that he was relieved that our conversation on the subject of the house’s name had been interrupted.

  Immediately to the right of the front door was a large stone plaque with the words ‘Little Key’ carved into it. The stone was pale grey and the carved grooves of the letters had been painted black. Sidney and Lilian Devonport cannot have failed to notice the prominently displayed new name of their home, I decided. I tried to come up with a likely reason why the change of name should be ruled as unmentionable by Godfrey Laviolette, but no plausible theories presented themselves.

  One of the first things I noticed about Sidney Devonport, as he repeatedly slapped me on the back by way of welcome, was that his smile took on an increasingly intimidating air the more one saw of it. It had a mask-like quality: mouth half-open, corners upturned, frozen in a past moment of guffawing joviality that was no longer applicable. I had been in the man’s company for less than three minutes when I decided that I would find it difficult to look at his fossilized face for much longer.

  ‘Welcome, welcome!’ he said, now giving Poirot’s back the same pummelling treatment that I had just endured.

  ‘It is most kind of you to invite us as your guests to Kingfisher Hill … and to Little Key,’ said Poirot, indicating the stone plaque. I looked at Godfrey Laviolette, who flinched slightly. Sidney Devonport showed no sign of discomfort as he ushered us into his house, telling us that we must be ready for a glass of something, not to mention a hot meal. As we followed him inside, however, his order of priorities changed and the conversation turned to Peepers.

  What happened, in fact, was astonishing to me, though I expect Poirot found it easier to comprehend than I did, being somewhat obsessive himself. As we stood in the house’s resplendent circular entrance hall—with its balconied landing that started at the top of the curved staircase and wrapped almost the full 360 degrees around, and its excessively long chandelier that looked like a narrowing avalanche of crystal daggers descending from on high—both Sidney Devonport and Godfrey Laviolette started to speak rapidly and often simultaneously (so that at times it was impossible to hear what either said) about Peepers and what they believed was its rival, the Monopoly game. Devonport insisted that Peepers was far superior and would triumph, while Laviolette was afraid that its prospects might be crushed by the fast-growing popularity of the other game. They held forth on the subject as if they might never stop, and I formed the distinct impression that this was an argument they had regularly. Every so often one of them would look at Poirot and me expectantly as if hoping we would take their side, although at other moments it was as if they had entirely forgotten that we were present. Poirot made a range of appropriate-sounding though non-partisan noises, and I did my best to give the impression that I agreed with whoever had aimed a remark at me most recently. On and on it went, with Devonport proclaiming that the people behind the other game ought to be thinking about making changes before it was too late, or else how were its players to know whether it was promoting the unrestricted accumulation of property as a worthy aspiration or taking a critical position on such monopolization?

  Laviolette countered that there were already many inventors and re-inventors of different versions of Monopoly, or the Landlord’s Game as some called it, and everyone thought that the moral message of the game was whatever they wanted it to be. This complication, argued Laviolette, had done nothing to make a dent in its popularity. Ah, said Devonport, but that did not mean that further complication needed to be introduced to Peepers in the hope of currying favour, especially not when the undeniable appeal of the rival game was in spite of its unclear moral message and not because of it.

  On and on it went. Before I had met these two men, it would never have occurred to me that there might be so much to be said about a board game. I wondered several times if this little scene was a test or joke of some kind, but it went on for too long and each point was made with too much zeal for that to be credible.

  I nearly cried out in gratitude when the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a stooped, bony woman. The pale skin of her face and hands looked as dry as fine paper and was covered with lines and creases as if every inch of her had been folded and unfolded hundreds of times. Her eyes were large and grey, and her hair was a darker grey—the colour of iron filings—and arranged in an artful pile atop her head. She came in on the arm of a young man of around thirty, leaning heavily on him as they shuffled slowly towards us. Sidney Devonport hurried over to her and supported her other side. ‘Poirot, Catchpool—may I introduce my wife, Lilian, and my son Richard?’

  Hearing that she was his wife was a shock to me. From appearances, she could have been his grandmother. She looked at us with dull eyes and a flat expression, and barely greeted us at all.

  As for the young man … so this was Richard Devonport. He was short and compact with fair hair and a capacious face that seemed to swallow up his small, unremarkable features. As I shook his hand, he gave me a pointed look that seemed to contain both fear and a threat. If I could have done so without giving the game away, I would have put him out of his misery by promising not to breathe a word about the letter he had sent to Poirot.

  ‘Oh, are they here?’ a dry and rather aloof-sounding American voice called out from above our heads.

  We looked up to the balconied landing, where stood a slim, auburn-haired woman of around sixty years of age. Her bright red lipstick, gold high-heeled shoes, green silk dress and strings of pearls made her easily the most glamorous among us, and her posture looked practised—as if she had rehearsed for hours how to look perfectly elegant in front of the mirror.

  ‘Verna!’ said Godfrey Laviolette, opening his arms as if inviting her to leap into them. ‘Yes, they’re here: Moysier Poy-row and Mr Catchpool.’

  I nearly corrected him from Mr to Inspector, then remembered that I was supposed to be a busi
nessman, not a policeman.

  ‘Gentlemen, say hello to Verna, the love of my life! My dear love, my dear wife!’ Godfrey Laviolette, at the foot of the stairs, performed a complicated and undoubtedly celebratory forward-rolling gesture with his right arm, as if Verna descending the staircase were a special occasion.

  ‘Godfrey, don’t embarrass these poor fellows,’ she said as she swept towards us, her long dress swishing around her feet like waves in a green sea. ‘Are we all here, then? Am I the last?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said her husband. ‘Oliver took his motorcar out to fetch Daisy, who telephoned with some sort of emergency. She seems to have gotten herself into a scrape. He said he would probably be a while.’

  ‘Oh, not too long, I shouldn’t think,’ said Sidney. ‘They will arrive in good time for dinner, which in any case will be delayed because …’ He stopped, glanced sideways at his wife and obviously decided not to continue.

  ‘Because what?’ Verna Laviolette sounded ready to be aggravated, whatever the answer turned out to be. Sidney Devonport did not appear to notice her rudeness. With his ossified smile-mask still in place, he was now staring at his son, Richard, who gave a small nod. Some meaningful communication must have taken place between the two men, for Richard moved immediately to stand in front of Lilian, blocking her view of her husband. ‘How are you feeling, Mother?’ he said. ‘Shall I get you a chair?’

  Her flat, unfocused eyes came to life in response to this, as if she had suddenly awoken in a vertical position after a long sleep. She said, ‘Do not provoke me, Richard. Why should I want a chair here when I could sit in the drawing room? I feel quite well, thank you.’ Her voice sounded surprisingly strong, and was deeper than is usual for a woman.