The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘I do. I’m not convinced, Poirot. Philosophically it works, but if Frank’s murderer were anyone other than Helen Acton, I do not believe that Winnie would have said the part about “It’s not the reason you all think.” She would simply have said, “I know who killed Frank and it’s not who you think it is” or “I know who killed Frank and why they did it”.’

  ‘Non, non,’ Poirot said gently. ‘We cannot know this, my friend. Please consider: if Helen Acton is indeed guilty and Winnie Lord knows this, why would she say to Sergeant Gidley, “I know who did it”? Is she not more likely to say, “You’ve got the right person but she’s lying about why she did it”? I put it to you that “I know who did it” weighs as heavily on the side of Helen Acton’s innocence—or at least, Winnie Lord’s belief that she is innocent—as “It’s not the reason you all think” weighs on the side of Mademoiselle Helen being guilty.’

  I was finding it harder, the more I thought about it, to extract any meaning from the words at all. I had been turning them over in my mind for so long that they were losing any resonance and usefulness they had once possessed.

  ‘Tell me, did you make the list I asked you to make?’ said Poirot.

  Without a word, I produced it from my pocket and handed it to him.

  We travelled in silence while he read it. I prepared myself for criticism, and was pleasantly surprised when he began, ‘This is not a bad effort, Catchpool. Not bad at all. You have listed many interesting questions. You have only failed to include three or four of the most important questions. This is much better than I expected. A more orderly person would have assigned to each individual question a number of its own, of course, and here you have at the top of your list many questions relating to Joan Blythe, all grouped together—’

  The pleasure I had felt at first had deserted me. ‘What important questions have I failed to include?’

  ‘Well, for a start, there is a vital question that pertains to Winnie Lord and what she told Sergeant Gidley. Though perhaps you made this list before receiving the message from Sergeant Gidley yesterday evening?’

  ‘I did. So that needs adding to the list: what does Winnie Lord know? Who does she believe the murderer to be, and for what reason does she think the murder was committed?’

  ‘Non, mon ami. You are right, this does need adding, but it is not the question I had in mind. Ah, if you would only recognize what that most important question is …’ he said wistfully.

  ‘Yes, just imagine.’ I feigned a wistful sigh. ‘If only there were some way for me to know what this elusive question might be so that we could discuss it now.’

  ‘Ah, you tease me.’ Poirot chuckled. ‘I see also that you have omitted essential questions about Kingfisher’s View and the book, Midnight Gathering—’

  ‘The book features prominently in the list,’ I said.

  ‘But the two most important questions about it are missing, along with their obvious and fascinating answers,’ said Poirot. ‘Also missing is an item that I was sure you would remember to include: the demeanour and temperament of Daisy Devonport.’

  ‘What about her demeanour? When? On the coach or when we met her at Kingfisher Hill?’

  ‘All of the times,’ said Poirot. ‘The personality and psychology of Daisy Devonport—this is what is most deeply interesting to me in this whole affair.’

  ‘I find her dull and rebarbative,’ I told him. ‘I think she’s spoilt, manipulative and thoroughly unpleasant and I should be happy if I never had to encounter her again. As for an essential question about Kingfisher’s View that’s missing … do you mean Kingfisher’s Rest, the original name of Little Key? If so, it’s on the list. Number thirteen, I think.’

  ‘I know what is on your list. I have the paper in front of me and I am looking at it now. Why do you assume that my words do not accurately reflect my meaning? I said “Kingfisher’s View” because that is what I meant. Kingfisher’s View: the house to which the Laviolettes and Richard and Daisy Devonport were sent on the day of Frank’s death so that Sidney and Lilian could spend some time alone with Frank. Inspector Capeling told us that it was not near to Little Key, do you remember? “Not a near neighbour,” he said. And did he not also say that Daisy had complained about the distance between the two houses? In which case …’ Poirot made a beckoning gesture, as if he was trying to coax the right answer out of me.

  For once I thought I had it. ‘In which case, why was that particular house chosen and by whom? Who decided to send the Laviolettes and Richard and Daisy to Kingfisher’s View in particular, and why? Is that house owned by friends of Sidney Devonport, perhaps?’

  Poirot clapped his hands together in delight. ‘Precisely, Catchpool. You have hit on the head the nail!’

  I felt briefly elated, until he added, ‘It proceeds most satisfactorily, the training of your brain.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Helen Acton

  Holloway was as dismal as ever. The advantage of visiting with Poirot was that we were treated like royalty and shown immediately to a comfortable, well-appointed room in which coffee of a surprisingly good quality was provided, along with a plate of biscuits of varying levels of appeal. Some were symmetrical and biscuit-coloured; others were misshapen and of a greyish hue. Poirot and I both avoided one that looked as if it had an indentation in it from a thumb or large finger. I thought nostalgically of the scones baked by Marcus Capeling’s wife, and of the fool I had been yesterday to imagine that one might consume too many of them.

  Helen Acton was brought to us by two prison guards. I noticed at once that she was not bound, handcuffed or constrained in any way. She smiled at us—a smile that was demure and moderate, welcoming and cautious—as she entered the room and sat in the chair that we had set out for her. Before leaving us alone with her, one of the guards said, ‘Open the door when you’re finished. I’ll be waiting outside. Don’t worry, Miss Acton won’t give you any trouble.’ As he said this, he grinned at her and his expression seemed to me to contain a great deal of respect. She responded to him with a smile.

  I was surprised. Female prisoners, on the whole, were treated poorly and often with great brutality by male prison employees. It was one of the many things I hated to witness inside institutions such as this one, and it gave me a convenient opening for our conversation with Helen Acton. ‘You seem to be on friendly terms with the guards here,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they treat me well,’ she replied. Her hair was dark brown and cut in a short, plain style. She had a kindly, intelligent face with a large forehead and round brown eyes that were alert and watchful. Her clothing was as plain as the attire of women prisoners all over England.

  ‘You are lucky, mademoiselle,’ said Poirot. ‘You have received news of the postponement of your execution?’

  ‘I have,’ she said.

  ‘And you know the cause?’

  ‘Yes. Daisy has confessed to killing Frank.’ She leaned forward. ‘M. Poirot, she did not kill him. I did. You must do all that you can to protect Daisy.’

  ‘If she is innocent, why did she confess?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Why would she do such a thing? I can think of no reason.’ She spoke as if the three of us were jointly charged with solving the puzzle. ‘It cannot be to save my life—Daisy and I are … well, we are strangers. She might have been Frank’s sister but I did not know her. She has no reason to wish to save the life of the woman who killed the brother she adored, so why does she insist upon this lie?’ She looked from me to Poirot. ‘It is very important to me to know. Will you find out for me, M. Poirot?’

  ‘Oh, I intend to find out the truth, mademoiselle. Be assured of that.’

  Helen Acton seemed not entirely satisfied with his answer. ‘May I speak frankly?’ she said.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I have very little left in this world that matters to me. Almost nothing. I will be put to death—not when I expected to be, but later. That is as it should be. I killed Frank and I must pay for w
hat I did. But … having been resigned to my own death for so long, and even happy about it, I am now greatly agitated by this news about Daisy. I cannot bear the thought that I might die without knowing what it means. That might not make sense to you but it is how I feel. Frank loved Daisy most of all the Devonports. She mattered to him. For his sake, I need to know why she is saying that she killed him.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Poirot. ‘As I say, I shall find out the answers to your questions about Mademoiselle Daisy. When I have them, I will bring them to you and lay them all before you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘In return, I hope that you will tell me and my friend Inspector Catchpool here the full truth about the death of Frank Devonport.’

  Helen Acton’s expression changed from gratitude to alarm.

  ‘Is it really such a dreadful prospect to tell us the truth?’ I asked her. ‘You have just told us that Daisy mattered to Frank and that you need to know the truth for his sake. When you said it, you sounded very much like someone who was fond of Frank Devonport. This is also suggested by the fact that, until he died, you were also engaged to be married to him. May I tell you what I believe? I think you loved Frank a great deal, and I think you still do.’

  She stared at me intently. After nearly a minute of silence, she said in a voice that was hoarse with emotion, ‘I do. I will always love Frank. Thank you … No one has asked me that before. They have all asked me endlessly if I killed him and why I killed him, but never if I loved him.’

  ‘Yet in spite of this love, you claim that you murdered him,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you regret doing so? If you could wind back the clock and return to the sixth of December last year, would you behave differently?’

  ‘You are the first person to ask me that question too,’ she said. ‘Yes, I regret it profoundly. I should not have done it. If only I had not done it. I …’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Tears rolled down her face. She shook her head wildly. ‘All I can tell you is that I intended to kill Frank and I did kill him.’

  ‘Why?’ Poirot asked. ‘Tell us why you killed the man you loved.’

  She did not reply. Neither of us tried to persuade her to do so. There was something immovable and wholly resolute about her.

  ‘So you are happy to die,’ I said, changing the subject back to what I knew she was willing to talk about.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You regret your crime and wish to atone for it with your own death.’

  She nodded. ‘I hope and pray that I might be reunited with Frank. Oh, I do not truly believe it will happen. He is in Heaven and I have no hope of ending up there, I know that. But I also know, or at least I have been told, that the Lord is all forgiving, and I have prayed for so many hours and begged for His forgiveness. It is all I do in here. And sometimes I allow myself to hope that my prayers have been heard.’

  ‘Mademoiselle.’ Poirot stood up and walked slowly around the table that separated us from her. ‘You sound sincere but your words make little sense to me. May I ask, how do you feel about Richard Devonport? Is he not the man to whom you are presently engaged to be married?’

  ‘Ah, Richard.’ She gave a small smile. ‘I wondered when we would have to talk about him. Yes, I have promised to marry Richard, though it is a meaningless promise given where I am and what is going to happen to me.’

  ‘Do you love Monsieur Richard?’ Poirot asked her.

  ‘No, I do not.’ Her words fell heavily in the hollow air.

  We waited.

  ‘You asked me for the truth, didn’t you? The truth is, I have never loved Richard. I wanted to confess to killing Frank and I needed to provide a reason, and … and the police believed me. People are so stupid. I did not know Richard until that day, the day Frank died. That afternoon, I spent somewhere between one and a half and two hours in his company, for much of that time with Frank present and lots of other people, too—and the police believed that this would be long enough for me to fall madly in love with Richard? How could they think that? Frank was tall and handsome, gregarious and brave. There was no physical resemblance between Frank and Richard, none whatever. Neither was there a similarity of character. Richard is timid and mousy and he looks like a suet pudding.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I should not have said that. I don’t mean to be unkind, only to say that no one would know Richard was in a room, let alone fall in love with him! It is quite ludicrous to believe that any woman who had known and loved Frank could ever love Richard.’

  ‘Yet you are engaged to be married to him,’ I said.

  ‘He proposed. I don’t know what he was thinking, but … well, it was convenient. I agreed, knowing what awaited me and that I would never have to go through with it. What harm could it do? It made my story look all the more true.’

  ‘If you did not and do not love Richard Devonport, you must have murdered Frank for a different reason,’ said Poirot.

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid I cannot tell you my true reason.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I cannot tell you that either.’

  ‘Cannot or will not?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘It would not be the right thing to do.’

  ‘Perhaps you did not kill Frank and someone else did,’ I said. ‘Maybe Daisy did, and you have been protecting her all this time. As you say, Frank loved her more than the other Devonports. You might have known that he would want you to save her life no matter what she had done to him. And if you felt that life without him was not worth living … No wonder you’re confused that Daisy has suddenly decided to make a mockery of your efforts by confessing.’

  ‘Please tell us about the day that Frank Devonport died,’ said Poirot. ‘Exactly what happened?’

  ‘It was horrible,’ Helen said at once. ‘Unbearable from start to finish. I knew I might find it difficult, in the circumstances, but nothing could have prepared me for how awful it was from the moment I arrived at Little Key.’

  ‘Why did you expect it to be difficult?’ I asked.

  ‘Frank and his parents had been estranged for some time. I assume you have heard the story of how he stole from them in order to help Oliver Prowd and his invalid father?’

  ‘I should very much like to hear your version,’ I told her.

  ‘My version, as you call it, is that I would never allow myself to be welcomed back by a family that had disowned me after a quite understandable action for which I had apologized over and over again. Frank paid back every penny of the money he took from his father. He admitted to his theft when an admission was quite unnecessary. Sidney and Lilian would never have noticed that things had been temporarily amiss. But Frank was honourable. He valued honesty and integrity above all else. It mattered deeply to him to tell the truth, and for that they banished him—a banishment that he not only understood but forgave. Frank …’ Her face contorted in pain. ‘He forgave people. Always. He—’ She started to sob and buried her face in her hands.

  There seemed to be nothing to do but wait.

  When Helen finally recovered, she said, ‘Frank would have disagreed, but I believe that Sidney and Lilian Devonport are evil, M. Poirot. They terrified Daisy and Richard into submission. Neither of them wanted to sever their ties with Frank but they obeyed their parents without question. Nobody wants to fall foul of two monsters who would stop at nothing, and that’s exactly what Sidney and Lilian Devonport are: monsters.’

  ‘And this is why you expected to find your first visit to Kingfisher Hill difficult?’ said Poirot. ‘Frank wished to be reconciled with these monsters while you wished that the rapprochement could be avoided?’

  ‘Yes, I did. You will think me cold for wanting to deprive Frank of his family whom he loved, but I did not see how he could overlook the way they had treated him. In my opinion, such things should not be overlooked. Even Richard and Daisy’s behaviour … At the time, and it was not all that long ago, I thought cowardice of that sort was unfor
givable. Blind obedience in the face of tyranny, it seemed to me.’ A faraway look passed across her face. ‘It’s funny how one can be terribly brave in some respects and an utter coward in others, isn’t it? In any case, it was Frank’s family so I complied with his wishes as best I could, though in my opinion we would have been better off on our own.’ She sighed. ‘If only we had not gone to Kingfisher Hill that day, Frank would still be alive. I wish he had torn up their wretched letter!’

  ‘Letter?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, the one asking him to come back. Everything about it was sickening. Sidney and Lilian offered no apology and took no share of the blame for their cruel treatment of Frank. They said neither that they loved him nor that they had missed him, only that he had betrayed the family inexcusably and was lucky to be given this second chance. The letter also made it abundantly clear that everything that had happened in the past was never to be mentioned again. The condition of Frank being re-admitted to the family was that he was not allowed to refer to problems of the past because the whole situation was upsetting enough as it was. The words “We forgive you” were nowhere to be found. Instead they said Frank was lucky that illness had weakened their moral standards to the extent that they were now willing to tolerate the unforgivable. I said to him, “How dare they write in such terms and expect you to go running back to them?”’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Poirot.

  ‘He told me I didn’t understand—assured me that they did love him and did forgive him and were simply too proud to admit they had made a mistake that they now regretted. Frank always saw the best in everybody. I’m afraid that is a talent I do not possess. I told him that he should go alone to Kingfisher Hill, but he was determined to introduce me to his family. “I want all the people I love to love each other,” he said. Most of all, he wanted me to meet Daisy. I could not find it in my heart to refuse him. And I hoped that once I met his parents face to face I might be able to find some warmth or goodness in them. At the same time, I feared that I might soften towards them: I had no desire to think about them less harshly after the way they had treated Frank. That is why I was not looking forward to my first visit to Little Key.’