The Clocks

by Agatha Christie

  “And then comes the inquest. And the girls all go to it. Miss Martindale repeats her story of the telephone call and Edna knows definitely now that the evidence Miss Martindale gives so clearly, with such precision as to the exact time, is untrue. It was then that she asked the constable if she could speak to the inspector. I think probably that Miss Martindale, leaving the Cornmarket in a crowd of people, overheard her asking that. Perhaps by then she had heard the girls chaffing Edna about her shoe accident without realizing what it involved. Anyway, she followed the girl to Wilbraham Crescent. Why did Edna go there, I wonder?”

  “Just to stare at the place where it happened, I expect,” said Hardcastle with a sigh. “People do.”

  “Yes, that is true enough. Perhaps Miss Martindale speaks to her there, walks with her down the road and Edna plumps out her question. Miss Martindale acts quickly. They are just by the telephone box. She says, ‘This is very important. You must ring up the police at once. The number of the police station is so and so. Ring up and tell them we are both coming there now.’ It is second nature for Edna to do what she is told. She goes in, picks up the receiver and Miss Martindale comes in behind her, pulls the scarf round her neck and strangles her.”

  “And nobody saw this?”

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

  “They might have done, but they didn’t! It was just on one o’clock. Lunchtime. And what people there were in the Crescent were busy staring at 19. It was a chance boldly taken by a bold and unscrupulous woman.”

  Hardcastle was shaking his head doubtfully.

  “Miss Martindale? I don’t see how she can possibly come into it.”

  “No. One does not see at first. But since Miss Martindale undoubtedly killed Edna—oh, yes—only she could have killed Edna, then she must come into it. And I begin to suspect that in Miss Martindale we have the Lady Macbeth of this crime, a woman who is ruthless and unimaginative.”

  “Unimaginative?” queried Hardcastle.

  “Oh, yes, quite unimaginative. But very efficient. A good planner.”

  “But why? Where’s the motive?”

  Hercule Poirot looked at me. He wagged a finger.

  “So the neighbours’ conversation was no use to you, eh? I found one most illuminating sentence. Do you remember that after talking of living abroad, Mrs. Bland remarked that she liked living in Crowdean because she had a sister here. But Mrs. Bland was not supposed to have a sister. She had inherited a large fortune a year ago from a Canadian great-uncle because she was the only surviving member of his family.”

  Hardcastle sat up alertly.

  “So you think—”

  Poirot leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. He half closed his eyes and spoke dreamily.

  “Say you are a man, a very ordinary and not too scrupulous man, in bad financial difficulties. A letter comes one day from a firm of lawyers to say that your wife has inherited a big fortune from a great-uncle in Canada. The letter is addressed to Mrs. Bland and the only difficulty is that the Mrs. Bland who receives it is the wrong Mrs. Bland—she is the second wife—not the first one—Imagine the chagrin! The fury! And then an idea comes. Who is to know that it is the wrong Mrs. Bland? Nobody in Crowdean knows that Bland was married before. His first marriage, years ago, took place during the war when he was overseas. Presumably his first wife died soon afterwards, and he almost immediately remarried. He has the original marriage certificate, various family papers, photographs of Canadian relations now dead—It will be all plain sailing. Anyway, it is worth risking. They risk it, and it comes off. The legal formalities go through. And there the Blands are, rich and prosperous, all their financial troubles over—

  “And then—a year later—something happens. What happens? I suggest that someone was coming over from Canada to this country—and that this someone had known the first Mrs. Bland well enough not to be deceived by an impersonation. He may have been an elderly member of the family attorneys, or a close friend of the family—but whoever he was, he will know. Perhaps they thought of ways of avoiding a meeting. Mrs. Bland could feign illness, she could go abroad—but anything of that kind would only arouse suspicion. The visitor would insist on seeing the woman he had come over to see—”

  “And so—to murder?”

  “Yes. And here, I fancy, Mrs. Bland’s sister may have been the ruling spirit. She thought up and planned the whole thing.”

  “You are taking it that Miss Martindale and Mrs. Bland are sisters?”

  “It is the only way things make sense.”

  “Mrs. Bland did remind me of someone when I saw her,” said Hardcastle. “They’re very different in manner—but it’s true—there is a likeness. But how could they hope to get away with it?” The man would be missed. Inquiries would be made—”

  “If this man were travelling abroad—perhaps for pleasure, not for business, his schedule would be vague. A letter from one place—a postcard from another—it would be a little time before people wondered why they had not heard from him. By that time who would connect a man identified and buried as Harry Castleton, with a rich Canadian visitor to the country who has not even been seen in this part of the world? If I had been the murderer, I would have slipped over on a day trip to France or Belgium and discarded the dead man’s passport in a train or a tram so that the inquiry would take place from another country.”

  I moved involuntarily, and Poirot’s eyes came round to me.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Bland mentioned to me that he had recently taken a day trip to Boulogne—with a blonde, I understand—”

  “Which would make it quite a natural thing to do. Doubtless it is a habit of his.”

  “This is still conjecture,” Hardcastle objected.

  “But inquiries can be made,” said Poirot.

  He took a sheet of hotel notepaper from the rack in front of him and handed it to Hardcastle.

  “If you will write to Mr. Enderby at 10, Ennismore Gardens, S.W. 7 he has promised to make certain inquiries for me in Canada. He is a well-known international lawyer.”

  “And what about the business of the clocks?”

  “Oh! The clocks. Those famous clocks!” Poirot smiled. “I think you will find that Miss Martindale was responsible for them. Since the crime, as I said, was a simple crime, it was disguised by making it a fantastic one. That Rosemary clock that Sheila Webb took to be repaired. Did she lose it in the Bureau of Secretarial Studies? Did Miss Martindale take it as the foundation of her rigmarole, and was it partly because of that clock that she chose Sheila as the person to discover the body—?”

  Hardcastle burst out:

  “And you say this woman is unimaginative? When she concocted all this?”

  “But she did not concoct it. That is what is so interesting. It was all there—waiting for her. From the very first I detected a pattern—a pattern I knew. A pattern familiar because I had just been reading such patterns. I have been very fortunate. As Colin here will tell you, I attended this week a sale of authors’ manuscripts. Among them were some of Garry Gregson’s. I hardly dared hope. But luck was with me. Here—” Like a conjuror he whipped from a drawer in the desk two shabby exercise books “—it is all here! Among the many plots of books he planned to write. He did not live to write this one—but Miss Martindale, who was his secretary, knew all about it. She just lifted it bodily to suit her purpose.”

  “But the clocks must have meant something originally—in Gregson’s plot, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. His clocks were set at one minute past five, four minutes past five and seven minutes past five. That was the combination number of a safe, 515457. The safe was concealed behind a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Inside the safe,” continued Poirot, with distaste, “were the Crown jewels of the Russian Royal Family. Un tas de bêtises, the whole thing! And of course there was a story of kinds—a persecuted girl. Oh, yes, it came in very handy for la Martindale. She just chose her local characters and adapted the story to fit in.
All these flamboyant clues would lead—where? Exactly nowhere! Ah, yes, an efficient woman. One wonders—he left her a legacy—did he not? How and of what did he die, I wonder?”

  Hardcastle refused to be interested in past history. He gathered up the exercise books and took the sheet of hotel paper from my hand. For the last two minutes I had been staring at it, fascinated. Hardcastle had scribbled down Enderby’s address without troubling to turn the sheet the right way up. The hotel address was upside down in the left-hand bottom corner.

  Staring at the sheet of paper, I knew what a fool I had been.

  “Well, thank you, M. Poirot,” said Hardcastle. “You’ve certainly given us something to think about. Whether anything will come of it—”

  “I am most delighted if I have been of any assistance.”

  Poirot was playing it modestly.

  “I’ll have to check various things—”

  “Naturally—naturally—”

  Good-byes were said. Hardcastle took his departure.

  Poirot turned his attention to me. His eyebrows rose.

  “Eh bien—and what, may I ask, is biting you?—you look like a man who has seen an apparition.”

  “I’ve seen what a fool I’ve been.”

  “Aha. Well, that happens to many of us.”

  But presumably not to Hercule Poirot! I had to attack him.

  “Just tell me one thing, Poirot. If, as you said, you could do all this sitting in your chair in London and could have got me and Dick Hardcastle to come to you there, why—oh, why, did you come down here at all?”

  “I told you, they make the reparation in my apartment.”

  “They would have lent you another apartment. Or you could have gone to the Ritz, you would have been more comfortable there than in the Curlew Hotel.”

  “Indubitably,” said Hercule Poirot. “The coffee here, mon dieu, the coffee!”

  “Well, then, why?”

  Hercule Poirot flew into a rage.

  “Eh bien, since you are too stupid to guess, I will tell you. I am human, am I not? I can be the machine if it is necessary. I can lie back and think. I can solve the problem so. But I am human, I tell you. And the problems concern human beings.”

  “And so?”

  “The explanation is as simple as the murder was simple. I came out of human curiosity,” said Hercule Poirot, with an attempt at dignity.

  Twenty-nine

  Once more I was in Wilbraham Crescent, proceeding in a westerly direction.

  I stopped before the gate of No. 19. No one came screaming out of the house this time. It was neat and peaceful.

  I went up to the front door and rang the bell.

  Miss Millicent Pebmarsh opened it.

  “This is Colin Lamb,” I said. “May I come in and speak to you?”

  “Certainly.”

  She preceded me into the sitting room.

  “You seem to spend a lot of time down here, Mr. Lamb. I understood that you were not connected with the local police—”

  “You understood rightly. I think, really, you have known exactly who I am from the first day you spoke to me.”

  “I’m not sure quite what you mean by that.”

  “I’ve been extremely stupid, Miss Pebmarsh. I came to this place to look for you. I found you the first day I was here—and I didn’t know I had found you!”

  “Possibly murder distracted you.”

  “As you say. I was also stupid enough to look at a piece of paper the wrong way up.”

  “And what is the point of all this?”

  “Just that the game is up, Miss Pebmarsh. I’ve found the headquarters where all the planning is done. Such records and memoranda as are necessary are kept by you on the microdot system in Braille. The information Larkin got at Portlebury was passed to you. From here it went to its destination by means of Ramsay. He came across when necessary from his house to yours at night by way of the garden. He dropped a Czech coin in your garden one day—”

  “That was careless of him.”

  “We’re all careless at some time or another. Your cover is very good. You’re blind, you work at an institute for disabled children, you keep children’s books in Braille in your house as is only natural—you are a woman of unusual intelligence and personality. I don’t know what is the driving power that animates you—”

  “Say if you like that I am dedicated.”

  “Yes. I thought it might be like that.”

  “And why are you telling me all this? It seems unusual.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “You have two hours, Miss Pebmarsh. In two hours’ time members of the special branch will come here and take charge—”

  “I don’t understand you. Why do you come here ahead of your people, to give me what seems to be a warning—”

  “It is a warning. I have come here myself, and shall remain here until my people arrive, to see that nothing leaves this house—with one exception. That exception is you yourself. You have two hours’ start if you choose to go.”

  “But why? Why?”

  I said slowly:

  “Because I think there is an off-chance that you might shortly become my mother-in-law … I may be quite wrong.”

  There was a silence. Millicent Pebmarsh got up and went to the window. I didn’t take my eyes off her. I had no illusions about Millicent Pebmarsh. I didn’t trust her an inch. She was blind but even a blind woman can catch you if you are off guard. Her blindness wouldn’t handicap her if she once got her chance to jam an automatic against my spine.

  She said quietly:

  “I shall not tell you if you’re right or wrong. What makes you think that—that it might be so?”

  “Eyes.”

  “But we are not alike in character.”

  “No.”

  She spoke almost defiantly.

  “I did the best I could for her.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion. With you a cause came first.”

  “As it should do.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  There was silence again. Then I asked, “Did you know who she was—that day?”

  “Not until I heard the name … I had kept myself informed about her—always.”

  “You were never as inhuman as you would have liked to be.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  I looked at my watch again.

  “Time is going on,” I said.

  She came back from the window and across to the desk.

  “I have a photograph of her here—as a child….”

  I was behind her as she pulled the drawer open. It wasn’t an automatic. It was a small very deadly knife….

  My hand closed over hers and took it away.

  “I may be soft, but I’m not a fool,” I said.

  She felt for a chair and sat down. She displayed no emotion whatever.

  “I am not taking advantage of your offer. What would be the use? I shall stay here until—they come. There are always opportunities—even in prison.”

  “Of indoctrination, you mean?”

  “If you like to put it that way.”

  We sat there, hostile to each other, but with understanding.

  “I’ve resigned from the Service,” I told her. “I’m going back to my old job—marine biology. There’s a post going at a university in Australia.”

  “I think you are wise. You haven’t got what it takes for this job. You are like Rosemary’s father. He couldn’t understand Lenin’s dictum: ‘Away with softness.’”

  I thought of Hercule Poirot’s words.

  “I’m content,” I said, “to be human….”

  We sat there in silence, each of us convinced that the other’s point of view was wrong.

  Letter from Detective Inspector Hardcastle to M. Hercule Poirot

  Dear M. Poirot,

  We are now in possession of certain facts, and I feel you may be interested to hear about them.

  A Mr. Quentin Duguesclin of Quebec left Cana
da for Europe approximately four weeks ago. He has no near relatives and his plans for return were indefinite. His passport was found by the proprietor of a small restaurant in Boulogne, who handed it in to the police. It has not so far been claimed.

  Mr. Duguesclin was a lifelong friend of the Montresor family of Quebec. The head of that family, Mr. Henry Montresor, died eighteen months ago, leaving his very considerable fortune to his only surviving relative, his great-niece Valerie, described as the wife of Josaiah Bland of Portlebury, England. A very reputable firm of London solicitors acted for the Canadian executors. All communications between Mrs. Bland and her family in Canada ceased from the time of her marriage of which her family did not approve. Mr. Duguesclin mentioned to one of his friends that he intended to look up the Blands while he was in England, since he had always been very fond of Valerie.

  The body hitherto identified as that of Henry Castleton has been positively identified as Quentin Duguesclin.

  Certain boards have been found stowed away in a corner of Bland’s building yard. Though hastily painted out, the words SNOWFLAKE LAUNDRY are plainly perceptible after treatment by experts.

  I will not trouble you with lesser details, but the public prosecutor considers that a warrant can be granted for the arrest of Josaiah Bland. Miss Martindale and Mrs. Bland are, as you conjectured, sisters, but though I agree with your views on her participation in these crimes, satisfactory evidence will be hard to obtain. She is undoubtedly a very clever woman. I have hopes, though, of Mrs. Bland. She is the type of woman who rats.