English Rose (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 13)

by Frank Howell Evans

  “C’est bon. Then, no one, he was able to enter the room. No one, he had been in the room for at least two hours except for you and your husband when you hear the clockwork. From that the only conclusion, it is that only your husband or you, Madame, could have done it.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Lady Hassocks demanded, astonished.

  “Poiret, he wishes to prove to you by this absurd conclusion, Madame, that it is necessary to never put reason above the psychology. It is clear to Poiret, Madame, that Monsieur Hassocks, he does not desire to commit the suicide and above all, he would not choose the strange method of suicide by bomb. It is also clear to Poiret, Madame, that you adore your husband.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Lady Hassocks, whose tears, flowed freely. “But, Holy Mary, why do you speak to me without looking at me?”

  “Please not to turn! Not to make the movement! And speak low, Madame, very low. And do not move the body!”

  “But you say the bomb…”

  “Not to move, Madame. Please to listen to Poiret without interrupting him,” he said, still inclining his ear and still without looking at her. “It is because of these things, c’est impossible. Poiret, he says to himself, “There is the third man. Someone, he is able to enter the room of Monsieur Hassocks even when he is there and all the doors, they are locked.”

  “Oh, no. No one could possibly enter. I swear!”

  Poiret seized her arm so roughly that she almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep her quiet.

  “But, tell me what you’re looking at like that.”

  “Poiret, he is watching the corner where someone, he is going to enter the room of your husband when everything, it is locked.”

  Lady Hassocks remembered that when she entered Poiret’s room she had found all the doors open that connected the different rooms with each other, the detective’s room with hers, the dressing room and her husband’s room. She tried, under Poiret’s gaze, to keep calm, but in spite of all the detective’s exhortations she couldn’t hold her tongue.

  “But which way? Where will they enter?”

  “By the door.”

  “Which door?”

  “The one, Madame, connecting the room with the staircase of the servants.”

  “How? The key, I have it! The bolt, it’s locked!”

  “They have made the key.”

  “But the bolt is on this side.”

  “They will draw it back from the other side of the door.”

  “What! That is impossible.”

  Poiret laid his two hands on Lady Hassocks’s trembling shoulders and repeated, “Madame, it is the trick much in use with the cat burglars in the hotels in the South of France. All it is needed is the little hole the size of the pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt.”

  Lady Hassocks shook her head.

  “I don’t understand what you mean by your little hole. Explain that to me, Mr. Poiret.”

  Poiret, his eyes all the time fixed elsewhere, continued, “The person, who wishes to enter the room, he sticks through the hole the brass wire that he has already given the curve. With such an instrument it is easy to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside. He moves up the knob on it. He withdraws it and then he can open the door.”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” moaned Lady Hassocks, who paled visibly. “And that hole?”

  “It exists.”

  “You have seen it?”

  “Oui, Madame, the first hour Poiret, he was here.”

  “Oh, Mr. Poiret! But how did you do that when you never entered my husband’s room until tonight?”

  “C’est vrai. Poiret, he went up the staircase of the servants. Poiret, he will tell to you why. When Poiret, he was brought into the mansion the first time and you, Madame, watched him, hiding behind the door, do you know what Poiret, he was watching himself, while he gave the appearance of being solely occupied with the food? The fresh footprints of the shoes, which were left on the carpet near the table, where someone, he had spilled the beer. The footprints, almost invisible for the human eye, it went to the door of the staircase of the servants and it went up the stairs. But, before Poiret, he could investigate, you entered the room.”

  “You never told me anything about it. Of course if I had known there was a shoe-print...”

  “Poiret, he did not tell to you anything about it, because the prints, they dried while he was telling to you about his journey.”

  “My God! Let us go into my husband’s room. We will wake him.”

  “Madame, Poiret, he has not told to you everything. The shoe-print, it occupied the brains of Poiret and later, when it was possible for him to get away from the dining room, he climbed the staircase himself to see the door, where he discovered what he has told to you now.”

  “But in all you have said there has been nothing said about the hat-pins.”

  “We have come to them now.”

  “And the attack, when will it happen again?”

  “Tonight, Madame, when you allowed Poiret to go into Mr. Hassocks’s room, he examined the bolt of the door without alarming you. Poiret, he received the confirmation of his opinion. It was that way that the bomb, it was brought in and it is by that way that someone, he has prepared to return.”

  “Are you sure that is how they mean to return? You know well enough that, not having succeeded in my husband’s room, they are at work in the dining room.”

  “Madame, it is certain that they have given up on the work in the dining room, since they have begun this very day working again in the room of Mr. Hassocks. Poiret, he asked the police to leave so he would be able to better investigate the murder attempts. Do you understand now, Madame, the confidence of Poiret and why he has been able to assume so heavy a responsibility? It is because he knows he has only one thing to watch, one little hat-pin. It is not difficult, Madame, to watch one little hat-pin.”

  Lady Hassocks cried, “Dear Holy Angel! What were you thinking, taking a stroll on the boulevard! That door hasn’t been watched this afternoon. Someone could have placed a bomb in there during our absence!”

  “That is why Poiret, he sent you at once to the dining room to make the search, even though Poiret, he knows it will be fruitless. Poiret, he hurried upstairs to the bedroom. He went to the staircase door immediately. Poiret, he had created the test to know if someone he has opened the door. The door, it has not been touched in our absence.”

  “Ah, Good God! This is so confusing. How can you see that, all that, in a small, little hat-pin hole?”

  “Madame, it is not the single hat-pin hole. There are two.

  “Two hat-pin holes?”

  “Oui, Madame. There is the old one and the new one. Why, you ask of Poiret, this second hole? Because the old one, it was judged as too small and they wished to enlarge it. In enlarging it they broke off the point of the hat-pin in it. The point, Madame, it is there yet, filling up the little old hole. The metal, it is very sharp and very bright to see. Please not to move, Madame.”

  “But they are going to come! They are going to come!”

  “Oui, Madame.”

  “Great heavens! But how can you remain so calm?”

  “Madame, the fifth hat-pin of Mademoiselle Kimberley, the one, which it is in the hat hanging in the vestibule, it has the tip newly broken off.”

  “Oh misery, who will tell my husband!” cried Lady Hassocks, crumpling in her chair.

  Poiret raised her up.

  “Madame, perhaps, someone, he has used her hat-pin for the purpose, which is horrible.”

  “Oh, that is true, that is true. You are right.”

  Poiret during this conversation had not stopped to watch through the open doors of Lady Hassocks’s room and the dressing room the fatal door, whose brass bolt shone in the yellow light of the night-lamp.

  At last Poiret raised his finger in the air. Followed by Lady Hassocks, he advanced on tip-toe, as far as that was possible for a man with his bulk, to the threshold of the a
rms manufacturer’s room. Stephen Hassocks slept. They heard his heavy breath. Lady Hassocks was perhaps right in attributing the nightmares to the sleeping medicine prepared for him each night, because the glass from which he drank was still full. The bed was so placed that, whoever occupied it, even if they were wide awake, couldn’t see the door connecting to the servants’ staircase. The little table where the glass was placed and which had borne the dangerous vase, was near the bed, but a little back of it and nearer to the door. Nothing would have been easier than for someone to open the door, stretch an arm and place the bomb among the flowers. Easier still if he heard the heavy breathing of the arms manufacturer, telling him that he was fast asleep and if looking through the keyhole, he had made sure Lady Hassocks was in her own room.

  Poiret moved to one side, out of the line of view from the hat-pin hole. He moved slowly toward the door. He put his handkerchief on the floor and crouched down on his knees. With his head to the floor he made sure that the needle, which he had stuck in the floor against the door, was still erect. It was. The door had not been opened. He rose to his feet and slowly walked back into the dressing room.

  “Madame, please to go,” he said in a hushed voice, “and take your blanket into the corner of the dressing room, where you can see the door, but no one, he can see you by looking through the keyhole. Poiret, he will sit on the floor outside the door of the bedroom of Mr. Hassocks.”

  “Yes, but you will fall asleep. I don’t wish to leave the door where the eye is. Let me watch too.”

  Poiret didn’t insist and they crouched together on the floor. Poiret was squatted like a tailor at work on his handkerchief. Lady Hassocks stayed on all-fours, her jaw out, her eyes fixed, like a bulldog ready to attack. The minutes went by in deep silence, broken only by the irregular breathing of the arms manufacturer. The night-lamp on the mantelpiece made strange shadows from the corners of the furniture, from the gilded frame of a picture on the wall and from the items on the table. But all Lady Hassocks saw was the brass bolt which shone on the door. Tired of being on her knees, she shifted, her chin in her hands, her gaze fixed. As time went by and nothing happened she sighed. She couldn’t have said whether she hoped for or dreaded the coming of the attacker.

  As for Poiret, he hoped that nothing would come to pass until toward dawn, the moment, when deep sleep is most apt to vanquish all watchfulness. And as he waited for that moment he had not moved.

  Suddenly Lady Hassocks’s hand fell on Poiret’s. His hand imprisoned hers so firmly that she understood she was forbidden to make the least movement, because there had been a slight noise in the lock. A key turned softly in the lock. Then another little noise, a grinding sound, a slight grating of wire, first above, then on the bolt, which shone in the subdued glow of the night-lamp. The bolt softly, very softly, moved. Then the door was pushed slowly, so slowly. It opened.

  Through the opening an arm appeared, which held in its gloved fingers something which shone. Poiret felt Lady Hassocks was ready to explode. He feared hearing her suddenly scream. The arm stretched out, almost touching the pillow on the bed where the arms manufacturer continued to sleep a sleep of peace such as he had not known for a long time. The mysterious hand held a small medicine bottle and poured the entire contents into the glass containing the sleeping medicine. Then the hand withdrew as it had come, slowly, prudently, slyly and the key turned in the lock and the bolt moved back into place.

  Poiret implored Lady Hassocks to seize the glass with the deadly liquid. He himself moved fast, reached the hallway, moved towards the stairs, went down to the patio, crossed the drawing room like a flash and reached the little sitting room without having touched a single piece of furniture. He heard nothing, saw nothing.

  The first light of dawn filtered through the blinds. He was able to make out that the only closed door was the one to Kimberley’s room. He stopped before that door, his heart beating and listened. But no sound came to his ear. Perhaps the door would open. He waited. He walked to the window and pulled aside the curtain. The window was closed. The bar of iron inside was in its place. Then he went to the hallway, went up and down the narrow servants’ stairway, looked around in all the rooms, assuring himself that no lock had been tampered with. On his return, as he raised his head, he saw Lady Hassocks. She looked at Poiret with all the power of her eyes, as though she wished to discover his innermost thoughts, but Poiret shook his head. Lady Hassocks pointed her finger at Kimberley’s room.

  “You have not gone in there!” she said gravely.

  He replied, “It is not necessary to enter there, Madame.”

  “I will enter there, myself,” she said and grit her teeth.

  Poiret, however, barred her way with his arms spread out.

  “If you love someone,” he said, “please, not to go a step further.”

  “But the person is in that room. The person is there!”

  She waved him aside with a gesture as though she were sleepwalking. Poiret gripped her wrist in his hand.

  “The person, he is not there, perhaps,” he said, transpiration appearing on his forehead.

  But she didn’t understand him. She said, “Since the person is nowhere else, the person must be there.”

  But Poiret continued obstinately, “No, no. Perhaps he is gone.”

  “Gone! Everything is locked on the inside!”

  “That is not the good reason,” he replied, almost begging her to listen to him.

  But she couldn’t follow his thoughts any further. She wished to make her way into Kimberley’s room.

  “If you enter in there,” he said, “and if you do not find the person, whom you are looking for, you will suspect the person, who is there and all hope, it will be lost!”

  “Kimberley, why?”

  She sank in a heap on a chair.

  “Please, not to despair,” he murmured. “We do not know anything for certain.”

  She shook her head dejectedly.

  “We know that only she is here, since no one has been able to enter and since no one has been able to leave.”

  Her truth filled her brain and prevented her from understanding what Poiret meant to say. He demanded her keys.

  She said, “What do you want them for?”

  “To make the search outside as we have made the search inside.”

  “Why? Everything is locked on the inside!”

  “Madame, Poiret, he will tell to you once more, that is not the good reason that the person, he cannot be outside.”

  Poiret took five minutes to open the door of the patio, so many were his precautions. She watched him impatiently.

  He whispered to her, “Poiret, he is going out, but please not to lose sight of the little sitting room. If you see the movement, please to call Poiret.”

  He walked carefully into the garden with the same precautions for silence. From her chair, through the doors left open, Lady Hassocks could follow both the detective and watch Kimberley’s room at the same time. She watched him as if she thought him insane. The footman on guard out at the cottage also watched the rotund man, as though he thought him a fool. Poiret walked silently along the paths of beaten earth or cement, which offered no chance for footprints. He noted that the grass of the lawn had not been trodden. Then he seemed to lose all interest in footsteps. He looked attentively at the rosy color in the east, which foretold the dawning of a new day, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.

  Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and fixed, he took a few steps then suddenly stopped as if he had been given an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path. He walked along the path, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had up to the time he so suddenly stopped. He continually worked back toward the house. He walked along all the paths that led from the mansion, but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of vision from Kimberley�
�s window, a restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the building. To gather more information about this window he bowed as low as he could and walked along the foot of the wall, finding sufficient proof that no one had left that way. Then he rejoined Lady Hassocks on the patio.

  “No one, he has come into the garden this morning,” he said, “and no one, he has gone out of the mansion into the garden. Poiret, he will now go and look outside of the grounds. Please to wait here. Poiret, he will not take more than five minutes.”

  He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the cottage and waited. Carswell came out and opened the gate for him.

  Lady Hassocks moved to the threshold of the little sitting room and watched Kimberley’s door with horror. She felt her legs give under her. That arm reaching out, making its way with a little shining medicine bottle in its hand. What could there be in the books, which Kimberley and her friends read, that could justify such an abominable crime?

  “Ah, Kimberley, Kimberley!” she whispered.

  It was from her that she would have wished to hear the answer. Kimberley, whom she had loved so much! She sank to the floor, crept across the carpet to the door and lay there, stretched out. She buried her head in her arms while she wept over her daughter. What use that the little man had gone to search outside when the whole truth lay behind the door? She rose to her knees and worked her way over to the window that looked out over the road.

  Below her the consulting detective was going through the same incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in the garden. Three pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of the mansion. The little man, still with his hands behind his back and with his face up, took them one after the other. In the first he stopped at the first step. He didn’t take more than two steps in the second. In the third, which cut sideways toward the right, she saw him advance slowly at first then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree. He seemed to see something invisible. Then he continued along the road. He sat down on a stone and appeared to think. In front of him in the distance, surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles of the mansion, where Ian and Adam lived. From that mansion a person could see the window of the sitting room in Mr. Hassocks’s residence. A cab drove by filled with singing young men and young women. Lady Hassocks’s eyes searched for Poiret, but couldn’t see him anymore.