English Rose (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 13)

by Frank Howell Evans

  Thus muttered Poiret as he walked along the boulevard, not far from the mansion. She had fled after the poisoning and before the assassins arrived. Was the poison only the pretext for the arrival of the two false doctors? Kimberley, Kimberley, the living mystery surrounded by the veil of death!

  He took a cab to his hotel. The concierge, who knew he had a fondness for Roxy told him that he had seen the young lady in the company of several men and a young lady, who was crying.

  “Kimberley,” thought Poiret then said to the man, “Please to tell to Poiret if they are in the apartment of Mademoiselle Roxy.”

  The concierge told him that they had left the apartment and had driven away in an automobile. They had gone in the direction of the boulevard. Poiret paid him handsomely for his information and took a cab back to the boulevard. He stepped out of the cab and sat down to smoke a cigarette.

  “They have, how do you say, carried off Mademoiselle Kimberley,” he muttered in a surge of anguish. “Imbecile! It is all the fault of Poiret. They wished to avenge the death of Monsieur Adam, for which they hold Mademoiselle Kimberley responsible and they have now kidnapped her.”

  His eyes searched the water for a boat. Not a sail, nothing visible on the dead water! “What must Poiret do? What must Poiret do? He must save her.” He resumed his course along the boulevard. Who could give him any useful information?

  There where the sand slowly changed into cliffs, where there were almost no travelers, there he saw a small gas station. He went inside and asked the attendant, if he had noticed something that evening along the boulevard. Maybe two young women and a group of men in a car.

  “As a matter of fact, sir, I’ve been quite stumped by the doings and comings of a sailing yacht all afternoon. Men and women kept going to and fro in a small rowing boat.”

  The word was a ray of light for the detective, who remembered now the advice Secretary Bromley had given him. “Watch the boats on the boulevard and tell me then if you still believe Kimberley is innocent!” Bromley must have known when he said this that Kimberley had ties to the Communists, but evidently he was ignorant that she had gone with them under duress.

  “Please to tell to Poiret where the sailing boat, it is, Monsieur.”

  “It must be there somewhere. I haven’t taken much notice of it the last half hour, when the cars stopped coming.”

  “Cars, Monsieur?”

  “Aye, sir. They stopped here and went to the rowing boat, waiting for them on the shore.”

  “When was the last car here, Monsieur?”

  “About half an hour ago, it was. Two men dressed in long black coats went to the boat. The car drove off into town. I haven’t seen or heard anything since.”

  “Merci, Monsieur!” said Poiret, tipping his hat and left, leaving an angry tradesman behind, who had apparently spilled his guts to the prosperous looking foreigner for naught.

  Poiret looked at the water, at the horizon. He couldn’t see any yachts. He had to wait. He walked along the boulevard in the direction of the town center, until he was picked up by a cab. He asked to be taken to The Red Lion.

  Poiret felt tired as he took the few steps needed to enter the establishment. It was as usual almost filled with revelers. Poiret sat down at a table with a view of the boulevard and the Channel behind it. A young woman eagerly brought him a bottle of good wine and later his less than satisfactory meal. Poiret was quite ready enough to suffer to get to the bottom of this affair, but he didn’t wish to perish from hunger.

  His view couldn’t have been better and with his eyes now on the horizon, now on the boulevard, he began to eat with gloomy avidity. He was inclined to feel sorry for himself, to indulge in self-pity.

  “Two and two, it always makes four,” he said to himself, “but in this calculation perhaps Poiret, he has forgotten the improbable. Ah, there was the time when Poiret, he would not have overlooked anything. And even now he has not overlooked anything, if Kimberley, she is innocent!” He struck the table with his fist and said, “She is!”

  Just then the door opened. Poiret looked at it as the restaurant went quiet for a moment. It was Inspector Watkins.

  He rose, startled. He couldn’t imagine by what mystery the inspector had made his way there, but he rejoiced from the bottom of his heart, because he was trying to rescue Kimberley from the hands of the Communists. Poiret shook his hand enthusiastically.

  “Mon ami Watkins!” he said, joyfully. “Poiret, he had not expected to see you here in a million years.”

  “I’m here for the same thing as you.”

  “Monsieur,” exclaimed Poiret, “do you mean to say that you have come here to save Mademoiselle Kimberley?”

  “To save her? No, I come to capture her.”

  “To capture her?”

  “Mr. Poiret, a man has died. I have a very fine little jail cell that is all ready for her.”

  “You are going to throw Mademoiselle Kimberley into the jail cell! For what reasons?”

  “The reason is simple enough. Miss Kimberley Hassocks doesn’t deserve anybody’s pity. She’s the accomplice of the Communists and the instigator of all the crimes against her father.”

  “Poiret, he is sure that you are mistaken, Monsieur. But how have you been guided to her?”

  “Simply by you.”

  “By Poiret?”

  “Yes, we lost all trace of Kimberley. But, as you had disappeared also, I made up my mind that you could only be occupied in searching for her and that by finding you I would lay my hands on her.”

  “Miserable-moi!”

  The consulting detective bent his head, red with chagrin. The idea that he was responsible for the death of an innocent man and all the ills which had followed out of it had paralyzed his detective talents. He recognized it now. What was the use of struggling! If anyone had told him that he would be at the mercy of his emotions during a case one day, he, Poiret, he would have laughed heartily, then. But now, well, he wasn’t capable of anything further. Not only was Kimberley in the hands of the Communists through his fault, because of his horrible error, but worse yet, in the very moment when he wished to save her, he foolishly, naively, had conducted the police to the very spot where they should have been kept away. The once great detective Jules Poiret was utterly humiliated. Watkins pitied the little man.

  “Come, don’t blame yourself too much,” he said. “We would have found Kimberley without you. Bromley notified us that she was going be on a yacht this evening with Sergeant Demille.”

  “Mademoiselle Kimberley with Monsieur Demille!” exclaimed Poiret. “Mademoiselle Kimberley is with the man, who has introduced the two assassins into the house of her father! If she is with him, Monsieur, it is because she is his prisoner and that alone, it will be sufficient to prove her innocence.”

  Watkins swallowed a glass of sherry, poured another after it and finally deigned to talk.

  “Kimberley is the friend of these people and we will see them disembark from the yacht hand in hand.”

  “Non, Monsieur!” said Poiret standing up and striking the table with his hand. “That is not so.”

  “Oh, you have been hoodwinked. Can’t you see that Kimberley’s presence in the mansion had become quite too dangerous for that charming young woman after the poisoning of her father and stepmother failed? She arranged to get away and yet to appear innocent, kidnapped. It’s too simple.”

  Poiret sat down again.

  “There is the more simple explanation than the culpability of Mademoiselle Kimberley. Monsieur Demille, he has poured the poison into the bottle of sherry, saying to himself that if the poison, it does not succeed at least it will give him the chance to introduce his assassins into the house, dressed as the doctors.”

  Watkins seized Poiret’s wrist and looking into the depths of his eyes, threw some terrible words at him, “It wasn’t Demille, who poured the poison, because there was no poison in the bottle.”

  Poiret, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, m
ore startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling case.

  If there was no poison in the bottle, the poison must have been poured directly into the glasses by a person, who was in the gazebo! Now, there were only four persons in the gazebo, the two, who were poisoned and Kimberley and Poiret. And the gazebo was so perfectly isolated that it was impossible for any other person than the four, who were there to pour the poison.

  “Ce n’est pas possible!” he cried.

  “It’s so possible that it’s so. Dr. Hartman declared in an official statement that there is no poison in the bottle. There was no poison, either, in the small bottle you took to Dr. Hartman and into which you yourself had poured the contents of Kimberley’s glass and yours. No trace of poison except for in two of the four glasses. Arsenic was only found on the soiled napkins of Hassocks and his wife and in the two glasses they drank from.”

  “Mais, c’est horrible,” muttered the stupefied little man. “C’est horrible, for then the poisoner, he must be either Kimberley or Poiret.”

  “I have every confidence in you,” declared Watkins with a great laugh of satisfaction, striking him on the shoulder. “I won’t arrest you.”

  Poiret hadn’t a word more to say. He sat down again and let his head fall into his hands, like one sleep has seized.

  “Ah, our young women, my poor friend, you don’t know them. They are terrible, terrible!” said Watkins, lighting a cigar. “Much more terrible than the boys. In good families the boys still enjoy themselves, but the women, they read! It goes to their heads. They are ready for anything. They know neither father nor mother. Ah, you are French, you cannot understand them. Two lovely eyes, a melancholy smile, a soft, low voice and you are captured. You believe you have before you a simple, inoffensive, good little woman. Well, Poiret, here is what I will tell you about these so called English roses; our jails are filled with them and the graveyards are filled with their victims.”

  A man entered and walked to their table. Poiret recognized him as a policeman in plain clothes. There were some rapid words between the inspector and the agent. Then the agent left. Watkins, as he pushed aside the table that was near the window, said to the detective, “You had better come closer to the window. My man has just told me the yacht is coming near. You can watch an interesting sight. We are sure that Kimberley is still aboard. The yacht, after the assassins disappeared from the mansion, took up two men and since then it has simply sailed back and forth in the Channel. We have taken our precautions. It’s here they are going to try to disembark. You’ll see.”

  Watkins was at his post of observation. Morning slowly dawned. The sky was growing grayish, a tint that blended with the slate-colored sea. To those on the boulevard, the sight and sound of policemen preparing an arrest was an unwelcome interruption of their holiday. There was a sail far out. From the sea the buildings along the boulevard entirely hid anyone, who lay in ambush behind them. The consulting detective watched the policemen scatter and hide, some on their stomachs crawling through the sand in search of a hiding place closer to the water. In Poiret’s line of sight was the white sail, looming much larger now. The yacht was heeled in the water and glided with elegance, heading straight on. Suddenly, just when they supposed she was coming straight to shore, the sails fell and a dinghy was dropped over the side. Four men stepped into it. Then a woman jumped lightly down a little gangway into the dinghy. It was Kimberley Hassocks. Watkins had no difficulty in recognizing her through his binoculars.

  “Ah, my dear Poiret,” he said, “see your prisoner. Notice how she’s bound. The ropes certainly are causing her great pain. These Communists surely are brutes!”

  The truth was that Kimberley had gone quite readily to the rudder and while the others rowed she steered the light boat to a place on the beach directly in front of The Red Lion. Soon the prow of the dinghy touched the sand. There were only a few early risers on the beach, mostly old men and women holding on to each other, taking their morning constitutional. The men in the dinghy, who stood up looking around, seemed to reach this conclusion. They jumped out and then it was Kimberley’s turn. She accepted the hand held out to her, talking pleasantly with the men all the time. She even turned to press the hand of one of them. The group came up across the beach. All this time the watchers in the restaurant could see the policemen, who were hiding, holding themselves ready to spring.

  From his vantage point, Watkins couldn’t restrain an exclamation of triumph. Poiret hardly breathed as he watched the outcome. The group of Communists, who strolled behind Kimberley, stopped to confer. In three, maybe two minutes, they would be surrounded, cut off, fallen in the trap. Suddenly a whistle sounded in the night and the group, with startled speed, turned in their tracks and ran for the sea, while from all directions policemen poured onto the beach, screaming after the fugitives. But the cries became cries of rage, because the group of Communists reached their dinghy. Poiret saw Kimberley fall. One of the Communists looked back, but the policemen were too near. She made him go and seeing that she was going to be taken, she stood up and waited for the policemen stoically, with folded arms. Meanwhile, her companions succeeded in throwing themselves into the dinghy and plied the oars hard while Watkins’s men, in the water up to their chests, could do nothing but swim back ashore. The yacht had sails up by the time the rowing boat drew alongside and made off like a bird toward the sea.

  Meantime, Watkins’s agents, flustered, gathered at The Red Lion. The inspector let his fury loose on them and doubly on the man, who had blown the whistle too soon. The capture of Kimberley was little comfort. He had planned for the whole bag and his men’s stupidity had cost him dearly. Kimberley, standing in a corner of the restaurant, with her face remarkably calm, watched this extraordinary scene that was like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become a wild beast. From another corner, Poiret kept his eyes fixed on Kimberley, who ignored him.

  “Ah, that woman, sphinx to all!” he mused.

  Even to him, who thought a while ago that he could read things in her eyes, which were invisible to other less refined men! The impassive face of that woman, whose father they had tried to assassinate only a few hours before and who had just parted ways with the assassins, once she turned it slightly toward Poiret, the consulting detective looked back towards her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he wished to say, “Surely, Mademoiselle Kimberley, you are not the accomplice of the assassins of your father. Surely it was not you, who poured the poison!”

  But Kimberley’s glance coldly passed over the little man. That mysterious, cold mask, the mouth with its bitter, impudent smile, an atrocious smile which seemed to say to the detective, “If it’s not I, who poured the poison, then it’s you! Why not take the blame on you, my dear!”

  It was the face of one of the young women of whom Watkins had spoken of a little while before, the young women, who read and their reading done, set themselves to accomplish something, sometimes a terrible thing.

  Finally, Watkins’s anger wore itself out and he gave them a sign. The men took Kimberley by the arm and left. They put her in a police car, which sped away in the direction of the police station.

  Watkins prepared to leave in turn. Poiret stopped him.

  “Mon ami, Poiret, he will not help you convict her.”

  With this, the total abandonment of his vows to seek truth and justice, the little man left The Red Lion, emptied of all that had sustained him for the past decades of his life. He left slowly, leaning heavily on his cane as if he had aged considerably during only the last hour.

  At the hotel the clerk handed Poiret a note from Secretary Bromley, “Don’t forget this time to come tomorrow to have lunch with me. Warmest regards from me and Mrs. Bromley.” Then a horrible, sleepless night, filled with echoes and ghosts; of Dr. Hartman, stretching out toward Poiret a small medicine bottle filled with poison and saying, “Either Kimberley or you,” of Adam Ashby pronouncing his innocence, of Kimberley begging him for help.

>   In the morning Poiret received an unsigned note. He was invited to lunch. It simply asked Mr. Jules Poiret to see him, before he left for France.

  “Aha,” said Poiret to himself. “You wish to pronounce the expulsion of Poiret from England!”

  Once more he passed over the Bromley invitation. The meeting place named was the Avalon.

  Poiret entered it promptly at noon. He gave the maître d his name. A waiter conducted him to the huge main hall, where, however, there was only one person. This man, standing before a table spread with fine foods, was stuffing himself. At the sound of Poiret’s step on the floor this sole famished patron turned and lifted his hands to heaven as he recognized the detective. The latter would have given all the shillings in his pocket to have avoided the recognition. But he was already face to face with the High Court judge so celebrated for his drinking, the amiable John Colliver, dressed in a suit only Poiret could estimate the cost of, wearing shoes only Poiret would be willing to spend an equal amount on to possess.

  “How goes it, little friend?”

  “Monsieur!”

  “I can see you are doing well again. Very well! There is nothing the matter, anyway. In a week we shall have forgotten it, what you, my dear fellow?”

  “This histoire, it is not yet finished.”

  “Eh! Don’t you think anything more about that! It’s nothing. You have come here to dine! A very celebrated house, this. Alright!”

  He busied himself to do the honors. One would have thought the restaurant belonged to him. He boasted of its architecture and the French cuisine.

  “Do you know,” he inquired confidently, “a finer restaurant anywhere in the world?”

  In fact, it seemed to Poiret as he looked up into the high glass arch that he was in a railway station decorated for some illustrious traveler, because there were flowers everywhere. But the visitor, whom the restaurant awaited, was the typical tourist, the ogre, who never failed to come to eat at the Avalon. John Colliver pointed out the lines of tables shining with their white cloths and bright silver.