Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  “Yes.”

  “And at the time of the ptomaine poisoning, was he still away?”

  “No, they were both there.”

  “Curious” murmured Poirot. “Now, madame, who are the inmates of your establishment?”

  “Miss Saunders, the children’s governess, and John Gardiner, my husband’s secretary” Mrs Lemesurier paused, as though slightly embarrassed. “And who else, madame?”

  “Major Roger Lemesurier, whom you also met on that night, I believe, stays with us a good deal.”

  “Ah, yes-he is a cousin is he not?”

  “A distant cousin. He does not belong to our branch of the family. Still, I suppose now he is my husband’s nearest relative. He is a dear fellow, and we are all very fond of him. The boys are devoted to him.”

  “It was not he who taught them to climb up the ivy?”

  “It might have been. He incites them to mischief often enough.”

  “Madame, I apologize for what I said to you earlier. The danger is real, and I believe that I can be of assistance. I propose that you should invite us both to stay with you. Your husband will not object?”

  “Oh no. But he will believe it to be all of no use. It makes me furious the way he just sits around and expects the boy to die.”

  “Calm yourself, madame. Let us make our arrangements methodically.”

  Our arrangements were duly made, and the following day saw us flying northward. Poirot was sunk in a reverie. He came out of it, to remark abruptly: “It was from a train such as this that Vincent Lemesurier fell?” He put a slight accent on the ‘fell’.

  “You don’t suspect foul play there, surely?” I asked.

  “Has it struck you, Hastings, that some of the Lemesurier deaths were, shall we say, capable of being arranged? Take that of Vincent, for instance. Then the Eton boy-an accident with a gun is always ambiguous. Supposing this child had fallen from the nursery window and been dashed to death-what more natural and unsuspicious? But why only the one child, Hastings? Who profits by the death of the elder child? His younger brother, a child of seven! Absurd!”

  “They mean to do away with the other later” I suggested, though with the vaguest ideas as to who ‘they’ were. Poirot shook his head as though dissatisfied. “Ptomaine poisoning” he mused. “Atropine will produce much the same symptoms. Yes, there is need for our presence.”

  Mrs Lemesurier welcomed us enthusiastically. Then she took us to her husband’s study and left us with him. He had changed a good deal since I saw him last. His shoulders stooped more than ever, and his face had a curious pale grey tinge. He listened while Poirot explained our presence in the house.

  “How exactly like Sadie’s practical common sense!” he said at last. “Remain by all means, M. Poirot, and I thank you for coming; but-what is written, is written. The way of the transgressor is hard. We Lemesuriersknow -none of us can escape the doom.”

  Poirot mentioned the sawn-through ivy, but Hugo seemed very little impressed. “Doubtless some careless gardener-yes, yes, there may be an instrument, but the purpose behind is plain; and I will tell you this, M. Poirot, it cannot be long delayed.” Poirot looked at him attentively. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I myself am doomed. I went to a doctor last year. I am suffering from an incurable disease-the end cannot be much longer delayed; but before I die, Ronald will be taken. Gerald will inherit.”

  “And if anything were to happen to your second son also?”

  “Nothing will happen to him; he is not threatened.”

  “But if it did?” persisted Poirot.

  “My cousin Roger is the next heir.” We were interrupted. A tall man with a good figure and crispy curling auburn hair entered with a sheaf of papers. “Never mind about those now, Gardiner” said Hugo Lemesurier, then he added: “My secretary, Mr Gardiner.”

  The secretary bowed, uttered a few pleasant words and then went out. In spite of his good looks, there was something repellent about the man. I said so to Poirot shortly afterward when we were walking round the beautiful old grounds together, and rather to my surprise, he agreed.

  “Yes, yes, Hastings, you are right. I do not like him. He is too good-looking. He would be one for the soft job always. Ah, here are the children.”

  Mrs Lemesurier was advancing towards us, her two children beside her. They were fine-looking boys, the younger dark like his mother, the elder with auburn curls. They shook hands prettily enough, and were soon absolutely devoted to Poirot. We were next introduced to Miss Saunders, a nondescript female, who completed the party. For some days we had a pleasant, easy existence-ever vigilant, but without result. The boys led a happy normal life and nothing seemed to be amiss. On the fourth day after our arrival Major Roger Lemesurier came down to stay. He was little changed, still care-free and debonair as of old, with the same habit of treating all things lightly. He was evidently a great favourite with the boys, who greeted his arrival with shrieks of delight and immediately dragged him off to play wild Indians in the garden. I noticed that Poirot followed them unobtrusively.

  On the following day we were all invited to tea, boys included, with Lady Claygate, whose place adjoined that of the Lemesuriers. Mrs Lemesurier suggested that we also should come, but seemed rather relieved when Poirot refused and declared he would much prefer to remain at home. Once everyone had started, Poirot got to work. He reminded me of an intelligent terrier. I believe that there was no corner of the house that he left unsearched; yet it was all done so quietly and methodically that no attention was directed to his movements. Clearly, at the end, he remained unsatisfied. We had tea on the terrace with Miss Saunders, who had not been included in the party.

  “The boys will enjoy it” she murmured in her faded way, “though I hope they will behave nicely, and not damage the flower-beds, or go near the bees”

  Poirot paused in the very act of drinking. He looked like a man who has seen a ghost. “Bees?” he demanded in a voice of thunder.

  “Yes, M. Poirot, bees. Three hives. Lady Claygate is very proud of her bees”

  “Bees?” cried Poirot again. Then he sprang from the table and walked up and down the terrace with his hands to his head. I could not imagine why the little man should be so agitated at the mere mention of bees. At that moment we heard the car returning. Poirot was on the doorstep as the party alighted.

  “Ronald’s been stung” cried Gerald excitedly.

  “It’s nothing” said Mrs Lemesurier. “It hasn’t even swollen. We put ammonia on it.”

  “Let me see, my little man” said Poirot. “Where was it?”

  “Here, on the side of my neck” said Ronald importantly. “But it doesn’t hurt. Father said: “Keep still-there’s a bee on you.” And I kept still, and he took it off, but it stung me first, though it didn’t really hurt, only like a pin, and I didn’t cry, because I’m so big and going to school next year.”

  Poirot examined the child’s neck, then drew away again. He took me by the arm and murmured: “Tonight,mon ami, tonight we have a little affair on! Say nothing-to anyone.”

  He refused to be more communicative, and I went through the evening devoured by curiosity. He retired early and I followed his example. As we went upstairs, he caught me by the arm and delivered his instructions: “Do not undress. Wait a sufficient time, extinguish your light and join me here.”

  I obeyed, and found him waiting for me when the time came. He enjoined silence on me with a gesture, and we crept quietly along the nursery wing. Ronald occupied a small room of his own. We entered it and took up our position in the darkest corner. The child’s breathing sounded heavy and undisturbed.

  “Surely he is sleeping very heavily?” I whispered.

  Poirot nodded. “Drugged” he murmured.

  “Why?”

  “So that he should not cry out at”

  “At what?”’ I asked, as Poirot paused.

  “At the prick of the hypodermic needle, mon ami! Hush, let us speak no more-not that I expe
ct anything to happen for some time.” But in this Poirot was wrong. Hardly ten minutes had elapsed before the door opened softly, and someone entered the room. I heard a sound of quick hurried breathing. Footsteps moved to the bed, and then there was a sudden click. The light of a little electric lantern fell on the sleeping child-the holder of it was still invisible in the shadow. The figure laid down the lantern. With the right hand it brought forth a syringe; with the left it touched the boy’s neck. Poirot and I sprang at the same minute. The lantern rolled to the floor, and we struggled with the intruder in the dark. His strength was extraordinary. At last we overcame him. “The light, Hastings, I must see his face-though I fear I know only too well whose face it will be.”

  So did I, I thought as I groped for the lantern. For a moment I had suspected the secretary, egged on by my secret dislike of the man, but I felt assured by now that the man who stood to gain by the death of his two childish cousins was the monster we were tracking. My foot struck against the lantern. I picked it up and switched on the light. It shone full on the face of-Hugo Lemesurier, the boy’s father! The lantern almost dropped from my hand. ‘Impossible,’ I murmured hoarsely. “Impossible!” Lemesurier was unconscious. Poirot and I between us carried him to his room and laid him on the bed. Poirot bent and gently extricated something from his right hand. He showed it to me. It was a hypodermic syringe. I shuddered. “What is in it? Poison?”

  “Formic acid, I fancy.”

  “Formic acid?”

  “Yes. Probably obtained by distilling ants. He was a chemist, you remember. Death would have been attributed to the bee sting.”

  “My God” I muttered. “His own son! And you expected this?” Poirot nodded gravely. “Yes. He is insane, of course. I imagine that the family history has become a mania with him. His intense longing to succeed to the estate led him to commit the long series of crimes. Possibly the idea occurred to him first when travelling north that night with Vincent. He couldn’t bear the prediction to be falsified. Ronald’s son was already dead, and Ronald himself was a dying man-they are a weakly lot. He arranged the accident to the gun, and-which I did not suspect until now-contrived the death of his brother John by this same method of injecting formic acid into the jugular vein. His ambition was realized then, and he became the master of the family acres. But his triumph was short-lived-he found that he was suffering from an incurable disease. And he had the madman’s fixed idea-the eldest son of a Lemesurier could not inherit. I suspect that the bathing accident was due to him-he encouraged the child to go out too far. That failing, he sawed through the ivy, and afterwards poisoned the child’s food.”

  “Diabolical!” I murmured with a shiver. “And so cleverly planned!”

  “Yes,mon ami, there is nothing more amazing than the extraordinary sanity of the insane! Unless it is the extraordinary eccentricity of the sane! I imagine that it is only lately that he has completely gone over the borderline, there was method in his madness to begin with.”

  “And to think that I suspected Roger-that splendid fellow.”

  “It was the natural assumption,mon ami . We knew that he also travelled north with Vincent that night. We knew, too, that he was the next heir after Hugo and Hugo’s children. But our assumption was not borne out by the facts. The ivy was sawn through when only little Ronald was at home-but it would be to Roger’s interest that both children should perish. In the same way, it was only Ronald’s food that was poisoned. And today when they came home and I found that there was only his father’s word for it that Ronald had been stung, I remembered the other death from a wasp sting-and I knew!”

  Hugo Lemesurier died a few months later in the private asylum to which he was removed. His widow was remarried a year later to Mr John Gardiner, the auburn-haired secretary. Ronald inherited the broad acres of his father, and continues to flourish.

  “Well, well” I remarked to Poirot. “Another illusion gone. You have disposed very successfully of the curse of the Lemesuriers.”

  “I wonder” said Poirot very thoughtfully. “I wonder very much indeed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mon ami, I will answer you with one significant word-red!”

  “Blood?” I queried, dropping my voice to an awe-stricken whisper. “Always you have the imagination melodramatic, Hastings! I refer to something much more prosaic-the colour of little Ronald Lemesurier’s hair.”

  Problem At Sea

  BY

  AGATHA CHRISTIE

  Problem at Sea

  “Colonel Clapperton!” said General Forbes.

  He said it with an effect midway between a snort and a sniff. Miss Ellie Henderson leaned forward, a strand of her soft grey hair blowing across her face. Her eyes, dark and snapping, gleamed with a wicked pleasure. “Such a soldierly-looking man?” she said with malicious intent, and smoothed back the lock of hair to await the result.

  “Soldierly!” exploded General Forbes. He tugged at his military moustache and his face became bright red.

  “In the Guards, wasn't he?” murmured Miss Henderson, completing her work.

  “Guards? Guards? Pack of nonsense. Fellow was on the music hall stage! Fact! Joined up and was out in France counting tins of plum and apple. Huns dropped a stray bomb and he went home with a flesh wound in the arm. Somehow or other got into Lady Carrington's hospital.”

  “So that's how they met.”

  “Fact! Fellow played the wounded hero. Lady Carrington had no sense and oceans of money. Old Carrington had been in munitions. She'd been a widow only six months. This fellow snaps her up in no time. She wangled him a job at the War Office. Colonel Clapperton! Pah!” he snorted.

  “And before the war he was on the music hall stage” mused Miss Henderson, trying to reconcile the distinguished grey-haired Colonel Clapperton with a red-nosed comedian singing mirth-provoking songs. “Fact!” said General Forbes. “Heard it from old Basaingtonffrench. And he heard it from old Badger Cotterill who'd got it from Snooks Parker.” Miss Henderson nodded brightly. “That does seem to settle it!” she said.

  A fleeting smile showed for a minute on the face of a small man sitting near them. Miss Henderson noticed the smile. She was observant. It had shown appreciation of the irony underlying her last remark - irony which the General never for a moment suspected. The General himself did not notice the smiles. He glanced at his watch, rose and remarked: “Exercise. Got to keep oneself fit on a boat” and passed out through the open door on to the deck. Miss Henderson glanced at the man who had smiled. It was a well-bred glance indicating that she was ready to enter into conversation with a fellow traveller.

  “He is energetic - yes?” said the little man.

  “He goes round the deck forty-eight times exactly” said Miss Henderson. “What an old gossip! And they say we are the scandal-loving sex.”

  “What an impoliteness!”

  “Frenchmen are always polite” said Miss Henderson - there was the nuance of a question in her voice. The little man responded promptly. “Belgian, mademoiselle.”

  “Oh Belgian.”

  “Hercule Poirot. At your service.”

  The name aroused some memory. Surely she had heard it before? “Are you enjoying this trip, M. Poirot?”

  “Frankly, no. It was an imbecility to allow myself to be persuaded to come. I detest la sea. Never does it remain tranquil no, not for a little minute.”

  “Well, you admit it's quite calm now.” M. Poirot admitted this grudgingly. “fore ce moment, yes. That is why I revive. I once more interest myself in what passes around me - your very adept handling of the General Forbes, for instance.”

  “You mean” Miss Henderson paused. Hercule Poirot bowed. “Your methods of extracting the scandalous matter. Admirable?”

  Miss Henderson laughed in an unashamed manner. “That touch about the Guards? I knew that would bring the old boy up spluttering and gasping.” She leaned forward confidentially. “I admit I love scandal - the more ill-natured, the better!” Poirot look
ed thoughtfully at her - her slim well-preserved figure, her keen dark eyes, her grey hair; a woman of forty-five who was content to look her age. Ellie said abruptly: “I have it! Aren't you the great detective?” Poirot bowed. “You are too amiable, mademoiselle.” But he made no disclaimer.

  “How thrilling” said Miss Henderson. “Are you "hot on the trail" as they say in books? Have we a criminal secretly in our midst? Or am I being indiscreet?”

  “Not at all. Not at all. It pains me to disappoint your expectations, but I am simply here, like everyone else, to amuse myself.” He said it in such a gloomy voice that Miss Henderson laughed.

  “Oh! Well, you will be able to get ashore tomorrow at Alexandria. You have been to Egypt before?”

  “Never, mademoiselle.”

  Miss Henderson rose somewhat abruptly. “I think I shall join the General on his constitutional” she announced.

  Poirot sprang politely to his feet. She gave him a little nod and passed out on to the deck. A faint puzzled look showed for a moment in Poirot's eyes, then, a little smile creasing his lips, he rose, put his head through the door and glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man. Poirot's smile deepened. He drew himself back into the smoking-room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell. For the moment he had the smoking-room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long. It did not. Mrs Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed. She said: “John -? Oh! Good morning, M. Poirot - have you seen John?”

  “He's on the starboard deck, madame. Shall I?”

  She arrested him with a gesture. “I'll sit here a minute.” She sat down in a regal fashion in the chair opposite him. From the distance she had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine years, but a possible fifty-five. Her eyes were a hard pale blue with tiny pupils. “I was sorry not to have seen you at dinner last night” she said.