Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  The following evening, at dinner, every passenger found a typewritten slip by his plate requesting him to be in the main lounge at 8.30. When the company were assembled, the Captain stepped on to the raised platform where the orchestra usually played and addressed them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you all know of the tragedy which took place yesterday. I am sure you all wish to co-operate in bringing the perpetrator of that foul crime to justice.”

  He paused and cleared his throat. “We have on board with us M. Hercule Poirot who is probably known to you all as a man who has had wide experience in - er - such matters. I hope you will listen carefully to what he has to say.”

  It was at this minute that Colonel Clapperton, who had not been at dinner, came in and sat down next to General Forbes. He looked like a man bewildered by sorrow - not at all like a man conscious of great relief. Either he was a very good actor or else he had been genuinely fond of his disagreeable wife.

  “M. Hercule Poirot” said the Captain and stepped down. Poirot took his place. He looked comically self-important as he beamed on his audience. “Messieurs, Mesdames” he began. “It is most kind of you to be so indulgent as to listen to me. M. le Capitaine has told you that I have had a certain experience in these matters. I have, it is true, a little idea of my own about how to get to the bottom of this particular case.' He made a sign and a steward pushed forward and passed on to him a bulky, shapeless object wrapped in a sheet. What I am about to do may surprise you a little” Poirot warned them. “It may occur to you that I am eccentric, perhaps mad. Nevertheless I assure you that behind my madness there is - as you English say - a method.”

  His eyes met those of Miss Henderson for just a minute. He began unwrapping the bulky object. “I have here, mesdeurs and mesdames, an important witness to the truth of who killed Mrs Clapperton.” With a deft hand he whisked away the last enveloping cloth, and the object it concealed was revealed - an almost life-sized wooden doll, dressed in a velvet suit and lace collar.

  “Now, Arthur” said Poirot and his voice changed subtly - it was no longer foreign - it had instead a confident English, a slightly Cockney inflection. “Can you tell me - I repeat - can you tell me - anything at all about the death of Mrs Clapperton?”

  The doll's neck oscillated a little, its wooden lower jaw dropped and wavered and a shrill high-pitched woman's voice spoke: “What is it, John? The door's locked. I don't want to be disturbed by the stewards…” There was a cry - an overturned chair - a man stood swaying, his hand to his throat - trying to speak - trying… Then suddenly, his figure seemed to crumple up. He pitched headlong. It was Colonel Clapperton. Poirot and the ship's doctor rose from their knees by the prostrate figure. “All over, I'm afraid. Heart” said the doctor briefly. Poirot nodded. “The shock of having his trick seen through” he said. He turned to General Forbes. “It was you, General, who gave me a valuable hint with your mention of the music hall stage. I puzzle - I think - and then it comes to me. Supposing that before the war Clapperton was a ventriloquist. In that case, it would be perfectly possible for three people to hear Mrs Clapperton speak from inside her cabin when she was already dead…”

  Ellie Henderson was beside him. Her eyes were dark and full of pain. “Did you know his heart was weak?” she asked.

  “I guessed it… Mrs Clapperton talked of her own heart being affected, but she struck me as the type of woman who likes to be thought ill. Then I picked up a torn prescription with a very strong dose of digitalin in it. Digitalin is a heart medicine but it couldn't be Mrs Clapperton's because digitalin dilates the pupils of the eyes. I had never noticed such a phenomenon with her but when I looked at his eyes I saw the signs at once.”

  Ellie murmured: “So you thought - it might end - this way?” “The best way, don't you think, mademoiselle?” he said gently.

  He saw the tears rise in her eyes. She said: “You've known. You've known all along… That I cared… But he didn't do it for me… It was those girls - youth - it made him feel his slavery. He wanted to be free before it was too late… Yes, I'm sure that's how it was ·… When did you guess - that it was him?”

  “His self-control was too perfect” said Poirot simply. “No matter how galling his wife's conduct, it never seemed to touch him. That meant either that he was so used to it that it no longer stung him, or else - eh bien - I decided on the latter alternative… And I was right…And then there was his insistence on his conjuring ability - the evening before the crime he pretended to give himself away. But a man like Clapperton doesn't give himself away. There must be a reason. So long as people thought he had been a conjuror they weren't likely to think of his having been a ventriloquist.”

  “And the voice we heard - Mrs Clapperton's voice?”

  “One of the stewardesses had a voice not unlike hers. I induced her to hide behind the stage and taught her the words to say.”

  “It was a trick - a cruel trick” cried out Ellie.

  “I do not approve of murder” said Hercule Poirot.

  The Cornish Mystery

  BY

  AGATHA CHRISTIE

  The Cornish Mystery............

  “Mrs Pengelley” announced our landlady, and withdrew discreetly. Many unlikely people came to consult Poirot, but to my mind, the woman who stood nervously just inside the door, fingering her feather neck-piece, was the most unlikely of all. She was so extraordinarily commonplace - a thin, faded woman of about fifty, dressed in a braided coat and skirt, some gold jewellery at her neck, and with her grey hair surmounted by a singularly unbecoming hat. In a country town, you pass a hundred Mrs Pengelleys in the street every day. Poirot came forward and greeted her pleasantly, perceiving her obvious embarrassment. “Madame! Take a chair, I beg of you. My colleague, Captain Hastings.”

  The lady sat down, murmuring uncertainly: “You are M. Poirot, the detective?”

  “At your service, madame.” But our guest was still tongue-tied. She sighed, twisted her fingers, and grew steadily redder and redder.

  “There is something I can do for you, eh, madame?”

  “Well, I thought - that is - you see”

  “Proceed, madame, I beg of you - proceed.” Mrs Pengelley, thus encouraged, took a grip on herself. “It's this way, M. Poirot - I don't want to have anything to do with the police. No, I wouldn't go to the police for anything! But all the same, I'm sorely troubled about something. And yet I don't know if I ought” She stopped abruptly.

  “Then, I have nothing to do with the police. My investigations are strictly private.” Mrs Pengelley caught at the word. “Private - that's what I want. I don't want any talk or fuss, or things in the papers. Wicked it is, the way they write things, until the family could never hold up their heads again. And it isn't as though I was even sure - it's just a dreadful idea that's come to me, and put it out of my head I can't.” She paused for breath. “And all the time I may be wickedly wronging poor Edward. It's a terrible thought for any wife to have. But you do read of such dreadful things nowadays.”

  “Permit me - it is of your husband you speak?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you suspect him of- what?”

  “I don't like even to say it, M. Poirot. But you do read of such things happening - and the poor souls suspecting nothing.”

  I was beginning to despair of the lady's ever coming to the point, but Poirot's patience was equal to the demand made upon it. “Speak without fear, madame. Think what joy will be yours if we are able to prove your suspicions unfounded.”

  “That's true - anything's better than this wearing uncertainty. Oh, M. Poirot, I'm dreadfully afraid I'm being poisoned.”

  “What makes you think so?” Mrs Pengelley, her reticence leaving her, plunged into a full recital more suited to the ears of her medical attendant.

  “Pain and sickness after food, eh?” said Poirot thoughtfully. “You have a doctor attending you, madame? What does he say?”

  “He says it's acute gastritis, M. Poirot. But I can see tha
t he's puzzled and uneasy, and he's always altering the medicine, but nothing does any good.”

  “You have spoken of your - fears, to him?”

  “No, indeed, M. Poirot. It might get about in the town. And perhaps it is gastritis. All the same, it's very odd that whenever Edward is away for the weekend, I'm quite all right again. Even Freda noticed that - my niece, M. Poirot. And then there's that bottle of weed-killer, never used, the gardener says, and yet it's half-empty.” She looked appealingly at Poirot. He smiled reassuringly at her, and reached for a pencil and notebook. “Let us be businesslike, madame. Now, then, you and your husband reside - where?”

  “Polgarwith, a small market town in Cornwall.”

  “You have lived there long?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  “And your household consists of you and your husband. Any children?”

  “NO”

  “But a niece, I think you said?”

  “Yes, Freda Stanton, the child of my husband's only sister. She has lived with us for the last eight years - that is, until a week go.”

  “Oho, and what happened a week ago?”

  “Things hadn't been very pleasant for some time; I don't know what had come over Freda. She was so rude and impertinent, and her temper something shocking, and in the end she flared up one day, and out she walked and took rooms of her own in the town. I've not seen her since. Better leave her to come to her senses, so Mr Radnor says.”

  “Who is Mr Radnor?” Some of Mrs Pengelley's initial embarrassment returned. “Oh, he's - he's just a friend. Very pleasant young fellow.”

  “Anything between him and your niece?”

  “Nothing whatever” said Mrs Pengelley emphatically.

  Poirot shifted his ground. “You and your husband are, I presume, in comfortable circumstances?”

  “Yes, we're very nicely off.”

  “The money, is it yours or your husband's?”

  “Oh, it's all Edward's. I've nothing of my own.”

  “You see, madame, to be business like, we must be brutal. We must seek for a motive. Your husband, he would not poison you just pour passere le temps. Do you know of any reason why he should wish you out of the way?”

  “There's the yellow-haired hussy who works for him” said Mrs Pengelley, with a flash of temper.

  “My husband's a dentist, M. Poirot, and nothing would do but he must have a smart girl, as he said, with bobbed hair and a white overall, to make his appointments and mix his fillings for him. It's come to my ears that there have been fine goings-on, though of course he swears it's all right.”

  “This bottle of weed-killer, madame, who ordered it?”

  “My husband - about a year ago.”

  “Your niece, now, has she any money of her own?”

  “About fifty pounds a year, I should say. She'd be glad enough to come back and keep house for Edward if I left him.”

  “You have contemplated leaving him, then?”

  “'I don't intend to let him have it all his own way. Women aren't the downtrodden slaves they were in old days, M. Poirot.”

  “I congratulate you on your independent spirit, madame; but let us be practical. You return to Polgarwith today?”

  “Yes, I came up by an excursion. Six this morning the train started, and the train goes back at five this afternoon.”

  “Bien! I have nothing of great moment on hand. I can devote myself to your little affair. Tomorrow I shall be in Polgarwith. Shall we say that Hastings, here, is a distant relative of yours, the son of your second cousin? Me, I am his eccentric foreign friend. In the meantime, eat only what is prepared by your own hands, or under your eye. You have a maid whom you trust?”

  “'Jessie is a very good girl, I am sure.”

  “Till tomorrow then, madame, and be of good courage.” Poirot bowed the lady out, and returned thoughtfully to his chair. His absorption was not so great, however, that he failed to see two minute strands of feather scarf wrenched off by the lady's agitated fingers. He collected them carefully and consigned them to the wastepaper basket.

  “What do you make of the case, Hastings?”

  “A nasty business, I should say.”

  “Yes, if what the lady suspects be true. But is it? Woe betide any husband who orders a bottle of weed-killer nowadays. If his wife suffers from gastritis, and is inclined to be of a hysterical temperament, the fat is in the fire.”

  “You think that is all there is to it?”

  “Ah - void - I do not know, Hastings. But the case interests me - it interests me enormously. For, see you, it has positively no new features. Hence the hysterical theory, and yet Mrs Pengelley did not strike me as being a hysterical woman. Yes, if I mistake not, we have here a very poignant human drama. Tell me, Hastings, what do you consider Mrs Pengelley's feelings towards her husband to be?”

  “Loyalty struggling with fear” I suggested.

  “Yet, ordinarily, a woman will accuse anyone in the world - but not her husband. She will stick to her belief in him through thick and thin.”

  “The "other woman" complicates the matter.”

  “Yes, affection may turn to hate, under the stimulus of jealousy. But hate would take her to the police - not to me. She would want an outcry - a scandal. No, no, let us exercise our little grey cells. Why did she come to me? To have her suspicions proved wrong? Or - to have them proved right? Ah, we have here something I do not understand - an unknown factor. Is she a superb actress, our Mrs Pengelley? No, she was genuine, I would swear that she was genuine, and therefore I am interested. Look up the train to Polgarwith, I pray you.”

  The best train of the day was the one-fifty from Paddington which reached Polgarwith just after seven o'clock. The journey was uneventful, and I had to rouse myself from a pleasant nap to alight upon the platform of the bleak little station. We took our bags to the Duchy Hotel, and after a light meal, Poirot suggested our stepping round to pay an after-dinner call on my so-called cousin. The Pengelleys' house stood a little way back from the road with an old-fashioned cottage garden in front. The smell of stocks and mignonette came sweetly wafted on the evening breeze. It seemed impossible to associate thoughts of violence with this Old World charm. Poirot rang and knocked. As the summons was not answered, he rang again. This time, after a little pause, the door was opened by a dishevelled-looking servant. Her eyes were red, and she was sniffing violently.

  “We wish to see Mrs Pengelley” explained Poirot. “May we enter?”

  The maid stared. Then, with unusual directness, she answered: “Haven't you heard, then? She's dead. Died this evening - about half an hour ago.” We stood staring at her, stunned. “What did she die of?” I asked at last.

  “There's some as could tell.” She gave a quick glance over her shoulder. “If it wasn't that somebody ought to be in the house with the missus, I'd pack my box and go tonight. But I'll not leave her dead with no one to watch by her. It's not my place to say anything, and I'm not going to say anything - but everybody knows. It's all over the town. And if Mr Radnor don't write to the 'Home Secretary, someone else will. The doctor may say what he likes. Didn't I see the master with my own eyes a-lifting down of the weed-killer from the shelf this very evening? And didn't he jump when he turned round and saw me watching of him? And the missus' gruel there on the table, all ready to take to her? Not another bit of food passes my lips while I am in this house! Not if I dies for it.”

  “Where does the doctor live who attended your mistress?”

  “Dr Adams. Round the corner there in High Street. The second house.” Poirot turned away abruptly. He was very pale.

  “For a girl who was not going to say anything, that girl said a lot” I remarked dryly.

  Poirot struck his clenched hand into his palm. “An imbecile, a criminal imbecile, that is what I have been, Hastings. I have boasted of my little grey cells, and now I have lost a human life, a life that came to me to be saved. Never did I dream that anything would happen so soon. May the good God forgive
me, but I never believed anything would happen at all. Her story seemed to me artificial. Here we are at the doctor's. Let us see what he can tell us.”

  Dr Adams was the typical genial red-faced country doctor of fiction. He received us politely enough, but at a hint of our errand, his red face became purple. “Damned nonsense! Damned nonsense, every word of it! Wasn't I in attendance on the case? Gastritis - gastritis pure and simple. This town's a hotbed of gossip - a lot of scandal-mongering old women get together and invent God knows what. They read these scurrilous rags of newspapers, and nothing will suit them but that someone in their town shall get poisoned too. They see a bottle of weed-killer on a shelf - and hey presto! - away goes their imagination with the bit between its teeth. I know Edward Pengelley - he wouldn't poison his grandmother's dog. And why should he poison his wife? Tell me that?”

  “There is one thing, M. le Docteur, that perhaps you do not know.” And, very briefly, Poirot outlined the main facts of Mrs Pengelley's visit to him. No one could have been more astonished than Dr Adams. His eyes almost started out of his head. “God bless my soul!” he ejaculated. “The poor woman must have been mad. Why didn't she speak to me? That was the proper thing to do.”

  “And have her fears ridiculed?”

  “Not at all, not at all. I hope I've got an open mind.” Poirot looked at him and smiled. The physician was evidently more perturbed than he cared to admit. As we left the house, Poirot broke into a laugh. “He is as obstinate as a pig, that one. He has said it is gastritis; therefore it is gastritis! All the same, he has the mind uneasy.”

  “What's our next step?”

  “A return to the inn, and a night of horror upon one of your English provincial beds, mon ami. It is a thing to make pity, the cheap English bed!”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Rich d faire. We must return to town and await developments.”