Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  There is the same high-bridged aquiline nose, the long sharp line of the jaw, the backward poise of the head. I think, too, that Harry inherited many of his father’s mannerisms…that habit, for instance, of throwing back his head and laughing, and another habit of drawing his finger along the line of his jaw. Bearing all these things in mind, and being convinced that the murder was committed by a person closely connected with the dead man, I studied the family from the psychological standpoint. That is, I tried to decide which of them were psychologically possible criminals And, in my judgment, only two persons qualified in that respect. They were Alfred Lee and Hilda Lee, David’s wife. David himself I rejected as a possible murderer. I do not think a person of his delicate susceptibilities could have faced the actual bloodshed of a cut throat. George Lee and his wife I likewise rejected. Whatever their desires, I did not think they had the temperament to take a risk. They were both essentially cautious. Mrs Alfred Lee I felt sure was quite incapable of an act of violence. She has too much irony in her nature. About Harry Lee I hesitated. He had a certain coarse truculence of aspect, but I was nearly sure that Harry Lee, in spite of his bluff and his bluster, was essentially a weakling. That, I now know, was also his father’s opinion. Harry, he said, was worth no more than the rest. That left me with two people I have already mentioned. Alfred Lee was a person capable of a great deal of selfless devotion.

  He was a man who had controlled and subordinated himself to the will of another for many years. It was always possible under these conditions for something to snap. Moreover, he might quite possibly have harboured a secret grudge against his father which might gradually have grown in force through never being expressed in any way. It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violence for the reason that when their control does snap, it does so entirely! The other person I considered was capable of the crime was Hilda Lee. She is the kind of individual who is capable, on occasions, of taking the law into her own hands—though never through selfish motives. Such people judge and also execute. Many Old Testament characters are of this type. Jael and Judith, for example.

  ‘And now having got so far I examined the circumstances of the crime itself. And the first thing that arises that strikes one in the face, as it were…is the extraordinary conditions under which that crime took place! Take your minds back to that room where Simeon Lee lay dead. If you remember, there was both a heavy table and a heavy chair overturned, a lamp, crockery, glasses, etc. But the chair and the table were especially surprising. They were of solid mahogany. It was hard to see how any struggle between that frail old man and his opponent could result in so much solid furniture being overturned and knocked down. The whole thing seemed unreal. And yet surely no one in their senses would stage such an effect if it had not really occurred…unless possibly Simeon Lee had been killed by a powerful man and the idea was to suggest that the assailant was a woman or somebody of weak physique.

  ‘But such an idea was unconvincing in the extreme, since the noise of the furniture would give the alarm and the murderer would thereby have very little time to make his exit. It would surely be to anyone’s advantage to cut Simeon Lee’s throat as quietly as possible.

  ‘Another extraordinary point was the turning of the key in the lock from the outside. Again, there seemed no reason for such a proceeding. It could not suggest suicide, since nothing in the death itself accorded with suicide. It was not to suggest escape through the windows, for those windows were so arranged that escape that way was impossible! Moreover, once again, it involved time. Time which must be precious to the murderer!

  ‘There was one other incomprehensible thing a piece of rubber cut from Simeon Lee’s spongebag and a small wooden peg shown to me by Superintendent Sugden. These had been picked up from the floor by one of the persons who first entered the room. There again—these things did not make sense! They meant exactly nothing at all! Yet they had been there. The crime, you perceive, is becoming increasingly incomprehensible. It has no order, no method enfin, it is not reasonable. And now we come to a further difficulty. Superintendent Sugden was sent for by the dead man; a robbery was reported to him, and he was asked to return an hour and a half later. Why? If it is because Simeon Lee suspected his granddaughter or some other member of the family, why does he not ask Superintendent Sugden to wait downstairs while he has his interview straight away with the suspected party? With the superintendent actually in the house, his lever over the guilty person would have been much stronger. So now we arrive at the point where not only the behaviour of the murderer is extraordinary, but the behaviour of Simeon Lee also is extraordinary! And I say to myself: “This thing is all wrong!” Why? Because we are looking at it from the wrong angle. We are looking at it from the angle that the murderer wants us to look at it …

  ‘We have three things that do not make sense: the struggle, the turned key, and the snip of rubber. But there must be some way of looking at those three things which would make sense! And I empty my mind blank and forget the circumstances of the crime and take these things on their own merits. I say a struggle. What does that suggest? Violence—breakage—noise…The key? Why does one turn a key? So that no one shall enter? But the key did not prevent that, since the door was broken down almost immediately. To keep someone in? To keep someone out? A snip of rubber? I say to myself: “A little piece of a spongebag is a little piece of a spongebag, and that is all!”

  ‘So you would say there is nothing there and yet that is not strictly true, for three impressions remain: noise seclusion blankness…

  ‘Do they fit with either of my two possibles? No, they do not. To both Alfred Lee and Hilda Lee a quiet murder would have been infinitely preferable, to have wasted time in locking the door from the outside is absurd, and the little piece of spongebag means yet once more nothing at all! And yet I have very strongly the feeling that there is nothing absurd about this crime that it is on the contrary, very well planned and admirably executed. That is has, in fact, succeeded! Therefore that everything that has happened was meant …And then, going over it again, I got my first glimmer of light…

  ‘Blood—so much blood—blood everywhere…An insistence on blood—fresh, wet, gleaming blood…So much blood—too much blood…‘And a second thought comes with that. This is a crime of blood —it is in the blood. It is Simeon Lee’s own blood that rises up against him …’ Hercule Poirot leaned forward.

  ‘The two most valuable clues in this case were uttered quite unconsciously by two different people. The first was when Mrs Alfred Lee quoted a line from Macbeth: “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” The other was a phrase uttered by Tressilian, the butler. He described how he felt dazed and things seemed to be happening that had happened before. It was a very simple occurrence that gave him that strange feeling. He heard a ring at the bell and went to open the door to Harry Lee, and the next day he did the same thing to Stephen Farr.

  ‘Now why did he have that feeling? Look at Harry Lee and Stephen Farr and you will see why. They are astoundingly alike! That was why opening the door to Stephen Farr was just like opening the door to Harry Lee . It might almost have been the same man standing there. And then, only today, Tressilian mentioned that he was always getting muddled between people. No wonder! Stephen Farr has a high-bridged nose, a habit of throwing his head back when he laughs, and a trick of stroking his jaw with his forefinger. Look long and earnestly at the portrait of Simeon Lee as a young man and you see not only Harry Lee, but Stephen Farr …’

  Stephen moved. His chair creaked. Poirot said: ‘Remember that outburst of Simeon Lee, his tirade against his family. He said, you remember it, that he would swear he had better sons born the wrong side of the blanket. We are back again at the character of Simeon Lee. Simeon Lee, who was successful with women and who broke his wife’s heart! Simeon Lee, who boasted to Pilar that he might have a bodyguard of sons almost the same age! So I came to this conclusion: Simeon Lee ha
d not only his legitimate family in the house, but an unacknowledged and unrecognized son of his own blood .’

  Stephen got to his feet. Poirot said: ‘That was your real reason, wasn’t it? Not that pretty romance of the girl you met in the train! You were coming here before you met her. Coming to see what kind of a man your father was …Stephen had gone dead white. He said, and his voice was broken and husky: ‘Yes, I’ve always wondered…Mother spoke about him sometimes. It grew into a kind of obsession with me…to see what he was like! I made a bit of money and I came to England. I wasn’t going to let him know who I was. I pretended to be old Eb’s son. I came here for one reason only…to see the man who was my father…Superintendent Sugden said in almost a whisper: ‘Lord, I’ve been blind…I can see it now. Twice I’ve taken you for Mr Harry Lee and then seen my mistake, and yet I never guessed!’

  He turned on Pilar. ‘That was it, wasn’t it? It was Stephen Farr you saw standing outside that door? You hesitated, I remember, and looked at him before you said it was a woman. It was Farr you saw, and you weren’t going to give him away.’

  There was a gentle rustle. Hilda Lee’s deep voice spoke:

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong. It was I whom Pilar saw…’

  Poirot said: ‘You, madame? Yes, I thought so…’

  Hilda said quietly: ‘Self-preservation is a curious thing. I wouldn’t believe I could be such a coward. To keep silence just because I was afraid!’

  Poirot said: ‘You will tell us now?’

  She nodded. ‘I was with David in the music-room. He was playing. He was in a very queer mood. I was a little frightened and I felt my responsibility very keenly because it was I who had insisted on coming here. David began to play the “Dead March”, and suddenly I made up my mind. However odd it might seem, I determined that we would both leave at once that night. I went quietly out of the music-room and upstairs. I meant to go to old Mr Lee and tell him quite plainly why we were going. I went along the corridor to his room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again a little louder. There was still no answer. Then I tried the door handle. The door was locked. And then, as I stood hesitating, I heard a sound inside the room’

  She stopped. ‘You won’t believe me, but it’s true! Someone was in there assaulting Mr Lee. I heard tables and chairs overturned and the crash of glass and china, and then I heard that one last horrible cry that died away to nothing…and then silence. I stood there paralysed! I couldn’t move! And then Mr Farr came running along and Magdalene and all the others and Mr Farr and Harry began to batter on the door. It went down and we saw the room and there was no one in it…except Mr Lee lying dead in all that blood.’ Her quiet voice rose higher. She cried: ‘There was no one else there no one, you understand! And no one had come out of the room …’

  VII

  Superintendent Sugden drew a deep breath. He said: ‘Either I’m going mad or everybody else is! What you’ve said, Mrs Lee, is just plumb impossible. It’s crazy!’

  Hilda Lee cried: ‘I tell you I heard them fighting in there, and I heard the old man scream when his throat was cut—and no one came out and no one was in the room!’

  Hercule Poirot said: ‘And all this time you have said nothing.’

  Hilda Lee’s face was white, but she said steadily: ‘No, because if I told you what had happened, there’s only one thing you could say or think—that it was I who killed him…’

  Poirot shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You did not kill him. His son killed him.’

  Stephen Farr said: ‘I swear before God I never touched him!’

  ‘Not you,’ said Poirot. ‘He had other sons!’

  Harry said: ‘What the hell—’

  George stared. David drew his hand across his eyes. Alfred blinked twice. Poirot said: ‘The very first night I was here…the night of the murder…I saw a ghost. It was the ghost of the dead man. When I first saw Harry Lee I was puzzled. I felt I had seen him before. Then I noted his features carefully and I realized how like his father he was, and I told myself that that was what caused the feeling of familiarity.

  ‘But yesterday a man sitting opposite me threw back his head and laughed…and I knew who it was Harry Lee reminded me of. And I traced again, in another face, the features of the dead man.

  ‘No wonder poor old Tressilian felt confused when he had answered the door not to two, but to three men who resembled each other closely. No wonder he confessed to getting muddled about people when there were three men in the house who, at a little distance, could pass for each other! The same build, the same gestures (one in particular, a trick of stroking the jaw), the same habit of laughing with the head thrown back, the same distinctive high-bridged nose. Yet the similarity was not always easy to see for the third man had a moustache.’

  He leaned forward. ‘One forgets sometimes that police officers are men, that they have wives and children, mothers’ he paused‘ and fathers …Remember Simeon Lee’s local reputation: a man who broke his wife’s heart because of his affairs with women. A son born the wrong side of the blanket may inherit many things. He may inherit his father’s features and even his gestures. He may inherit his pride and his patience and his revengeful spirit!’

  His voice rose. ‘All your life, Sugden, you’ve resented the wrong your father did you. I think you determined long ago to kill him. You come from the next county, not very far away. Doubtless your mother, with the money Simeon Lee so generously gave her, was able to find a husband who would stand father to her child. Easy for you to enter the Middleshire Police Force and wait your opportunity. A police superintendent has a grand opportunity of committing a murder and getting away with it.’ Sugden’s face had gone white as paper. He said: ‘You’re mad! I was outside the house when he was killed.’

  Poirot shook his head. ‘No, you killed him before you left the house the first time. No one saw him alive after you left. It was all so easy for you. Simeon Lee expected you, yes, but he never sent for you. It was you who rang him up and spoke vaguely about an attempt at robbery. You said you would call upon him just before eight that night and would pretend to be collecting for a police charity. Simeon Lee had no suspicions. He did not know you were his son. You came and told him a tale of substituted diamonds. He opened the safe to show you that the real diamonds were safe in his possession. You apologized, came back to the hearth with him and, catching him unawares, you cut his throat, holding your hand over his mouth so that he shouldn’t cry out. Child’s play to a man of your powerful physique.

  ‘Then you set the scene. You took the diamonds. You piled up tables and chairs, lamps and glasses, and twined a very thin rope or cord which you had brought in coiled round your body, in and out between them. You had with you a bottle of some freshly killed animal’s blood to which you had added a quantity of sodium citrate. You sprinkled this about freely and added more sodium citrate to the pool of blood which flowed from Simeon Lee’s wound. You made up, up the fire so that the body should keep its warmth. Then you passed the two ends of the cord out through the narrow slit at the bottom of the window and let them hang down the wall. You left the room and turned the key from the outside. That was vital, since no one must, by any chance, enter that room .

  ‘Then you went out and hid the diamonds in the stone sink garden. If, sooner or later, they were discovered there, they would only focus suspicion more strongly where you wanted it: on the members of Simeon Lee’s legitimate family. A little before nine-fifteen you returned and, going up to the wall underneath the window, you pulled on the cord. That dislodged the carefully piled-up structure you had arranged. Furniture and china fell with a crash. You pulled on one end of the cord and re-wound it round your body under your coat and waistcoat.

  ‘You had one further device!’

  He turned to the others.

  ‘Do you remember, all of you, how each of you described the dying scream of Mr Lee in a different way? You, Mr Lee, described it as the cry of a man in mortal agony. Your wife an
d David Lee both used the expression: a soul in hell. Mrs David Lee, on the contrary, said it was the cry of someone who had no soul. She said it was inhuman, like a beast. It was Harry Lee who came nearest to the truth. He said it sounded like killing a pig.

  ‘Do you know those long pink bladders that are sold at fairs with faces painted on them called “Dying Pigs”? As the air rushes out they give forth an inhuman wail. That, Sugden was your final touch. You arranged one of those in the room. The mouth of it was stopped up with a peg, but that peg was connected to the cord. When you pulled on the cord the peg came out and the pig began to deflate. On top of the falling furniture came the scream of the “Dying Pig”.’

  He turned once more to the others.

  ‘You see now what it was that Pilar Estravados picked up? The superintendent had hoped to get there in time to retrieve that little wisp of rubber before anyone noticed it. However, he took it from Pilar quickly enough in his most official manner. But remember he never mentioned that incident to anyone . In itself, that was a singularly suspicious fact. I heard of it from Magdalene Lee and tackled him about it. He was prepared for that eventuality. He had snipped a piece from Mr Lee’s rubber spongebag and produced that, together with a wooden peg. Superficially it answered to the same description—a fragment of rubber and a piece of wood. It meant, as I realized at the time, absolutely nothing! But, fool that I was, I did not at once say; “This means nothing, so it cannot have been there, and Superintendent Sugden is lying …” No, I foolishly went on trying to find an explanation for it. It was not until Mademoiselle Estravados was playing with a balloon that burst, and she cried out that it must have been a burst balloon she picked up in Simeon Lee’s room, that I saw the truth.