Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  The Turkish woman nodded with approbation and respect. She added that if only her cousin who spoke French really fluently was here they could understand each other a great deal better. She then resumed the story of her last miscarriage.

  The other passengers were sprawled about near them, eating odd bits of food from the baskets they carried with them. The bus, looking slightly the worse for wear, was drawn up against an overhanging rock, and the driver and another man were busy inside the bonnet. Mrs Upjohn had lost complete count of time. Floods had blocked two of the roads, détours had been necessary and they had once been stuck for seven hours until the river they were fording subsided. Ankara lay in the not impossible future and that was all she knew. She listened to her friend’s eager and incoherent conversation, trying to gauge when to nod admiringly, when to shake her head in sympathy. A voice cut into her thoughts, a voice highly incongruous with her present surroundings. ‘Mrs Upjohn, I believe,’ said the voice.

  Mrs Upjohn looked up. A little way away a car had driven up. The man standing opposite her had undoubtedly alighted from it. His face was unmistakably British, as was his voice. He was impeccably dressed in a grey flannel suit.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Mrs Upjohn. ‘Dr Livingstone?’

  ‘It must seem rather like that,’ said the stranger pleasantly. ‘My name’s Atkinson. I’m from the Consulate in Ankara. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for two or three days, but the roads have been cut.’

  ‘You wanted to get in touch with me? Why?’ Suddenly Mrs Upjohn rose to her feet. All traces of the gay traveller had disappeared. She was all mother, every inch of her. ‘Julia?’ she said sharply. ‘Has something happened to Julia?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mr Atkinson reassured her. ‘Julia’s quite all right. It’s not that at all. There’s been a spot of trouble at Meadowbank and we want to get you home there as soon as possible. I’ll drive you back to Ankara, and you can get on a plane in about an hour’s time.’

  Mrs Upjohn opened her mouth and then shut it again. Then she rose and said, ‘You’ll have to get my bag off the top of that bus. It’s the dark one.’ She turned, shook hands with her Turkish companion, said:

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to go home now,’ waved to the rest of the bus load with the utmost friendliness, called out a Turkish farewell greeting which was part of her small stock of Turkish, and prepared to follow Mr Atkinson immediately without asking any further questions. It occurred to him as it had occurred to many other people that Mrs Upjohn was a very sensible woman.

  Chapter 23

  Showdown

  In one of the smaller classrooms Miss Bulstrode looked at the assembled people. All the members of her staff were there: Miss Chadwick, Miss Johnson, Miss Rich and the two younger mistresses. Ann Shapland sat with her pad and pencil in case Miss Bulstrode wanted her to take notes. Beside Miss Bulstrode sat Inspector Kelsey and beyond him, Hercule Poirot. Adam Goodman sat in a no-man’s-land of his own halfway between the staff and what he called to himself the executive body. Miss Bulstrode rose and spoke in her practised, decisive voice.

  ‘I feel it is due to you all,’ she said, ‘as members of my staff, and interested in the fortunes of the school, to know exactly to what point this inquiry has progressed. I have been informed by Inspector Kelsey of several facts. M. Hercule Poirot who has international connections, has obtained valuable assistance from Switzerland and will report himself on that particular matter. We have not yet come to the end of the inquiry, I am sorry to say, but certain minor matters have been cleared up and I thought it would be a relief to you all to know how matters stand at the present moment.’ Miss Bulstrode looked towards Inspector Kelsey, and he rose.

  ‘Officially,’ he said, ‘I am not in a position to disclose all that I know. I can only reassure you to the extent of saying that we are making progress and we are beginning to have a good idea who is responsible for the three crimes that have been committed on the premises. Beyond that I will not go. My friend, M. Hercule Poirot, who is not bound by official secrecy and is at perfect liberty to give you his own ideas, will disclose to you certain information which he himself has been influential in procuring. I am sure you are all loyal to Meadowbank and to Miss Bulstrode and will keep to yourselves various matters upon which M. Poirot is going to touch and which are not of any public interest. The less gossip or speculation about them the better, so I will ask you to keep the facts that you will learn here today to yourselves. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Chadwick, speaking first and with emphasis. ‘Of course we’re all loyal to Meadowbank, I should hope.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Miss Johnson.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the two younger mistresses.

  ‘I agree,’ said Eileen Rich.

  ‘Then perhaps, M. Poirot?’

  Hercule Poirot rose to his feet, beamed on his audience and carefully twisted his moustaches. The two younger mistresses had a sudden desire to giggle, and looked away from each other pursing their lips together.

  ‘It has been a difficult and anxious time for you all,’ he said. ‘I want you to know first that I do appreciate that. It has naturally been worst of all for Miss Bulstrode herself, but you have all suffered.

  You have suffered first the loss of three of your colleagues, one of whom has been here for a considerable period of time. I refer to Miss Vansittart. Miss Springer and Mademoiselle Blanche were, of course, newcomers, but I do not doubt that their deaths were a great shock to you and a distressing happening. You must also have suffered a good deal of apprehension yourselves, for it must have seemed as though there were a kind of vendetta aimed against the mistresses of Meadowbank school. That I can assure you, and Inspector Kelsey will assure you also, is not so. Meadowbank by a fortuitous series of chances became the centre for the attentions of various undesirable interests. There has been, shall we say, a cat among the pigeons. There have been three murders here and also a kidnapping. I will deal first with the kidnapping, for all through this business the difficulty has been to clear out of the way extraneous matters which, though criminal in themselves, obscure the most important thread—the thread of a ruthless and determined killer in your midst.’

  He took from his pocket a photograph.

  ‘First, I will pass round this photograph.’

  Kelsey took it, handed it to Miss Bulstrode and she in turn handed it to the staff. It was returned to Poirot. He looked at their faces, which were quite blank.

  ‘I ask you, all of you, do you recognize the girl in that photograph?’

  One and all they shook their heads.

  ‘You should do so,’ said Poirot. ‘Since that is a photograph obtained by me from Geneva of Princess Shaista.’

  ‘But it’s not Shaista at all,’ cried Miss Chadwick.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Poirot. ‘The threads of all this business start in Ramat where, as you know, a revolutionary coup d’état took place about three months ago. The ruler, Prince Ali Yusuf, managed to escape, flown out by his own private pilot. Their plane, however, crashed in the mountains north of Ramat and was not discovered until later in the year. A certain article of great value, which was always carried on Prince Ali’s person, was missing. It was not found in the wreck and there were rumours that it had been brought to this country. Several groups of people were anxious to get hold of this very valuable article. One of their leads to it was Prince Ali Yusuf’s only remaining relation, his first cousin, a girl who was then at a school in Switzerland. It seemed likely that if the precious article had been safely got out of Ramat it would be brought to Princess Shaista or to her relatives and guardians. Certain agents were detailed to keep an eye on her uncle, the Emir Ibrahim, and others to keep an eye on the Princess herself.

  It was known that she was due to come to this school, Meadowbank, this term. Therefore it would have been only natural that someone should be detailed to obtain employment here and to keep a close watch on anyone who approached the Princess, her letters, and a
ny telephone messages. But an even simpler and more efficacious idea was evolved, that of kidnapping Shaista and sending one of their own number to the school as Princess Shaista herself. This could be done successfully since the Emir Ibrahim was in Egypt and did not propose to visit England until late summer. Miss Bulstrode herself had not seen the girl and all arrangements that she had made concerning her reception had been made with the Embassy in London.

  ‘The plan was simple in the extreme. The real Shaista left Switzerland accompanied by a representative from the Embassy in London. Or so it was supposed. Actually, the Embassy in London was informed that a representative from the Swiss school would accompany the girl to London. The real Shaista was taken to a very pleasant chalet in Switzerland where she has been ever since, and an entirely different girl arrived in London, was met there by a representative of the Embassy and subsequently brought to this school. This substitute, of course, was necessarily much older than the real Shaista. But that would hardly attract attention since Eastern girls noticeably look much more mature than their age. A young French actress who specializes in playing schoolgirl parts was the agent chosen.

  ‘I did ask,’ said Hercule Poirot, in a thoughtful voice, ‘as to whether anyone had noticed Shaista’s knees. Knees are a very good indication of age. The knees of a woman of twenty-three or twenty-four can never really be mistaken for the knees of a girl of fourteen or fifteen. Nobody, alas, had noticed her knees.

  ‘The plan was hardly as successful as had been hoped. Nobody attempted to get in touch with Shaista, no letters or telephone calls of significance arrived for her and as time went on an added anxiety arose. The Emir Ibrahim might arrive in England ahead of schedule. He was not a man who announced his plans ahead. He was in the habit, I understand, of saying one evening, “Tomorrow I go to London” and thereupon to go.

  ‘The false Shaista, then, was aware that at any moment someone who knew the real Shaista might arrive. Especially was this so after the murder and therefore she began to prepare the way for a kidnapping by talking about it to Inspector Kelsey. Of course, the actual kidnapping was nothing of the kind. As soon as she learned that her uncle was coming to take her out the following morning, she sent a brief message by telephone, and half an hour earlier than the genuine car, a showy car with false C.D. plates on it arrived and Shaista was officially “kidnapped”. Actually, of course, she was set down by the car in the first large town where she at once resumed her own personality. An amateurish ransom note was sent just to keep up the fiction.’

  Hercule Poirot paused, then said, ‘It was, as you can see, merely the trick of the conjurer. Misdirection.

  You focus the eyes on the kidnapping here and it does not occur to anyone that the kidnapping really occurred three weeks earlier in Switzerland.’

  What Poirot really meant, but was too polite to say, was that it had not occurred to anyone but himself! We pass now,’ he said, ‘to something far more serious than kidnapping—murder.

  ‘The false Shaista could, of course, have killed Miss Springer but she could not have killed Miss Vansittart or Mademoiselle Blanche, and would have had no motive to kill anybody, nor was such a thing required of her. Her role was simply to receive a valuable packet if, as seemed likely, it should be brought to her: or, alternatively, to receive news of it. ‘Let us go back now to Ramat where all this started. It was widely rumoured in Ramat that Prince Ali Yusuf had given this valuable packet to Bob Rawlinson, his private pilot, and that Bob Rawlinson had arranged for its despatch to England. On the day in question Rawlinson went to Ramat’s principal hotel where his sister, Mrs Sutcliffe, and her daughter Jennifer were staying. Mrs Sutcliffe and Jennifer were out, but Bob Rawlinson went up to their room where he remained for at least twenty minutes. That is rather a long time under the circumstances. He might of course have been writing a long letter to his sister. But that was not so. He merely left a short note which he could have scribbled in a couple of minutes.

  ‘It was a very fair inference then, inferred by several separate parties, that during his time in her room he had placed this object amongst his sister’s effects and that she had brought it back to England. Now we come to what I may call the dividing of two separate threads. One set of interests—(or possibly more than one set)—assumed that Mrs Sutcliffe had brought this article back to England and in consequence her house in the country was ransacked and a thorough search made. This showed that whoever was searching did not know where exactly the article was hidden . Only that it was probably somewhere in Mrs Sutcliffe’s possession.

  ‘But somebody else knew very definitely exactly where that article was, and I think that by now it will do no harm for me to tell you where, in fact, Bob Rawlinson did conceal it. He concealed it in the handle of a tennis racquet, hollowing out the handle and afterwards piecing it together again so skilfully that it was difficult to see what had been done.

  ‘The tennis racquet belonged, not to his sister, but to her daughter Jennifer. Someone who knew exactly where the cache was, went out to the Sports Pavilion one night, having previously taken an impression of the key and got a key cut. At that time of night everyone should have been in bed and asleep. But that was not so. Miss Springer saw the light of a torch in the Sports Pavilion from the house, and went out to investigate. She was a tough hefty young woman and had no doubts of her own ability to cope with anything she might find. The person in question was probably sorting through the tennis racquets to find the right one. Discovered and recognized by Miss Springer, there was no hesitation…The searcher was a killer, and shot Miss Springer dead. Afterwards, however, the killer had to act fast. The shot had been heard, people were approaching. At all costs the killer must get out of the Sports Pavilion unseen. The racquet must be left where it was for the moment…

  ‘Within a few days another method was tried. A strange woman with a faked American accent waylaid Jennifer Sutcliffe as she was coming from the tennis courts, and told her a plausible story about a relative of hers having sent her down a new tennis racquet. Jennifer unsuspiciously accepted this story and gladly exchanged the racquet she was carrying for the new, expensive one the stranger had brought. But a circumstance had arisen which the woman with the American accent knew nothing about. That was that a few days previously Jennifer Sutcliffe and Julia Upjohn had exchanged racquets so that what the strange woman took away with her was in actual fact Julia Upjohn’s old racquet, though the identifying tape on it bore Jennifer’s name.

  ‘We come now to the second tragedy. Miss Vansittart for some unknown reason, but possibly connected with the kidnapping of Shaista which had taken place that afternoon, took a torch and went out to the Sports Pavilion after everybody had gone to bed. Somebody who had followed her there struck her down with a cosh or a sandbag, as she was stooping down by Shaista’s locker. Again the crime was discovered almost immediately. Miss Chadwick saw a light in the Sports Pavilion and hurried out there.

  ‘The police once more took charge at the Sports Pavilion, and again the killer was debarred from searching and examining the tennis racquets there. But by now, Julia Upjohn, an intelligent child, had thought things over and had come to the logical conclusion that the racquet she possessed and which had originally belonged to Jennifer, was in some way important. She investigated on her own behalf, found that she was correct in her surmise, and brought the contents of the racquet to me.

  ‘These are now,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘in safe custody and need concern us here no longer.’ He paused and then went on, ‘It remains to consider the third tragedy.

  ‘What Mademoiselle Blanche knew or suspected we shall never know. She may have seen someone leaving the house on the night of Miss Springer’s murder. Whatever it was that she knew or suspected, she knew the identity of the murderer. And she kept that knowledge to herself. She planned to obtain money in return for her silence.

  ‘There is nothing,’ said Hercule Poirot, with feeling, ‘more dangerous than levying blackmail on a person who has killed p
erhaps twice already. Mademoiselle Blanche may have taken her own precautions but whatever they were, they were inadequate. She made an appointment with the murderer and she was killed.’

  He paused again.

  ‘So there,’ he said, looking round at them, ‘you have the account of this whole affair.’

  They were all staring at him. Their faces, which at first had reflected interest, surprise, excitement, seemed now frozen into a uniform calm. It was as though they were terrified to display any emotion.

  Hercule Poirot nodded at them.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know how you feel. It has come, has it not, very near home? That is why, you see, I and Inspector Kelsey and Mr Adam Goodman have been making the inquiries. We have to know, you see, if there is still a cat among the pigeons! You understand what I mean? Is there still someone here who is masquerading under false colours?’

  There was a slight ripple passing through those who listened to him, a brief almost furtive sidelong glance as though they wished to look at each other, but did not dare do so.

  ‘I am happy to reassure you,’ said Poirot. ‘All of you here at this moment are exactly who you say you are . Miss Chadwick, for instance, is Miss Chadwick—that is certainly not open to doubt, she has been here as long as Meadowbank itself! Miss Johnson, too, is unmistakably Miss Johnson. Miss Rich is Miss Rich. Miss Shapland is Miss Shapland. Miss Rowan and Miss Blake are Miss Rowan and Miss Blake. To go further,’ said Poirot, turning his head, ‘Adam Goodman who works here in the garden, is, if not precisely Adam Goodman, at any rate the person whose name is on his credentials. So then, where are we? We must seek not for someone masquerading as someone else, but for someone who is, in his or her proper identity, a murderer.’ The room was very still now. There was menace in the air.

  Poirot went on. ‘We want, primarily, someone who was in Ramat three months ago. Knowledge that the prize was concealed in the tennis racquet could only have been acquired in one way. Someone must have seen it put there by Bob Rawlinson. It is as simple as that. Who then, of all of you present here, was in Ramat three months ago? Miss Chadwick was here, Miss Johnson was here.’ His eyes went on to the two junior Mistresses. ‘Miss Rowan and Miss Blake were here.’