by Mark Place
Hercule Poirot said quietly: ‘Granting that your ideas are correct—what will happen next?’ Mr Barnes rubbed his nose.
‘They’ll try to get him again,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes. They’ll have another try. Time’s short. Blunt has got people looking after him, I dare say. They’ll have to be extra careful. It won’t be a man hiding in a bush with a pistol. Nothing so crude as that. You tell ’em to look out for the respectable people—the relations, the old servants, the chemist’s assistant who makes up a medicine, the wine merchant who sells him his port. Getting Alistair Blunt out of the way is worth a great many millions, and it’s wonderful what people will do for—say a nice little income of four thousand a year!’
‘As much as that?’
‘Possibly more…’
Poirot was silent a moment, then he said: ‘I have had Reilly in mind from the first.’
‘Irish? I.R.A.?’
‘Not that so much, but there was a mark, you see, on the carpet, as though the body had been dragged along it. But if Morley had been shot by a patient he would be shot in the surgery and there would be no need to move the body. That is why, from the first, I suspected that he had been shot, not in the surgery, but in his office—next door. That would mean that it was not a patient who shot him, but some member of his own household.’
‘Neat,’ said Mr Barnes appreciatively.
Hercule Poirot got up and held out a hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have helped me a great deal.’
IV
On his way home, Poirot called in at the Glengowrie Court Hotel. As a result of that visit he rang Japp up very early the following morning. ‘Bonjour, mon ami. The inquest is today, is it not?’
‘It is. Are you going to attend?’
‘I do not think so.’
‘It won’t really be worth your while, I expect.’
‘Are you calling Miss Sainsbury Seale as a witness?’
‘The lovely Mabelle—why can’t she just spell it plain Mabel. These women get my goat! No, I’m not calling her. There’s no need.’
‘You have heard nothing from her?’
‘No, why should I?’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘I wondered, that was all. Perhaps it may interest you to learn that Miss Sainsbury Seale walked out of the Glengowrie Court Hotel just before dinner the night before last—and did not come back.’
‘What? She’s hooked it?’
‘That is a possible explanation.’
‘But why should she? She’s quite all right, you know. Perfectly genuine and above-board. I cabled Calcutta about her—that was before I knew the reason for Amberiotis’ death, otherwise I shouldn’t have bothered—and I got the reply last night. Everything O.K. She’s been known there for years, and her whole account of herself is true—except that she’s slurred over her marriage a bit. Married a Hindu student and then found he’d got a few attachments already. So she resumed her maiden name and took to good works. She’s hand and glove with the missionaries—teaches elocution, and helps in amateur dramatic shows. In fact, what I call a terrible woman—but definitely above suspicion of being mixed up in a murder. And now you say she’s walked out on us! I can’t understand it.’ He paused a minute and then went on doubtfully: ‘Perhaps she just got fed up with that hotel? I could have easily.’
Poirot said: ‘Her luggage is still there. She took nothing with her.’
Japp swore. ‘When did she go?’
‘About a quarter-to-seven.’
‘What about the hotel people?’
‘They’re very upset. Manageress looked quite distraught.’
‘Why didn’t they report to the police?’
‘Because, mon cher, supposing that a lady does happen to stay out for a night (however unlikely it may seem from her appearance) she will be justifiably annoyed by finding on her return that the police have been called in. Mrs Harrison, the manageress in question, called up various hospitals in case there had been an accident. She was considering notifying the police when I called. My appearance seemed to her like an answer to a prayer. I charged myself with everything, and explained that I would enlist the help of a very discreet police officer.’
‘The discreet police officer being yours truly, I suppose?’
‘You suppose rightly.’
Japp groaned:
‘All right. I’ll meet you at the Glengowrie Court Hotel after the inquest.’
V
Japp grumbled as they were waiting for the manageress. ‘What does the woman want to disappear for?’
‘It is curious, you admit?’ They had no time for more. Mrs Harrison, proprietor of the Glengowrie Court, was with them. Mrs Harrison was voluble and almost tearful. She was so worried about Miss Sainsbury Seale. What could have happened to her? Rapidly she went over every possibility of disaster. Loss of memory, sudden illness, haemorrhage, run down by an omnibus, robbery and assault—She paused at last for breath, murmuring: ‘Such a nice type of woman—and she seemed so happy and comfortable here.’
She took them, at Japp’s request, up to the chaste bedroom occupied by the missing lady. Everything was neat and orderly. Clothes hung in the wardrobe, nightclothes were folded ready on the bed, in a corner were Miss Sainsbury Seale’s two modest suitcases. A row of shoes stood under the dressing-table—some serviceable Oxfords, two pairs of rather meretricious glacé fancy shoes with court heels and ornament with bows of leather, some plain black satin evening shoes, practically new, and a pair of moccasins. Poirot noted that the evening shoes were a size smaller than the day ones—a fact that might be put down to corns or to vanity. He wondered whether Miss Sainsbury Seale had found time to sew the second buckle on her shoe before she went out. He hoped so. Slovenliness in dress always annoyed him.
Japp was busy looking through some letters in a drawer of the dressing-table. Hercule Poirot gingerly pulled open a drawer of the chest of drawers. It was full of underclothing. He shut it again modestly, murmuring that Miss Sainsbury Seale seemed to believe in wearing wool next to the skin, and opened another drawer which contained stockings. Japp said: ‘Got anything, Poirot?’
Poirot said sadly, as he dangled a pair: ‘Ten inch, cheap shiny silk, price probably two-and-eleven.’
Japp said: ‘You’re not valuing for probate, old boy. Two letters here from India, one or two receipts from charitable organizations, no bills. Most estimable character, our Miss Sainsbury Seale.’
‘But very little taste in dress,’ said Poirot sadly.
‘Probably thought dress wordly.’ Japp was noting down an address from an old letter dated two months back.
‘These people may know something about her,’ he said. ‘Address up Hampstead way. Sound as though they were fairly intimate.’
There was nothing more to be gleaned at the Glengowrie Court Hotel except the negative fact that Miss Sainsbury Seale had not seemed excited or worried in any way when she went out, and it would appear that she had definitely intended to return since on passing her friend Mrs Bolitho in the hall, she had called out: ‘After dinner I will show you that Patience I was telling you about.’
Moreover, it was the custom at the Glengowrie Court to give notice in the dining-room if you intended to be out for a meal. Miss Sainsbury Seale had not done so. Therefore it seemed clear that she had intended returning for dinner which was served from seven-thirty to eight-thirty. But she had not returned. She had walked out into the Cromwell Road and disappeared. Japp and Poirot called at the address in West Hampstead which had headed the letter found. It was a pleasant house and the Adams were pleasant people with a large family. They had lived in India for many years and spoke warmly of Miss Sainsbury Seale. But they could not help. They had not seen her lately, not for a month, not in fact since they came back from their Easter holidays. She had been staying then at a hotel near Russell Square. Mrs Adams gave Poirot the address of it and also the address of some other Anglo-Indian friends of Miss Sainsbury Seale’s who lived in Streatham.
&n
bsp; But the two men drew a blank in both places. Miss Sainsbury Seale had stayed at the hotel in question, but they remembered very little about her and nothing that could be of any help. She was a nice quiet lady and had lived abroad. The people in Streatham were no help either. They had not seen Miss Sainsbury Seale since February. There remained the possibility of an accident, but that possibility was dispelled too. No hospital had admitted any casualty answering to the description given. Miss Sainsbury Seale had disappeared into space.
VI
On the following morning, Poirot went to the Holborn Palace Hotel and asked for Mr Howard Raikes. By this time it would hardly have surprised him to hear that Mr Howard Raikes, too, had stepped out one evening and had never returned. Mr Howard Raikes, however, was still at the Holborn Palace and was said to be breakfasting. The apparition of Hercule Poirot at the breakfast table seemed to give Mr Howard Raikes doubtful pleasure. Though not looking so murderous as in Poirot’s disordered recollection of him, his scowl was still formidable—he stared at his uninvited guest and said ungraciously: ‘What the hell?’
‘You permit?’ Hercule Poirot drew a chair from another table.
Mr Raikes said: ‘Don’t mind me! Sit down and make yourself at home!’ Poirot smiling availed himself of the permission. Mr Raikes said ungraciously: ‘Well, what do you want?’
‘Do you remember me at all, Mr Raikes?’
‘Never set eyes on you in my life.’
‘There you are wrong. You sat in the same room with me for at least five minutes not more than three days ago.’
‘I can’t remember everyone I meet at some God-damned party or other.’
‘It was not a party,’ said Poirot. ‘It was a dentist’s waiting-room.’ Some swift emotion flashed into the young man’s eyes and died again at once. His manner changed. It was no longer impatient and casual. It became suddenly wary. He looked across at Poirot and said: ‘Well!’
Poirot studied him carefully before replying. He felt, quite positively, that this was indeed a dangerous young man. A lean hungry face, an aggressive jaw, the eyes of a fanatic. It was a face, though, that women might find attractive. He was untidily, even shabbily dressed, and he ate with a careless voraciousness that was, so the man watching him thought, significant. Poirot summed him up to himself.
‘It is a wolf with ideas…’
Raikes said harshly: ‘What the hell do you mean—coming here like this?’
‘My visit is disagreeable to you?’
‘I don’t even know who you are.’
‘I apologize.’
Dexterously Poirot whipped out his card case. He extracted a card and passed it across the table. Again that emotion that he could not quite define showed upon Mr Raikes’ lean face. It was not fear—it was more aggressive than fear. After it, quite unquestionably, came anger. He tossed the card back.
‘So that’s who you are, is it? I’ve heard of you.’
‘Most people have,’ said Hercule Poirot modestly.
‘You’re a private dick, aren’t you? The expensive kind. The kind people hire when money is no object—when it’s worth paying anything in order to save their miserable skins!’
‘If you do not drink your coffee,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘it will get cold.’
He spoke kindly and with authority.
Raikes stared at him.
‘Say, just what kind of an insect are you?’
‘The coffee in this country is very bad anyway—’ said Poirot.
‘I’ll say it is,’ agreed Mr Raikes with fervour.
‘But if you allow it to get cold it is practically undrinkable.’
The young man leant forward.
‘What are you getting at? What’s the big idea in coming round here?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘I wanted to—see you.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Mr Raikes sceptically. His eyes narrowed.
‘If it’s the money you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong man! The people I’m in with can’t afford to buy what they want. Better go back to the man who pays your salary.’
Poirot said, sighing: ‘Nobody has paid me anything—yet.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Mr Raikes.
‘It is the truth,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I am wasting a good deal of valuable time for no recompense whatsoever. Simply, shall we say, to assuage my curiosity.’
‘And I suppose,’ said Mr Raikes, ‘you were just assuaging your curiosity at that darned dentist’s the other day.’
Poirot shook his head. He said:
‘You seem to overlook the most ordinary reason for being in a dentist’s waiting-room—which is that one is waiting to have one’s teeth attended to.’
‘So that’s what you were doing?’ Mr Raikes’ tone expressed contemptuous unbelief. ‘Waiting to have your teeth seen to?’
‘Certainly.’
‘You’ll excuse me if I say I don’t believe it.’
‘May I ask then, Mr Raikes, what you were doing there?’
Mr Raikes grinned suddenly. He said:
‘Got you there! I was waiting to have my teeth seen to also.’
‘You had perhaps the toothache?’
‘That’s right, big boy.’
‘But all the same, you went away without having your teeth attended to?’
‘What if I did? That’s my business.’
He paused—then he said, with a quick savagery of tone: ‘Oh, what the hell’s the use of all this slick talking? You were there to look after your big shot. Well, he’s all right, isn’t he? Nothing happened to your precious Mr Alistair Blunt. You’ve nothing on me.’
Poirot said: ‘Where did you go when you went so abruptly out of the waiting-room?’
‘Left the house, of course.’
‘Ah!’ Poirot looked up at the ceiling.
‘But nobody saw you leave, Mr Raikes.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘It might. Somebody died in that house not long afterwards, remember.’
Raikes said carelessly: ‘Oh, you mean the dentist fellow.’
Poirot’s tone was hard as he said: ‘Yes, I mean the dentist fellow.’
Raikes stared. He said: ‘You trying to pin that on me? Is that the game? Well, you can’t do it. I’ve just read the account of the inquest yesterday. The poor devil shot himself because he’d made a mistake with a local anæsthetic and one of his patients died.’
Poirot went on unmoved: ‘Can you prove that you left the house when you say you did? Is there anyone who can say definitely where you were between twelve and one?’
The other’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you are trying to pin it on me? I suppose Blunt put you up to this?’
Poirot sighed. He said: ‘You will pardon me, but it seems an obsession with you—this persistent harping on Mr Alistair Blunt. I am not employed by him, I never have been employed by him. I am concerned, not with his safety, but with the death of a man who did good work in his chosen profession.’
Raikes shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe you. You’re Blunt’s private dick all right.’ His face darkened as he leaned across the table. ‘But you can’t save him, you know. He’s got to go—he and everything he stands for! There’s got to be a new deal—the old corrupt system of finance has got to go—this cursed net of bankers all over the world like a spider’s web. They’ve got to be swept away. I’ve nothing against Blunt personally—but he’s the type of man I hate. He’s mediocre—he’s smug. He’s the sort you can’t move unless you use dynamite. He’s the sort of man who says, “You can’t disrupt the foundations of civilization.” Can’t you, though? Let him wait and see! He’s an obstruction in the way of Progress and he’s got to be removed. There’s no room in the world today for men like Blunt—men who hark back to the past—men who want to live as their fathers lived or even as their grandfathers lived! You’ve got a lot of them here in England—crusted old diehards—useless, worn-out symbols of a decayed era. And, my
God, they’ve got to go! There’s got to be a new world. Do you get me—a new world, see?’
Poirot sighed and rose. He said: ‘I see, Mr Raikes, that you are an idealist.’
‘What if I am?’
‘Too much of an idealist to care about the death of a dentist.’
Mr Raikes said scornfully: ‘What does the death of one miserable dentist matter?’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘It does not matter to you. It matters to me. That is the difference between us.’
VII
Poirot arrived home to be informed by George that a lady was waiting to see him. ‘She is—ahem—a little nervous, sir,’ said George.
Since the lady had given no name Poirot was at liberty to guess. He guessed wrong, for the young woman who rose agitatedly from the sofa as he entered was the late Mr Morley’s secretary, Miss Gladys Nevill.
‘Oh, dear, M. Poirot. I am so sorry to worry you like this—and really I don’t know how I had the courage to come—I’m afraid you’ll think it very bold of me—and I’m sure I don’t want to take up your time—I know what time means to a busy professional man—but really I have been so unhappy—only I dare say you will think it all a waste of time—’ Profiting by a long experience of the English people, Poirot suggested a cup of tea. Miss Nevill’s reaction was all that could be hoped for. ‘Well, really, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. Not that it’s so very long since breakfast, but one can always do with a cup of tea, can’t one?’ Poirot, who could always do without one, assented mendaciously. George was instructed to this effect, and in a miraculously short time Poirot and his visitor faced each other across a tea-tray.
‘I must apologize to you,’ said Miss Nevill, regaining her aplomb under the influence of the beverage, ‘but as a matter of fact the inquest yesterday upset me a good deal.’
‘I’m sure it must have done,’ said Poirot kindly.
‘There was no question of my giving evidence, or anything like that. But I felt somebody ought to go with Miss Morley. Mr Reilly was there, of course—but I meant a woman. Besides, Miss Morley doesn’t like Mr Reilly. So I thought it was my duty to go.’
