Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  ‘Well—yes,’ I said. ‘Quite attractive.’

  ‘You will talk to her,’ Poirot ordered, ‘because you are already friends, and you will go again and see this blind woman with some excuse. And you will talk to her. And you will go to the typewriting bureau on the pretence perhaps of having some manuscript typed. You will make friends, perhaps, with one of the other young ladies who works there. You will talk to all these people and then you will come and see me again and you will tell me all the things that they will say.’

  ‘Have mercy!’ I said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Poirot, ‘you will enjoy it.’

  ‘You don’t seem to realize that I’ve got my own work to do.’

  ‘You will work all the better for having a certain amount of relaxation,’ Poirot assured me. I got up and laughed.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’re the doctor! Any more words of wisdom for me? What do you feel about this strange business of the clocks?’

  Poirot leaned back in his chair again and closed his eyes.

  The words he spoke were quite unexpected.

  ‘ “The time has come, the Walrus said,

  To talk of many things.

  Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,

  And cabbages and kings.

  And why the sea is boiling hot

  And whether pigs have wings.” ’

  He opened his eyes again and nodded his head.

  ‘Do you understand?’ he said.

  ‘Quotation from “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Alice Through the Looking Glass.’

  ‘Exactly. For the moment, that is the best I can do for you, mon cher. Reflect upon it.’

  Chapter 15

  The inquest was well attended by the general public. Thrilled by a murder in their midst, Crowdean turned out with eager hopes of sensational disclosures. The proceedings, however, were as dry as they could be. Sheila Webb need not have dreaded her ordeal, it was over in a couple of minutes.

  There had been a telephone message to the Cavendish Bureau directing her to go to 19, Wilbraham Crescent. She had gone, acting as told to do, by entering the sitting-room. She had found the dead man there and had screamed and rushed out of the house to summon assistance. There were no questions or elaborations. Miss Martindale, who also gave evidence, was questioned for an even shorter time. She had received a message purporting to be from Miss Pebmarsh asking her to send a shorthand typist, preferably Miss Sheila Webb, to 19, Wilbraham Crescent, and giving certain directions. She had noted down the exact time of the telephone call as 1.49. That disposed of Miss Martindale.

  Miss Pebmarsh, called next, denied categorically that she had asked for any typist to be sent to her that day from the Cavendish Bureau. Detective Inspector Hardcastle made a short emotionless statement. On receipt of a telephone call, he had gone to 19, Wilbraham Crescent where he had found the body of a dead man. The coroner then asked him: ‘Have you been able to identify the dead man?’

  ‘Not as yet, sir. For that reason, I would ask for this inquest to be adjourned.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  Then came the medical evidence. Doctor Rigg, the police surgeon, having described himself and his qualifications, told of his arrival at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, and of his examination of the dead man. ‘Can you give us an approximate idea of the time of death, Doctor?’

  ‘I examined him at half past three. I should put the time of death as between half past one and half past two.’

  ‘You cannot put it nearer than that?’

  ‘I should prefer not to do so. At a guess, the most likely time would be two o’clock or rather earlier, but there are many factors which have to be taken into account. Age, state of health, and so on.’

  ‘You performed an autopsy?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘The cause of death?’

  ‘The man had been stabbed with a thin, sharp knife. Something in the nature, perhaps, of a French cooking-knife with a tapering blade. The point of the knife entered…’ Here the doctor became technical as he explained the exact position where the knife had entered the heart.

  ‘Would death have been instantaneous?’

  ‘It would have occurred within a very few minutes.’

  ‘The man would not have cried out or struggled?’

  ‘Not under the circumstances in which he was stabbed.’

  ‘Will you explain to us, Doctor, what you mean by that phrase?’

  ‘I made an examination of certain organs and made certain tests. I would say that when he was killed he was in a state of coma due to the administration of a drug.’

  ‘Can you tell us what this drug was, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes. It was chloral hydrate.’

  ‘Can you tell how this was administered?’

  ‘I should say presumably in alcohol of some kind. The effect of chloral hydrate is very rapid.’

  ‘Known in certain quarters as a Mickey Finn, I believe,’ murmured the coroner.

  ‘That is quite correct,’ said Doctor Rigg. ‘He would drink the liquid unsuspectingly, and a few moments later he would reel over and fall unconscious.’

  ‘And he was stabbed, in your opinion, while unconscious?’

  ‘That is my belief. It would account for there being no sign of a struggle and for his peaceful appearance.’

  ‘How long after becoming unconscious was he killed?’

  ‘That I cannot say with any accuracy. There again it depends on the personal idiosyncrasy of the victim.

  He would certainly not come round under half an hour and it might be a good deal more than that.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Rigg. Have you any evidence as to when this man last had a meal?’

  ‘He had not lunched if that is what you mean. He had eaten no solid food for at least four hours.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Rigg. I think that is all.’

  The coroner then looked round and said: ‘The inquest will be adjourned for a fortnight, until September 28th.’

  The inquest concluded, people began to move out of the court. Edna Brent who, with most of the other girls at the Cavendish Bureau, had been present, hesitated as she got outside the door. The Cavendish Secretarial Bureau had been closed for the morning. Maureen West, one of the other girls, spoke to her.

  ‘What about it, Edna? Shall we go to the Bluebird for lunch? We’ve got heaps of time. At any rate, you have.’

  ‘I haven’t got any more time than you have,’ said Edna in an injured voice. ‘Sandy Cat told me I’d better take the first interval for lunch. Mean of her. I thought I’d get a good extra hour for shopping and things.’

  ‘Just like Sandy Cat,’ said Maureen. ‘Mean as hell, isn’t she? We open up again at two and we’ve all got to be there. Are you looking for anyone?’

  ‘Only Sheila. I didn’t see her come out.’

  ‘She went away earlier,’ said Maureen, ‘after she’d finished giving her evidence. She went off with a young man—but I didn’t see who he was. Are you coming?’

  Edna still hovered uncertainly, and said, ‘You go on—I’ve got shopping to do anyway.’

  Maureen and another girl went off together. Edna lingered. Finally she nerved herself to speak to the fair-haired young policeman who stood at the entrance.

  ‘Could I go in again?’ she murmured timidly, ‘and speak to—to the one who came to the office—Inspector something.’

  ‘Inspector Hardcastle?’

  ‘That’s right. The one who was giving evidence this morning.’

  ‘Well—’ the young policeman looked into the court and observed the inspector in deep consultation with the coroner and with the chief constable of the county.

  ‘He looks busy at the moment, miss,’ he said. ‘If you called round at the station later, or if you’d like to give me a message…Is it anything important?’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter really,’ said Edna. ‘It’s—well—just that I don’t see how what she said could have been true because I mean…’ She turned away, s
till frowning perplexedly. She wandered away from the Corn market and along the High Street. She was still frowning perplexedly and trying to think. Thinking had never been Edna’s strong point. The more she tried to get things clear in her mind, the more muddled her mind became. Once she said aloud: ‘But it couldn’t have been like that…It couldn’t have been like she said…’

  Suddenly, with an air of one making a resolution, she turned off from the High Street and along Albany Road in the direction of Wilbraham Crescent. Since the day that the Press had announced that a murder had been committed at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, large numbers of people had gathered in front of the house every day to have a good look at it. The fascination mere bricks and mortar can have for the general public under certain circumstances is a truly mysterious thing. For the first twenty-four hours a policeman had been stationed there to pass people along in an authoritative manner. Since then interest had lessened; but had still not ceased entirely. Trades-men’s delivery vans would slacken speed a little as they passed, women wheeling prams would come to a four or five minute stop on the opposite pavement and stare their eyes out as they contemplated Miss Pebmarsh’s neat residence. Shopping women with baskets would pause with avid eyes and exchange pleasurable gossip with friends. ‘That’s the house—that one there…’

  ‘The body was in the sitting-room…No, I think the sitting-room’s the room at the front, the one on the left…’

  ‘The grocer’s man told me it was the one on the right.’

  ‘Well, of course it might be, I’ve been into Number 10 once and there, I distinctly remember the dining-room was on the right, and the sitting-room was on the left…’

  ‘It doesn’t look a bit as though there had been a murder done there, does it…?’

  ‘The girl, I believe, came out of the gate screaming her head off…’

  ‘They say she’s not been right in her head since…Terrible shock, of course…’

  ‘He broke in by a back window, so they say. He was putting the silver in a bag when this girl came in and found him there…’

  ‘The poor woman who owns the house, she’s blind, poor soul. So, of course, she couldn’t know what was going on.’

  ‘Oh, but she wasn’t there at the time…’

  ‘Oh, I thought she was. I thought she was upstairs and heard him. Oh, dear, I must get on to the shops.’

  These and similar conversations went on most of the time. Drawn as though by a magnet, the most unlikely people arrived in Wilbraham Crescent, paused, stared, and then passed on, some inner need satisfied. Here, still puzzling in her mind, Edna Brent found herself jostling a small group of five or six people who were engaged in the favourite pastime of looking at the murder house. Edna, always suggestible, stared also. So that was the house where it happened! Net curtains in the windows. Looked ever so nice. And yet a man had been killed there. Killed with a kitchen knife. An ordinary kitchen knife. Nearly everybody had got a kitchen knife… Mesmerized by the behaviour of the people round her, Edna, too, stared and ceased to think…She had almost forgotten what had brought her here…She started when a voice spoke in her ear. She turned her head in surprised recognition.

  Chapter 16

  Colin Lamb’s Narrative

  I

  I noticed when Sheila Webb slipped quietly out of the Coroner’s Court. She’d given her evidence very well. She had looked nervous but not unduly nervous. Just natural, in fact. (What would Beck say?

  ‘Quite a good performance.’ I could hear him say it!)

  I took in the surprise finish of Doctor Rigg’s evidence. (Dick Hardcastle hadn’t told me that, but he must have known) and then I went after her.

  ‘It wasn’t so bad after all, was it?’ I said, when I had caught her up.

  ‘No. It was quite easy really. The coroner was very nice.’ She hesitated. ‘What will happen next?’

  ‘He’ll adjourn the inquest—for further evidence. A fortnight probably or until they can identify the dead man.’

  ‘You think they will identify him?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘They’ll identify him all right. No doubt of that.’ She shivered. ‘It’s cold today.’

  It wasn’t particularly cold. In fact I thought it was rather warm.

  ‘What about an early lunch?’ I suggested. ‘You haven’t got to go back to your typewriting place, have you?’

  ‘No. It’s closed until two o’clock.’

  ‘Come along then. How do you react to Chinese food? I see there’s a little Chinese restaurant just down the street.’

  Sheila looked hesitant.

  ‘I’ve really got to do some shopping.’

  ‘You can do it afterwards.’

  ‘No, I can’t—some of the shops close between one and two.’

  ‘All right then. Will you meet me there? In half an hour’s time?’

  She said she would. I went along to the sea front and sat there in a shelter. As the wind was blowing straight in from the sea, I had it to myself. I wanted to think. It always infuriates one when other people know more about you than you know about yourself. But old Beck and Hercules Poirot and Dick Hardcastle, they all had seen quite clearly what I was now forced to admit to myself was true. I minded about this girl—minded in a way I had never minded about a girl before. It wasn’t her beauty—she was pretty, pretty in rather an unusual way, no more. It wasn’t her sex appeal—I had met that often enough—had been given the full treatment. It was just that, almost from the first, I had recognized that she was my girl. And I didn’t know the first damned thing about her!

  II

  It was just after two o’clock that I walked into the station and asked for Dick. I found him at his desk leafing over a pile of stuff. He looked up and asked me what I had thought of the inquest. I told him I thought it had been a very nicely managed and gentlemanly performance.

  ‘We do this sort of thing so well in this country.’

  ‘What did you think of the medical evidence?’

  ‘Rather a facer. Why didn’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘You were away. Did you consult your specialist?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘I believe I remember him vaguely. A lot of moustache.’

  ‘Oceans of it,’ I agreed. ‘He’s very proud of that moustache.’

  ‘He must be quite old.’

  ‘Old but not ga-ga,’ I said.

  ‘Why did you really go to see him? Was it purely the milk of human kindness?’

  ‘You have such a suspicious policeman’s mind, Dick! It was mainly that. But I admit to curiosity, too. I wanted to hear what he had to say about our own particular set-up. You see, he’s always talked what I call a lot of cock about its being easy to solve a case by just sitting in your chair, bringing the tips of your fingers symmetrically together, closing your eyes and thinking. I wanted to call his bluff.’

  ‘Did he go through that procedure for you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And what did he say?’ Dick asked with some curiosity.

  ‘He said,’ I told him, ‘that it must be a very simple murder.’

  ‘Simple, my God!’ said Hardcastle, roused. ‘Why simple?’

  ‘As far as I could gather,’ I said, ‘because the whole set-up was so complex.’

  Hardcastle shook his head. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘It sounds like one of those clever things that young people in Chelsea say, but I don’t see it. Anything else?’

  ‘Well, he told me to talk to the neighbours. I assured him we had done so.’

  ‘The neighbours are even more important now in view of the medical evidence.’

  ‘The presumption being that he was doped somewhere else and brought to Number 19 to be killed?’

  Something familiar about the words struck me.

  ‘That’s more or less what Mrs What’s-her-name, the cat woman, said. It struck me at the time as a rather interesting remark.’

  ‘Those cats,’ said Dick, and shuddered. He went on: ‘
We’ve found the weapon, by the way.

  Yesterday.’

  ‘You have? Where?’

  ‘In the cattery. Presumably thrown there by the murderer after the crime.’

  ‘No fingerprints, I suppose?’

  ‘Carefully wiped. And it could be anybody’s knife—slightly used—recently sharpened.’

  ‘So it goes like this. He was doped—then brought to Number 19—in a car? Or how?’

  ‘He could have been brought from one of the houses with an adjoining garden.’

  ‘Bit risky, wouldn’t it have been?’

  ‘It would need audacity,’ Hardcastle agreed, ‘and it would need a very good knowledge of the neighbourhood’s habits. It’s more likely that he would have been brought in a car.’

  ‘That would have been risky too. People notice a car.’

  ‘Nobody did. But I agree that the murderer couldn’t know that they wouldn’t. Passers-by would have noted a car stopping at Number 19 that day—’

  ‘I wonder if they would notice,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s so used to cars. Unless, of course, it had been a very lush car—something unusual, but that’s not likely—’

  ‘And of course it was the lunch hour. You realize, Colin, that this brings Miss Millicent Pebmarsh back into the picture? It seems far-fetched to think of an able-bodied man being stabbed by a blind woman—but if he was doped—’

  ‘In other words “if he came there to be killed,” as our Mrs Hemming put it, he arrived by appointment quite unsuspiciously, was offered a sherry or a cocktail—the Mickey Finn took effect and Miss Pebmarsh got to work. Then she washed up the Mickey Finn glass, arranged the body neatly on the floor, threw the knife into her neighbour’s garden, and tripped out as usual.’

  ‘Telephoning to the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau on the way—’

  ‘And why should she do that? And ask particularly for Sheila Webb?’

  ‘I wish we knew.’ Hardcastle looked at me. ‘Does she know? The girl herself?’

  ‘She says not.’

  ‘She says not,’ Hardcastle repeated tonelessly. ‘I’m asking you what you think about it?’

  I didn’t speak for a moment or two. What did I think? I had to decide right now on my course of action.