"Not at present. I stay for a few days at the Stag."
"At the Stag. Oh - at the Stag! But that's where - oh, M. Poirot, do you think you are wise?"
"I have been guided to the Stag," said Poirot solemnly.
"Guided? What do you mean?"
"Guided by you."
"Oh, but I never meant - I mean, I had no idea. It's all so dreadful, don't you think so?"
Poirot shook his head sadly, and said:
"I have been talking to Mr Rowley Cloade and Miss Marchmont. They are getting married, I hear, quite soon?"
Aunt Kathie was immediately diverted.
"Dear Lynn, she is such a sweet girl - and so very good at figures. Now, I have no head for figures - no head at all. Having Lynn home is an absolute blessing. If I get in a terrible muddle she always straightens things out for me. Dear girl, I do hope she will be happy. Rowley, of course, is a splendid person, but possibly - well, a little dull. I mean dull to a girl who has seen as much of the world as Lynn has. Rowley, you see, has been here on his farm all through the war - oh, quite rightly, of course - I mean the Government wanted him to - that side of it is quite all right - not white feathers or things like that as they did in the Boer War - but what I mean is, it's made him rather limited in his ideas."
"Six years' engagement is a good test of affection."
"Oh, it is! But I think these girls, when they come home, they get rather restless - and if there is someone else about - someone, perhaps, who has led an adventurous life -"
"Such as David Hunter?"
"There isn't anything between them," Aunt Kathie said anxiously. "Nothing at all. I'm quite sure of that! It would have been dreadful if there had been, wouldn't there, with his turning out a murderer? His own brother-in-law, too! Oh, no, M. Poirot, please don't run away with the idea that there's any kind of an understanding between Lynn and David. Really, they seemed to quarrel more than anything else every time they met. What I feel is that - oh, dear, I think that's my husband coming. You will remember, won't you, M. Poirot, not a word about our first meeting? My poor dear husband gets so annoyed if he thinks that - oh, Lionel dear, here is M. Poirot who so cleverly brought that Major Porter down to see the body."
Dr Cloade looked tired and haggard. His eyes, pale blue, with pin-point pupils, wandered vaguely round the room.
"How do you do, M. Poirot, on your way back to town?"
"Mon Dieu, another who packs me back to London!" thought Poirot.
Aloud he said patiently:
"No, I remain at the Stag for a day or so."
"The Stag?" Lionel Cloade frowned. "Oh? Police want to keep you here for a bit?"
"No. It is my own choice."
"Indeed?" The doctor suddenly flashed a quick intelligent look. "So you're not satisfied?"
"Why should you think that, Dr Cloade?"
"Come, man, it's true, isn't it?"
Twittering about tea, Mrs Cloade left the room. The doctor went on: "You've a feeling, haven't you, that something's wrong?"
Poirot was startled.
"It is odd that you should say that. Do you, then, feel that yourself?"
Cloade hesitated.
"N-n-o. Hardly that... perhaps it's just a feeling of unreality. In books the blackmailer gets slugged. Does he in real life? Apparently the answer is yes. But it seems unnatural."
"Was there anything unsatisfactory about the medical aspect of the case? I ask unofficially, of course."
Dr Cloade said thoughtfully:
"No, I don't think so."
"Yes - there is something. I can see there is something."
When he wished, Poirot's voice could assume an almost hypnotic quality. Dr Cloade frowned a little, then he said hesitatingly:
"I've no experience, of course, of police cases. And anyway medical evidence isn't the hard-and-fast, cast-iron business that laymen or novelists seem to think. We're fallible - medical science is fallible. What's diagnosis? A guess, based on a very little knowledge, and some indefinite clues which point in more than one direction. I'm pretty sound, perhaps, at diagnosing measles because, at my time of life, I've seen hundreds of cases of measles and I know an extraordinary wide variation of signs and symptoms. You hardly ever get what a text book tells you is a 'typical case' of measles. But I've known some queer things in my time - I've seen a woman practically on the operating table ready for her appendix to be whipped out - and paratyphoid diagnosed just in time! I've seen a child with skin trouble pronounced as a case of serious vitamin deficiency by an earnest and conscientious young doctor - and the local vet comes along and mentions to the mother that the cat the child is hugging has got ringworm and that the child has caught it!
"Doctors, like every one else, are victims of the preconceived idea. Here's a man, obviously murdered, lying with a bloodstained pair of fire-tongs beside him. It would be nonsense to say he was hit with anything else, and yet, speaking out of complete inexperience of people with their heads smashed in, I'd have suspected something rather different - something not so smooth and round - something - oh, I don't know, something with a more cutting edge - a brick, something like that."
"You did not say so at the inquest?"
"No - because I don't really know. Jenkins, the police surgeon, was satisfied, and he's the fellow who counts. But there's the preconceived idea - weapon lying beside the body. Could the wound have been inflicted with that? Yes, it could. But if you were shown the wound and asked what made it - well, I don't know whether you'd say it, because it really doesn't make sense - I mean if you had two fellows, one hitting him with a brick and one with the tongs -"
The doctor stopped, shook his head in a dissatisfied way.
"Doesn't make sense, does it?" he said to Poirot.
"Could he have fallen on some sharp object?"
Dr Cloade shook his head.
"He was lying face down in the middle of the floor - on a good thick old-fashioned Axminster carpet."
He broke off as his wife entered the room.
"Here's Kathie with the cat-lap." he remarked.
Aunt Kathie was balancing a tray covered with crockery, half a loaf of bread and some depressing-looking jam in the bottom of a 2-lb. pot.
"I think the kettle was boiling," she remarked doubtfully as she raised the lid of the teapot and peered inside.
Dr Cloade snorted again and muttered: "Cat-lap," with which explosive word he left the room.
"Poor Lionel, his nerves are in a terrible state since the war. He worked much too hard. So many doctors away. He gave himself no rest. Out morning, noon, and night. I wonder he didn't break down completely. Of course he looked forward to retiring as soon as peace came. That was all fixed up with Gordon. His hobby, you know, is botany with special reference to medicinal herbs in the Middle Ages. He's writing a book on it. He was looking forward to a quiet life and doing the necessary research. But then, when Gordon died like that - well, you know what things are, M. Poirot, nowadays. Taxation and everything. He can't afford to retire and it's made him very bitter. And really it does seem unfair. Gordon's dying like that, without a will - well, it really quite shook my faith. I mean, I really couldn't see the purpose in that. It seemed, I couldn't help feeling, a mistake."
She sighed, then cheered up a little.
"But I get some lovely reassurances from the other side. 'Courage and patience and a way will be found.' And really, when that nice Major Porter stood up today and said in such a firm manly way that the poor murdered man was Robert Underhay - well, I saw that a way had been found! It's wonderful, isn't it, M. Poirot, how things do turn out for the best?"
"Even murder," said Hercule Poirot.
Chapter 7
Poirot entered the Stag in a thoughtful mood, and shivering slightly for there was a sharp east wind. The hall was deserted. He pushed open the door of the lounge on the right. It smelt of stale smoke and the fire was nearly out. Poirot tiptoed along to the door at the end of the hall labelled "Residents Only." Here there was a good fire, but in a large arm-chair, comfortably toasting her toes, was a monumental old lady who glared at Poirot with such ferocity that he beat an apologetic retreat.
He stood for a moment in the hall looking from the glass-enclosed empty office to the door labelled in firm old-fashioned style Coffee-Room. By experience of country hotels Poirot knew well that the only time coffee was served there was somewhat grudgingly for breakfast and that even then a good deal of watery hot milk was its principal component. Small cups of a treacly and muddy liquid called Black Coffee were served not in the Coffee-Room but in the lounge. The Windsor Soup, Vienna Steak and Potatoes, and Steamed Pudding which comprised Dinner would be obtainable in the Coffee-Room at seven sharp. Until then a deep peace brooded over the residential area of the Stag.
Poirot went thoughtfully up the staircase. Instead of turning to the left where his own room. No. 11, was situated, he turned to the right and stopped before the door of No. 5. He looked round him. Silence and emptiness. He opened the door and went in.
The police had done with the room. It had clearly been freshly cleaned and scrubbed. There was no carpet on the floor. Presumably the "old-fashioned Axminster" had gone to the cleaners. The blankets were folded on the bed in a neat pile.
Closing the door behind him, Poirot wandered round the room. It was clean and strangely barren of human interest. Poirot took in its furnishings - a writing-table, a chest of drawers of good old-fashioned mahogany, an upright wardrobe of the same (the one presumably that masked the door into No. 4), a large brass double bed, a basin with hot and cold water - tribute to modernity and the servant shortage - a large but rather uncomfortable arm-chair, two small chairs, an old-fashioned Victorian grate with a poker and a pierced shovel belonging to the same set as the fire-tongs, a heavy marble mantelpiece and a solid marble firecurb with squared corners.
It was at these last that Poirot bent and looked. Moistening his finger he rubbed it along the right-hand corner and then inspected the result. His finger was slightly black. He repeated the performance with another finger on the left-hand corner of the curb. This time his finger was quite clean.
"Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully to himself. "Yes."
He looked at the fitted washbasin. Then he strolled to the window. It looked out over some leads - the roof of a garage, he fancied, and then to a small back alley. An easy way to come and go unseen from room No. 5. But then it was equally easy to walk upstairs to No. 5 unseen. He had just done it himself.
Quietly, Poirot withdrew, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. He went along to his own room. It was decidedly chilly. He went downstairs again, hesitated, and then, driven by the chill of the evening, boldly entered the Residents Only, drew up a second arm-chair to the fire and sat down.
The monumental old lady was even more formidable seen close at hand. She had iron-grey hair, a nourishing moustache and, when presently she spoke, a deep and awe-inspiring voice.
"This lounge," she said, "is Reserved for persons staying in the hotel."
"I am staying in the Hotel," replied Hercule Poirot.
The old lady meditated for a moment or two before returning to the attack.
Then she said accusingly:
"You're a foreigner."
"Yes," replied Hercule Poirot.
"In my opinion," said the old lady, "you should all go back."
"Go back where?" inquired Poirot.
"To where you came from," said the old lady firmly.
She added as a kind of rider, sotto voce: "Foreigners!" and snorted.
"That," said Poirot mildly, "would be difficult."
"Nonsense," said the old lady. "That's what we fought the war for, isn't it? So that people could go back to their proper places and stay there."
Poirot did not enter into a controversy. He had already learnt that every single individual had a different version of the theme. "What did we fight the war for?"
A somewhat hostile silence reigned.
"I don't know what things are coming to," said the old lady. "I really don't. Every year I come and stay in this place. My husband died here sixteen years ago. He's buried here. I come every year for a month."
"A pious pilgrimage," said Poirot politely.
"And every year things get worse and worse. No service! Food uneatable! Vienna steaks indeed! A steak's either Rump or Fillet steak - not chopped-up horse!"
Poirot shook his head sadly.
"One good thing - they've shut down the aerodrome," said the old lady. "Disgraceful it was, all those young airmen coming in here with those dreadful girls. Girls, indeed! I don't know what their mothers are thinking of nowadays. Letting them gad about as they do. I blame the Government. Sending the mothers to work in factories. Only let 'em off if they've got young children. Young children, stuff and nonsense! Any one can look after a baby! A baby doesn't go running round after soldiers. Girls from fourteen to eighteen, they're the ones that need looking after! Need their mothers. It takes a mother to know just what a girl is up to. Soldiers! Airmen! That's all they think about. Americans! Niggers! Polish riff-raff!"
Indignation at this point made the old lady cough. When she had recovered, she went on, working herself into a pleasurable frenzy and using Poirot as a target for her spleen.
"Why do they have barbed wire round their camps? To keep the soldiers from getting at the girls? No, to keep the girls from getting at the soldiers! Man-mad, that's what they are! Look at the way they dress. Trousers! Some poor fools wear shorts - they wouldn't if they knew what they looked like from behind!"
"I agree with you, Madame, indeed I agree with you."
"What do they wear on their heads? Proper hats? No, a twisted up bit of stuff, and faces covered with paint and powder. Filthy stuff, all over their mouths. Not only red nails - but red toe-nails!"
