第 17 页

Poirot paused as Georges entered with a glass of beer.

"Some refreshment, Inspector. No, no, I insist."

"Won't you join me?"

"I do not drink the beer. But I will myself have a glass of sirop de cassis - the English they do not care for it, I have noticed."

Inspector Morton looked gratefully at his beer.

Poirot, sipping delicately from his glass of dark purple fluid, said:

"It begins, all this, at a funeral. Or rather, to be exact, after the funeral."

Graphically, with many gestures he set forth the story as Mr Entwhistle had told it to him, but with such embellishments as his exuberant nature suggested. One almost felt that Hercule Poirot had himself been an eye-witness of the scene.

Inspector Morton had an excellent clear-cut brain. He seized at once on what were, for his purposes, the salient points.

"This Mr Abernethie may have been poisoned?"

"It is a possibility."

"And the body has been cremated and there is no evidence?"

"Exactly."

Inspector Morton ruminated.

"Interesting. There's nothing in it for us. Nothing, that is, to make Richard Abernethie's death worth investigating. It would be waste of time."

"Yes."

"But there are the people - the people who were there - the people who heard Cora Lansquenet say what she did, and one of whom may have thought that she might say it again and with more detail."

"As she undoubtedly would have. There are, Inspector, as you say, the people. And now you see why I was at the inquest, why I interest myself in the case - because it is, always, people in whom I interest myself."

"Then the attack on Miss Gilchrist -"

"Was always indicated. Richard Abernethie had been down to the cottage. He had talked to Cora. He had, perhaps, actually mentioned a name. The only person who might possibly have known or overheard something was Miss Gilchrist. After Cora is silenced, the murderer might continue to be anxious. Does the other woman know something - anything? Of course, if the murderer is wise he will let well alone, but murderers, Inspector, are seldom wise. Fortunately for us. They brood, they feel uncertain, they desire to make sure - quite sure. They are pleased with their own cleverness. And so, in the end, they protrude their necks, as you say."

Inspector Morton smiled faintly.

Poirot went on:

"This attempt to silence Miss Gilchrist, already it is a mistake. For now there are two occasions about which you make inquiry. There is the handwriting on the wedding label also. It is a pity the wrapping paper was burnt."

"Yes, I could have been certain, then, whether it came by post or whether it didn't."

"You have reason for thinking the latter, you say?"

"It's only what the postman thinks - he's not sure. If the parcel had gone through a village post office, it's ten to one the postmistress would have noticed it, but nowadays the mail is delivered by van from Market Keynes and of course the young chap does quite a round and delivers a lot of things. He thinks it was letters only and no parcel at the cottage - but he isn't sure. As a matter of fact he's having a bit of girl trouble and he can't think about anything else. I've tested his memory and he isn't reliable in any way. If he did deliver it, it seems to me odd that the parcel shouldn't have been noticed until after this Mr - whats-his-name - Guthrie -"

"Ah, Mr Guthrie."

Inspector Morton smiled.

"Yes, M. Poirot. We're checking up on him. After all, it would be easy, wouldn't it, to come along with a plausible tale of having been a friend of Mrs Lansquenet's. Mrs Banks wasn't to know if he was or he wasn't. He could have dropped that little parcel, you know. It's easy to make a thing look as though it's been through the post. Lamp black a little smudged, makes quite a good postmark cancellation mark over a stamp."

He paused and then added:

"And there are other possibilities."

Poirot nodded.

"You think -?"

"Mr George Crossfield was down in that part of the world - but not until the next day. Meant to attend the funeral, but had a little engine trouble on the way. Know anything about him, M. Poirot?"

"A little. But not as much as I would like to know."

"Like that, is it? Quite a little bunch interested in the late Mr Abernethie's will, I understand. I hope it doesn't mean going after all of them."

"I have accumulated a little information. It is at your disposal. Naturally I have no authority to ask these people questions. In, fact it would not be wise for me to do so."

"I shall go slowly myself. You don't want to fluster your bird too soon. But when you do fluster it, you want to fluster it well."

"A very sound technique. For you then, my friend, the routine - with all the machinery you have at your disposal. It is slow - but sure. For myself -"

"Yes, M. Poirot?"

"For myself, I go North. As I have told you, it is people in whom I interest myself. Yes - a little preparatory camouflage - and I go North.

"I intend," added Hercule Poirot, "to purchase a country mansion for foreign refugees. I represent UNARCO."

"And what's UNARCO?"

"United Nations Aid for Refugee Centres Organisation. It sounds well, do you not think?"

Inspector Morton grinned.

Chapter 14

Hercule Poirot said to a grim-faced Janet:

"Thank you very much. You have been most kind."

Janet, her lips still fixed in a sour line, left the room. These foreigners! The questions they asked. Their impertinence! All very well to say that he was a specialist interested in unsuspected heart conditions such as Mr Abernethie must have suffered from. That was very likely true - gone very sudden the master had, and the doctor had been surprised. But what business was it of some foreign doctor coming along and nosing around?

All very well for Mrs Leo to say: "Please answer Monsieur Pontarlier's questions. He has a good reason for asking."

Questions. Always questions. Sheets of them sometimes to fill in as best you could - and what did the Government or anyone else want to know about your private affairs for? Asking your age at that census - downright impertinent and she hadn't told them, either! Cut off five years she had. Why not? If she only felt fifty-four, she'd call herself fifty-four!

At any rate Monsieur Pontarlier hadn't wanted to know her age. He'd had some decency. Just questions about the medicines the master had taken, and where they were kept, and if, perhaps, he might have taken too much of them if he was feeling not quite the thing - or if he'd been forgetful. As though she could remember all that rubbish - the master knew what he was doing! And asking if any of the medicines he took were still in the house. Naturally they'd all been thrown away. Heart condition - and some long word he'd used. Always thinking of something new they were, these doctors. Look at them telling old Rogers he had a disc or some such in his spine. Plain lumbago, that was all that was the matter with him. Her father had been a gardener and he'd suffered from lumbago. Doctors!

The self-appointed medical man sighed and went downstairs in search of Lanscombe. He had not got very much out of Janet but he had hardly expected to do so. All he had really wanted to do was to check such information as could unwillingly be extracted from her with that given him by Helen Abernethie and which had been obtained from the same source - but with much less difficulty, since Janet was ready to admit that Mrs Leo had a perfect right to ask such questions and indeed Janet herself had enjoyed dwelling at length on the last few weeks of her master's life. Illness and death were congenial subjects to her.

Yes, Poirot thought, he could have relied on the information that Helen had got for him. He had done so really. But by nature and long habit he trusted nobody until he himself had tried and proved them.

In any case the evidence was slight and unsatisfactory. It boiled down to the fact that Richard Abernethie had been prescribed vitamin oil capsules. That these had been in a large bottle which had been nearly finished at the time of his death. Anybody who had wanted to, could have operated on one or more of those capsules with a hypodermic syringe and could have rearranged the bottle so that the fatal dose would only be taken some weeks after that somebody had left the house. Or someone might have slipped into the house on the day before Richard Abernethie died and have doctored a capsule then - or, which was more likely - have substituted something else for a sleeping tablet in the little bottle that stood beside the bed. Or again might have quite simply tampered with the food or drink.

Hercule Poirot had made his own experiments. The front door was kept locked, but there was a side door giving on the garden which was not locked until evening. At about quarter-past one, when the gardeners had gone to lunch and when the household was in the dining-room, Poirot had entered the grounds, come to the side door, and mounted the stairs to Richard Abernethie's bedroom without meeting anybody. As a variant he had pushed through a baize door and slipped into the larder. He had heard voices from the kitchen at the end of the passage but no one had seen him.

Yes, it could have been done. But had it been done? There was nothing to indicate that that was so. Not that Poirot was really looking for evidence - he wanted only to satisfy himself as to possibilities. The murder of Richard Abernethie could only be a hypothesis. It was Cora Lansquenet's murder for which evidence was needed. What he wanted was to study the people who had been assembled for the funeral that day, and to form his own conclusions about them. He already had his plan, but first he wanted a few more words with old Lanscombe.

Lanscombe was courteous but distant. Less resentful than Janet, he nevertheless regarded this upstart foreigner as the materialisation of the Writing on the Wall. This was What We are Coming to!

He put down the leather with which he was lovingly polishing the Georgian teapot and straightened his back.

"Yes, sir?" he said politely.

Poirot sat down gingerly on a pantry stool.

"Mrs Abernethie tells me that you hoped to reside in the lodge by the north gate when you retired from service here?"

"That is so, sir. Naturally all that is changed now. When the property is sold -"

Poirot interrupted deftly:

"It might still be possible. There are cottages for the gardeners. The lodge is not needed for the guests or their attendants. It might be possible to make an arrangement of some kind."

"Well, thank you, sir, for the suggestion. But I hardly think - The majority of the - guests would be foreigners, I presume?"

"Yes, they will be foreigners. Amongst those who fled from Europe to this country are several who are old and infirm. There can be no future for them if they return to their own countries, for these persons, you understand, are those whose relatives there have perished. They cannot earn their living here as an able-bodied man or woman can do. Funds have been raised and are being administered by the organisation which I represent to endow various country homes for them. This place is, I think, eminently suitable. The matter is practically settled."

Lanscombe sighed.

"You'll understand, sir, that it's sad for me to think that this won't be a private dwelling-house any longer. But I know how things are nowadays. None of the family could afford to live here - and I don't think the young ladies and gentlemen would even want to do so. Domestic help is too difficult to obtain these days, and even if obtained is expensive and unsatisfactory. I quite realise that these fine mansions have served their turn." Lanscombe sighed again. "If it has to be an - an institution of some kind, I'll be glad to think that it's the kind you're mentioning. We were spared in this country, sir, owing to our Navy and Air Force and our brave young men and being fortunate enough to be an island. If Hitler had landed here we'd all have turned out and given him short shrift. My sight isn't good enough for shooting, but I could have used a pitchfork, sir, and I intended to do so if necessary. We've always welcomed the unfortunate in this country, sir, it's been our pride. We shall continue so to do."

"Thank you, Lanscombe," said Poirot gently. "Your master's death must have been a great blow to you."

"It was, sir. I'd been with the master since he was quite a young man. I've been very fortunate in my life, sir. No one could have had a better master."

"I have been conversing with my friend and - er - colleague, Dr Larraby. We were wondering if your master could have had any extra worry - any unpleasant interview - on the day before he died? You do not remember if any visitors came to the house that day?"

"I think not, sir. I do not recall any."

"No one called at all just about that time?"

"The vicar was here to tea the day before. Otherwise - some nuns called for a subscription - and a young man came to the back door and wanted to sell Marjorie some brushes and saucepan cleaners. Very persistent he was. Nobody else."

A worried expression had appeared on Lanscombe's face. Poirot did not press him further. Lanscombe had already unburdened himself to Mr Entwhistle. He would be far less forthcoming with Hercule Poirot.

With Marjorie, on the other hand, Poirot had had instant success. Marjorie had none of the conventions of "good service." Marjorie was a first-class cook and the way to her heart lay through her cooking. Poirot had visited her in the kitchen, praised certain dishes with discernment, and Marjorie, realising that here was someone who knew what he was talking about, hailed him immediately as a fellow spirit. He had no difficulty in finding out exactly what had been served the night before Richard Abernethie had died. Marjorie, indeed, was inclined to view the matter as "It was the night I made that chocolate soufflé that Mr Abernethie died. Six eggs I'd saved up for it. The dairyman he's a friend of mine. Got hold of some cream too. Better not ask how. Enjoyed it, Mr Abernethie did." The rest of the meal was likewise detailed. What had come out from the dining-room had been finished in the kitchen. Ready as Marjorie was to talk, Poirot had learned nothing of value from her.