Death in the Clouds (12 page)

He smiled gently at Jane.

‘The trials of an author!’

He darted past her to a bookcase.

‘One thing you must allow me to give you.’

He came back with a book in his hand.

‘
The Clue of the Scarlet Petal
. I think I mentioned at Croydon that that book of mine dealt with arrow poison and native darts.’

‘A thousand thanks. You are too amiable.’

‘Not at all. I see,’ said Mr Clancy suddenly to Jane, ‘that you don’t use the Pitman system of shorthand.’

Jane flushed scarlet. Poirot came to her rescue.

‘Miss Grey is very up to date. She uses the most recent system invented by a Czecho-Slovakian.’

‘You don’t say so? What an amazing place Czecho-Slovakia must be. Everything seems to come from there
—shoes, glass, gloves, and now a shorthand system. Quite amazing.’

He shook hands with them both.

‘I wish I could have been more helpful.’

They left him in the littered room smiling wistfully after them.

From Mr Clancy’s house they took a taxi to the Monseigneur, where they found Norman Gale awaiting them.

Poirot ordered some
consommé
and a
chaud-froid
of chicken.

‘Well?’ said Norman. ‘How did you get on?’

‘Miss Grey,’ said Poirot, ‘has proved herself the super-secretary.’

‘I don’t think I did so very well,’ said Jane. ‘He spotted my stuff when he passed behind me. You know, he must be very observant.’

‘Ah, you noticed that? This good Mr Clancy is not quite so absent-minded as one might imagine.’

‘Did you really want those addresses?’ asked Jane.

‘I think they might be useful—yes.’

‘But if the police—’

‘Ah, the police! I should not ask the same questions
as the police have asked. Though, as a matter of fact, I doubt whether the police have asked any questions at all. You see, they know that the blowpipe found in the plane was purchased in Paris by an American.’

‘In Paris? An American? But there wasn’t any American in the aeroplane.’

Poirot smiled kindly on her.

‘Precisely. We have here an American just to make it more difficult.
Voilà tout
.’

‘But it was bought by a man?’ said Norman.

Poirot looked at him with rather an odd expression.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was
bought
by a man.’

Norman looked puzzled.

‘Anyway,’ said Jane, ‘it wasn’t Mr Clancy. He’d got one blowpipe already, so he wouldn’t want to go about buying another.’

Poirot nodded his head.

‘That is how one must proceed. Suspect everyone in turn and then wipe him or her off the list.’

‘How many have you wiped off so far?’ asked Jane.

‘Not so many as you might think, Mademoiselle,’ said Poirot with a twinkle. ‘It depends, you see, on the motive.’

‘Has there been—?’ Norman Gale stopped and then added apologetically: ‘I don’t want to butt in on official secrets, but is there no record of this woman’s dealings?’

Poirot shook his head.

‘All the records are burnt.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’

‘
Evidemment!
But it seems that Madame Giselle combined a little blackmailing with her profession of moneylending, and that opens up a wider field. Supposing, for instance, that Madame Giselle had knowledge of a certain criminal offence—say, attempted murder on the part of someone.’

‘Is there any reason to suppose such a thing?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Poirot slowly. ‘There is—one of the few pieces of documentary evidence that we have in this case.’

He looked from one to the other of their interested faces and gave a little sigh.

‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘that is that. Let us talk of other matters—for instance, of how this tragedy has affected the lives of you two young people.’

‘It sounds horrible to say so, but I’ve done well out of it,’ said Jane.

She related her rise of salary.

‘As you say, Mademoiselle, you have done well, but probably only for the time being. Even a nine-days’ wonder does not last longer than nine days, remember.’

Jane laughed. ‘That’s very true.’

‘I’m afraid it’s going to last more than nine days in my case,’ said Norman.

He explained the position. Poirot listened sympathetically.

‘As you say,’ he observed thoughtfully, ‘it will take more than nine days—or nine weeks—or nine months. Sensationalism dies quickly—fear is long-lived.’

‘Do you think I ought to stick it out?’

‘Have you any other plan?’

‘Yes—chuck up the whole thing. Go out to Canada or somewhere and start again.’

‘I’m sure that would be a pity,’ said Jane firmly.

Norman looked at her.

Poirot tactfully became engrossed with his chicken.

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Norman.

‘If I discover who killed Madame Giselle, you will not have to go,’ said Poirot cheerfully.

‘Do you really think you will?’ asked Jane.

Poirot looked at her reproachfully.

‘If one approaches a problem with order and method there should be no difficulty in solving it—none whatever,’ said Poirot severely.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Jane, who didn’t.

‘But I should solve this problem quicker if I had help,’ said Poirot.

‘What kind of help?’

Poirot did not speak for a moment or two. Then he said:

‘Help from Mr Gale. And perhaps, later, help from you also.’

‘What can I do?’ asked Norman.

Poirot shot a sideways glance at him.

‘You will not like it,’ he said warningly.

‘What is it?’ repeated the young man impatiently.

Very delicately, so as not to offend English susceptibilities, Poirot used a toothpick. Then he said: ‘Frankly, what I need is a blackmailer.’

‘A blackmailer?’ exclaimed Norman. He stared at Poirot as a man does who cannot believe his ears.

Poirot nodded.

‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘A blackmailer.’

‘But what for?’

‘
Parbleu!
To blackmail.’

‘Yes, but I mean who? Why?’

‘Why,’ said Poirot, ‘is my business. As to
whom
—’ He paused for a moment, then went on in a calm business-like tone:

‘Here is the plan I will outline for you. You will write a note—that is to say,
I
will write a note and
you
will copy it—to the Countess of Horbury. You will mark it “Personal”. In the note you will ask for an interview. You will recall yourself to her memory as having travelled to England by air on a certain occasion. You will also refer to certain business dealings of Madame Giselle’s having passed into your hands.’

‘And then?’

‘And then you will be accorded an interview. You will go and you will say certain things (in which I will instruct you). You will ask for—let me see—ten thousand pounds.’

‘You’re mad!’

‘Not at all,’ said Poirot. ‘I am eccentric, possibly, but mad, no.’

‘And suppose Lady Horbury sends for the police? I shall go to prison.’

‘She will not send for the police.’

‘You can’t
know
that.’

‘
Mon cher
, practically speaking, I know everything.’

‘And, anyway, I don’t like it.’

‘You will not get the ten thousand pounds—if that makes your conscience any clearer,’ said Poirot with a twinkle.

‘Yes, but look here, M. Poirot—this is the sort of wildcat scheme that might ruin me for life.’

‘Ta—ta—ta—the lady will not go to the police—that I assure you.’

‘She may tell her husband.’

‘She will not tell her husband.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Do you like losing your patients and ruining your career?’

‘No, but—’

Poirot smiled at him kindly.

‘You have the natural repugnance, yes? That is very natural. You have, too, the chivalrous spirit. But I can assure you that Lady Horbury is not worth all this fine feeling—to use your idiom she is a very nasty piece of goods.’

‘All the same, she can’t be a murderess.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because we should have seen her. Jane and I were sitting just opposite.’

‘You have too many preconceived ideas. Me, I desire to straighten things out; and to do that I must
know
.’

‘I don’t like the idea of blackmailing a woman.’

‘Ah,
mon Dieu
—what there is in a word! There will be no blackmail. You have only to produce a certain effect. After that, when the ground is prepared, I will step in.’

Norman said, ‘If you land me in prison—’

‘No, no, no, I am very well known at Scotland Yard. If anything should occur I will take the blame. But nothing will occur other than what I have prophesied.’

Norman surrendered with a sigh.

‘All right. I’ll do it. But I don’t half like it.’

‘Good. This is what you will write. Take a pencil.’

He dictated slowly.

‘
Voilà
,’ he said. ‘Later I will instruct you as to what
you are to say. Tell me, Mademoiselle, do you ever go to the theatre?’

‘Yes, fairly often,’ said Jane.

‘Good. Have you seen, for instance, a play called
Down Under
?’

‘Yes. I saw it about a month ago. It’s rather good.’

‘An American play, is it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember the part of Harry, played by Mr Raymond Barraclough?’

‘Yes. He was very good.’

‘You thought him attractive? Yes?’

‘Frightfully attractive.’

‘Ah,
il a le sex appeal?
’

‘Decidedly,’ said Jane, laughing.

‘Just that—or is he a good actor as well?’

‘Oh, I think he acts well too.’

‘I must go and see him,’ said Poirot.

Jane stared at him, puzzled.

What an odd little man he was—hopping from subject to subject like a bird from one branch to another!

Perhaps he read her thoughts. He smiled:

‘You do not approve of me, Mademoiselle? Of my methods?’

‘You jump about a good deal.’

‘Not really. I pursue my course logically with order
and method. One must not jump wildly to a conclusion. One must
eliminate
.’

‘Eliminate?’ said Jane. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’ She thought a moment. ‘I see. You’ve eliminated Mr Clancy—’

‘Perhaps,’ said Poirot.

‘And you’ve eliminated us; and now you’re going, perhaps, to eliminate Lady Horbury. Oh!’

She stopped as a sudden thought struck her.

‘What is it, Mademoiselle?’

‘That talk of attempted murder? Was that a
test
?’

‘You are very quick, Mademoiselle. Yes, that was part of the course I pursue. I mention attempted murder and I watch Mr Clancy, I watch you, I watch Mr Gale—and in neither of you three is there any sign—not so much as the flicker of an eyelash. And let me tell you that I could not be deceived on that point. A murderer can be ready to meet any attack that he
foresees
. But that entry in a little notebook could not have been known to any of you. So, you see, I am satisfied.’

‘What a horrible, tricky sort of person you are, M. Poirot,’ said Jane, rising. ‘I shall never know why you are saying things.’

‘That is quite simple. I want to find out things.’

‘I suppose you’ve got very clever ways of finding out things?’

‘There is only one really simple way.’

‘What is that?’

‘To let people tell you.’

Jane laughed.

‘Suppose they don’t want to?’

‘Everyone likes talking about themselves.’

‘I suppose they do,’ admitted Jane.

‘That is how many a quack makes a fortune. He encourages patients to come and sit and tell him things. How they fell out of the perambulator when they were two, and how their mother ate a pear and the juice fell on her orange dress, and how when they were one and a half they pulled their father’s beard; and then he tells them that now they will not suffer from the insomnia any longer, and he takes two guineas; and they go away, having enjoyed themselves—oh, so much—and perhaps they do sleep.’

‘How ridiculous,’ said Jane.

‘No, it is not so ridiculous as you think. It is based on a fundamental need of human nature—the need to talk—to reveal oneself. You yourself, Mademoiselle, do you not like to dwell on your childhood memories—on your mother and your father?’

‘That doesn’t apply in my case. I was brought up in an orphanage.’

‘Ah, that is different. It is not gay, that.’

‘I don’t mean that we were the kind of charity
orphans who go out in scarlet bonnets and cloaks. It was quite fun really.’

‘It was in England?’

‘No, in Ireland—near Dublin.’

‘So you are Irish. That is why you have the dark hair and the blue-grey eyes, with the look—’

‘As though they had been put in with a smutty finger—’ Norman finished with amusement.

‘
Comment?
What is that you say?’

‘That is a saying about Irish eyes—that they have been put in with a smutty finger.’

‘Really? It is not elegant, that. And yet—it expresses it well.’ He bowed to Jane. ‘The effect is very good, Mademoiselle.’

Jane laughed as she got up.

‘You’ll turn my head, M. Poirot. Good night, and thank you for supper. You’ll have to stand me another if Norman is sent to prison for blackmail.’

A frown came over Norman’s face at the reminder.

Poirot bade the two young people good night.

When he got home he unlocked a drawer and took out a list of eleven names.

Against four of these names he put a light tick. Then he nodded his head thoughtfully.

‘I think I know,’ he murmured to himself. ‘But I have got to be sure.
Il faut continuer
.’

Mr Henry Mitchell was just sitting down to a supper of sausage and mash when a visitor called to see him.

Somewhat to the steward’s astonishment the visitor in question was the full-moustached gentleman who had been one of the passengers on the fatal plane.

M. Poirot was very affable, very agreeable in his manner. He insisted on Mr Mitchell’s getting on with his supper, paid a graceful compliment to Mrs Mitchell, who was standing staring at him open-mouthed.

He accepted a chair, remarked that it was very warm for the time of year and then gently came round to the purpose of his call.

‘Scotland Yard, I fear, is not making much progress with the case,’ he said.

Mitchell shook his head.

‘It was an amazing business, sir—amazing. I don’t see what they’ve got to go on. Why, if none of the people
on the plane saw anything, it’s going to be difficult for anyone afterwards.’

‘Truly, as you say.’

‘Terribly worried, Henry’s been, over it,’ put in his wife. ‘Not able to sleep of nights.’

The steward explained:

‘It’s lain on my mind, sir, something terrible. The company have been very fair about it. I must say I was afraid at first I might lose my job—’

‘Henry, they couldn’t. It would have been cruelly unfair.’

His wife sounded highly indignant. She was a buxom, highly-complexioned woman with snapping dark eyes.

‘Things don’t always happen fairly, Ruth. Still it turned out better than I thought. They absolve me from blame. But I felt it, if you understand me. I was in charge, as it were.’

‘I understand your feelings,’ said Poirot sympathetically. ‘But I assure you that you are over-conscientious. Nothing that happened was your fault.’

‘That’s what
I
say, sir,’ put in Mrs Mitchell.

Mitchell shook his head.

‘I ought to have noticed that the lady was dead sooner. If I’d tried to wake her up when I first took round the bills—’

‘It would have made little difference. Death, they think, was very nearly instantaneous.’

‘He worries so,’ said Mrs Mitchell. ‘I tell him not to bother his head so. Who’s to know what reason foreigners have for murdering each other; and if you ask me, I think it’s a dirty trick to have done it in a British aeroplane.’

She finished her sentence with an indignant and patriotic snort.

Mitchell shook his head in a puzzled way.

‘It weighs on me, so to speak. Every time I go on duty I’m in a state. And then the gentleman from Scotland Yard asking me again and again if nothing unusual or sudden occurred on the way over. Makes me feel as though I
must
have forgotten something—and yet I know I haven’t. It was a most uneventful voyage in every way until—until
it
happened.’

‘Blowpipes and darts—heathen, I call it,’ said Mrs Mitchell.

‘You are right,’ said Poirot, addressing her with a flattering air of being struck by her remarks. ‘Not so is an English murder committed.’

‘You’re right, sir.’

‘You know, Mrs Mitchell, I can almost guess what part of England you come from.’

‘Dorset, sir. Not far from Bridport. That’s my home.’

‘Exactly,’ said Poirot. ‘A lovely part of the world.’

‘It is that. London isn’t a patch on Dorset. My folk
have been settled in Dorset for over two hundred years—and I’ve got Dorset in the blood, as you might say.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ He turned to the steward again. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to ask you, Mitchell.’

The man’s brow contracted.

‘I’ve told you all that I know—indeed I have, sir.’

‘Yes, yes—this is a very trifling matter. I only wondered if anything on the table—Madame Giselle’s table, I mean—was disarranged?’

‘You mean when—when I found her?’

‘Yes. The spoons and forks—the salt cellar—anything like that.’

The man shook his head.

‘There wasn’t anything of that kind on the tables. Everything was cleared away bar the coffee cups. I didn’t notice anything myself. I shouldn’t, though. I was much too flustered. But the police would know that, sir, they searched the plane through and through.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Poirot. ‘It is no matter. Sometime I must have a word with your colleague—Davis.’

‘He’s on the early 8.45 am service now, sir.’

‘Has this business upset him much?’

‘Oh, well, sir, you see he’s only a young fellow. If you ask me, he’s almost enjoyed it all. The excitement, and everyone standing him drinks and wanting to hear about it.’

‘Has he perhaps a young lady?’ asked Poirot. ‘Doubtless his connexion with the crime would be very thrilling to her.’

‘He’s courting old Johnson’s daughter at the Crown and Feathers,’ said Mrs Mitchell. ‘But she’s a sensible girl—got her head screwed on the right way. She doesn’t approve of being mixed up with a murder.’

‘A very sound point of view,’ said Poirot, rising. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Mitchell—and you, Mrs Mitchell—and I beg of you, my friend, do not let this weigh upon your mind.’

When he had departed Mitchell said, ‘The thick heads in the jury at the inquest thought he’d done it. But if you ask me, he’s secret service.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Mrs Mitchell, ‘there’s Bolshies at the back of it.’

Poirot had said that he must have a word with the other steward, Davis, sometime. As a matter of fact he had it not many hours later, in the bar of the Crown and Feathers.

He asked Davis the same question he had asked Mitchell.

‘Nothing disarranged—no, sir. You mean upset? That kind of thing?’

‘I mean—well, shall we say something missing from the table—or something that would not usually be there—’

Davis said slowly:

‘There was
something
—I noticed it when I was clearing up, after the police had done with the place—but I don’t suppose that it’s the sort of thing you mean. It’s only that the dead lady had two coffee spoons in her saucer. It does sometimes happen when we’re serving in a hurry. I noticed it because there’s a superstition about that; they say two spoons in a saucer means a wedding.’

‘Was there a spoon missing from anyone else’s saucer?’

‘No, sir, not that I noticed. Mitchell or I must have taken the cup and saucer along that way—as I say one does sometimes what with the hurry and all. I laid two sets of fish knives and forks only a week ago. On the whole it’s better than laying the table short, for then you have to interrupt yourself and go and fetch the extra knife, or whatever it is you’ve forgotten.’

Poirot asked one more question—a somewhat jocular one:

‘What do you think of French girls, Davis?’

‘English are good enough for me, sir.’

And he grinned at a plump, fair-haired girl behind the bar.