Poirot's Early Cases (24 page)

‘But what an extraordinary place!’ I expostulated. ‘Anyone might have used the log.’

‘In July, Hastings? And it was at the bottom of the pile—a very ingenious hiding-place. Ah, here
is a taxi! Now for home, a wash, and a refreshing sleep.’

After the excitement of the night, I slept late. When I finally strolled into our sitting-room just before one o’clock, I was surprised to see Poirot, leaning back in an armchair, the Chinese box open beside him, calmly reading the letter he had taken from it.

He smiled at me affectionately, and tapped the sheet he held.

‘She was right, the Lady Millicent; never would the Duke have pardoned this letter! It contains some of the most extravagant terms of affection I have ever come across.’

‘Really, Poirot,’ I said, rather disgustedly, ‘I don’t think you should have read the letter. ‘That’s the sort of thing that isn’t done.’

‘It is done by Hercule Poirot,’ replied my friend imperturbably.

‘And another thing,’ I said. ‘I don’t think using Japp’s official card yesterday was quite playing the game.’

‘But I was not playing a game, Hastings. I was conducting a case.’

I shrugged my shoulders. One can’t argue with a point of view.

‘A step on the stairs,’ said Poirot. ‘That will be Lady Millicent.’

Our fair client came in with an anxious expression on her face which changed to one of delight on seeing the letter and box which Poirot held up.

‘Oh, M. Poirot. How wonderful of you! How did you do it?’

‘By rather reprehensible methods, milady. But Mr Lavington will not prosecute. This is your letter, is it not?’

She glanced through it.

‘Yes. Oh, how can I ever thank you! You are a wonderful, wonderful man. Where was it hidden?’

Poirot told her.

‘How very clever of you!’ She took up the small box from the table. ‘I shall keep this as a souvenir.’

‘I had hoped, milady, that you would permit me to keep it—also as a souvenir.’

‘I hope to send you a better souvenir than that—on my wedding-day. You shall not find me ungrateful, M. Poirot.’

‘The pleasure of doing you a service will be more to me than a cheque—so you permit that I retain the box.’

‘Oh no, M. Poirot, I simply must have that,’ she cried laughingly.

She stretched out her hand, but Poirot was before her. His hand closed over it.

‘I think not.’ His voice had changed.

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice seemed to have grown sharper.

‘At any rate, permit me to abstract its further contents. You observed that the original cavity has been reduced by half. In the top half, the compromising letter; in the bottom—’

He made a nimble gesture, then held out his hand. On the palm were four large glittering stones, and two big milky white pearls.

‘The jewels stolen in Bond Street the other day, I rather fancy,’ murmured Poirot. ‘Japp will tell us.’

To my utter amazement, Japp himself stepped out from Poirot’s bedroom.

‘An old friend of yours, I believe,’ said Poirot politely to Lady Millicent.

‘Nabbed, by the Lord!’ said Lady Millicent, with a complete change of manner. ‘You nippy old devil!’ She looked at Poirot with almost affectionate awe.

‘Well, Gertie, my dear,’ said Japp, ‘the game’s up this time, I fancy. Fancy seeing you again so soon! We’ve got your pal, too, the gentleman who called here the other day calling himself Lavington. As for
Lavington himself, alias Croker, alias Reed, I wonder which of the gang it was who stuck a knife into him the other day in Holland? Thought he’d got the goods with him, didn’t you? And he hadn’t. He double-crossed you properly—hid ’em in his own house. You had two fellows looking for them, and then you tackled M. Poirot here, and by a piece of amazing luck he found them.’

‘You do like talking, don’t you?’ said the late Lady Millicent. ‘Easy there, now. I’ll go quietly. You can’t say that I’m not the perfect lady. Ta-ta, all!’

‘The shoes were wrong,’ said Poirot dreamily, while I was still too stupefied to speak. ‘I have made my little observations of your English nation, and a lady, a born lady, is always particular about her shoes. She may have shabby clothes, but she will be well shod. Now, this Lady Millicent had smart, expensive clothes, and cheap shoes. It was not likely that either you or I should have seen the real Lady Millicent; she has been very little in London, and this girl had a certain superficial resemblance which would pass well enough. As I say, the shoes first awakened my suspicions, and then her story—and her veil—were a little melodramatic, eh? The Chinese box with a bogus compromising letter in the top must have been known to all the gang, but the log of wood was the late Mr Lavington’s idea.
Eh, par example
, Hastings, I hope you will not again wound
my feelings as you did yesterday by saying that I am unknown to the criminal classes.
Ma foi
, they even employ me when they themselves fail!’

‘Colonel Clapperton!’ said General Forbes.

He said it with an effect midway between a snort and a sniff.

Miss Ellie Henderson leaned forward, a strand of her soft grey hair blowing across her face. Her eyes, dark and snapping, gleamed with a wicked pleasure.

‘Such a
soldierly
-looking man!’ she said with malicious intent, and smoothed back the lock of hair to await the result.

‘Soldierly!’ exploded General Forbes. He tugged at his military moustache and his face became bright red.

‘In the Guards, wasn’the?’murmured Miss Henderson, completing her work.

‘Guards? Guards? Pack of nonsense. Fellow was on the music hall stage! Fact! Joined up and was out in France counting tins of plum and apple. Huns dropped
a stray bomb and he went home with a flesh wound in the arm. Somehow or other got into Lady Carrington’s hospital.’

‘So that’s how they met.’

‘Fact! Fellow played the wounded hero. Lady Carrington had no sense and oceans of money. Old Carrington had been in munitions. She’d been a widow only six months. This fellow snaps her up in no time. She wangled him a job at the War Office.
Colonel
Clapperton! Pah!’ he snorted.

‘And before the war he was on the music hall stage,’ mused Miss Henderson, trying to reconcile the distinguished grey-haired Colonel Clapperton with a red-nosed comedian singing mirth-provoking songs.

‘Fact!’ said General Forbes. ‘Heard it from old Bassington-ffrench. And he heard it from old Badger Cotterill who’d got it from Snooks Parker.’

Miss Henderson nodded brightly. ‘That does seem to settle it!’ she said.

A fleeting smile showed for a minute on the face of a small man sitting near them. Miss Henderson noticed the smile. She was observant. It had shown appreciation of the irony underlying her last remark—irony which the General never for a moment suspected.

The General himself did not notice the smile. He glanced at his watch, rose and remarked: ‘Exercise.
Got to keep oneself fit on a boat,’ and passed out through the open door on to the deck.

Miss Henderson glanced at the man who had smiled. It was a well-bred glance indicating that she was ready to enter into conversation with a fellow traveller.

‘He is energetic—yes?’ said the little man.

‘He goes round the deck forty-eight times exactly,’ said Miss Henderson. ‘What an old gossip! And they say
we
are the scandal-loving sex.’

‘What an impoliteness!’

‘Frenchmen are always polite,’ said Miss Henderson—there was the nuance of a question in her voice.

The little man responded promptly. ‘Belgian, mademoiselle.’

‘Oh! Belgian.’

‘Hercule Poirot. At your service.’

The name aroused some memory. Surely she had heard it before—? ‘Are you enjoying this trip, M. Poirot?’

‘Frankly, no. It was an imbecility to allow myself to be persuaded to come. I detest
la mer
. Never does it remain tranquil—no, not for a little minute.’

‘Well, you admit it’s quite calm now.’

M. Poirot admitted this grudgingly. ‘
A ce moment
, yes. That is why I revive. I once more interest myself in what passes around me—your very adept handling of the General Forbes, for instance.’

‘You mean—’ Miss Henderson paused.

Hercule Poirot bowed. ‘Your methods of extracting the scandalous matter. Admirable!’

Miss Henderson laughed in an unashamed manner. ‘That touch about the Guards? I knew that would bring the old boy up spluttering and gasping.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘I admit I
like
scandal—the more ill-natured, the better!’

Poirot looked thoughtfully at her—her slim well-preserved figure, her keen dark eyes, her grey hair; a woman of forty-five who was content to look her age.

Ellie said abruptly: ‘I have it! Aren’t you the great detective?’

Poirot bowed. ‘You are too amiable, mademoiselle.’ But he made no disclaimer.

‘How thrilling,’ said Miss Henderson. ‘Are you “hot on the trail” as they say in books? Have we a criminal secretly in our midst? Or am I being indiscreet?’

‘Not at all. Not at all. It pains me to disappoint your expectations, but I am simply here, like everyone else, to amuse myself.’

He said it in such a gloomy voice that Miss Henderson laughed.

‘Oh! Well, you will be able to get ashore tomorrow at Alexandria. You have been to Egypt before?’

‘Never, mademoiselle.’

Miss Henderson rose somewhat abruptly.

‘I think I shall join the General on his constitutional,’ she announced.

Poirot sprang politely to his feet.

She gave him a little nod and passed on to the deck.

A faint puzzled look showed for a moment in Poirot’s eyes, then, a little smile creasing his lips, he rose, put his head through the door and glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man.

Poirot’s smile deepened. He drew himself back into the smoking-room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell. For the moment he had the smoking-room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long.

It did not. Mrs Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed.

She said: ‘John—? Oh! Good morning, M. Poirot—have you seen John?’

‘He’s on the starboard deck, madame. Shall I—?’

She arrested him with a gesture. ‘I’ll sit here a minute.’ She sat down in a regal fashion in the chair
opposite him. From the distance she had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine years, but a possible fifty-five. Her eyes were a hard pale blue with tiny pupils.

‘I was sorry not to have seen you at dinner last night,’ she said. ‘It was just a shade choppy, of course—’

‘
Précisément
,’ said Poirot with feeling.

‘Luckily, I am an excellent sailor,’ said Mrs Clapperton. ‘I say luckily, because, with my weak heart, seasickness would probably be the death of me.’

‘You have the weak heart, madame?’

‘Yes, I have to be
most
careful. I must
not
overtire myself!
All
the specialists say so!’ Mrs Clapperton had embarked on the—to her—ever-fascinating topic of her health. ‘John, poor darling, wears himself out trying to prevent me from doing too much. I live so intensely, if you know what I mean, M. Poirot?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘He always says to me: “Try to be more of a vegetable, Adeline.” But I can’t. Life was meant to be
lived
, I feel. As a matter of fact I wore myself out as a girl in the war. My hospital—you’ve heard of my hospital? Of course I had nurses and matrons and all that—but
I
actually ran it.’ She sighed.

‘Your vitality is marvellous, dear lady,’ said Poirot,
with the slightly mechanical air of one responding to his cue.

Mrs Clapperton gave a girlish laugh.

‘Everyone tells me how young I am! It’s absurd. I never try to pretend I’m a day less than forty-three,’ she continued with slightly mendacious candour, ‘but a lot of people find it hard to believe. “You’re so
alive
, Adeline,” they say to me. But really, M. Poirot, what would one
be
if one wasn’t alive?’

‘Dead,’ said Poirot.

Mrs Clapperton frowned. The reply was not to her liking. The man, she decided, was trying to be funny. She got up and said coldly: ‘I must find John.’

As she stepped through the door she dropped her handbag. It opened and the contents flew far and wide. Poirot rushed gallantly to the rescue. It was some few minutes before the lipsticks, vanity boxes, cigarette case and lighter and other odds and ends were collected. Mrs Clapperton thanked him politely, then she swept down the deck and said, ‘John—’

Colonel Clapperton was still deep in conversation with Miss Henderson. He swung round and came quickly to meet his wife. He bent over her protectively. Her deck chair—was it in the right place? Wouldn’t it be better—? His manner was courteous—full of
gentle consideration. Clearly an adored wife spoilt by an adoring husband.

Miss Ellie Henderson looked out at the horizon as though something about it rather disgusted her.

Standing in the smoking-room door, Poirot looked on.

A hoarse quavering voice behind him said: ‘I’d take a hatchet to that woman if I were her husband.’ The old gentleman known disrespectfully among the younger set on board as the Grandfather of All the Tea Planters, had just shuffled in. ‘Boy!’ he called. ‘Get me a whisky peg.’

Poirot stooped to retrieve a torn scrap of notepaper, an overlooked item from the contents of Mrs Clapperton’s bag. Part of a prescription, he noted, containing digitalin. He put it in his pocket, meaning to restore it to Mrs Clapperton later.

‘Yes,’ went on the aged passenger. ‘Poisonous woman. I remember a woman like that in Poona. In ’87 that was.’

‘Did anyone take a hatchet to her?’ inquired Poirot.

The old gentleman shook his head sadly.

‘Worried her husband into his grave within the year. Clapperton ought to assert himself. Gives his wife her head too much.’

‘She holds the purse strings,’ said Poirot gravely.

‘Ha, ha!’ chuckled the old gentleman. ‘You’ve put
the matter in a nutshell. Holds the purse strings. Ha, ha!’

Two girls burst into the smoking-room. One had a round face with freckles and dark hair streaming out in a windswept confusion, the other had freckles and curly chestnut hair.

‘A rescue—a rescue!’ cried Kitty Mooney. ‘Pam and I are going to rescue Colonel Clapperton.’

‘From his wife,’ gasped Pamela Cregan.

‘We think he’s a
pet
…’

‘And she’s just awful—she won’t let him do
anything
,’ the two girls exclaimed.

‘And if he isn’t with her, he’s usually grabbed by the Henderson woman…’

‘Who’s quite nice. But terribly
old
…’

They ran out, gasping in between giggles. ‘A rescue—a rescue…’

That the rescue of Colonel Clapperton was no isolated sally, but a fixed project, was made clear that same evening when the eighteen-year-old Pam Cregan came up to Hercule Poirot, and murmured: ‘Watch us, M. Poirot. He’s going to be cut out from under her nose and taken to walk in the moonlight on the boat deck.’

It was just at that moment that Colonel Clapperton was saying: ‘I grant you the price of a Rolls-Royce. But it’s practically good for a lifetime. Now my car—’

‘
My
car, I think, John.’ Mrs Clapperton’s voice was shrill and penetrating.

He showed no annoyance at her ungraciousness. Either he was used to it by this time, or else—

‘Or else?’ thought Poirot and let himself speculate.

‘Certainly, my dear,
your
car,’ Clapperton bowed to his wife and finished what he had been saying, perfectly unruffled.

‘
Voilà ce qu’on appelle le pukka sahib
,’ thought Poirot. ‘But the General Forbes says that Clapperton is no gentleman at all. I wonder now.’

There was a suggestion of bridge. Mrs Clapperton, General Forbes and a hawk-eyed couple sat down to it. Miss Henderson had excused herself and gone out on deck.

‘What about your husband?’ asked General Forbes, hesitating.

‘John won’t play,’ said Mrs Clapperton. ‘Most tiresome of him.’

The four bridge players began shuffling the cards.

Pam and Kitty advanced on Colonel Clapperton. Each one took an arm.

‘You’re coming with us!’ said Pam. ‘To the boat deck. There’s a moon.’

‘Don’t be foolish, John,’ said Mrs Clapperton. ‘You’ll catch a chill.’

‘Not with us, he won’t,’ said Kitty. ‘We’re hot stuff!’

He went with them, laughing.

Poirot noticed that Mrs Clapperton said No Bid to her initial bid of Two Clubs.

He strolled out on to the promenade deck. Miss Henderson was standing by the rail. She looked round expectantly as he came to stand beside her and he saw the drop in her expression.

They chatted for a while. Then presently as he fell silent she asked: ‘What are you thinking about?’

Poirot replied: ‘I am wondering about my knowledge of English. Mrs Clapperton said: “John won’t play bridge.” Is not “can’t play” the usual term?’

‘She takes it as a personal insult that he doesn’t, I suppose,’ said Ellie drily. ‘The man was a fool ever to have married her.’

In the darkness Poirot smiled. ‘You don’t think it’s just possible that the marriage may be a success?’ he asked diffidently.

‘With a woman like that?’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders. ‘Many odious women have devoted husbands. An enigma of nature. You
will admit that nothing she says or does appears to gall him.’ Miss Henderson was considering her reply when Mrs Clapperton’s voice floated out through the smoking-room window.

‘No—I don’t think I will play another rubber. So stuffy. I think I’ll go up and get some air on the boat deck.’

‘Good night,’ said Miss Henderson. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She disappeared abruptly.

Poirot strolled forward to the lounge—deserted save for Colonel Clapperton and the two girls. He was doing card tricks for them and noting the dexterity of his shuffling and handling of the cards, Poirot remembered the General’s story of a career on the music hall stage.

‘I see you enjoy the cards even though you do not play bridge,’ he remarked.

‘I’ve my reasons for not playing bridge,’ said Clapperton, his charming smile breaking out. ‘I’ll show you. We’ll play one hand.’

He dealt the cards rapidly. ‘Pick up your hands. Well, what about it?’ He laughed at the bewildered expression on Kitty’s face. He laid down his hand and the others followed suit. Kitty held the entire club suit, M. Poirot the hearts, Pam the diamonds and Colonel Clapperton the spades.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘A man who can deal his
partner and his adversaries any hand he pleases had better stand aloof from a friendly game! If the luck goes too much his way, ill-natured things might be said.’