Peril at End House (11 page)

I doubt if I shall ever forget the night that followed. Poirot was a prey to such an agony of self-reproach that I was really alarmed. Ceaselessly he strode up and down the room heaping anathemas on his own head and deaf to my well-meant remonstrances.

‘What it is to have too good an opinion of oneself. I am punished—yes, I am punished. I, Hercule Poirot. I was too sure of myself.’

‘No, no,’ I interpolated.

‘But who would imagine—who could imagine—such unparalleled audacity? I had taken, as I thought, all possible precautions. I had warned the murderer—’

‘Warned the murderer?’

‘
Mais oui
. I had drawn attention to myself. I had let him see that I suspected—someone. I had made it, or so I thought, too dangerous for him to dare to repeat his attempts at murder. I had drawn a cordon round
Mademoiselle. And he slips through it! Boldly—under our very eyes almost, he slips through it! In spite of us all—of everyone being on the alert, he achieves his object.’

‘Only he doesn’t,’ I reminded him.

‘That is the chance only! From my point of view, it is the same. A human life has been taken, Hastings—whose life is non-essential.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘But on the other hand, what you say is true. And that makes it worse—ten times worse. For the murderer is still as far as ever from achieving his object. Do you understand, my friend? The position is changed—for the worse. It may mean that not one life—but two—will be sacrificed.’

‘Not while you’re about,’ I said stoutly.

He stopped and wrung my hand.

‘
Merci, mon ami! Merci!
You still have confidence in the old one—you still have the faith. You put new courage into me. Hercule Poirot will not fail again. No second life shall be taken. I will rectify my error—for, see you, there must have been an error! Somewhere there has been a lack of order and method in my usually so well arranged ideas. I will start again. Yes, I will start at the beginning. And this time—I will not fail.’

‘You really think then,’ I said, ‘that Nick Buckley’s life is still in danger?’

‘My friend, for what other reason did I send her to this nursing home?’

‘Then it wasn’t the shock—’

‘The shock! Pah! One can recover from shock as well in one’s own home as in a nursing home—better, for that matter. It is not amusing there, the floors of green linoleum, the conversation of the nurses—the meals on trays, the ceaseless washing. No, no, it is for safety and safety only. I take the doctor into my confidence. He agrees. He will make all arrangements. No one,
mon ami, not even her dearest friend
, will be admitted to see Miss Buckley. You and I are the only ones permitted.
Pour les autres—eh bien!
“Doctor’s orders,” they will be told. A phrase very convenient and one not to be gainsayed.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Only—’

‘Only what, Hastings?’

‘That can’t go on for ever.’

‘A very true observation. But it gives us a little breathing space. And you realize, do you not, that the character of our operations has changed.’

‘In what way?’

‘Our original task was to ensure the safety of Mademoiselle. Our task now is a much simpler one—a task with which we are well acquainted. It is neither more nor less than the hunting down of a murderer.’

‘You call that simpler?’

‘Certainly it is simpler. The murderer has, as I said the other day,
signed his name to the crime
. He has come out into the open.’

‘You don’t think—’ I hesitated, then went on. ‘You don’t think that the police are right? That this is the work of a madman, some wandering lunatic with homicidal mania?’

‘I am more than ever convinced that such is not the case.’

‘You really think that—’

I stopped. Poirot took up my sentence, speaking very gravely.

‘That the murderer is someone in Mademoiselle’s own circle? Yes,
mon ami
, I do.’

‘But surely last night must almost rule out that possibility. We were all together and—’

He interrupted.

‘Could you swear, Hastings, that any particular person had never left our little company there on the edge of the cliff? Is there any one person there whom you could swear you had seen
all
the time?’

‘No,’ I said slowly, struck by his words. ‘I don’t think I could. It was dark. We all moved about, more or less. On different occasions I noticed Mrs Rice, Lazarus, you, Croft, Vyse—but all the time—no.’

Poirot nodded his head.

‘Exactly. It would be a matter of a very few minutes.
The two girls go to the house. The murderer slips away unnoticed, hides behind that sycamore tree in the middle of the lawn. Nick Buckley, or so he thinks, comes out of the window, passes within a foot of him, he fires three shots in rapid succession—’

‘Three?’ I interjected.

‘Yes. He was taking no chances this time. We found three bullets in the body.’

‘That was risky, wasn’t it?’

‘Less risky in all probability than one shot would have been. A Mauser pistol does not make a great deal of noise. It would resemble more or less the popping of the fireworks and blend in very well with the noise of them.’

‘Did you find the pistol?’ I asked.

‘No. And there, Hastings, lies to my mind the indisputable proof that no stranger is responsible for this. We agree, do we not, that Miss Buckley’s own pistol was taken in the first place for one reason only—to give her death the appearance of suicide.’

‘Yes.’

‘That is the only possible reason, is it not? But now, you observe, there is no pretence of suicide.
The murderer knows that we should not any longer be deceived by it
. He knows, in fact, what we know!’

I reflected, admitting to myself the logic of Poirot’s deduction.

‘What did he do with the pistol do you think?’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

‘For that, it is difficult to say. But the sea was exceedingly handy. A good toss of the arm, and the pistol sinks, never to be recovered. We cannot, of course, be absolutely sure—but that is what
I
should have done.’

His matter-of-fact tone made me shiver a little.

‘Do you think—do you think he realized that he’d killed the wrong person?’

‘I am quite sure he did not,’ said Poirot, grimly. ‘Yes, that must have been an unpleasant little surprise for him when he learnt the truth. To keep his face and betray nothing—it cannot have been easy.’

At that moment I bethought me of the strange attitude of the maid, Ellen. I gave Poirot an account of her peculiar demeanour. He seemed very interested.

‘She betrayed surprise, did she, that it was Maggie who was dead?’

‘Great surprise.’

‘That is curious. And yet, the fact of a tragedy was clearly
not
a surprise to her. Yes, there is something there that must be looked into. Who is she, this Ellen? So quiet, so respectable in the English manner? Could it be she who—?’ He broke off.

‘If you’re going to include the accidents,’ I said, ‘surely it would take a man to have rolled that heavy boulder down the cliff.’

‘Not necessarily. It is very largely a question of leverage. Oh, yes, it could be done.’

He continued his slow pacing up and down the room.

‘Anyone who was at End House last night comes under suspicion. But those guests—no, I do not think it was one of them. For the most part, I should say, they were mere acquaintances. There was no intimacy between them and the young mistress of the house.’

‘Charles Vyse was there,’ I remarked.

‘Yes, we must not forget him. He is, logically, our strongest suspect.’ He made a gesture of despair and threw himself into a chair opposite mine. ‘
Voilà
—it is always that we come back to! Motive! We must find the motive if we are to understand this crime. And it is there, Hastings, that I am continually baffled. Who can possibly have a motive for doing away with Mademoiselle Nick? I have let myself go to the most absurd suppositions. I, Hercule Poirot, have descended to the most ignominious flights of fancy. I have adopted the mentality of the cheap thriller. The grandfather—the “Old Nick”—he who is supposed to have gambled his money away. Did he really do so, I have asked myself? Did he, on the contrary, hide it away? Is it hidden somewhere in End House? Buried somewhere in the grounds? With that end in view (I am ashamed to say it) I inquired of Mademoiselle Nick whether there had ever been any offers to buy the house.’

‘Do you know, Poirot,’ I said, ‘I call that rather a bright idea. There may be something in it.’

Poirot groaned.

‘You would say that! It would appeal, I knew, to your romantic but slightly mediocre mind. Buried treasure—yes, you would enjoy that idea.’

‘Well—I don’t see why not—’

‘Because, my friend, the more prosaic explanation is nearly always more probable. Then Mademoiselle’s father—I have played with even more degrading ideas concerning him. He was a traveller. Supposing, I say to myself, that he has stolen a jewel—the eye of a God. Jealous priests are on his tracks. Yes, I, Hercule Poirot, have descended to depths such as these.

‘I have had other ideas concerning this father,’ he went on. ‘Ideas at once more dignified and more probable. Did he, in the course of his wanderings, contract a second marriage? Is there a nearer heir than M. Charles Vyse? But again, that leads nowhere, for we are up against the same difficulty—that there is really nothing of value to inherit.

‘I have neglected no possibility. Even that chance reference of Mademoiselle Nick’s to the offer made her by M. Lazarus. You remember? The offer to purchase her grandfather’s portrait. I telegraphed on Saturday for an expert to come down and examine that picture. He was the man about whom I wrote to Mademoiselle
this morning. Supposing, for instance, it were worth several thousand pounds?’

‘You surely don’t think a rich man like young Lazarus—?’

‘Is he rich? Appearances are not everything. Even an old-established firm with palatial showrooms and every appearance of prosperity may rest on a rotten basis. And what does one do then? Does one run about crying out that times are hard? No, one buys a new and luxurious car. One spends a little more money than usual. One lives a little more ostentatiously. For credit, see you, is everything! But sometimes a monumental business has crashed—for no more than a few thousand pounds—
of ready money
.

‘Oh! I know,’ he continued, forestalling my protests. ‘It is far-fetched—but it is not so bad as revengeful priests or buried treasure. It bears, at any rate, some relationship to things as they happen. And we can neglect nothing—nothing that might bring us nearer the truth.’

With careful fingers he straightened the objects on the table in front of him. When he spoke, his voice was grave and, for the first time, calm.

‘
Motive!
’he said. ‘Let us come back to that, and regard this problem calmly and methodically. To begin with, how many kinds of motive are there for murder? What are the motives which lead one human being to
take another human being’s life?

‘We exclude for the moment homicidal mania. Because I am absolutely convinced that the solution of our problem does not lie there. We also exclude killing done on the spur of the moment under the impulse of an ungovernable temper. This is cold-blooded deliberate murder. What are the motives that actuate such a murder as that?’

‘There is, first,
Gain
. Who stood to gain by Mademoiselle Buckley’s death? Directly or indirectly? Well, we can put down Charles Vyse. He inherits a property that, from the financial point of view, is probably not worth inheriting. He might, perhaps, pay off the mortgage, build small villas on the land and eventually make a small profit. It is possible. The place might be worth something to him if he had any deeply cherished love of it—if, it were, for instance, a family place. That is, undoubtedly, an instinct very deeply implanted in some human beings, and it has, in cases I have known, actually led to crime. But I cannot see any such motive in M. Vyse’s case.

‘The only other person who would benefit at all by Mademoiselle Buckley’s death is her friend, Madame Rice. But the amount would clearly be a very small one. Nobody else, as far as I can see,
gains
by Mademoiselle Buckley’s death.

‘What is another motive? Hate—or love that has
turned to hate. The
crime passionnel
. Well, there again we have the word of the observant Madame Croft that both Charles Vyse and Commander Challenger are in love with the young lady.’

‘I think we can say that we have observed the latter phenomenon for ourselves,’ I remarked, with a smile.

‘Yes—he tends to wear his heart on his sleeve, the honest sailor. For the other, we rely on the word of Madame Croft. Now, if Charles Vyse felt that he were supplanted, would he be so powerfully affected that he would kill his cousin rather than let her become the wife of another man?’

‘It sounds very melodramatic,’ I said, doubtfully.

‘It sounds, you would say, un-English. I agree. But even the English have emotions. And a type such as Charles Vyse, is the most likely to have them. He is a repressed young man. One who does not show his feelings easily. Such often have the most violent feelings. I would never suspect the Commander Challenger of murder for emotional reasons. No, no, he is not the type. But with Charles Vyse—yes, it is possible. But it does not entirely satisfy me.

‘Another motive for crime—Jealousy. I separate it from the last, because jealousy may not, necessarily, be a sexual emotion. There is envy—envy of possession—of supremacy. Such a jealousy as drove the Iago of your great Shakespeare to one of the cleverest crimes
(speaking from the professional point of view) that has ever been committed.’

‘Why was it so clever?’ I asked, momentarily diverted.

‘
Parbleu
—because he got others to execute it. Imagine a criminal nowadays on whom one was unable to put the handcuffs because he had never done anything himself. But this is not the subject we were discussing. Can jealousy, of any kind, be responsible for this crime? Who has reason to envy Mademoiselle? Another woman? There is only Madame Rice, and as far as we can see, there was no rivalry between the two women. But again, that is only “as far as we can see”. There may be something there.