Part 6 (1/2)

”Very good, M. Poirot.”

Poirot withdrew to his sitting room, a rueful smile on his face.

”It is indeed the irony,” he said to himself, ”that after my dear friend Hastings I should have Miss Lemon. What greater contrast can one imagine? Ce cher Hastings - how he would have enjoyed himself. How he would have walked up and down talking about it, putting the most romantic construction on every incident, believing as gospel truth every word the papers have printed about it. And my poor Miss Lemon, what I have asked her to do, she will not enjoy at all!”

Miss Lemon came to him in due course with a typewritten sheet.

”I've got the information you wanted, M. Poirot. I'm afraid though, it can't be regarded as reliable. The papers vary a good deal in their accounts. I shouldn't like to guarantee that the facts as stated are more than sixty per cent accurate.”

”That is probably a conservative estimate,” murmured Poirot. ”Thank you, Miss Lemon, for the trouble you have taken.”

The facts were sensational but clear enough. Major Charles Rich, a well-to-do bachelor, had given an evening party to a few of his friends, at his apartment. These friends consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, Mr. and Mrs. Spence, and a Commander McLaren. Commander McLaren was a very old friend of both Rich and the Claytons. Mr. and Mrs. Spence, a younger couple, were fairly recent acquaintances. Arnold Clayton was in the Treasury. Jeremy Spence was a junior civil servant. Major Rich was forty-eight, Arnold Clayton was fifty-five, Commander McLaren was forty-six, Jeremy Spence was thirty-seven. Mrs. Clayton was said to be ”some years younger than her husband.” One person was unable to attend the party. At the last moment, Mr. Clayton was called away to Scotland on urgent business, and was supposed to have left King's Cross by the 8:15 train.

The party proceeded as such parties do. Everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves. It was neither a wild party nor a drunken one. It broke up about 11:45. The four guests left together and shared a taxi. Commander McLaren was dropped first at his club and then the Spences dropped Margharita Clayton at Cardigan Gardens just off Sloane Street and went on themselves to their house in Chelsea.

The gruesome discovery was made on the following morning by Major Rich's manservant, William Burgess. The latter did not live in. He arrived early so as to clear up the sitting room before calling Major Rich with his early morning tea. It was whilst clearing up that Burgess was startled to find a big stain discoloring the light-colored rug on which stood the Spanish chest. It seemed to have seeped through from the chest, and the valet immediately lifted up the lid of the chest and looked inside. He was horrified to find there the body of Mr. Clayton, stabbed through the neck.

Obeying his first impulse, Burgess rushed out into the street and fetched the nearest policeman.

Such were the bald facts of the case. But there were further details. The police had immediately broken the news to Mrs. Clayton, who had been ”completely prostrated.” She had seen her husband for the last time at a little after six o'clock on the evening before. He had come home much annoyed, having been summoned to Scotland on urgent business in connection with some property that he owned. He had urged his wife to go to the party without him. Mr. Clayton had then called in at his and Commander McLaren's club, had had a drink with his friend, and had explained the position. He had then said, looking at his watch, that he had just time on his way to King's Cross, to call in on Major Rich and explain. He had already tried to telephone him, but the line had seemed to be out of order.

According to William Burgess, Mr. Clayton arrived at the flat at about 7:55. Major Rich was out but was due to return any moment, so Burgess suggested that Mr. Clayton should come in and wait. Clayton said he had no time but would come in and write a note. He explained that he was on his way to catch a train at King's Cross. The valet showed him into the sitting room and himself returned to the kitchen, where he was engaged in the preparation of canapes for the party. The valet did not hear his master return, but about ten minutes later, Major Rich looked into the kitchen and told Burgess to hurry out and get some Turkish cigarettes, which were Mrs. Spence's favorite smoking. The valet did so and brought them to his master in the sitting room. Mr. Clayton was not there, but the valet naturally thought he had already left to catch his train.

Major Rich's story was short and simple. Mr. Clayton was not in the flat when he himself came in and he had no idea that he had been there. No note had been left for him and the first he heard of Mr. Clayton's journey to Scotland was when Mrs. Clayton and the others arrived.

There were two additional items in the evening papers. Mrs. Clayton who was ”prostrated with shock” had left her flat in Cardigan Gardens and was believed to be staying with friends.

The second item was in the stop press. Major Charles Rich had been charged with the murder of Arnold Clayton and had been taken into custody.

”So that is that,” said Poirot, looking up at Miss Lemon. ”The arrest of Major Rich was to be expected. But what a remarkable case. What a very remarkable case! Do you not think so?”

”I suppose such things do happen, M. Poirot,” said Miss Lemon without interest.

”Oh certainly! They happen every day. Or nearly every day. But usually they are quite understandable - though distressing.”

”It is certainly a very unpleasant business.”

”To be stabbed to death and stowed away in a Spanish chest is certainly unpleasant for the victim - supremely so. But when I say this is a remarkable case, I refer to the remarkable behavior of Major Rich.”

Miss Lemon said with faint distaste: ”There seems to be a suggestion that Major Rich and Mrs. Clayton were very close friends... It was a suggestion and not a proved fact, so I did not include it.”

”That was very correct of you. But it is an inference that leaps to the eye. Is that all you have to say?”

Miss Lemon looked blank. Poirot sighed, and missed the rich colorful imagination of his friend Hastings. Discussing a case with Miss Lemon was uphill work.

”Consider for a moment this Major Rich. He is in love with Mrs. Clayton - granted... He wants to dispose of her husband - that, too, we grant, though if Mrs. Clayton is in love with him, and they are having the affair together, where is the urgency? It is, perhaps, that Mr. Clayton will not give his wife the divorce? But it is not of all this that I talk. Major Rich, he is a retired soldier, and it is said sometimes that soldiers are not brainy. But, tout de meme, this Major Rich, is he, can he be, a complete imbecile?”

Miss Lemon did not reply. She took this to be a purely rhetorical question.

”Well,” demanded Poirot. ”What do you think about it all?”

”What do I think?” Miss Lemon was startled.

”Mais oui - you!”

Miss Lemon adjusted her mind to the strain put upon it. She was not given to mental speculation of any kind unless asked for it. In such leisure moments as she had, her mind was filled with the details of a superlatively perfect filing system. It was her only mental recreation.

”Well -” she began, and paused.

”Tell me just what happened - what you think happened, on that evening. Mr. Clayton is in the sitting room writing a note, Major Rich comes back - what then?”

”He finds Mr. Clayton there. They - I suppose they have a quarrel. Major Rich stabs him. Then, when he sees what he has done, he - he puts the body in the chest. After all, the guests, I suppose, might be arriving any minute.”

”Yes, yes. The guests arrive! The body is in the chest. The evening pa.s.ses. The guests depart. And then -”

”Well, then, I suppose Major Rich goes to bed and - Oh!”

”Ah,” said Poirot. ”You see it now. You have murdered a man. You have concealed his body in a chest. And then - you go peacefully to bed, quite unperturbed by the fact that your valet will discover the crime in the morning.”

”I suppose it's possible that the valet might never have looked inside the chest?”

”With an enormous pool of blood on the carpet underneath it?”

”Perhaps Major Rich didn't realize that the blood was there.”

”Was it not somewhat careless of him not to look and see?”

”I dare say he was upset,” said Miss Lemon. Poirot threw up his hands in despair.

Miss Lemon seized the opportunity to hurry from the room.

The mystery of the Spanish chest was, strictly speaking, no business of Poirot's. He was engaged at the moment in a delicate mission for one of the large oil companies where one of the high ups was possibly involved in some questionable transaction. It was hush-hush, important, and exceedingly lucrative. It was sufficiently involved to command Poirot's attention, and had the great advantage that it required very little physical activity. It was sophisticated and bloodless. Crime at the highest levels.

The mystery of the Spanish chest was dramatic and emotional, two qualities which Poirot had often declared to Hastings could be much overrated - and indeed frequently were so by the latter. He had been severe with ce cher Hastings on this point, and now here he was, behaving much as his friend might have done, obsessed with beautiful women, crimes of pa.s.sion, jealousy, hatred, and all the other romantic causes of murder! He wanted to know about it all. He wanted to know what Major Rich was like, and what his manservant, Burgess, was like, and what Margharita Clayton was like (though that, he thought, he knew) and what the late Arnold Clayton had been like (since he held that the character of the victim was of the first importance in a murder case), and even what Commander McLaren, the faithful friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Spence, the recently acquired acquaintances, were like.

And he did not see exactly how he was going to gratify his curiosity!

He reflected on the matter later in the day.

Why did the whole business intrigue him so much? He decided, after reflection, that it was because - as the facts were related - the whole thing was more or less impossible! Yes, there was a Euclidean flavor.

Starting from what one could accept, there had been a quarrel between two men. Cause, presumably, a woman. One man killed the other in the heat of rage. Yes, that happened - though it would be more acceptable if the husband had killed the lover. Still - the lover had killed the husband, stabbed him with a dagger (?), somehow a rather unlikely weapon. Perhaps Major Rich had had an Italian mother? Somewhere - surely - there should be something to explain the choice of a dagger as a weapon. Anyway, one must accept the dagger (some papers called it a stiletto!). It was to hand and was used. The body was concealed in the chest. That was common sense and inevitable. The crime had not been premeditated, and as the valet was returning at any moment, and four guests would be arriving before very long, it seemed the only course indicated.

The party is held, the guests depart, the manservant is already gone - and - Major Rich goes to bed!

To understand how that could happen, one must see Major Rich and find out what kind of a man acts in that way.

Could it be that, overcome with horror at what he had done and the long strain of an evening trying to appear his normal self, he had taken a sleeping pill of some kind or a tranquilizer which had put him into a heavy slumber which lasted long beyond his usual hour of waking? Possible. Or was it a case, rewarding to a psychologist, where Major Rich's feeling of subconscious guilt made him want the crime to be discovered?

To make up one's mind on that point one would have to see Major Rich. It all came back to - The telephone rang. Poirot let it ring for some moments, until he realized that Miss Lemon after bringing him his letters to sign, had gone home some time ago, and that George had probably gone out.