Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

He looked up and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hullo, Hastings, still about?’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said shortly.

‘Is that all? I’ll soon fix you up. Come with me.’

I followed him into his room, which was the next one to mine. A strange fascination drove me to study this man as closely as I could.

‘You keep late hours yourself,’ I remarked.

‘I’ve never been an early bed-goer. Not when there’s sport abroad. These fine evenings aren’t made to be wasted.’

He laughed – and I disliked the laugh.

I followed him into the bathroom. He opened a little cupboard and took out a bottle of tablets.

‘Here you are. This is the real dope. You’ll sleep like a log – and have pleasant dreams too. Wonderful stuff Slumberyl – that’s the patent name for it.’

The enthusiasm in his voice gave me a slight shock. Was he a drug taker as well? I said doubtfully: ‘It isn’t – dangerous?’

‘It is if you take too much of it. It’s one of the barbiturates – whose toxic dose is very near the effective one.’ He smiled, the corners of his mouth sliding up his face in an unpleasant way.

‘I shouldn’t have thought you could get it without a doctor’s prescription,’ I said.

‘You can’t, old boy. Anyway, quite literally, you can’t. I’ve got a pull in that line.’

I suppose it was foolish of me, but I get these impulses. I said: ‘You knew Etherington, I think?’

At once I knew that it had struck a note of some kind. His eyes grew hard and wary. He said – and his voice had changed – it was light and artificial: ‘Oh yes – I knew Etherington. Poor chap.’ Then, as I did not speak, he went on: ‘Etherington took drugs – of course – but he overdid it. One’s got to know when to stop. He didn’t. Bad business. That wife of his was lucky. If the sympathy of the jury hadn’t been with her, she’d have hanged.’

He passed me over a couple of the tablets. Then he said casually: ‘Did you know Etherington as well?’

I answered with the truth. ‘No.’

He seemed for a moment at a loss how to proceed. Then he turned it off with a light laugh.

‘Funny chap. Not exactly a Sunday school character but he was good company sometimes.’

I thanked him for the tablets and went back to my room.

As I lay down again and turned off the lights I wondered if I had been foolish.

For it came to me very strongly that Allerton was almost certainly X. And I had let him see that I suspected the fact.

Chapter 7

I

My narrative of the days spent at Styles must necessarily be somewhat rambling. In my recollection of it, it presents itself to me as a series of conversations – of suggestive words and phrases that etched themselves into my consciousness.

First of all, and very early on, there came the realization of Hercule Poirot’s infirmity and helplessness. I did believe, as he had said, that his brain still functioned with all its old keenness, but the physical envelope had worn so thin that I realized at once that my part was destined to be a far more active one than usual. I had to be, as it were, Poirot’s eyes and ears.

True, every fine day Curtiss would pick up his master and carry him carefully downstairs to where his chair had been carried down beforehand and was awaiting him. Then he would wheel Poirot out into the garden and select a spot that was free of draughts. On other days, when the weather was not propitious, he would be carried to the drawing-room.

Wherever he might be, someone or other was sure to come and sit with him and talk, but this was not the same thing as if Poirot could have selected for himself his partner in the tête-à-tête. He could no longer single out the person he wanted to talk to.

On the day after my arrival I was taken by Franklin to an old studio in the garden which had been fitted up in a rough and ready fashion for scientific purposes.

Let me make clear here and now that I myself have not got the scientific mind. In my account of Dr Franklin’s work I shall probably use all the wrong terms and arouse the scorn of those properly instructed in such matters.

As far as I, a mere layman, could make out, Franklin was experimenting with various alkaloids derived from the Calabar bean, Physostigma venenosum. I understood more after a conversation which took place one day between Franklin and Poirot. Judith, who tried to instruct me, was, as is customary with the earnest young, almost impossibly technical. She referred learnedly to the alkaloids physostigmine, eserine, physoveine and geneserine, and then proceeded to a most impossible sounding substance, prostigmin or the demethylcarbonic ester of 3 hydroxypheyl trimethyl lammonum, etc. etc., and a good deal more which, it appeared, was the same thing, only differently arrived at! It was all, at any rate, double Dutch to me, and I aroused Judith’s contempt by asking what good all this was likely to do mankind? There is no question that annoys your true scientist more. Judith at once threw me a scornful glance and embarked on another lengthy and learned explanation. The upshot of it was, so I gathered, that certain obscure tribes of West African natives had shown a remarkable immunity to an equally obscure, though deadly disease called, as far as I remember, Jordanitis – a certain enthusiastic Dr Jordan having originally tracked it down. It was an extremely rare tropical ailment, which had been, on one or two occasions, contracted by white people, with fatal results.

I risked inflaming Judith’s rage by remarking that it would be more sensible to find some drug that would counteract the after-effects of measles!

With pity and scorn Judith made it clear to me that it was not the benefaction of the human race, but the enlargement of human knowledge, that was the only goal worthy of attainment.

I looked at some slides through the microscope, studied some photographs of West African natives (really quite entertaining!), caught the eye of a soporific rat in a cage and hurried out again into the air.

As I say, any interest I could feel was kindled by Franklin’s conversation with Poirot.

He said: ‘You know, Poirot, the stuff’s really more up your street than mine. It’s the ordeal bean – supposed to prove innocence or guilt. These West African tribes believe it implicitly – or did do so – they’re getting sophisticated nowadays. They’ll solemnly chew it up quite confident that it will kill them if they’re guilty and not harm them if they’re innocent.’

‘And so, alas, they die?’

‘No, they don’t all die. That’s what has always been overlooked up to now. There’s a lot behind the whole thing – a medicine man ramp, I rather fancy. There are two distinct species of this bean – only they look so much alike that you can hardly spot the difference. But there is a difference. They both contain physostigmine and geneserine and the rest of it, but in the second species you can isolate, or I think I can, yet another alkaloid – and the action of that alkaloid neutralizes the effect of the others. What’s more that second species is regularly eaten by a kind of inner ring in a secret ritual – and the people who eat it never go down with Jordanitis. This third substance has a remarkable effect on the muscular system – without deleterious effects. It’s damned interesting. Unfortunately the pure alkaloid is very unstable. Still, I’m getting results. But what’s wanted is a lot more research out there on the spot. It’s work that ought to be done! Yes, by heck it is . . . I’d sell my soul to –’ He broke off abruptly. The grin came again. ‘Forgive the shop. I get too het up over these things!’

‘As you say,’ said Poirot placidly, ‘it would certainly make my profession much easier if I could test guilt and innocence so easily. Ah, if there were a substance that could do what is claimed for the Calabar bean.’

Franklin said: ‘Ah, but your troubles wouldn’t end there. After all, what is guilt or innocence?’

‘I shouldn’t think there could be any doubt about that,’ I remarked.

He turned to me. ‘What is evil? What is good? Ideas on them vary from century to century. What you would be testing would probably be a sense of guilt or a sense of innocence. In fact no value as a test at all.’

‘I don’t see how you make that out.’

‘My dear fellow, suppose a man thinks he has a divine right to kill a dictator or a money-lender or a pimp or whatever arouses his moral indignation. He commits what you consider a guilty deed – but what he considers is an innocent one. What is your poor ordeal bean to do about it?’

‘Surely,’ I said, ‘there must always be a feeling of guilt with murder?’

‘Lots of people I’d like to kill,’ said Dr Franklin cheerfully. ‘Don’t believe my conscience would keep me awake at night afterwards. It’s an idea of mine, you know, that about eighty per cent of the human race ought to be eliminated. We’d get on much better without them.’

He got up and strolled away, whistling cheerfully to himself.

I looked after him doubtfully. A low chuckle from Poirot recalled me.

‘You look, my friend, like one who has envisaged a nest of serpents. Let us hope that our friend the doctor does not practise what he preaches.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But supposing he does?’