Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories

‘Yes; that is the annoying part of it! I feel then that I could have done it myself.’

‘And so you could, Hastings, so you could. If you would but take the trouble of arranging your ideas! Without method –’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said hastily, for I knew Poirot’s eloquence when started on his favourite theme only too well. ‘Tell me, what do we do next? Are you really going to reconstruct the crime?’

‘Hardly that. Shall we say that the drama is over, but that I propose to add a – harlequinade?’

The following Tuesday was fixed upon by Poirot as the day for this mysterious performance. The preparations greatly intrigued me. A white screen was erected at one side of the room, flanked by heavy curtains at either side. A man with some lighting apparatus arrived next, and finally a group of members of the theatrical profession, who disappeared into Poirot’s bedroom, which had been rigged up as a temporary dressing-room.

Shortly before eight, Japp arrived, in no very cheerful mood. I gathered that the official detective hardly approved of Poirot’s plan.

‘Bit melodramatic, like all his ideas. But there, it can do no harm, and as he says, it might save us a good bit of trouble. He’s been very smart over the case. I was on the same scent myself, of course –’ I felt instinctively that Japp was straining the truth here – ‘but there, I promised to let him play the thing out his own way. Ah! Here is the crowd.’

His Lordship arrived first, escorting Mrs Mallaby, whom I had not as yet seen. She was a pretty, dark-haired woman, and appeared perceptibly nervous. The Davidsons followed. Chris Davidson also I saw for the first time. He was handsome enough in a rather obvious style, tall and dark, with the easy grace of the actor.

Poirot had arranged seats for the party facing the screen. This was illuminated by a bright light. Poirot switched out the other lights so that the room was in darkness except for the screen. Poirot’s voice rose out of the gloom.

‘Messieurs, mesdames, a word of explanation. Six figures in turn will pass across the screen. They are familiar to you. Pierrot and his Pierrette; Punchinello the buffoon, and elegant Pulcinella; beautiful Columbine, lightly dancing, Harlequin, the sprite, invisible to man!’

With these words of introduction, the show began. In turn each figure that Poirot had mentioned bounded before the screen, stayed there a moment poised, and then vanished. The lights went up, and a sigh of relief went round. Everyone had been nervous, fearing they knew not what. It seemed to me that the proceedings had gone singularly flat. If the criminal was among us, and Poirot expected him to break down at the mere sight of a familiar figure the device had failed signally – as it was almost bound to do. Poirot, however, appeared not a whit discomposed. He stepped forward, beaming.

‘Now, messieurs and mesdames, will you be so good as to tell me, one at a time, what it is that we have just seen? Will you begin, milor’?’

The gentleman looked rather puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’

‘Just tell me what we have been seeing.’

‘I – er – well, I should say we have seen six figures passing in front of a screen and dressed to represent the personages in the old Italian Comedy, or – er – ourselves the other night.’

‘Never mind the other night, milor’,’ broke in Poirot. ‘The first part of your speech was what I wanted. Madame, you agree with Milor’ Cronshaw?’

He had turned as he spoke to Mrs Mallaby.

‘I – er – yes, of course.’

‘You agree that you have seen six figures representing the Italian Comedy?’

‘Why, certainly.’

‘Monsieur Davidson? You too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Madame?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hastings? Japp? Yes? You are all in accord?’

He looked around upon us; his face grew rather pale, and his eyes were green as any cat’s.

‘And yet – you are all wrong! Your eyes have lied to you – as they lied to you on the night of the Victory Ball. To “see” things with your eyes, as they say, is not always to see the truth. One must see with the eyes of the mind; one must employ the little cells of grey! Know, then, that tonight and on the night of the Victory Ball, you saw not six figures but five! See!’

The lights went out again. A figure bounded in front of the screen – Pierrot!

‘Who is that?’ demanded Poirot. ‘Is it Pierrot?’

‘Yes,’ we all cried.

‘Look again!’

With a swift movement the man divested himself of his loose Pierrot garb. There in the limelight stood glittering Harlequin! At the same moment there was a cry and an overturned chair.

‘Curse you,’ snarled Davidson’s voice. ‘Curse you! How did you guess?’

Then came the clink of handcuffs and Japp’s calm official voice. ‘I arrest you, Christopher Davidson – charge of murdering Viscount Cronshaw – anything you say will be used in evidence against you.’

It was a quarter of an hour later. A recherché little supper had appeared; and Poirot, beaming all over his face, was dispensing hospitality and answering our eager questions.

‘It was all very simple. The circumstances in which the green pompon was found suggested at once that it had been torn from the costume of the murderer. I dismissed Pierrette from my mind (since it takes considerable strength to drive a table-knife home) and fixed upon Pierrot as the criminal. But Pierrot left the ball nearly two hours before the murder was committed. So he must either have returned to the ball later to kill Lord Cronshaw, or – eh bien, he must have killed him before he left! Was that impossible? Who had seen Lord Cronshaw after supper that evening? Only Mrs Davidson, whose statement, I suspected, was a deliberate fabrication uttered with the object of accounting for the missing pompon, which, of course, she cut from her own dress to replace the one missing on her husband’s costume. But then, Harlequin, who was seen in the box at one-thirty, must have been an impersonation. For a moment, earlier, I had considered the possibility of Mr Beltane being the guilty party. But with his elaborate costume, it was clearly impossible that he could have doubled the roles of Punchinello and Harlequin. On the other hand, to Davidson, a young man of about the same height as the murdered man and an actor by profession, the thing was simplicity itself.

‘But one thing worried me. Surely a doctor could not fail to perceive the difference between a man who had been dead two hours and one who had been dead ten minutes! Eh bien, the doctor did perceive it! But he was not taken to the body and asked, “How long has this man been dead?” On the contrary, he was informed that the man had been seen alive ten minutes ago, and so he merely commented at the inquest on the abnormal stiffening of the limbs for which he was quite unable to account!

‘All was now marching famously for my theory. Davidson had killed Lord Cronshaw immediately after supper, when, as you remember, he was seen to draw him back into the supper-room. Then he departed with Miss Courtenay, left her at the door of her flat (instead of going in and trying to pacify her as he affirmed) and returned post-haste to the Colossus – but as Harlequin, not Pierrot – a simple transformation effected by removing his outer costume.’

The uncle of the dead man leaned forward, his eyes perplexed.

‘But if so, he must have come to the ball prepared to kill his victim. What earthly motive could he have had? The motive, that’s what I can’t get.’

‘Ah! There we come to the second tragedy – that of Miss Courtenay. There was one simple point which everyone overlooked. Miss Courtenay died of cocaine poisoning – but her supply of the drug was in the enamel box which was found on Lord Cronshaw’s body. Where, then, did she obtain the dose which killed her? Only one person could have supplied her with it – Davidson. And that explains everything. It accounts for her friendship with the Davidsons and her demand that Davidson should escort her home. Lord Cronshaw, who was almost fanatically opposed to drug-taking, discovered that she was addicted to cocaine, and suspected that Davidson supplied her with it. Davidson doubtless denied this, but Lord Cronshaw determined to get the truth from Miss Courtenay at the ball. He could forgive the wretched girl, but he would certainly have no mercy on the man who made a living by trafficking in drugs. Exposure and ruin confronted Davidson. He went to the ball determined that Cronshaw’s silence must be obtained at any cost.’

‘Was Coco’s death an accident, then?’

‘I suspect that it was an accident cleverly engineered by Davidson. She was furiously angry with Cronshaw, first for his reproaches, and secondly for taking her cocaine from her. Davidson supplied her with more, and probably suggested her augmenting the dose as a defiance to “old Cronch”!’

‘One other thing,’ I said. ‘The recess and the curtain? How did you know about them?’

‘Why, mon ami, that was the most simple of all. Waiters had been in and out of that little room, so, obviously, the body could not have been lying where it was found on the floor. There must be some place in the room where it could be hidden. I deduced a curtain and a recess behind it. Davidson dragged the body there, and later, after drawing attention to himself in the box, he dragged it out again before finally leaving the Hall. It was one of his best moves. He is a clever fellow!’

But in Poirot’s green eyes I read unmistakably the unspoken remark: ‘But not quite so clever as Hercule Poirot!’

2 The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (#ulink_fce08292-4bde-5167-9012-0869e92b2a6e)

‘The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ was first published as ‘The Curious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls’ in The Sketch, 14 March 1923.

‘Poirot,’ I said, ‘a change of air would do you good.’

‘You think so, mon ami?’