Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot's Casebook

'The dressing-case of madame, it is not in the car,' she exclaimed.

There was a hurried search. At last Lord Mayfield discovered it where it had been put down in the shadow of an old oak chest. Leonie uttered a glad little cry as she seized the elegant affair of green morocco, and hurried out with it.

Then Mrs Vanderlyn leaned out of the car.

'Lord Mayfield, Lord Mayfield.' She handed him a letter.

'Would you mind putting this in your post-bag? If I keep it meaning to post it in town, I'm sure to forget. Letters just stay in my bag for days.'

Sir George Carrington was fidgeting with his watch, opening and shutting it. He was a maniac for punctuality.

'They're cutting it fine,' he murmured. 'Very fine. Unless they're careful, they'll miss the train '

His wife said irritably:

'Oh, don't fuss, George. After all, it's their train, not ours!'

He looked at her reproachfully.

The Rolls drove off.

Reggie drew up at the front door in the Carringtons' Morris.

'All ready, Father,' he said.

The servants began bringing out the Carringtons' luggage.

Reggie supervised its disposal in the dickey.

Poirot moved out of the front door, watching the proceedings.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm. Lady Julia's voice spoke in an agitated whisper.

'M. Poirot. I must speak to you - at once.'

He yielded to her insistent hand. She drew him into a small morning-room and closed the door. She came close to him.

'Is it true what you said - that the discovery of the papers is what matters most to Lord Mayfield?'

Poirot looked at her curiously.

'It is quite true, madame.'

'If- if those papers were returned to you, would you undertake that they should be given back to Lord Mayfield, and no questions asked?'

'I am not sure that I understand you.'

'You must! I am sure that you do! I am suggesting that the - the thief should remain anonymous if the papers are returned.'

Poirot asked:

'How soon would that be, madame?'

'Definitely within twelve hours.'

'You can promise that?'

'I can promise it.'

As he did not answer, she repeated urgently:

'Will you guarantee that there will be no publicity?'

He answered then - very gravely:

'Yes, madame, I will guarantee that.'

'Then everything can be arranged.'

She passed abruptly from the room. A moment later Poirot heard the car drive away.

He crossed the hall and went along the passage to the study.

Lord Mayfield was there. He looked up as Poirot entered.

'Well?' he said.

Poirot spread out his hands.

'The case is ended, Lord Mayfield.'

'What?'

Poirot repeated word for word the scene between himself and Lady Julia.

Lord Mayfield looked at him with a stupefied expression.

'But what does it mean? I don't understand.'

'It is very clear, is it not? Lady Julia knows who stole the plans.'

'You don't mean she took them herself?.'

'Certainly not. Lady Julia may be a gambler. She is not a thief. But if she offers to return the plans, it means that they were taken by her husband or her son. Now Sir George Carrington was out on the terrace with you. That leaves us the son. I think I can reconstruct the happenings of last night fairly accurately. Lady Julia went to her son's room last night and found it empty. She came downstairs to look for him, but did not find him. This morning she hears of the theft, and she also hears that her son declares that he went straight to his room and never left it. That, she knows, is not true. And she knows something else about her son. She knows that he is weak, that he is desperately hard-up for money. She has observed his infatuation for Mrs Vanderlyn. The whole thing is clear to her.

Mrs Vanderlyn has persuaded Reggie to steal the plans. But she determines to play her part also. She will tackle Reggie, get hold of the papers and return them.'

'But the whole thing is quite impossible,' cried Lord Mayfield.

'Yes, it is impossible, but Lady Julia does not know that. She does not know what I, Hercule Poirot, know, that young Reggie Carrington was not stealing papers last night, but instead was philandering with Mrs Vanderlyn's French maid.'

'The whole thing is a mare's nest!'

'Exactly.'

'And the case is not ended at all!'

'Yes, it is ended. I, Hercule Poirot, know the truth. You do not believe me? You did not believe me yesterday when I said I knew where the plans were. But I did know. They were very close at hand.'

'Where?'

'They were in your pocket, my lord.'

There was a pause, then Lord Mayfield said.'

'Do you really know what you are saying, M. Poirot?'

'Yes, I know. I know that I am speaking to a very clever man.

From the first it worried me that you, who were admitxedly short-sighted, should be so positive about the figure you had seen leaving the window. You wanted that solution - the convenient solution - to be accepted. Why? Later, one by one, I eliminated everyone else. Mrs Vandedyn was upstairs, Sir George was with you on the terrace, Reggie Carrington was with the French girl on the stairs, Mrs Macatta was blamelessly in her bedroom. (It is next to the housekeeper's room, and Mrs Macatta snores!) Lady Julia clearly believed her son guilty. So there remained only two possibilities. Either Carlile did not put the papers on the desk but into his own pocket (and that is not reasonable, because, as you pointed out, he could have taken a tracing of them), or else - or else the plans were there when you walked over to the desk, and the only place they could have gone was into your pocket. In that case everything was clear.

Your insistence on the figure you had seen, your insistence on Carlile's innocence, your disinclination to have me summoned.

'One thing did puzzle me - the motive. You were, I was convinced, an honest man, a man of integrity. That showed in your anxiety that no innocent person should be suspected. It was also obvious that the theft of the plans might easily affect your career unfavourably. Why, then, this wholly unreason-able theft? And at last the answer came to me. The crisis in your career, some years ago, the assurances given to the world by the prime Minister that you had had no negotiations with the power in question. Suppose that that was not strictly true, that there remained some record - a letter, perhaps - showing that in actual fact you had done what you had publicly denied. Such a denial was necessary in the interests of public policy. But it is doubtful if the man in the street would see it that way. It might mean that at the moment when supreme power might be given into your hands, some stupid echo from the past would undo everything.

'I suspect that that letter has been preserved in the hands of a certain government, that that government offered to trade with you - the letter in exchange for the plans of the new bomber. Some men would have refused. You - did not! You agreed. Mrs Vanderlyn was the agent in the matter. She came here by arrangement to make the exchange. You gave yourself iaway when you admitted that you had formed no definite stratagem for entrapping her. That admission made your 'Sreason for inviting her here incredibly weak.

'You arranged the robbery. Pretended to see the thief on the terrace - thereby clearing Carlile of suspicion. Even if he had not left the room, the desk was so near the window that a thief might have taken the plans while Carlile was busy at the safe with his back turned. You walked over to the desk, took the plans and kept them on your own person until the moment when, by prearranged plan, you slipped them into Mrs Vanderlyn's dressing-case. In return she handed you the fatal letter disguised as an unposted letter of her own.'

Poirot stopped.

Lord Mayfield said: