Agatha Christie: Murder in the mews

‘He?’

‘Douglas Gold.’

‘You think Douglas Gold would have followed her? Oh, no, mademoiselle, you are wrong—you are completely wrong. You have not yet appreciated the truth of this matter. If Valentine Chantry had left the island, her husband would have gone with her.’

Pamela looked puzzled.

‘Well, naturally.’

‘And then, you see, the crime would simply have taken place somewhere else.’

‘I don’t understand you?’

‘I am saying to you that the same crime would have occurred somewhere else— that crime being the murder of Valentine Chantry by her husband .’

Pamela stared.

‘Are you trying to say that it was Commander Chantry—Tony Chantry—who murdered Valentine?’

‘Yes. You saw him do it! Douglas Gold brought him his drink. He sat with it in front of him. When the women came in we all looked across the room, he had the stropanthin ready, he dropped it into the pink gin and presently, courteously, he passed it along to his wife and she drank it.’

‘But the packet of stropanthin was found in Douglas Gold’s pocket!’

‘A very simple matter to slip it there when we were all crowding round the dying woman.’

It was quite two minutes before Pamela got her breath.

‘But I don’t understand a word! The triangle—you said yourself—’

Hercule Poirot nodded his head vigorously.

‘I said there was a triangle—yes. But you, you imagined the wrong one . You were deceived by some very clever acting! You thought, as you were meant to think, that both Tony Chantry and Douglas Gold were in love with Valentine Chantry. You believed, as you were meant to believe, that Douglas Gold, being in love with Valentine Chantry (whose husband refused to divorce her) took the desperate step of administering a powerful heart poison to Chantry and that, by a fatal mistake, Valentine Chantry drank that poison instead. All that is illusion. Chantry has been meaning to do away with his wife for some time. He was bored to death with her, I could see that from the first. He married her for her money. Now he wants to marry another woman—so he planned to get rid of Valentine and keep her money. That entailed murder.’

‘Another woman ?’

Poirot said slowly:

‘Yes, yes— the little Marjorie Gold . It was the eternal triangle all right! But you saw it the wrong way round. Neither of those two men cared in the least for Valentine Chantry. It was her vanity and Majorie Gold’s very clever stage managing that made you think they did! A very clever woman, Mrs Gold, and amazingly attractive in her demure Madonna, poor-little-thing-way! I have known four women criminals of the same type. There was Mrs Adams who was acquitted of murdering her husband, but everybody knows she did it. Mary Parker did away with an aunt, a sweetheart and two brothers before she got a little careless and was caught. Then there was Mrs Rowden, she was hanged all right. Mrs Lecray escaped by the skin of her teeth. This woman is exactly the same type. I recognized it as soon as I saw her! That type takes to crime like a duck to water! And a very pretty bit of well-planned work it was. Tell me, what evidence did you ever have that Douglas Gold was in love with Valentine Chantry? When you come to think it out, you will realize that there was only Mrs Gold’s confidences and Chantry’s jealous bluster. Yes? You see?’

‘It’s horrible,’ cried Pamela.

‘They were a clever pair,’ said Poirot with professional detachment. ‘They planned to “meet” here and stage their crime. That Marjorie Gold, she is a cold-blooded devil! She would have sent her poor, innocent fool of a husband to the scaffold without the least remorse.’

Pamela cried out:

‘But he was arrested and taken away by the police last night.’

‘Ah,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘but after that, me, I had a few little words with the police. It is true that I did not see Chantry put the stropanthin in the glass. I, like everyone else, looked up when the ladies came in. But the moment I realized that Valentine Chantry had been poisoned, I watched her husband without taking my eyes off him. And so, you see, I actually saw him slip the packet of stropanthin in Douglas Gold’s coat pocket…’

He added with a grim expression on his face:

‘I am a good witness. My name is well known. The moment the police heard my story they realized that it put an entirely different complexion on the matter.’

‘And then?’ demanded Pamela, fascinated.

‘ Eh bien , then they asked Commander Chantry a few questions. He tried to bluster it out, but he is not really clever, he soon broke down.’

‘So Douglas Gold was set at liberty?’

‘Yes.’

‘And—Marjorie Gold?’

Poirot’s face grew stern.

‘I warned her,’ he said. ‘Yes, I warned her… Up on the Mount of the Prophet… It was the only chance of averting the crime. I as good as told her that I suspected her. She understood. But she believed herself too clever… I told her to leave the island if she valued her life. She chose—to remain…’