Agatha Christie - Death in the Clouds

"You see," said Fournier, "Madame Giselle had her own code. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. She gave her promise to her clients that she would deal honestly with them. She was ruthless, but she was also a woman of her word."

Japp shook his head dumbly. The four men were silent, ruminating on the strange character of the dead woman. Maître Thibault rose.

"I must leave you, messieurs. I have to keep an appointment. If there is any further information I can give you at any time, you know my address."

He shook hands with them ceremoniously and left the apartment.

With the departure of Maître Thibault, the three men drew their chairs a little closer to the table.

"Now then," said Japp, "let's get down to it." He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen. "There were eleven passengers in that Plane – in rear car, I mean – the other doesn't come into it – eleven passengers and two stewards – that's thirteen people we've got. One of those thirteen did the old woman in. Some of the passengers were English, some were French. The latter I shall hand over to M. Fournier. The English ones I'll take on. Then there are inquiries to be made in Paris – that's your job, too, Fournier."

"And not only in Paris," said Fournier. "In the summer Giselle did a lot of business at the French watering places – Deasuville, Le Pinet, Wimereux. She went down south, too, to Antibes and Nice and all those places."

"A good point – one or two of the people in the 'Prometheus' mentioned Le Pinet, I remember. Well, that's one line. Then we've got to get down to the actual murder itself – prove who could possibly be in a position to use that blowpipe." He unrolled a sketch plan of the aeroplane and placed it in the center of the table. "Now then, we're ready for the preliminary work. And to begin with, let's go through the people one by one, and decide on the probabilities and – even more important – the possibilities."

"To begin with, we can eliminate M. Poirot here. That brings the number down to eleven."

Poirot shook his head sadly.

"You are of too trustful a nature, my friend. You should trust nobody – nobody at all."

"Well, we'll leave you in, if you like," said Japp good-temperedly. "Then there are the stewards. Seems to me very unlikely it should be either of them from the probability point of view. They're not likely to have borrowed money on a grand scale, and they've both got a good record – decent sober men, both of them. It would surprise me very much if either of them had anything to do with this. On the other hand, from the possibility point of view we've got to include them. They were up and down the car. They could actually have taken up a position from which they could have used the blowpipe – from the right angle, I mean – though I don't believe that a steward could shoot a poisoned dart out of a blowpipe in a car full of people without someone noticing him do it. I know by experience that most people are blind as bats, but there are limits. Of course, in a way, the same thing applies to every blessed person. It was madness – absolute madness – to commit a crime that way. Only about a chance in a hundred that it would come off without being spotted. The fellow that did it must have had the luck of the devil. Of all the damn fool ways to commit a murder -"

Poirot, who had been sitting with his eyes down, smoking quietly, interposed a question:

"You think it was a foolish way of committing a murder, yes?"

"Of course it was. It was absolute madness."

"And yet it succeeded. We sit here, we three, we talk about it, but we have no knowledge of who committed the crime! That is success!"

"That's pure luck," argued Japp. "The murderer ought to have been spotted five or six times over."

Poirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner.

Fournier looked at him curiously.

"What is it that is in your mind, M. Poirot?"

"Mon ami," said Poirot, "my point is this: An affair must be judged by its results. This affair has succeeded. That is my point."

"And yet," said the Frenchman thoughtfully, "it seems almost a miracle."

"Miracle or no miracle, there it is," said Japp. "We've got the medical evidence, we've got the weapon – and if anyone had told me a week ago that I should be investigating a crime where a woman was killed with a poisoned dart with snake venom on it – well, I'd have laughed in his face! It's an insult – that's what this murder is – an insult."

He breathed deeply. Poirot smiled.

"It is, perhaps, a murder committed by a person with a perverted sense of humor," said Fournier thoughtfully. "It is most important in a crime to get an idea of the psychology of the murderer."

Japp snorted slightly at the word "psychology," which he disliked and mistrusted.

"That's the sort of stuff M. Poirot likes to hear," he said.

"I am very interested, yes, in what you both say."

"You don't doubt that she was killed that way, I suppose?" Japp asked him suspiciously. "I know your tortuous mind."

"No, no, my friend. My mind is quite at ease on that point. The poisoned thorn that I picked up was the cause of death – that is quite certain. But, nevertheless, there are points about this case -"

He paused, shaking his head perplexedly.

Japp went on:

"Well, we get back to our Irish stew, we can't wash out the stewards absolutely, but I think myself it's very unlikely that either of them had anything to do with it. Do you agree, M. Poirot?"

"Oh, you remember what I said. Me, I would not wash out – what a term, mon Dieu! – anybody at this stage."

"Have it your own way. Now, the passengers. Let's start up at the end by the stewards' pantry and the wash rooms. Seat No. 16." He jabbed a pencil on the plan. "That's the hairdressing girl, Jane Grey. Got a ticket in the Irish Sweep – blewed it at Le Pinet. That means the girl's a gambler. She might have been hard up and borrowed from the old dame; doesn't seem likely either that she borrowed a large sum, or that Giselle could have a hold over her. Seems rather too small a fish for what we're looking for. And I don't think a hairdresser's assistant has the remotest chance of laying her hands on snake venom. They don't use it as a hair dye or for face massage.

"In a way, it was rather a mistake to use snake venom; it narrows things down a lot. Only about two people in a hundred would be likely to have any knowledge of it and be able to lay hands on the stuff."

"Which makes one thing, at least, perfectly clear," said Poirot.

It was Fournier who shot a quick glance of inquiry at him.

Japp was busy with his own ideas.

"I look at it like this," he said. "The murderer has got to fall into one of two categories. Either he's a man who's knocked about the world in queer places – a man who knows something of snakes, and of the more deadly varieties, and of the habits of the native tribes who use the venom to dispose of their enemies. That's Category No. 1."

"And the other?"

"The scientific line. Research. This boomslang stuff is the kind of thing they experiment with in high-class laboratories. I had a talk with Winterspoon. Apparently, snake venom – cobra venom, to be exact – is sometimes used in medicine. It's used in the treatment of epilepsy with a fair amount of success. There's a lot being done in the way of scientific investigation into snake bite."

"Interesting and suggestive," said Fournier.

"Yes. But let's go on. Neither of those categories fits the Grey girl. As far as she's concerned, motive seems unlikely; chances of getting the poison, poor. Actual possibility of doing the blowpipe act very doubtful indeed – almost impossible. See here."

The three men bent over the plan.

"Here's No. 16," said Japp. "And here's No. 2 where Giselle was sitting, with a lot of people and seats intervening. If the girl didn't move from her seat – and everybody says she didn't – she couldn't possibly have aimed the thorn to catch Giselle on the side of the neck. I think we can take it she's pretty well out of it.