Agatha Christie: Death in the Clouds

"Mademoiselle Grey is passionately interested in pottery. The past has for her an immense fascination. It is the dream of her life to dig. Also she mends socks and sews on buttons in a manner truly admirable."

"A useful accomplishment."

"Is it not? And now you were telling me about the pottery of Susa."

M. Dupont resumed a happy monologue on his own particular theories of Susa I and Susa II.

Poirot reached his hotel, to find Jane saying good night to Jean Dupont in the hall.

As they went up in the lift, Poirot said: "I have obtained for you a job of great interest. You are to accompany the Duponts to Persia in the spring."

Jane stared at him.

"Are you quite mad?"

"When the offer is made to you, you will accept with every manifestation of delight."

"I am certainly not going to Persia. I shall be in Muswell Hill or New Zealand with Norman."

Poirot twinkled at her gently.

"My dear child," he said, "it is some months to next March. To express delight is not to buy a ticket. In the same way I have talked about a donation, but I have not actually signed a check! By the way, I must obtain for you in the morning a handbook on prehistoric pottery of the Near East. I have said that you are passionately interested in the subject."

Jane sighed.

"Being secretary to you is no sinecure, is it? Anything else?"

"Yes. I have said that you sew on buttons and darn socks to perfection."

"Do I have to give a demonstration of that tomorrow too?"

"It would be as well, perhaps," said Poirot, "if they took my word for it."

At half past ten on the following morning the melancholy M. Fournier walked in to Poirot's sitting room and shook the little Belgian warmly by the hand.

His own manner was far more animated than usual.

"Monsieur," he said, "there is something I want to tell you. I have, I think, at last seen the point of what you said in London about the finding of the blowpipe."

"Ah!" Poirot's face lighted up.

"Yes," said Fournier, taking a chair. "I pondered much over what you had said. Again and again I say to myself: 'Impossible that the crime should have been committed as we believe.' And at last – at last I see a connection between that repetition of mine and what you said about the finding of the blowpipe."

Poirot listened attentively, but said nothing.

"That day in London you said: 'Why was the blowpipe found when it might so easily have been passed out through the ventilator?' And I think now that I have the answer: The blowpipe was found because the murderer wanted it to be found."

"Bravo!" said Poirot.

"That was your meaning, then? Good. I thought so. And I went on a step further. I ask myself, 'Why did the murderer want the blowpipe to be found?' And to that I got the answer: 'Because the blowpipe was not used.'"

"Bravo! Bravo! My reasoning exactly."

"I say to myself: 'The poisoned dart, yes, but not the blowpipe.' Then something else was used to send that dart through the air – something that a man or woman might put to their lips in a normal manner, and which would cause no remark. And I remembered your insistence on a complete list of all that was found in the passengers' luggage and upon their persons. There were two things that especially attracted my attention – Lady Horbury had two cigarette holders, and on the table in front of the Duponts were a number of Kurdish pipes."

M. Fournier paused. He looked at Poirot. Poirot did not speak.

"Both those things could have been put to the lips naturally without anyone remarking on it. I am right, am I not?"

Poirot hesitated, then he said:

"You are on the right track, yes, but go a little further. And do not forget the wasp."

"The wasp?" Fournier stared. "No, there I do not follow you. I cannot see where the wasp comes in."

"You cannot see? But it is there that I -"

He broke off as the telephone rang.

He took up the receiver.

"Allô. Allô… Ah, good morning… Yes, it is I myself, Hercule Poirot." In an aside to Fournier, he said, "It is Thibault…

"Yes, yes, indeed… Very well. And you?… M. Fournier?… Quite right… Yes; he has arrived. He is here at this moment."

Lowering the receiver, he said to Fournier:

"He tried to get you at the Sûreté. They told him that you had come to see me here. You had better speak to him. He sounds excited."

Fournier took the telephone.

"Allô. Allô… Yes, it is Fournier speaking…What? What?… In verity, is that so?… Yes, indeed… Yes. Yes, I am sure he will. We will come round at once."

He replaced the telephone on its hook and looked across at Poirot.

"It is the daughter. The daughter of Madame Giselle."

"What?"

"Yes, she has arrived to claim her heritage."

"Where has she come from?"

" America, I understand. Thibault has asked her to return at half past eleven. He suggests we should go round and see him."

"Most certainly. We will go immediately. I will leave a note for Mademoiselle Grey."

He wrote:

Some developments have occurred which force me to go out. If M. Jean Dupont should ring up or call, be amiable to him. Talk of buttons and socks, but not as yet of prehistoric pottery. He admires you, but he is intelligent!

Au revoir.

Hercule Poirot.

"And now let us come, my friend," he said, rising. "This is what I have been waiting for – the entry on the scene of the shadowy figure of whose presence I have been conscious all along. Now, soon, I ought to understand everything."

Maître Thibault received Poirot and Fournier with great affability.

After an interchange of compliments and polite questions and answers, the lawyer settled down to the discussion of Madame Giselle's heiress.

"I received a letter yesterday," he said. "And this morning the young lady herself called upon me."

"What age is Mademoiselle Morisot?"

"Mademoiselle Morisot – or rather Mrs Richards; for she is married – is exactly twenty-four years of age."

"She brought documents to prove her identity?" said Fournier.

"Certainly. Certainly."

He opened a file at his elbow.

"To begin with, there is this."

It was a copy of a marriage certificate between George Leman, bachelor, and Marie Morisot, both of Quebec. Its date was 1910. There was also the birth certificate of Anne Morisot Leman. There were various other documents and papers.

"This throws a certain light on the early life of Madame Giselle," said Fournier.

Thibault nodded.

"As far as I can piece it out," he said, "Marie Morisot was nursery governess or sewing maid when she met this man Leman.

"He was, I gather, a bad lot who deserted her soon after the marriage, and she resumed her maiden name.

"The child was received in the Institut de Marie at Quebec and was brought up there. Marie Morisot, or Leman, left Quebec shortly afterwards – I imagine with a man – and came to France. She remitted sums of money from time to time and finally dispatched a lump sum of ready money to be given to the child on attaining the age of twenty-one. At that time, Marie Morisot, or Leman, was no doubt living an irregular life, and considered it better to sunder any personal relations."

"How did the girl realize that she was the heiress to a fortune?"

"We have inserted discreet advertisements in various journals. It seems one of these came to the notice of the principal of the Institut de Marie and she wrote or telegraphed to Mrs Richards, who was then in Europe, but on the point of returning to the States."

"Who is Richards?"

"I gather he is an American or Canadian from Detroit; by profession a maker of surgical instruments."

"He did not accompany his wife?"

"No, he is still in America."