Agatha Christie - The Labours of Hercules

Poirot said: "A lot has to be proved still. Opportunity – access to poison – the vehicle in which it was administered."

"But supposing, M. Poirot, that he had nothing to do with it – nothing at all."

"In that case," Poirot shrugged his shoulders, "he will be acquitted."

Nurse Harrison said slowly: "There is something – something that, I suppose, I ought to have told you before – but I didn't think that there was really anything in it. It was just queer."

"I knew there was something," said Poirot. "You had better tell it to me now."

"It isn't much. It's just that one day when I went down to the dispensary for something, Jean Moncrieffe was doing something rather – odd."

"Yes?"

"It sounds so silly. It's only that she was filling up her powder compact – a pink enamel one -"

"Yes?"

"But she wasn't filling it up with powder – with face powder, I mean. She was tipping something into it from one of the bottles out of the poison cupboard. When she saw me she started and shut up the compact and whipped it into her bag – and put back the bottle quickly into the cupboard so that I couldn't see what it was. I daresay it doesn't mean anything – but now that I know that Mrs Oldfield really was poisoned -" She broke off.

Poirot said: "You will excuse me?"

He went out and telephoned to Detective Sergeant Grey of the Berkshire Police.

Hercule Poirot came back and he and Nurse Harrison sat in silence.

Poirot was seeing the face of a girl with red hair and hearing a clear hard voice say: "I don't agree." Jean Moncrieffe had not wanted an autopsy. She had given a plausible enough excuse, but the fact remained. A competent girl – efficient – resolute. In love with a man who was tied to a complaining invalid wife, who might easily live for years since, according to Nurse Harrison, she had very little the matter with her.

Hercule Poirot sighed.

Nurse Harrison said: "What are you thinking of?"

Poirot answered: "The pity of things…"

Nurse Harrison said: "I don't believe for a minute he knew anything about it."

Poirot said: "No. I am sure he did not."

The door opened and Detective Sergeant Grey came in. He had something in his hand, wrapped in a silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it and set it carefully down. It was a bright rose pink enamel compact.

Nurse Harrison said: "That's the one I saw."

Grey said: "Found it pushed right to the back of Miss Moncrieffe's bureau drawer. Inside a handkerchief sachet. As far as I can see there are no fingerprints on it, but I'll be careful."

With the handkerchief over his hand he pressed the spring. The case flew open.

Grey said: "This stuff isn't face powder."

He dipped a finger and tasted it gingerly on the tip of his tongue.

"No particular taste."

Poirot said: "White arsenic does not taste."

Grey said: "It will be analysed at once." He looked at Nurse Harrison. "You can swear to this being the same case?"

"Yes. I'm positive. That's the case I saw Miss Moncrieffe with in the dispensary about a week before Mrs Oldfield's death."

Sergeant Grey sighed. He looked at Poirot and nodded.

The latter rang the bell.

"Send my servant here, please."

George, the perfect valet, discreet, unobtrusive, entered and looked inquiringly at his master.

Hercule Poirot said: "You have identified this powder compact, Miss Harrison, as one you saw in the possession of Miss Moncrieffe over a year ago. Would you be surprised to learn that this particular case was sold by Messrs. Woolworth only a few weeks ago and that, moreover, it is of a pattern and colour that has only been manufactured for the last three months?"

Nurse Harrison gasped. She stared at Poirot, her eyes round and dark.

Poirot said: "Have you seen this compact before, Georges?"

George stepped forward.

"Yes, sir. I observed this person, Nurse Harrison, purchase it at Woolworth's on Friday the 18th. Pursuant to your instructions I followed this lady whenever she went out. She took a bus over to Darnington on the day I have mentioned and purchased this compact. She took it home with her. Later, the same day, she came to the house in which Miss Moncrieffe lodges. Acting as by your instructions, I was already in the house. I observed her go into Miss Moncrieffe's bedroom and hide this in the back of the bureau drawer. I had a good view through the crack of the door. She then left the house believing herself unobserved. I may say that no one locks their front doors down here and it was dusk."

Poirot said to Nurse Harrison, and his voice was hard and venomous: "Can you explain these facts, Nurse Harrison? I think not. There was no arsenic in that box when it left Messrs. Woolworth, but there was when it left Miss Bristow's house." He added softly, "It was unwise of you to keep a supply of arsenic in your possession."

Nurse Harrison buried her face in her hands.

She said in a low dull voice: "It's true – it's all true… I killed her. And all for nothing – nothing… I was mad…"

Jean Moncrieffe said: "I must ask you to forgive me, M. Poirot. I have been so angry with you – so terribly angry with you. It seemed to me that you were making everything so much worse."

Poirot said with a smile: "So I was to begin with. It is like in the old legend of the Lernean Hydra. Every time a head was cut off, two heads grew in its place. So, to begin with, the rumours grew and multiplied. But you see my task, like that of my namesake Hercules, was to reach the first – the original head. Who had started this rumour? It did not take me long to discover that the originator of the story was Nurse Harrison. I went to see her. She appeared to be a very nice woman – intelligent and sympathetic. But almost at once she made a bad mistake – she repeated to me a conversation which she had overheard taking place between you and the doctor, and that conversation, you see, was all wrong. It was psychologically most unlikely. If you and the doctor had planned together to kill Mrs Oldfield, you are both of you far too intelligent and level-headed to hold such a conversation in a room with an open door, easily overheard by someone on the stairs or someone in the kitchen. Moreover, the words attributed to you did not fit in at all with your mental make-up. They were the words of a much older woman and of one of a quite different type. They were words such as would be imagined by Nurse Harrison as being used by herself in like circumstances.

"I had, up to then, regarded the whole matter as fairly simple. Nurse Harrison, I realised, was a fairly young and still handsome woman – she had been thrown closely with Doctor Oldfield for nearly three years – the doctor had been very fond of her and grateful to her for her tact and sympathy. She had formed the impression that if Mrs Oldfield died, the doctor would probably ask her to marry him. Instead of that, after Mrs Oldfield's death, she learns that Doctor Oldfield is in love with you. Straightaway, driven by anger and jealousy, she starts spreading the rumour that Doctor Oldfield has poisoned his wife.

"That, as I say, was how I had visualised the position at first. It was a case of a jealous woman and a lying rumour. But the old trite phrase 'no smoke without fire' recurred to me significantly. I wondered if Nurse Harrison had done more than spread a rumour. Certain things she said rang strangely. She told me that Mrs Oldfield's illness was largely imaginary – that she did not really suffer much pain. But the doctor himself had been in no doubt about the reality of his wife's suffering. He had not been surprised by her death. He had called in another doctor shortly before her death and the other doctor had realised the gravity of her condition. Tentatively I brought forward the suggestion of exhumation… Nurse Harrison was at first frightened out of her wits by the idea. Then, almost at once, her jealousy and hatred took command of her. Let them find arsenic – no suspicion would attach to her. It would be the doctor and Jean Moncrieffe who would suffer.