Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans

'Is this really true?' he demanded. 'All this about the fellow Jones being poisoned and all that?' 'Absolute gospel truth, my dear.' 'Sorry for my incredulity - but the facts do take a bit of swallowing, don't they?' He was silent a minute, frowning.

'Look here,' he said at last. 'Fantastic as the whole thing sounds, I think you must be right in your first deduction. This man, Alex Pritchard, or Alan Carstairs, must have been murdered. If he wasn't there seems no point in the attack upon Jones. Whether the key word to the situation is the phrase "Why didn't they ask Evans?" or not doesn't seem to me to matter much since you've no clue to who Evans is or as to what he was to have been asked. Let's put it that the murderer or murderers assumed that Jones was in possession of some knowledge, whether he knew it himself or not, which was dangerous to them. So, accordingly, they tried to eliminate him, and probably would try again if they got on his track. So far that seems sense - but I don't see by what process of reasoning you fix on Nicholson as the criminal.' 'He's such a sinister man, and he's got a dark-blue Talbot and he was away from here on the day that Bobby was poisoned.' 'That's all pretty thin as evidence.' 'There are all the things Mrs Nicholson told Bobby.' She recited them, and once again they sounded melodramatic and unsubstantial repeated aloud against the background of the peaceful English landscape.

Roger shrugged his shoulders.

'She thinks he supplies Henry with the drug - but that's pure conjecture, she's not a particle of evidence that he does so.

She thinks he wants to get Henry to the Grange as a patient well, that's a very natural wish for a doctor to have. A doctor wants as many patients as he can get. She thinks he's in love with Sylvia. Well, as to that, of course, I can't say.' 'If she thinks so, she's probably right,' interrupted Frankie.

'A woman would know all right about her own husband.' 'Well, granting that that's the case, it doesn't necessarily mean that the man's a dangerous criminal. Lots of respectable citizens fall in love with other people's wives.' 'There's her belief that he wants to murder her,' urged Frankie.

Roger looked at her quizzically.

'You take that seriously?' 'She believes it, anyhow.' Roger nodded and lit a cigarette.

'The question is, how much attention to pay that belief of hers,' he said. 'It's a creepy sort of place, the Grange, full of queer customers. Living there would be inclined to upset a woman's balance, especially if she were of the timid nervous type.' 'Then you don't think it's true?' 'I don't say that. She probably believes quite honestly that he is trying to kill her - but is there any foundation in fact for that belief? There doesn't seem to be.' Frankie remembered with curious clearness Moira saying, 'It's just nerves.' And somehow the mere fact that she had said that seemed to Frankie to point to the fact that it was not nerves, but she found it difficult to know how to explain her point of view to Roger.

Meanwhile the young man was going on: 'Mind you, if you could show that Nicholson had been in Marchbolt on the day of the cliff tragedy that would be very different, or if we could find any definite motive linking him with Carstairs, but it seems to me you're ignoring the real suspects.' 'What real suspects?' 'The - what did you call them - Haymans?' 'Caymans.' 'That's it. Now, they are undoubtedly in it up to the hilt.

First, there's the false identification of the body. Then there's their insistence on the point of whether the poor fellow said anything before he died. And I think it's logical to assume, as you did, that the Buenos Aires offer came from, or was arranged for, by them.' 'It's a bit annoying,' said Frankie, 'to have the most strenuous efforts made to get you out of the way because you know something - and not to know yourself what the something you know is. Bother - what a mess one gets into with words.' 'Yes,' said Roger grimly, 'that was a mistake on their part. A mistake that it's going to take them all their rime to remedy.' 'Oh!' cried Frankie. 'I've just thought of something. Up to now, you see, I've been assuming that the photograph of Mrs Cayman was substituted for the one of Moira Nicholson.' 'I can assure you,' said Roger gravely, 'that I have never treasured the likeness of a Mrs Cayman against my heart. She sounds a most repulsive creature.' 'Well, she was handsome in a way,' admitted Frankie. 'A sort of bold, coarse, vampish way. But the point is this: Carstairs must have had her photograph on him as well as Mrs Nicholson's.' Roger nodded.

'And you think -' he suggested.

'I think one was love and the other was business! Carstairs was carrying about the Cayman's photograph for a reason. He wanted it identified by somebody, perhaps. Now, listen - what happens? Someone, the male Cayman perhaps, is following him and, seeing a good opportunity, steals up behind him in the mist and gives him a shove. Carstairs goes over the cliff with a startled cry. Male Cayman makes off as fast as he can; he doesn't know who may be about. We'll say that he doesn't know that Alan Carstairs is carrying about that photograph.

What happens next? The photograph is published ' 'Consternation in the Cayman menage,' said Roger helpfully.

'Exactly. What is to be done? The bold thing - grasp the nettle. Who knows Carstairs as Carstairs? Hardly anyone in this country. Down goes Mrs Cayman, weeping crocodile tears and recognizing body as that of a convenient brother. They also do a little hocus pocus of posting parcels to bolster up the walking-tour theory.' 'You know, Frankie. I think that's positively brilliant,' said Roger with admiration.

'I think it's pretty good myself,' said Frankie. 'And you're quite right. We ought to get busy on the track of the Caymans.

I can't think why we haven't done so before.' This was not quite true, since Frankie knew quite well the reason - namely that they had been on the track of Roger himself. However, she felt it would be tactless, just at this stage, to reveal the fact.

'What are we going to do about Mrs Nicholson?' she asked abruptly.

'What do you mean - do about her?' 'Well, the poor thing is terrified to death. I do think you're callous about her, Roger.' 'I'm not, really, but people who can't help themselves always irritate me.' 'Oh! but do be fair. What can she do? She's no money and nowhere to go.' Roger said unexpectedly: 'If you were in her place, Frankie, you'd find something to do.' 'Oh!' Frankie was rather taken aback.

'Yes, you would. If you really thought somebody was trying to murder you, you wouldn't just stay there tamely waiting to be murdered. You'd run away and make a living somehow, or you'd murder the other person first! You'd do something.' Frankie tried to think what she would do.

'I'd certainly do something,' she said thoughtfully.

"The truth of the matter is that you've got guts and she hasn't,' said Roger with decision.

Frankie felt complimented. Moira Nicholson was not really the type of woman she admired and she had also felt just slightly ruffled by Bobby's absorption in her. 'Bobby,' she thought to herself, 'likes them helpless.' And she remembered the curious fascination that the photograph had had for him from the start of the affair.

'Oh, well,' thought Frankie, 'at any rate, Roger's different.' Roger, it was clear, did not like them helpless. Moira, on the other hand, clearly did not think very much of Roger. She had called him weak and had scouted the possibility of his having the guts to murder anyone. He was weak, perhaps - but undeniably he had charm. She had felt it from the first moment of arriving at Merroway Court.

Roger said quietly: 'If you liked, Frankie, you could make anything you chose of a man...' Frankie felt a sudden little thrill - and at the same time an acute embarrassment. She changed the subject hastily.