Agatha Christie: Lord Edgware Dies

The maid’s voice held a smug complacency. It amused me.

‘So Mr Bryan Martin was – how do you say – turned down? Did he take it badly?’

‘He carried on something awful, sir.’

‘Ah!’

‘He threatened her with a revolver once. And the scenes he made. It frightened me, it did. He was drinking a lot, too. He went all to pieces.’

‘But in the end he calmed down.’

‘So it seemed, sir. But he still hung about. And I didn’t like the look in his eye. I’ve warned her ladyship about it, but she only laughed. She’s one who enjoys feeling her power, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot thoughtfully. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

‘We’ve not seen so much of him just lately, sir. A good thing in my opinion. He’s beginning to get over it, I hope.’

‘Perhaps.’

Something in Poirot’s utterance of the word seem to strike her. She asked anxiously:

‘You don’t think she’s in danger, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot gravely. ‘I think she is in great danger. But she has brought it on herself.’

His hand, running aimlessly along the mantelshelf, caught a vase of roses and it toppled over. The water fell on Ellis’s face and head. I had seldom known Poirot clumsy, and I could deduce from it that he was in a great state of mental perturbation. He was very upset – rushed for a towel – tenderly assisted the maid to dry her face and neck and was profuse in apologies.

Finally a treasury note changed hands and he escorted her towards the door, thanking her for her goodness in coming.

‘But it is still early,’ he said, glancing at the clock. ‘You will be back before your mistress returns.’

‘Oh! that is quite all right, sir. She is going out to supper, I think, and anyway, she never expects me to sit up for her unless she says so special.’

Suddenly Poirot flew off at a tangent.

‘Mademoiselle, pardon me, but you are limping.’

‘That’s nothing, sir. My feet are a little painful.’

‘The corns?’ murmured Poirot in the confidential voice of one sufferer to another.

Corns, apparently, it was. Poirot expatiated upon a certain remedy which, according to him, worked wonders.

Finally Ellis departed.

I was full of curiosity.

‘Well, Poirot?’ I said. ‘Well?’

He smiled at my eagerness.

‘Nothing more this evening, my friend. Tomorrow morning early, we will ring up Japp. We will ask him to come round. We will also ring up Mr Bryan Martin. I think he will be able to tell us something interesting. Also, I wish to pay him a debt that I owe him.’

‘Really?’

I looked at Poirot sideways. He was smiling to himself in a curious way.

‘At any rate,’ I said, ‘you can’t suspect him of killing Lord Edgware. Especially after what we’ve heard of tonight. That would be playing Jane’s game with a vengeance. To kill off the husband so as to let the lady marry someone else is a little too disinterested for any man.’

‘What profound judgement!’

‘Now don’t be sarcastic,’ I said with some annoyance. ‘And what on earth are you fiddling with all the time?’

Poirot held the object in question up.

‘With the pince-nez of the good Ellis, my friend. She left them behind.’

‘Nonsense! She had them on her nose when she went out.’

He shook his head gently.

‘Wrong! Absolutely wrong! What she had on, my dear Hastings, were the pair of pince-nez we found in Carlotta Adams’ handbag.’

I gasped.

It fell to me to ring up Inspector Japp the following morning.

His voice sounded rather depressed.

‘Oh! it’s you, Captain Hastings. Well, what’s in the wind now?’

I gave him Poirot’s message.

‘Come round at eleven? Well, I dare say I could. He’s not got anything to help us over young Ross’s death, has he? I don’t mind confessing that we could do with something. There’s not a clue of any kind. Most mysterious business.’

‘I think he’s got something for you,’ I said noncommittally. ‘He seems very pleased with himself at all events.’

‘That’s more than I am, I can tell you. All right, Captain Hastings. I’ll be there.’

My next task was to ring up Bryan Martin. To him I said what I had been told to say: That Poirot had discovered something rather interesting which he thought Mr Martin would like to hear. When asked what it was, I said that I had no idea. Poirot had not confided in me. There was a pause.

‘All right,’ said Bryan at last. ‘I’ll come.’

He rang off.

Presently, somewhat to my surprise, Poirot rang up Jenny Driver and asked her, also, to be present.

He was quiet and rather grave. I asked him no questions.

Bryan Martin was the first to arrive. He looked in good health and spirits, but – or it might have been my fancy – a shade uneasy. Jenny Driver arrived almost immediately afterwards. She seemed surprised to see Bryan and he seemed to share her surprise.

Poirot brought forward two chairs and urged them to sit down. He glanced at his watch.

‘Inspector Japp will be here in one moment, I expect.’

‘Inspector Japp?’ Bryan seemed startled.

‘Yes – I have asked him to come here – informally – as a friend.’

‘I see.’

He relapsed into silence. Jenny gave a quick glance at him then glanced away. She seemed rather preoccupied about something this morning.

A moment later Japp entered the room.

He was, I think, a trifle surprised to find Bryan Martin and Jenny Driver there, but he made no sign. He greeted Poirot with his usual jocularity.

‘Well, M. Poirot, what’s it all about? You’ve got some wonderful theory or other, I suppose.’

Poirot beamed at him.

‘No, no – nothing wonderful. Just a little story quite simple – so simple that I am ashamed not to have seen it at once. I want, if you permit, to take you with me through the case from the beginning.’

Japp sighed and looked at his watch.

‘If you won’t be more than an hour–’ he said.

‘Reassure yourself,’ said Poirot. ‘It will not take as long as that. See here, you want to know, do you not, who it was killed Lord Edgware, who it was killed Miss Adams, who it was killed Donald Ross?’

‘I’d like to know the last,’ said Japp cautiously.

‘Listen to me and you shall know everything. See, I am going to be humble.’ (Not likely! I thought unbelievingly.) ‘I am going to show you every step of the way – I am going to reveal how I was hoodwinked, how I displayed the gross imbecility, how it needed the conversation of my friend Hastings and a chance remark by a total stranger to put me on the right track.’

He paused and then, clearing his throat, he began to speak in what I called his ‘lecture’ voice.

‘I will begin at the supper party at the Savoy. Lady Edgware accosted me and asked for a private interview. She wanted to get rid of her husband. At the close of our interview she said – somewhat unwisely, I thought – that she might have to go round in a taxi and kill him herself. Those words were heard by Mr Bryan Martin, who came in at that moment.’

He wheeled round.

‘Eh? That is so, is it not?’

‘We all heard,’ said the actor. ‘The Widburns, Marsh, Carlotta – all of us.’

‘Oh! I agree. I agree perfectly. Eh bien, I did not have a chance to forget those words of Lady Edgware’s. Mr Bryan Martin called on the following morning for the express purpose of driving those words home.’

‘Not at all,’ cried Bryan Martin angrily. ‘I came–’

Poirot held up a hand.

‘You came, ostensibly, to tell me a cock-and-bull story about being shadowed. A tale that a child might have seen through. You probably took it from an out-of-date film. A girl whose consent you had to obtain – a man whom you recognized by a gold tooth. Mon ami, no young man would have a gold tooth – it is not done in these days – and especially in America. The gold tooth it is a hopelessly old-fashioned piece of dentistry. Oh! it was all of a piece – absurd! Having told your cock-and-bull story you get down to the real purpose of your visit – to poison my mind against Lady Edgware. To put it clearly, you prepare the ground for the moment when she murders her husband.’