Agatha Christie - Death On The Nile

"You mean you put Mrs. Doyle on her guard?" asked Race.

"Not so much that. But I think I put the wind up Pennington. I felt convinced he wouldn't try any more funny business for some time and by then I hoped to have got intimate enough with Mr. and Mrs. Doyle to convey some kind of a warning. As a matter of fact I hoped to do so through Doyle. Mrs. Doyle was so attached to Mr. Pennington that it would have been a bit awkward to suggest things to her about him. It would have been easier for me to approach the husband."

Race nodded.

Poirot asked:

"Will you give me a candid opinion on one point, M. Fanthorp? If you were engaged in putting a swindle over, would you choose Mrs. Doyle or Mr. Doyle as a victim?"

Fanthorp smiled faintly.

"Mr. Doyle, every time. Linnet Doyle was very shrewd in business matters.

Her husband, I should fancy, is one of those trustful fellows who know nothing of business and are always ready to 'sign on the dotted line' as he himself put it." "I agree," said Poirot. He looked at Race. "And there's your motive." Jim Fanthorp said:

"But this is all pure conjecture. It isn't evidence."

Poirot said easily:

"Ah bah! we will get evidence!"

"How?"

"Possibly from Mr. Pennington himself."

Fanthorp looked doubtful.

"I wonder. I very much wonder." Race glanced at his watch.

"He's about due now."

Jim Fanthorp was quick to take the hint. He left them.

Two minutes later Andrew Pennington made his appearance.

His manner was all smiling urbanity. Only the taut line of his jaw and the wariness of his eyes betrayed the fact that a thoroughly experienced fighter was on his guard.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "here I am."

He sat down and looked at them inquiringly.

"We asked you to come here, Mr. Pennington," began Poirot, "because it is fairly obvious that you have a very special and immediate interest in the case." Pennington raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Is that so?" Poirot said gently:

"Surely. You have known Linnet Ridgeway, I understand, since she was quite a child."

"Oh! that-" his face altered-became less alert. "I beg pardon, I didn't quite get you. Yes, as I told you this morning, I've known Linnet since she was a cute little thing in pinafores."

"You were on terms of close intimacy with her father?"

"That's so. Melhuish Ridgeway and I were close-very close."

"You were so intimately associated that on his death he appointed you business guardian to his daughter and trustee to the vast fortune she inherited."

"Why, roughly-that is so." The wariness was back again. The note.was more cautious. "I was not the only trustee, naturally--others were associated with me." "Who have since died?"

"Two of them are dead. The other, Mr. Sterndale Rockford, is alive." "Your partner?" "Yes."

"Miss Ridgeway, I understand, was not yet of age when she married?"

"She would have been twenty-one next July."

"And in the normal course of events she would have come into control of her fortune then?"

"Yes."

"But her marriage precipitated matters?"

Pennington's jaw hardenedhe shot out his chin at them aggressively.

"You'll pardon me, gentlemen, but what exact business is all this of yours?" "If you dislike answering the question-"

"There's no dislike about it. I don't mind what you ask me. But I don't see the relevance of all this."

"Oh, but surely, Mr. Pennington…" Poirot leaned forward, his eyes green and catlike-"there is the question of motivein considering that, financial considerations must always be taken into account."

Pennington said sullenly:

"By Ridgeway's will, Linnet got control of her dough when she was twenty-one or when she married."

"No conditions of any kind?"

"No conditions."

"And it is a matter, I am credibly assured, of millions." "Millions it is." Poirot said softly:

"Your resp,o, nsibilRy, Mr. Pennington, and that of your partner, has been a very grave one.

Pennington said curtly:

"We're used to responsibility. Doesn't worry us any."

"I wonder."

Something in his tone flicked the other man on the raw. He said angrily: "What the devil do you mean?"

Poifot replied with an air of engaging frankness:

"I was wondering, Mr. Pennington, whether Linnet Ridgeway's sudden marriage caused any--consternation in your office?"

"Consternation?"

"That was the word I used."

"What the hell are you driving at?"

"Something quite simple. Are Linnet Doyle's affairs in the perfect order they should be?"

Pennington rose to his feet.

"That's enough. I'm through." He made for the door.

"But you will answer my question first?" Pennington snapped: "They're in perfect order."

"You were not so alarmed when the news of Linnet Ridgeway's marriage reached you that you rushed over to Europe by the first boat and staged an apparently fortuitous meeting in Egypt?"

Pennington came back towards them. He had himself under control once more.

"What you are saying is absolute balderdash! I didn't even know that Linnet was married till I met her in Cairo. I was utterly astonished. Her letter must have missed me by a day in New York. It was forwarded and I got it about a week later." "You came over by the Carmanic, I think you said." "That's right."

"And the letter reached New York after the Carmanic sailed?"

' "How many times have I got to repeat it?" "It is strange," said Poirot.

"What's strange?"

"That on your luggage there are no labels of the Carmanic. The only recent labels of transatlantic sailing are the Normandie. The Normandie, I remember, sailed two days after the Carmanic."

For a moment the other was at a loss. His eyes wavered.

Colonel Race weighed in with telling effect.

"Come, now, Mr. pennington," he said. "We've several reasons for believing that you came over on the Normandie and not by the Carmanic, as you said. In that case, you received Mrs. Doyle's letter before you left New York. It's no good denying it, for it's the easiest thing in the world to check up the steamship companies."

Andrew Pennington felt absent-mindedly for a chair and sat down. His face was impassive a poker face. Behind that mask his agile brain looked ahead to the next move.

"I'll have to hand it you, gentlemen. You've been too smart for me. But I had my reasons for acting as I did."

"No doubt."

Race's tone was curt.

"If I give them to you, it must be understood I do so in confidence."

"I think you can trust us to behave fittingly. Naturally I cannot give assurances blindly."

"Well--" Pennington sighed. "I'll come clean. There was some monkey business going on in England. It worried me. I couldn't do much about it by letter.

The only thing was to come over and see for myself?."

"What do you mean by monkey business?"

"I'd good reason to believe that Linnet was being swindled." "By whom?" "Her British lawyer. Now that's not the kind of accusation you can fling around anyhow. I madeup my mind to come over right away and see into matters myself." "That does great credit to your vigilance, I am sure. But why the little deception about not having received the letter." "Well, I ask you-" Pennington spread out his hands. "You can'tbutt in on a honeymoon couple without more or less coming down to brass tacks and giving your reasons. I thought it best to make the meeting accidental. Besides, I didn't know anything about the husband. He might have been mixed up in the racket for all I knew." "In fact all your actions were actuated by pure disinterestedness," said Colonel Race dryly.

"You've said it, Colonel." There was a pause.

Race glanced at Poirot. The little man leant forward.

"M. Pennington, we do not believe a word of your story." "The hell you don't! And what the hell do you believe?" "We believe that Linnet Ridgeway's unexpected marriage put you in a financial quandary-that you came over post haste to try and find some way out of the mess you were in-that is to say, some way of gaining time. That, with that end in view, you endeavoured to obtain Mrs. Doyle's signature to certain documents-and failed. That on the journey up the Nile, when walking along the clifftop at Abu Simbel, you dislodged a boulder which fell and only very narrowly missed its object-" "You're crazy." "We believe that the same kind of circumstances occurred on the return journey-that is to say, an opportunity presented itself of putting Mrs. Doyle out of the way at the moment when her death would be almost certainly ascribed to the action of another person-we not only believe, but know, that it was your revolver which killed a woman who was about to reveal to us the name of the person whom she had reason to believe killed both Linnet Doyle and the maid Louise-" "Hell!" The?orcible ejaculation broke forth and interrupted Poirot's stream of eloquence. "What are you getting at? Are you crazy? What motive had I to kill Linnet? I wouldn't get her money-that goes to her husband. Why don't you pick on him. He's the one to benefit-not me." Race said coldly: "Doyle nevcz left the lounge on the night of the tragedy till he was shot at and wounded in the leg. The impossibility of his walking a step aider that is attested to by a doctor and a nurse both independent and reliable witnesses. Simon Doyle could not have killed his wife. He could not have killed Louise Bourget. He most definitely did not kill Mrs. Otterbourne! You know that as well as we do." "I know he didn't kill her." Pennington sounded a little calmer. "All I say is, why pick on me when I don't benefit by her death?" "But, my dear sir," Poirot's voice came soft as a purring cat, "that is rather a matter of opinion. Mrs. Doyle was a keen woman of business, fully conversant of her own affairs and very quick to spot any irregularity. As soon as she took up the control of her property which she would have done on her return to England her suspicions were bound to be aroused. But now that she is dead and that her husband, as you have just pointed out, inherits, the whole thing is different. Simon Doyle knows nothing whatever of his {vife's affairs except that she was a rich woman. He is of a simple trusting disposition. You will find it easy to place complicated statements before him, to involve the real issue in a net of figures, and to delay settlement with pleas of legal formalities and the recent depression. I think that it makes a very considerable difference to you whether you deal with the husband or the wife.'