Agatha Christie - Cat Among the Pigeons

‘That does not matter,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘We want to ask you something.’

‘Mrs Upjohn,’ said Kelsey, ‘when you came here to bring your daughter to the school and you were in Miss Bulstrode’s sitting-room, you looked out of the window—the window which gives on the front drive—and you uttered an exclamation as though you recognized someone you saw there. That is so, is it not?’

Mrs Upjohn stared at him. ‘When I was in Miss Bulstrode’s sitting-room? I looked—oh, yes, of course ! Yes, I did see someone.’

‘Someone you were surprised to see?’

‘Well, I was rather…You see, it had all been such years ago.’

‘You mean the days when you were working in Intelligence towards the end of the war?’

‘Yes. It was about fifteen years ago. Of course, she looked much older, but I recognized her at once. And I wondered what on earth she could be doing here .’

‘Mrs Upjohn, will you look round this room and tell me if you see that person here now?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Upjohn. ‘I saw her as soon as I came in. That’s her.’

She stretched out a pointing finger. Inspector Kelsey was quick and so was Adam, but they were not quick enough. Ann Shapland had sprung to her feet. In her hand was a small wicked-looking automatic and it pointed straight at Mrs Upjohn. Miss Bulstrode, quicker than the two men, moved sharply forward, but swifter still was Miss Chadwick. It was not Mrs Upjohn that she was trying to shield, it was the woman who was standing between Ann Shapland and Mrs Upjohn.

‘No, you shan’t,’ cried Chaddy, and flung herself on Miss Bulstrode just as the small automatic went off.

Miss Chadwick staggered, then slowly crumpled down. Miss Johnson ran to her. Adam and Kelsey had got hold of Ann Shapland now. She was struggling like a wild cat, but they wrested the small automatic from her.

Mrs Upjohn said breathlessly:

‘They said then that she was a killer. Although she was so young. One of the most dangerous agents they had. Angelica was her code name.’

‘You lying bitch!’ Ann Shapland fairly spat out the words.

Hercule Poirot said:

‘She does not lie. You are dangerous. You have always led a dangerous life. Up to now, you have never been suspected in your own identity. All the jobs you have taken in your own name have been perfectly genuine jobs, efficiently performed—but they have all been jobs with a purpose, and that purpose has been the gaining of information. You have worked with an Oil Company, with an archaeologist whose work took him to a certain part of the globe, with an actress whose protector was an eminent politician. Ever since you were seventeen you have worked as an agent—though for many different masters. Your services have been for hire and have been highly paid. You have played a dual role. Most of your assignments have been carried out in your own name, but there were certain jobs for which you assumed different identities. Those were the times when ostensibly you had to go home and be with your mother.

‘But I strongly suspect, Miss Shapland, that the elderly woman I visited who lives in a small village with a nurse-companion to look after her, an elderly woman who is genuinely a mental patient with a confused mind, is not your mother at all. She has been your excuse for retiring from employment and from the circle of your friends. The three months this winter that you spent with your “mother” who had one of her “bad turns” covers the time when you went out to Ramat. Not as Ann Shapland but as Angelica de Toredo, a Spanish, or near-Spanish cabaret dancer. You occupied the room in the hotel next to that of Mrs Sutcliffe and somehow you managed to see Bob Rawlinson conceal the jewels in the racquet. You had no opportunity of taking the racquet then for there was the sudden evacuation of all British people, but you had read the labels on their luggage and it was easy to find out something about them. To obtain a secretarial post here was not difficult. I have made some inquiries. You paid a substantial sum to Miss Bulstrode’s former secretary to vacate her post on the plea of a “breakdown”. And you had quite a plausible story. You had been commissioned to write a series of articles on a famous girls’ school “from within”.

‘It all seemed quite easy, did it not? If a child’s racquet was missing, what of it? Simpler still, you would go out at night to the Sports Pavilion, and abstract the jewels. But you had not reckoned with Miss Springer. Perhaps she had already seen you examining the racquets. Perhaps she just happened to wake that night. She followed you out there and you shot her. Later, Mademoiselle Blanche tried to blackmail you, and you killed her. It comes natural to you, does it not, to kill?’

He stopped. In a monotonous official voice, Inspector Kelsey cautioned his prisoner.

She did not listen. Turning towards Hercule Poirot, she burst out in a low-pitched flood of invective that startled everyone in the room.

‘Whew!’ said Adam, as Kelsey took her away. ‘And I thought she was a nice girl!’

Miss Johnson had been kneeling by Miss Chadwick.

‘I’m afraid she’s badly hurt,’ she said. ‘She’d better not be moved until the doctor comes.’

Chapter 24 Poirot Explains

Mrs Upjohn, wandering through the corridors of Meadowbank School, forgot the exciting scene she had just been through. She was for the moment merely a mother seeking her young. She found her in a deserted classroom. Julia was bending over a desk, her tongue protruding slightly, absorbed in the agonies of composition.

She looked up and stared. Then flung herself across the room and hugged her mother.

‘Mummy!’

Then, with the self-consciousness of her age, ashamed of her unrestrained emotion, she detached herself and spoke in a carefully casual tone—indeed almost accusingly.

‘Aren’t you back rather soon , Mummy?’

‘I flew back,’ said Mrs Upjohn, almost apologetically, ‘from Ankara.’

‘Oh,’ said Julia. ‘Well—I’m glad you’re back.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Upjohn, ‘I am very glad too.’

They looked at each other, embarrassed. ‘What are you doing?’ said Mrs Upjohn, advancing a little closer.

‘I’m writing a composition for Miss Rich,’ said Julia. ‘She really does set the most exciting subjects.’

‘What’s this one?’ said Mrs Upjohn. She bent over.

The subject was written at the top of the page. Some nine or ten lines of writing in Julia’s uneven and sprawling hand-writing came below. ‘Contrast the Attitudes of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to Murder’ read Mrs Upjohn.

‘Well,’ she said doubtfully, ‘you can’t say that the subject isn’t topical!’

She read the start of her daughter’s essay. ‘Macbeth,’ Julia had written, ‘liked the idea of murder and had been thinking of it a lot, but he needed a push to get him started. Once he’d got started he enjoyed murdering people and had no more qualms or fears. Lady Macbeth was just greedy and ambitious. She thought she didn’t mind what she did to get what she wanted. But once she’d done it she found she didn’t like it after all.’

‘Your language isn’t very elegant,’ said Mrs Upjohn. ‘I think you’ll have to polish it up a bit, but you’ve certainly got something there.’

II

Inspector Kelsey was speaking in a slightly complaining tone.

‘It’s all very well for you, Poirot,’ he said. ‘You can say and do a lot of things we can’t: and I’ll admit the whole thing was well stage managed. Got her off her guard, made her think we were after Rich, and then, Mrs Upjohn’s sudden appearance made her lose her head. Thank the lord she kept that automatic after shooting Springer. If the bullet corresponds—’