ABC Murders - Agatha Christie [37]
The Daily Flicker had the grand inspiration of using the caption:
HE MAY BE IN YOUR TOWN!
Poirot, of course, was in the thick of things. The letters sent to him were published and facsimiled. He was abused wholesale for not having prevented the crimes and defended on the ground that he was on the point of naming the murderer.
Reporters incessantly badgered him for interviews.
What M. Poirot Says Today.
Which was usually followed by a half column of imbecilities.
M. Poirot Takes Grave View of Situation.
M. Poirot on the Eve of Success.
Captain Hastings, the great friend of M. Poirot, told our Special Representative….
“Poirot,” I would cry. “Pray believe me. I never said anything of the kind.”
My friend would reply kindly:
“I know, Hastings—I know. The spoken word and the written—there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the original meaning.”
“I wouldn’t like you to think I’d said—”
“But do not worry yourself. All this is of no importance. These imbecilities, even, may help.”
“How?”
“Eh bien,” said Poirot grimly. “If our madman reads what I am supposed to have said to the Daily Blague today, he will lose all respect for me as an opponent!”
I am, perhaps, giving the impression that nothing practical was being done in the way of investigations. On the contrary, Scotland Yard and the local police of the various counties were indefatigable in following up the smallest clues.
Hotels, people who kept lodgings, boarding-houses—all those within a wide radius of the crimes were questioned minutely.
Hundreds of stories from imaginative people who had “seen a man looking very queer and rolling his eyes,” or “noticed a man with a sinister face slinking along,” were sifted to the last detail. No information, even of the vaguest character, was neglected. Trains, buses, trams, railway porters, conductors, bookstalls, stationers—there was an indefatigable round of questions and verifications.
At least a score of people were detained and questioned until they could satisfy the police as to their movements on the night in question.
The net result was not entirely a blank. Certain statements were borne in mind and noted down as of possible value, but without further evidence they led nowhere.
If Crome and his colleagues were indefatigable, Poirot seemed to me strangely supine. We argued now and again.
“But what is it that you would have me do, my friend? The routine inquiries, the police make them better than I do. Always—always you want me to run about like the dog.”
“Instead of which you sit at home like—like—”
“A sensible man! My force, Hastings, is in my brain, not in my feet! All the time, whilst I seem to you idle, I am reflecting.”
“Reflecting?” I cried. “Is this a time for reflection?”
“Yes, a thousand times yes.”
“But what can you possibly gain by reflection? You know the facts of the three cases by heart.”
“It is not the facts I reflect upon—but the mind of the murderer.”
“The mind of a madman!”
“Precisely. And therefore not to be arrived at in a minute. When I know what the murderer is like, I shall be able to find out who he is. And all the time I learn more. After the Andover crime, what did we know about the murderer? Next to nothing at all. After the Bexhill crime? A little more. After the Churston murder? More still. I begin to see—not what you would like to see—the outlines of a face and form but the outlines of a mind. A mind that moves and works in certain definite directions. After the next crime—”
“Poirot!”
My friend looked at me dispassionately.
“But, yes, Hastings, I think it is almost certain there will be another. A lot depends on la chance. So far our inconnu has been lucky. This time the luck may turn against him. But in any case, after another crime, we shall know infinitely more. Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits,