ABC Murders - Agatha Christie [40]
“Yes. I had a kind of roving commission to purchase things for my brother.”
“Very interesting it must have been. Eh bien, Mr. Clarke, I approve very highly of your idea. I was saying to Hastings only yesterday that a rapprochement of the people concerned was needed. It is necessary to pool reminiscences, to compare notes—enfin to talk the thing over—to talk—to talk—and again to talk. Out of some innocent phrase may come enlightenment.”
A few days later the “Special Legion” met at Poirot’s rooms.
As they sat round looking obediently towards Poirot, who had his place, like the chairman at a board meeting, at the head of the table, I myself passed them, as it were, in review, confirming or revising my first impressions of them.
The three girls were all of them striking-looking—the extraordinary fair beauty of Thora Grey, the dark intensity of Megan Barnard, with her strange Red Indian immobility of face—Mary Drower, neatly dressed in a black coat and skirt, with her pretty, intelligent face. Of the two men, Franklin Clarke, big, bronzed and talkative, Donald Fraser, self-contained and quiet, made an interesting contrast to each other.
Poirot, unable, of course, to resist the occasion, made a little speech.
“Mesdames and Messieurs, you know what we are here for. The police are doing their utmost to track down the criminal. I, too, in my different way. But it seems to me a reunion of those who have a personal interest in the matter—and also, I may say, a personal knowledge of the victims—might have results that an outside investigation cannot pretend to attain.
“Here we have three murders—an old woman, a young girl, an elderly man. Only one thing links these three people together—the fact that the same person killed them. That means that the same person was present in three different localities and was seen necessarily by a large number of people. That he is a madman in an advanced stage of mania goes without saying. That his appearance and behaviour give no suggestion of such a fact is equally certain. This person—and though I say he, remember it may be a man or a woman—has all the devilish cunning of insanity. He has succeeded so far in covering his traces completely. The police have certain vague indications but nothing upon which they can act.
“Nevertheless, there must exist indications which are not vague but certain. To take one particular point—this assassin, he did not arrive at Bexhill at midnight and find conveniently on the beach a young lady whose name began with B—”
“Must we go into that?”
It was Donald Fraser who spoke—the words wrung from him, it seemed, by some inner anguish.
“It is necessary to go into everything, monsieur,” said Poirot, turning to him. “You are here, not to save your feelings by refusing to think of details, but if necessary to harrow them by going into the matter au fond. As I say, it was not chance that provided A B C with a victim in Betty Barnard. There must have been deliberate selection on his part—and therefore premeditation. That is to say, he must have reconnoitred the ground beforehand. There were facts of which he had informed himself—the best hour for the committing of the crime at Andover—the mise en scène at Bexhill—the habits of Sir Carmichael Clarke at Churston. Me, for one, I refuse to believe that there is no indication—no slightest hint—that might help to establish his identity.
“I make the assumption that one—or possibly all of you—knows something that they do not know they know.
“Sooner or later, by reason of your association with one another, something will come to light, will take on a significance as yet undreamed of. It is like the jig-saw puzzle—each of you may have a piece apparently without meaning, but which when reunited may show a definite portion of the picture as a whole.”
“Words!” said Megan Barnard.
“Eh?” Poirot looked at her inquiringly.
“What you’ve been saying. It’s just words. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She spoke with that kind of desperate intensity that I had come to associate with her personality.
“Words, mademoiselle,