After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [56]
“Ah, Mr. Guthrie.”
Inspector Morton smiled.
“Yes, M. Poirot. We’re checking up on him. After all, it would be easy, wouldn’t it, to come along with a plausible tale of having been a friend of Mrs. Lansquenet’s. Mrs. Banks wasn’t to know if he was or he wasn’t. He could have dropped that little parcel, you know. It’s easy to make a thing look as though it’s been through the post. Lamp black a little smudged, makes quite a good postmark cancellation mark over a stamp.”
He paused and then added:
“And there are other possibilities.”
Poirot nodded.
“You think—?”
“Mr. George Crossfield was down in that part of the world—but not until the next day. Meant to attend the funeral, but had a little engine trouble on the way. Know anything about him, M. Poirot?”
“A little. But not as much as I would like to know.”
“Like that, is it? Quite a little bunch interested in the late Mr. Abernethie’s will, I understand. I hope it doesn’t mean going after all of them.”
“I have accumulated a little information. It is at your disposal. Naturally I have no authority to ask these people questions. In fact, it would not be wise for me to do so.”
“I shall go slowly myself. You don’t want to fluster your bird too soon. But when you do fluster it, you want to fluster it well.”
“A very sound technique. For you then, my friend, the routine—with all the machinery you have at your disposal. It is slow—but sure. For myself—”
“Yes, M. Poirot?”
“For myself, I go North. As I have told you, it is people in whom I interest myself. Yes—a little preparatory camouflage—and I go North.
“I intend,” added Hercule Poirot, “to purchase a country mansion for foreign refugees. I represent U.N.A.R.C.O.”
“And what’s U.N.A.R.C.O.?”
“United Nations Aid for Refugee Centre Organization. It sounds well, do you not think?”
Inspector Morton grinned.
Fourteen
Hercule Poirot said to a grim-faced Janet:
“Thank you very much. You have been most kind.”
Janet, her lips still fixed in a sour line, left the room. These foreigners! The questions they asked. Their impertinence! All very well to say that he was a specialist interested in unsuspected heart conditions such as Mr. Abernethie must have suffered from. That was very likely true—gone very sudden the master had, and the doctor had been surprised. But what business was it of some foreign doctor coming along and nosing around?
All very well for Mrs. Leo to say: “Please answer Monsieur Pontarlier’s questions. He has a good reason for asking.”
Questions. Always questions. Sheets of them sometimes to fill in as best you could—and what did the Government or anyone else want to know about your private affairs for? Asking your age at that census—downright impertinent and she hadn’t told them, either! Cut off five years she had. Why not? If she only felt fifty-four, she’d call herself fifty-four!
At any rate Monsieur Pontarlier hadn’t wanted to know her age. He’d had some decency. Just questions about the medicines the master had taken, and where they were kept, and if, perhaps, he might have taken too much of them if he was feeling not quite the thing—or if he’d been forgetful. As though she could remember all that rubbish—the master knew what he was doing! And asking if any of the medicines he took were still in the house. Naturally they’d all been thrown away. Heart condition—and some long word he’d used. Always thinking of something new they were, these doctors. Look at them telling old Rogers he had a disc or some such in his spine. Plain lumbago, that was all that was the matter with him. Her father had been a gardener and he’d suffered from lumbago. Doctors!
The self-appointed medical man sighed and went downstairs in search of Lanscombe. He had not got very much out of Janet but he had hardly expected to do so. All he had really wanted to do was to check such information as could unwillingly be extracted from her with that given him by Helen Abernethie and which had been obtained from the