After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [94]
“So I said to myself: ‘Supposing it was not Cora Lansquenet who came to the funeral that day?’”
“Do you mean that Aunt Cora—wasn’t Aunt Cora?” Susan demanded incredulously. “Do you mean that it wasn’t Aunt Cora who was murdered, but someone else?”
“No, no, it was Cora Lansquenet who was murdered. But it was not Cora Lansquenet who came the day before to her brother’s funeral. The woman who came that day came for one purpose only—to exploit, one may say, the fact that Richard died suddenly. And to create in the minds of his relations that he had been murdered. Which she managed to do most successfully!”
“Nonsense! Why? What was the point of it?” Maude spoke bluffly.
“Why? To draw attention away from the other murder. From the murder of Cora Lansquenet herself. For if Cora says that Richard has been murdered and the next day she herself is killed, the two deaths are bound to be at least considered as possible cause and effect. But if Cora is murdered and her cottage is broken into, and if the apparent robbery does not convince the police, then they will look—where? Close at home, will they not? Suspicion will tend to fall on the woman who shares the house with her.”
Miss Gilchrist protested in a tone that was almost bright:
“Oh come—really—Mr. Pontarlier—you don’t suggest I’d commit a murder for an amethyst brooch and a few worthless sketches?”
“No,” said Poirot. “For a little more than that. There was one of those sketches, Miss Gilchrist, that represented Polflexan harbour and which, as Mrs. Banks was clever enough to realize, had been copied from a picture postcard which showed the old pier still in position. But Mrs. Lansquenet painted always from life. I remembered then that Mr. Entwhistle had mentioned there being a smell of oil paint in the cottage when he first got there. You can paint, can’t you, Miss Gilchrist? Your father was an artist and you know a good deal about pictures. Supposing that one of the pictures that Cora picked up cheaply at a sale was a valuable picture. Supposing that she herself did not recognize it for what it was, but that you did. You knew she was expecting, very shortly, a visit from an old friend of hers who was a well-known art critic. Then her brother died suddenly—and a plan leaps into your head. Easy to administer a sedative to her in her early cup of tea that will keep her unconscious for the whole of the day of the funeral whilst you yourself are playing her part at Enderby. You know Enderby well from listening to her talk about it. She has talked, as people do when they get on in life, a great deal about her childhood days. Easy for you to start off by a remark to old Lanscombe about meringues and huts which will make him quite sure of your identity in case he was inclined to doubt. Yes, you used your knowledge of Enderby well that day, with allusions to this and that, and recalling memories, None of them suspected you were not Cora. You were wearing her clothes, slightly padded, and since she wore a false front of hair, it was easy for you to assume that. Nobody had seen Cora for twenty years—and in twenty years people change so much that one often hears the remark: ‘I would never have known her!’ But mannerisms are remembered, and Cora had certain very definite mannerisms, all of which you had practised carefully before the glass.
“And it was there, strangely enough, that you made your first mistake. You forgot that a mirror image is reversed. When you saw in the glass the perfect reproduction of Cora’s birdlike sidewise tilt of the head, you didn’t realize that it was actually the wrong way round. You saw, let us say, Cora inclining her head to the right—but you forgot that actually your own head was inclined to the left to produce that effect in the glass.
“That was what puzzled and worried Helen Abernethie at the moment when you made your famous insinuation. Something seemed to her ‘wrong.’ I realized myself the other night when Rosamund Shane made an unexpected remark what happens on such an occasion.