Appointment With Death - Agatha Christie [71]
‘What you say is nonsense—absurd.’
‘Delusions of persecution?’ murmured Poirot.
‘Yes; but she could never have done it that way. She would have done it, you must perceive, dramatically—a dagger—something flamboyant—spectacular—never this cool, calm logic! I tell you, my friends, it is so. This was a reasoned crime—a sane crime.’
Poirot smiled. Unexpectedly he bowed. ‘Je suis entièrement de votre avis,’ he said smoothly.
Chapter 18
‘Come,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘We have still a little way to go! Dr Gerard has invoked the psychology. So let us now examine the psychological side of this case. We have taken the facts, we have established a chronological sequence of events, we have heard the evidence. There remains—the psychology. And the most important psychological evidence concerns the dead woman—it is the psychology of Mrs Boynton herself that is the most important thing in this case.
‘Take from my list of specified facts points three and four. Mrs Boynton took definite pleasure in keeping her family from enjoying themselves with other people. Mrs Boynton, on the afternoon in question, encouraged her family to go away and leave her.
‘These two facts, they contradict each other flatly! Why, on this particular afternoon, should Mrs Boynton suddenly display a complete reversal of her usual policy? Was it that she felt a sudden warmth of the heart—an instinct of benevolence? That, it seems to me from all I have heard, was extremely unlikely! Yet there must have been a reason. What was that reason?
‘Let us examine closely the character of Mrs Boynton. There have been many different accounts of her. She was a tyrannical old martinet—she was a mental sadist—she was an incarnation of evil—she was crazy. Which of these views is the true one?
‘I think myself that Sarah King came nearest to the truth when in a flash of inspiration in Jerusalem she saw the old lady as intensely pathetic. But not only pathetic—futile!
‘Let us, if we can, think ourselves into the mental condition of Mrs Boynton. A human creature born with immense ambition, with a yearning to dominate and to impress her personality on other people. She neither sublimated that intense craving for power—nor did she seek to master it—no, mesdames and messieurs—she fed it! But in the end—listen well to this—in the end what did it amount to? She was not a great power! She was not feared and hated over a wide area! She was the petty tyrant of one isolated family! And as Dr Gerard said to me—she became bored like any other old lady with her hobby and she sought to extend her activities and to amuse herself by making her dominance more precarious! But that led to an entirely different aspect of the case! By coming abroad, she realized for the first time how extremely insignificant she was!
‘And now we come directly to point number ten—the words spoken to Sarah King in Jerusalem. Sarah King, you see, had put her finger on the truth. She had revealed fully and uncompromisingly the pitiful futility of Mrs Boynton’s scheme of existence! And now listen very carefully—all of you—to what her exact words to Miss King were. Miss King has said that Mrs Boynton spoke “so malevolently—not even looking at me”. And this is what she actually said, “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.”
‘Those words made a great impression on Miss King. Their extraordinary intensity and the loud hoarse tone in which they were uttered! So strong was the impression that they left on her mind that I think she quite failed to realize their extraordinary significance!
‘Do you see that significance, any of you?’ He waited a minute. ‘It seems not…But, mes amis, does it escape you that those words were not a reasonable answer at all to what Miss King had just been saying? “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” It does not make sense! If she had said, “I never forget impertinence”—something of that kind—but no—a face is what she said…
‘Ah!’ cried Poirot, beating his hands together. ‘But it leaps to the eye! Those