Big Four - Agatha Christie [13]
Ingles looks steadily at Poirot.
‘There’s a catch in it still. Why did nobody see him?’
‘Ah! That is where the cleverness of Number Four, I am convinced, comes in. Everybody saw him—and yet nobody saw him. You see, he drove up in a butcher’s cart!’
I uttered an exclamation.
‘The leg of mutton?’
‘Exactly, Hastings, the leg of mutton. Everybody swore that no one had been to Granite Bungalow that morning, but, nevertheless, I found in the larder a leg of mutton, still frozen. It was Monday, so the meat must have been delivered that morning; for if on Saturday, in this hot weather, it would not have remained frozen over Sunday. So someone had been to the Bungalow, and a man on whom a trace of blood here and there would attract no attention.’
‘Damned ingenious!’ cried Ingles approvingly.
‘Yes, he is clever, Number Four.’
‘As clever as Hercule Poirot?’ I murmured.
My friend threw me a glance of dignified reproach.
‘There are some jests that you should not permit yourself, Hastings,’ he said sententiously. ‘Have I not saved an innocent man from being sent to the gallows? That is enough for one day.’
Chapter 5
Disappearance of a Scientist
Personally, I don’t think that, even when a jury had acquitted Robert Grant, alias Biggs, of the murder of Jonathan Whalley, Inspector Meadows was entirely convinced of his innocence. The case which he had built up against Grant—the man’s record, the jade which he had stolen, the boots which fitted the footprints so exactly—was to his matter-of-fact mind too complete to be easily upset; but Poirot, compelled much against his inclination to give evidence, convinced the jury. Two witnesses were produced who had seen a butcher’s cart drive up to the bungalow on that Monday morning, and the local butcher testifed that his cart only called there on Wednesdays and Fridays.
A woman was actually found who, when questioned, remembered seeing the butcher’s man leaving the bungalow, but she could furnish no useful description of him. The only impression he seemed to have left on her mind was that he was clean shaven, of medium height, and looked exactly like a butcher’s man. At this description Poirot shrugged his shoulders philosophically.
‘It is as I tell you, Hastings,’ he said to me, after the trial. ‘He is an artist, this one. He disguises himself not with the false beard and the blue spectacles. He alters his features, yes; but that is the least part. For the time being he is the man he would be. He lives in his part.’
Certainly I was compelled to admit that the man who had visited us from Hanwell had fitted in exactly with my idea of what an asylum attendant should look like. I should never for a moment have dreamt of doubting that he was genuine.
It was all a little discouraging, and our experience on Dartmoor did not seem to have helped us at all. I said as much to Poirot, but he would not admit that we had gained nothing.
‘We progress,’ he said; ‘we progress. At every contact with this man we learn a little of his mind and his methods. Of us and our plans he knows nothing.’
‘And there, Poirot,’ I protested, ‘he and I seem to be in the same boat. You don’t seem to me to have any plans, you seem to sit and wait for him to do something.’
Poirot smiled.
‘Mon ami, you do not change. Always the same Hastings, who would be up and at their throats. Perhaps,’ he added, as a knock sounded on the door, ‘you have here your chance; it may be our friend