Big Four - Agatha Christie [34]
The Chinaman was sent for and appeared, shuffling along, with his eyes cast down, and his pigtail swinging. His impassive face showed no trace of any kind of emotion.
‘Ah Ling,’ said Poirot, ‘are you sorry your master is dead?’
‘I welly sorry. He good master.’
‘You know who kill him?’
‘I not know. I tell pleeceman if I know.’
The questions and answers went on. With the same impassive face, Ah Ling described how he had made the curry. The cook had had nothing to do with it, he declared, no hand had touched it but his own. I wondered if he saw where his admission was leading him. He stuck to it too, that the window to the garden was bolted that evening. If it was open in the morning, his master must have opened it himself. At last Poirot dismissed him.
‘That will do, Ah Ling.’ Just as the Chinaman had got to the door, Poirot recalled him. ‘And you know nothing, you say, of the Yellow Jasmine?’
‘No, what should I know?’
‘Nor yet of the sign that was written underneath it?’
Poirot leaned forward as he spoke, and quickly traced something on the dust of a little table. I was near enough to see it before he rubbed it out. A down stroke, a line at right angles, and then a second line down which completed a big 4. The effect on the Chinaman was electrical. For one moment his face was a mask of terror. Then, as suddenly, it was impassive again, and repeating his grave disclaimer, he withdrew.
Japp departed in search of young Paynter, and Poirot and I were left alone together.
‘The Big Four, Hastings,’ cried Poirot. ‘Once again, the Big Four. Paynter was a great traveller. In his book there was doubtless some vital information concerning the doings of Number One, Li Chang Yen, the head and brains of the Big Four.’
‘But who—how—’
‘Hush, here they come.’
Gerald Paynter was an amiable, rather weak-looking young man. He had a soft brown beard, and a peculiar flowing tie. He answered Poirot’s questions readily enough.
‘I dined out with some neighbours of ours, the Wycherleys,’ he explained. ‘What time did I get home? Oh, about eleven. I had a latchkey, you know. All the servants had gone to bed, and I naturally thought my uncle had done the same. As a matter of fact, I did think I caught sight of that soft-footed Chinese beggar, Ah Ling, just whisking round the corner of the hall, but I fancy I was mistaken.’
‘When did you last see your uncle, Mr Paynter? I mean before you came to live with him?’
‘Oh! not since I was a kid of ten. He and his brother (my father) quarrelled, you know.’
‘But he found you again with very little trouble, did he not? In spite of all the years that had passed?’
‘Yes, it was quite a bit of luck my seeing the lawyer’s advertisement.’
Poirot asked no more questions.
Our next move was to visit Dr Quentin. His story was substantially the same as he had told at the inquest, and he had little to add to it. He received us in his surgery, having just come to the end of his consulting patients. He seemed an intelligent man. A certain primness of manner went well with his pince-nez, but I fancied that he would be thoroughly modern in his methods.
‘I wish I could remember about the window,’ he said frankly. ‘But it’s dangerous to think back, one becomes quite positive about something that never existed. That’s psychology, isn’t it, M. Poirot? You see, I’ve read all about your methods, and I may say I’m an enormous admirer of yours. No, I suppose it’s pretty certain that the Chinaman put the powdered opium in the curry, but he’ll never admit it, and we shall never know why. But holding a man down in a fire—that’s not in keeping with our Chinese friend’s character, it seems to me.’
I commented on this last point to Poirot as we walked down the main street of Market Handford.
‘Do you think he let a confederate in?’ I asked. ‘By the way, I suppose Japp can be trusted to keep an eye on him?’ (The Inspector had passed into the police station on some business or other.) ‘The emissaries of the Big Four are pretty spry.