Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [71]
“Mademoiselle Blanche,” said Kelsey thoughtfully.
Hercule Poirot again spoke to Adam.
“You yourself considered Mademoiselle Blanche’s manner odd where it concerned the Sports Pavilion?”
“She explained,” said Adam. “She explained too much. I should never have questioned her right to be there if she had not taken so much trouble to explain it away.”
Poirot nodded.
“Exactly. That certainly gives one to think. But all we know is that Miss Springer was killed in the Sports Pavilion at one o’clock in the morning when she had no business to be there.”
He turned to Kelsey.
“Where was Miss Springer before she came to Meadowbank?”
“We don’t know,” said the Inspector. “She left her last place of employment,” he mentioned a famous school, “last summer. Where she has been since we do not know.” He added dryly: “There was no occasion to ask the question until she was dead. She has no near relatives, nor, apparently, any close friends.”
“She could have been in Ramat, then,” said Poirot thoughtfully.
“I believe there was a party of schoolteachers out there at the time of the trouble,” said Adam.
“Let us say, then, that she was there, that in some way she learned about the tennis racquet. Let us assume that after waiting a short time to familiarize herself with the routine at Meadowbank she went out one night to the Sports Pavilion. She got hold of the racquet and was about to remove the jewels from their hiding place when—” he paused—“when someone interrupted her. Someone who had been watching her? Following her that evening? Whoever it was had a pistol—and shot her—but had no time to prise out the jewels, or to take the racquet away, because people were approaching the Sports Pavilion who had heard the shot.”
He stopped.
“You think that’s what happened?” asked the Chief Constable.
“I do not know,” said Poirot. “It is one possibility. The other is that that person with the pistol was there first, and was surprised by Miss Springer. Someone whom Miss Springer was already suspicious of. She was, you have told me, that kind of woman. A noser out of secrets.”
“And the other woman?” asked Adam.
Poirot looked at him. Then, slowly, he shifted his gaze to the other two men.
“You do not know,” he said. “And I do not know. It could have been someone from outside—?”
His voice half asked a question.
Kelsey shook his head.
“I think not. We have sifted the neighbourhood very carefully. Especially, of course, in the case of strangers. There was a Madam Kolinsky staying nearby—known to Adam here. But she could not have been concerned in either murder.”
“Then it comes back to Meadowbank. And there is only one method to arrive at the truth—elimination.”
Kelsey sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what it amounts to. For the first murder, it’s a fairly open field. Almost anybody could have killed Miss Springer. The exceptions are Miss Johnson and Miss Chadwick—and a child who had the earache. But the second murder narrows things down. Miss Rich, Miss Blake and Miss Shapland are out of it. Miss Rich was staying at the Alton Grange Hotel, twenty miles away, Miss Blake was at Littleport on Sea, Miss Shapland was in London at a nightclub, the Nid Sauvage, with Mr. Dennis Rathbone.”
“And Miss Bulstrode was also away, I understand?”
Adam grinned. The Inspector and the Chief Constable looked shocked.
“Miss Bulstrode,” said the Inspector severely, “was staying with the Duchess of Welsham.”
“That eliminates Miss Bulstrode then,” said Poirot gravely. “And leaves us—what?”
“Two members of the domestic staff who sleep in, Mrs. Gibbons and a girl called Doris Hogg. I can’t consider either of them seriously. That leaves Miss Rowan and Mademoiselle Blanche.”
“And the pupils, of course.”
Kelsey looked startled.
“Surely