Curtain - Agatha Christie [45]
I was bewildered, incredulous, disgusted, and finally immeasurably and overwhelmingly relieved.
Who was it who wrote, ‘The darkest day, lived till tomorrow, will have passed away’? And how true it is. I saw now, clearly and sanely, how overwrought and wrong-headed I had been. Melodramatic, lost to all sense of proportion. I had actually made up my mind to kill another human being.
At this moment my eyes fell on the glass of whisky in front of me. With a shudder I got up, drew the curtains and poured it out of the window. I must have been mad last night!
I shaved, had a bath and dressed. Then, feeling very much better, I went across to Poirot. He always woke very early, I knew. I sat down and made a clean breast of the whole thing to him.
I may say it was a great relief.
He shook his head gently at me. ‘Ah, but what follies it is you contemplate. I am glad you came to confess your sins to me. But why, my dear friend, did you not come to me last night and tell me what was in your mind?’
I said shame-facedly: ‘I was afraid, I suppose, that you would have tried to stop me.’
‘Assuredly I would have stopped you. Ah that, certainly. Do you think I want to see you hanged by the neck, all on account of a very unpleasant scoundrel called Major Allerton?’
‘I shouldn’t have been caught,’ I said. ‘I’d taken every precaution.’
‘That is what all murderers think. You had the true mentality! But let me tell you, mon ami, you were not as clever as you thought yourself.’
‘I took every precaution. I wiped my fingerprints off the bottle.’
‘Exactly. You also wiped Allerton’s fingerprints off. And when he is found dead, what happens? They perform the autopsy and it is established that he died of an overdose of Slumberyl. Did he take it by accident or intention? Tiens, his fingerprints are not on the bottle. But why not? Whether accident or suicide he would have no reason to wipe them off. And then they analyse the remaining tablets and find nearly half of them have been replaced by aspirin.’
‘Well, practically everyone has aspirin tablets,’ I murmured weakly.
‘Yes, but it is not everyone who has a daughter whom Allerton is pursuing with dishonourable intentions – to use an old-fashioned dramatic phrase. And you have had a quarrel with your daughter on the subject the day before. Two people, Boyd Carrington and Norton, can swear to your violent feeling against the man. No, Hastings, it would not have looked too good. Attention would immediately have been focused upon you, and by that time you would probably have been in such a state of fear – or even remorse – that some good solid inspector of police would have made up his mind quite definitely that you were the guilty party. It is quite possible, even, that someone may have seen you tampering with the tablets.’
‘They couldn’t. There was no one about.’
‘There is a balcony outside the window. Somebody might have been there, peeping in. Or, who knows, someone might have been looking through the keyhole.’
‘You’ve got keyholes on the brain, Poirot. People don’t really spend their time looking through keyholes as much as you seem to think.’
Poirot half closed his eyes and remarked that I had always had too trusting a nature.
‘And let me tell you, very funny things happen with keys in this house. Me, I like to feel that my door is locked on the inside, even if the good Curtiss is in the adjoining room. Soon after I am here, my key disappears – but entirely! I have to have another one made.’
‘Well, anyway,’ I said with a deep breath of relief, my mind still laden with my own troubles, ‘it didn’t come off. It’s awful to think one can get worked up like that.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Poirot, you don’t think that because – because of that murder long ago there’s a sort of infection in the air?’
‘A virus of murder, you mean? Well, it is an interesting suggestion.’
‘Houses do have an atmosphere,