Curtain - Agatha Christie [75]
‘I then replaced the dressing-gown on Norton, laid him on his bed, and shot him with a small pistol that I acquired abroad and which I have kept carefully locked up except for two occasions when (nobody being about) I have put it ostentatiously on Norton’s dressing-table, he himself being well away somewhere that morning.
‘Then I left the room after putting the key in Norton’s pocket. I myself locked the door from the outside with the duplicate key which I have possessed for some time. I wheeled the chair back to my room.
‘Since then I have been writing this explanation.
‘I am very tired – and the exertions I have been through have strained me a good deal. It will not, I think, be long before . . .
‘There are one or two things I would like to stress.
‘Norton’s were the perfect crimes.
‘Mine was not. It was not intended to be.
‘The easiest way and the best way for me to have killed him was to have done so quite openly – to have had, shall we say, an accident with my little pistol. I should have professed dismay, regret – a most unfortunate accident. They would have said, “Old ga ga, didn’t realize it was loaded – ce pauvre vieux.”
‘I did not choose to do that.
‘I will tell you why.
‘It is because, Hastings, I chose to be “sporting”.
‘Mais oui, sporting! I am doing all the things that so often you have reproached me with not doing. I am playing fair with you. I am giving you a run for your money. I am playing the game. You have every chance to discover the truth.
‘In case you disbelieve me let me enumerate all the clues.
‘The keys.
‘You know, for I have told you so, that Norton arrived here after I did. You know, for you have been told, that I changed my room after I got here. You know, for again it has been told to you, that since I have been at Styles the key of my room disappeared and I had another made.
‘Therefore when you ask yourself who could have killed Norton? Who could have shot and still have left the room (apparently) locked on the inside since the key is in Norton’s pocket? –
‘The answer is “Hercule Poirot, who since he has been here has possessed duplicate keys of one of the rooms.”
‘The man you saw in the passage.
‘I myself asked you if you were sure the man you saw in the passage was Norton. You were startled. You asked me if I intended to suggest it was not Norton. I replied, truthfully, that I did not at all intend to suggest it was not Norton. (Naturally, since I had taken a good deal of trouble to suggest it was Norton.) I then brought up the question of height. All the men, I said, were much taller than Norton. But there was a man who was shorter than Norton – Hercule Poirot. And it is comparatively easy with raised heels or elevators in the shoes to add to one’s height.
‘You were under the impression that I was a helpless invalid. But why? Only because I said so. And I had sent away George. That was my last indication to you, “Go and talk to George.”
‘Othello and Clutie John show you that X was Norton.
‘Then who could have killed Norton?
‘Only Hercule Poirot.
‘And once you suspected that, everything would have fallen into place, the things I had said and done, my inexplicable reticence. Evidence from the doctors in Egypt, from my own doctor in London, that I was not incapable of walking about. The evidence of George as to my wearing a wig. The fact which I was unable to disguise, and which you ought to have noticed, that I limp much more than Norton does.
‘And last of all, the pistol shot. My one weakness. I should, I am aware, have shot him through the temple. I could not bring myself to produce an effect so lopsided, so haphazard. No, I shot him symmetrically, in the exact centre of the forehead . . .
‘Oh, Hastings, Hastings, that should have told you the truth.
‘But perhaps, after all, you have suspected the truth? Perhaps when you read this, you already know.
‘But somehow I do not think so . . .
‘No, you are too trusting . . .
‘You have too beautiful a nature . . .
‘What