Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [45]
A lean, elderly man, Mr Fullerton, with an impassive face, a dry, legal voice, and eyes that were unexpectedly shrewd. Beneath his hand rested a sheet of notepaper, the few words on which he had just read. He read them once again, assessing their meaning very exactly. Then he looked at the man whom the note introduced to him.
‘Monsieur Hercule Poirot?’ He made his own assessment of the visitor. An elderly man, a foreigner, very dapper in his dress, unsuitably attired as to the feet in patent leather shoes which were, so Mr Fullerton guessed shrewdly, too tight for him. Faint lines of pain were already etching themselves round the corners of his eyes. A dandy, a fop, a foreigner and recommended to him by, of all people, Inspector Henry Raglan, C.I.D., and also vouched for by Superintendent Spence (retired), formerly of Scotland Yard.
‘Superintendent Spence, eh?’ said Mr Fullerton.
Fullerton knew Spence. A man who had done good work in his time, had been highly thought of by his superiors. Faint memories flashed across his mind. Rather a celebrated case, more celebrated actually than it had showed any signs of being, a case that had seemed cut and dried. Of course! It came to him that his nephew Robert had been connected with it, had been Junior Counsel. A psychopathic killer, it had seemed, a man who had hardly bothered to try and defend himself, a man whom you might have thought really wanted to be hanged (because it had meant hanging at that time). No fifteen years, or indefinite number of years in prison. No. You paid the full penalty—and more’s the pity they’ve given it up, so Mr Fullerton thought in his dry mind. The young thugs nowadays thought they didn’t risk much by prolonging assault to the point where it became mortal. Once your man was dead, there’d be no witness to identify you.
Spence had been in charge of the case, a quiet, dogged man who had insisted all along that they’d got the wrong man. And they had got the wrong man, and the person who found the evidence that they’d got the wrong man was some sort of an amateurish foreigner. Some retired detective chap from the Belgian police force. A good age then. And now—senile, probably, thought Mr Fullerton, but all the same he himself would take the prudent course. Information, that’s what was wanted from him. Information which, after all, could not be a mistake to give, since he could not see that he was likely to have any information that could be useful in this particular matter. A case of child homicide.
Mr Fullerton might think he had a fairly shrewd idea of who had committed that homicide, but he was not so sure as he would like to be, because there were at least three claimants in the matter. Any one of three young ne’er-do-wells might have done it. Words floated through his head. Mentally retarded. Psychiatrist’s report. That’s how the whole matter would end, no doubt. All the same, to drown a child during a party—that was rather a different cup of tea from one of the innumerable school children who did not arrive home and who had accepted a lift in a car after having been repeatedly warned not to do so, and who had been found in a nearby copse or gravel pit. A gravel pit now. When was that? Many, many years ago now.
All this took about four minutes time and Mr Fullerton then cleared his throat in a slightly asthmatic fashion, and spoke.
‘Monsieur Hercule Poirot,’ he said again. ‘What can I do for you? I suppose it’s the business of this young girl, Joyce Reynolds. Nasty business, very nasty business. I can’t see actually where I can assist you. I know very little about it all.’
‘But you are, I believe, the legal adviser to the Drake family?’
‘Oh yes, yes. Hugo Drake, poor chap. Very nice fellow. I’ve known them for years, ever since they bought Apple Trees and came here to live. Sad thing, polio—he contracted it when they were holidaying abroad one year. Mentally, of course, his health was quite unimpaired. It’s sad when it happens to a man who has been a good athlete all his life, a sportsman, good