Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie [24]
‘What is your opinion of the butler?’ asked Poirot.
‘I don’t like him much and that’s a fact,’ replied Miss Carroll. ‘But I can’t tell you why.’
We had reached the front door.
‘It was up there that you stood, was it not, last night, Mademoiselle?’ said Poirot suddenly, pointing with his hands up the stairs.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘And you saw Lady Edgware go along the hall into the study?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you saw her face distinctly?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you could not have seen her face, Mademoiselle. You can only have seen the back of her head from where you were standing.’
Miss Carroll flushed angrily. She seemed taken aback.
‘Back of her head, her voice, her walk! It’s all the same thing. Absolutely unmistakable! I tell you I know it was Jane Wilkinson – a thoroughly bad woman if there ever was one.’
And turning away she flounced upstairs.
Chapter 8
Possibilities
Japp had to leave us. Poirot and I turned into Regent’s Park and found a quiet seat.
‘I see the point of your rose between the lips now,’ I said, laughing. ‘At the moment I thought you had gone mad.’
He nodded without smiling.
‘You observe, Hastings, that the secretary is a dangerous witness, dangerous because inaccurate. You notice that she stated positively that she saw the visitor’s face? At the time I thought that impossible. Coming from the study – yes, but not going to the study. So I made my little experiment which resulted as I thought, and then sprung my trap upon her. She immediately changed her ground.’
‘Her belief was quite unaltered, though,’ I argued. ‘And after all, a voice and a walk are just as unmistakable.’
‘No, no.’
‘Why, Poirot, I think a voice and the general gait are about the most characteristic things about a person.’
‘I agree. And therefore they are the most easily counterfeited.’
‘You think –’
‘Cast your mind back a few days. Do you remember one evening as we sat in the stalls of a theatre –’
‘Carlotta Adams? Ah! but then she is a genius.’
‘A well-known person is not so difficult to mimic. But I agree she has unusual gifts. I believe she could carry a thing through without the aid of footlights and distance –’
A sudden thought flashed into my mind.
‘Poirot,’ I cried. ‘You don’t think that possibly – no, that would be too much of a coincidence.’
‘It depends how you look at it, Hastings. Regarded from one angle it would be no coincidence at all.’
‘But why should Carlotta Adams wish to kill Lord Edgware? She did not even know him.’
‘How do you know she did not know him? Do not assume things, Hastings. There may have been some link between them of which we know nothing. Not that that is precisely my theory.’
‘Then you have a theory?’
‘Yes. The possibility of Carlotta Adams being involved struck me from the beginning.’
‘But, Poirot –’
‘Wait, Hastings. Let me put together a few facts for you. Lady Edgware, with a complete lack of reticence, discusses the relations between her and her husband, and even goes so far as to talk of killing him. Not only you and I hear this. A waiter hears it, her maid probably has heard it many times, Bryan Martin hears it, and I imagine Carlotta Adams herself hears it. And there are the people to whom these people repeat it. Then, in that same evening, the excellence of Carlotta Adams’ imitation of Jane is commented upon. Who had a motive for killing Lord Edgware? His wife.
‘Now supposing that someone else wishes to do away with Lord Edgware. Here is a scapegoat ready to his hand. On the day when Jane Wilkinson announced that she had a headache and is going to have a quiet evening – the plan is put into operation.
‘Lady Edgware must be seen to enter the house in Regent Gate. Well, she is seen. She even goes so far as to announce her identity. Ah! c’est peu trop, ça! It would awaken suspicion in an oyster.
‘And another point – a small point, I admit. The woman who came to the house last night wore black. Jane Wilkinson never wears black. We heard her say so. Let us assume, then, that the woman who came to the house last night was not Jane Wilkinson – that it was a woman