Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie [85]
His face was scarlet. His voice came thickly.
‘Now, now,’ said Jenny Driver.
She spoke exactly as I have heard nursemaids speak to a small child in the park.
‘And the gold box with the initial D, and Paris November inside?’ said Japp.
‘She ordered that by letter and sent Ellis, her maid, to fetch it. Naturally Ellis just called for a parcel which she paid for. She had no idea what was inside. Also, Lady Edgware borrowed a pair of Ellis’s pince-nez to help in the Van Dusen impersonation. She forgot about them and left them in Carlotta Adams’ handbag – her one mistake.
‘Oh! it came to me – it all came to me as I stood in the middle of the road. It was not polite what the bus driver said to me, but it was worth it. Ellis! Ellis’s pince-nez. Ellis calling for the box in Paris. Ellis and therefore Jane Wilkinson. Very possibly she borrowed something else from Ellis besides des pince-nez.’
‘What?’
‘A corn knife . . .’
I shivered.
There was a momentary silence.
Then Japp said with a strange reliance in the answer.
‘M. Poirot. Is this true?’
‘It is true, mon ami.’
Then Bryan Martin spoke, and his words were, I thought, very typical of him.
‘But look here,’ he said peevishly. ‘What about me? Why bring me here today? Why nearly frighten me to death?’
Poirot looked at him coldly.
‘To punish you, Monsieur, for being impertinent! How dare you try and make the games with Hercule Poirot?’
And then Jenny Driver laughed. She laughed and laughed.
‘Serve you right, Bryan,’ she said at last.
She turned to Poirot.
‘I’m glad as I can be that it wasn’t Ronnie Marsh,’ she said. ‘I’ve always liked him. And I’m glad, glad, glad that Carlotta’s death won’t go unpunished! As for Bryan here, well I’ll tell you something, M. Poirot. I’m going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He’s going to marry and stick to me.’
Poirot looked at her – looked at her determined chin – and at her flaming hair.
‘It is very possible, Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘that that may be so. I said that you had sufficient nerve for anything. Even to marry a film “star”.’
Chapter 31
A Human Document
A day or two after that I was suddenly recalled to the Argentine. So it happened that I never saw Jane Wilkinson again and only read in the paper of her trial and condemnation. Unexpectedly, at least unexpectedly to me, she went completely to pieces when charged with the truth. So long as she was able to be proud of her cleverness and act her part she made no mistakes, but once her self-confidence failed her, owing to someone having found her out, she was as incapable as a child would be of keeping up a deception. Cross-examined, she went completely to pieces.
So, as I said before, that luncheon party was the last time I saw Jane Wilkinson. But when I think of her, I always see her the same way – standing in her room at the Savoy trying on expensive black clothes with a serious absorbed face. I am convinced that that was no pose. She was being completely natural. Her plan had succeeded and therefore she had no further qualms and doubts. Neither do I think that she ever suffered one pang of remorse for the three crimes she had committed.
I reproduce here a document which she had directed was to be sent to Poirot after her death. It is, I think, typical of that very lovely and completely conscienceless lady.
Dear M. Poirot, I have been thinking things over and I feel that I should like to write this for you. I know that you sometimes publish reports of your cases. I don’t really think that you’ve ever published a document by the person themselves. I feel, too, that I would like everyone to know just exactly how I did it all. I still think it was all very well planned. If it hadn’t been for you everything would have been quite all right. I’ve felt rather bitter about that, but I suppose you couldn’t help it. I’m sure, if I send you this, you’ll give it plenty