Murder in the Mews - Agatha Christie [56]
‘He looked in, as usual, on his way downstairs before dinner. My maid was there. He just said he was going down.’
‘What has he talked about most in the last few weeks?’
‘Oh, the family history. He was getting on so well with it. He found that funny old thing, Miss Lingard, quite invaluable. She looked up things for him in the British Museum — all that sort of thing. She worked with Lord Mulcaster on his book, you know. And she was tactful — I mean, she didn’t look up the wrong things. After all, there are ancestors one doesn’t want raked up. Gervase was very sensitive. She helped me, too. She got a lot of information for me about Hatshepsut. I am a reincarnation of Hatshepsut, you know.’
Lady Chevenix-Gore made this announcement in a calm voice.
‘Before that,’ she went on, ‘I was a Priestess in Atlantis.’
Major Riddle shifted a little in his chair.
‘Er — er — very interesting,’ he said. ‘Well, really, Lady Chevenix-Gore, I think that will be all. Very kind of you.’
Lady Chevenix-Gore rose, clasping her oriental robes about her.
‘Goodnight,’ she said. And then, her eyes shifting to a point behind Major Riddle. ‘Goodnight, Gervase dear. I wish you could come, but I know you have to stay here.’ She added in an explanatory fashion, ‘You have to stay in the place where you’ve passed over for at least twenty-four hours. It’s some time before you can move about freely and communicate.’
She trailed out of the room.
Major Riddle wiped his brow.
‘Phew,’ he murmured. ‘She’s a great deal madder than I ever thought. Does she really believe all that nonsense?’
Poirot shook his head thoughtfully.
‘It is possible that she finds it helpful,’ he said. ‘She needs, at this moment, to create for herself a world of illusion so that she can escape the stark reality of her husband’s death.’
‘She seems almost certifiable to me,’ said Major Riddle. ‘A long farrago of nonsense without one word of sense in it.’
‘No, no, my friend. The interesting thing is, as Mr Hugo Trent casually remarked to me, that amidst all the vapouring there is an occasional shrewd thrust. She showed it by her remark about Miss Lingard’s tact in not stressing undesirable ancestors. Believe me, Lady Chevenix-Gore is no fool.’
He got up and paced up and down the room.
‘There are things in this affair that I do not like. No, I do not like them at all.’
Riddle looked at him curiously.
‘You mean the motive for his suicide?’
‘Suicide — suicide! It is all wrong, I tell you. It is wrong psychologically. How did Chevenix-Gore think of himself? As a Colossus, as an immensely important person, as the centre of the universe! Does such a man destroy himself? Surely not. He is far more likely to destroy someone else — some miserable crawling ant of a human being who had dared to cause him annoyance…Such an act he might regard as necessary — as sanctified! But self-destruction? The destruction of such a Self?’
‘It’s all very well, Poirot. But the evidence is clear enough. Door locked, key in his own pocket. Window closed and fastened. I know these things happen in books — but I’ve never come across them in real life. Anything else?’
‘But yes, there is something else.’ Poirot sat down in the chair. ‘Here I am. I am Chevenix-Gore. I am sitting at my desk. I am determined to kill myself — because, let us say, I have made a discovery concerning some terrific dishonour to the family name. It is not very convincing, that, but it must suffice.
‘Eh bien, what do I do? I scrawl on a piece of paper the word SORRY. Yes, that is quite possible. Then I open a drawer of the desk, take out the pistol which I keep there, load it, if it is not loaded, and then — do I proceed to shoot myself? No, I first turn my chair round — so, and I lean over a little to the right — so — and then I put the pistol to my temple and fire!’
Poirot sprang up from his chair, and wheeling round, demanded:
‘I ask you, does that make sense? Why turn the chair round? If, for instance, there had been a picture on the wall there, then, yes, there might be an explanation. Some portrait which