Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie [28]
Giraud snorted incredulously.
“There have been many affairs of masked men. I cannot remember the details of them all. The crimes all resemble each other more or less.”
“There is such a thing as the individual touch.” Poirot suddenly assumed his lecturing manner, and addressed us collectively. “I am speaking to you now of the psychology of crime. Monsieur Giraud knows quite well that each criminal has his particular method, and that the police, when called in to investigate, say, a case of burglary, can often make a shrewd guess at the offender, simply by the peculiar methods he has employed. (Japp would tell you the same, Hastings.) Man is an unoriginal animal. Unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life, equally unoriginal outside the law. If a man commits a crime, any other crime he commits will resemble it closely. The English murderer who disposed of his wives in succession by drowning them in their baths was a case in point. Had he varied his methods, he might have escaped detection to this day. But he obeyed the common dictates of human nature, arguing that what had once succeeded would succeed again, and he paid the penalty of his lack of originality.”
“And the point of all this?” sneered Giraud.
“That, when you have two crimes precisely similar in design and execution, you find the same brain behind them both. I am looking for that brain, Monsieur Giraud, and I shall find it. Here we have a true clue—a psychological clue. You may know all about cigarettes and match ends, Monsieur Giraud, but I, Hercule Poirot, know the mind of man.”
Giraud remained singularly unimpressed.
“For your guidance,” continued Poirot, “I will also advise you of one fact which might fail to be brought to your notice. The wristwatch of Madame Renauld, on the day following the tragedy, had gained two hours.”
Giraud stared.
“Perhaps it was in the habit of gaining?”
“As a matter of fact, I am told it did.”
“Very well, then.”
“All the same, two hours is a good deal,” said Poirot softly. “Then there is the matter of the footprints in the flower bed.”
He nodded his head towards the open window. Giraud took two eager strides, and looked out.
“But I see no footprints?”
“No,” said Poirot, straightening a little pile of books on a table. “There are none.”
For a moment an almost murderous rage obscured Giraud’s face. He took two strides towards his tormentor, but at that moment the salon door was opened, and Marchaud announced:
“Monsieur Stonor, the secretary, has just arrived from England. May he enter?”
Ten
GABRIEL STONOR
The man who now entered the room was a striking figure. Very tall, with a well-knit, athletic frame, and a deeply bronzed face and neck, he dominated the assembly. Even Giraud seemed anaemic beside him. When I knew him better I realized that Gabriel Stonor was quite an unusual personality. English by birth, he had knocked about all over the world. He had shot big game in Africa, travelled in Korea, ranched in California, and traded in the South Sea islands.
His unerring eye picked out M. Hautet.
“The examining magistrate in charge of the case? Pleased to meet you, sir. This is a terrible business. How’s Mrs. Renauld? Is she bearing up fairly well? It must have been an awful shock to her.”
“Terrible, terrible,” said M. Hautet. “Permit me to introduce Monsieur Bex, our commissary of police, Monsieur Giraud of the Sûreté. This gentleman is Monsieur Hercule Poirot. Mr. Renauld sent for him, but he arrived too late to do anything to avert the tragedy. A friend of Monsieur Poirot’s, Captain Hastings.”
Stonor looked at Poirot with some interest.
“Sent for you, did he?”
“You did not know, then, that Monsieur Renauld contemplated calling a detective?” interposed M. Bex.
“No, I didn’t. But it doesn’t surprise me a bit.”
“Why?”
“Because the old man was rattled. I don’t know what it was all about. He didn’t confide in me. We weren’t on those terms. But rattled he was—and badly.”
“H’m!” said M. Hautet. “But you have no notion of the cause?”
“That’s what I