Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie [51]
Keeping a discreet distance behind our quarry, we followed him through the streets of Merlinville. But when Poirot saw that he took the turning to the station he checked himself.
“All is well. He has taken the bait. He will go to Abbalac, and will inquire for the mythical valise left by the mythical foreigners. Yes, mon ami, all that was a little invention of my own.”
“You wanted him out of the way!” I exclaimed.
“Your penetration is amazing, Hastings! Now, if you please, we will go up to the Villa Geneviève.”
Eighteen
GIRAUD ACTS
Arrived at the villa, Poirot led the way up to the shed where the second body had been discovered. He did not, however, go in, but paused by the bench which I have mentioned before as being set some few yards away from it. After contemplating it for a moment or two, he paced carefully from it to the hedge which marked the boundary between the Villa Geneviève and the Villa Marguerite. Then he paced back again, nodding his head as he did so. Returning again to the hedge, he parted the bushes with his hands.
“With good fortune,” he remarked to me over his shoulder, “Mademoiselle Marthe may find herself in the garden. I desire to speak to her and would prefer not to call formally at the Villa Marguerite. Ah, all is well, there she is. Pst, Mademoiselle! Pst! Un moment, s’il vous plaît.”
I joined him at the moment that Marthe Daubreuil, looking slightly startled, came running up to the hedge at his call.
“A little word with you, mademoiselle, if it is permitted?”
“Certainly, Monsieur Poirot.”
Despite her acquiescence, her eyes looked troubled and afraid.
“Mademoiselle, do you remember running after me on the road the day that I came to your house with the examining magistrate? You asked me if anyone were suspected of the crime.”
“And you told me two Chileans.” Her voice sounded rather breathless, and her left hand stole to her breast.
“Will you ask me the same question again, mademoiselle?”
“What do you mean?”
“This. If you were to ask me that question again, I should give you a different answer. Someone is suspected—but not a Chilean.”
“Who?” The word came faintly between her parted lips.
“Monsieur Jack Renauld.”
“What?” It was a cry. “Jack? Impossible. Who dares to suspect him?”
“Giraud.”
“Giraud!” The girl’s face was ashy. “I am afraid of that man. He is cruel. He will—he will—” She broke off. There was courage gathering in her face, and determination. I realized in that moment that she was a fighter. Poirot, too, watched her intently.
“You know, of course, that he was here on the night of the murder?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied mechanically. “He told me.”
“It was unwise to have tried to conceal the fact,” ventured Poirot.
“Yes, yes,” she replied impatiently. “But we cannot waste time on regrets. We must find something to save him. He is innocent, of course; but that will not help him with a man like Giraud, who has his reputation to think of. He must arrest someone, and that someone will be Jack.”
“The facts will tell against him,” said Poirot. “You realize that?”
She faced him squarely.
“I am not a child, monsieur. I can be brave and look facts in the face. He is innocent, and we must save him.”
She spoke with a kind of desperate energy, then was silent, frowning as she thought.
“Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, observing her keenly, “is there not something that you are keeping back that you could tell us?”
She nodded perplexedly.
“Yes, there is something, but I hardly know whether you will believe it—it seems so absurd.”
“At any rate, tell us, mademoiselle.”
“It is this. M. Giraud sent for me, as an afterthought, to see if I could identify the man in there.” She signed with her head towards the shed. “I could not. At least I could not at the moment. But since I have been thinking—”
“Well?”
“It seems so queer, and yet I am almost sure. I will tell you. On the morning of the day Monsieur Renauld was murdered, I was walking in the garden here, when I heard a sound of men’s voices quarrelling. I pushed aside the bushes and looked