Peril at End House - Agatha Christie [72]
‘How you are enjoying this,’ I murmured feebly.
‘Du tout. It is part of my plan, that is all. To play the comedy successfully, you must put the heart into it. Well, then, the conventional expressions of regret over, Madame comes to matters nearer home. All night she has lain awake wondering about those sweets. It is impossible—impossible. “Madame,” I say, “it is not impossible. You can see the analyst’s report.” Then she says, and her voice is far from steady, “It was—cocaine, you say?” I assent. And she says, “Oh, my God. I don’t understand.”’
‘Perhaps that’s true.’
‘She understands well enough that she is in danger. She is intelligent. I told you that before. Yes, she is in danger, and she knows it.’
‘And yet it seems to me that for the first time you don’t believe her guilty.’
Poirot frowned. The excitement of his manner abated.
‘It is profound what you say there, Hastings. No—it seems to me that—somehow—the facts no longer fit. These crimes—so far what has marked them most—the subtlety, is it not? And here is no subtlety at all—only the crudity, pure and simple. No, it does not fit.’
He sat down at the table.
‘Voilà—let us examine the facts. There are three possibilities. There are the sweets bought by Madame and delivered by M. Lazarus. And in that case the guilt rests with one or the other or both. And the telephone call, supposedly from Mademoiselle Nick, that is an invention pure and simple. That is the straightforward—the obvious solution.
‘Solution 2: The other box of sweets—that which came by post. Anyone may have sent those. Any of the suspects on our list from A. to J. (You remember? A very wide field.) But, if that were the guilty box, what is the point of the telephone call? Why complicate matters with a second box?’
I shook my head feebly. With a temperature of 102, any complication seemed to me quite unnecessary and absurd.
‘Solution 3: A poisoned box was substituted for the innocent box bought by Madame. In that case the telephone call is ingenious and understandable. Madame is to be what you call the kitten’s paw. She is to pull the roasting chestnuts out of the fire. So Solution 3 is the most logical—but, alas, it is also the most difficult. How be sure of substituting a box at the right moment? The orderly might take the box straight upstairs—a hundred and one possibilities might prevent the substitution being effected. No, it does not seem sense.’
‘Unless it were Lazarus,’ I said.
Poirot looked at me.
‘You have the fever, my friend. It mounts, does it not?’
I nodded.
‘Curious how a few degrees of heat should stimulate the intellect. You have uttered there an observation of profound simplicity. So simple, was it, that I had failed to consider it. But it would suppose a very curious state of affairs. M. Lazarus, the dear friend of Madame, doing his best to get her hanged. It opens up possibilities of a very curious nature. But complex—very complex.’
I closed my eyes. I was glad I had been brilliant, but I did not want to think of anything complex. I wanted to go to sleep.
Poirot, I think, went on talking, but I did not listen. His voice was vaguely soothing…
It was late afternoon when I saw him next.
‘My little plan, it has made the fortune of flower shops,’ he announced. ‘Everybody orders wreaths. M. Croft, M. Vyse, Commander Challenger—’
The last name awoke a chord of compunction in my mind.
‘Look here, Poirot,’ I said. ‘You must let him in on this. Poor fellow, he will be distracted with grief. It isn’t fair.’
‘You have always the tenderness for him, Hastings.’
‘I like him. He’s a thoroughly decent chap. You’ve got to take him into the secret.’
Poirot shok his head.
‘No, mon ami. I do not make the exceptions.’
‘But