Peril at End House - Agatha Christie [83]
‘She seizes the chance and sends for Maggie to come a day earlier.
‘How easy the crime is actually! She leaves us at the dinner table and after hearing on the wireless that Seton’s death is a fact, she starts to put her plan into action. She has plenty of time, then, to take Seton’s letters to Maggie—look through them and select the few that will answer her purpose. These she places in her own room. Then, later, she and Maggie leave the fireworks and go back to the house. She tells her cousin to put on her shawl. Then stealing out after her, she shoots her. Quick, into the house, the pistol concealed in the secret panel (of whose existence she thinks nobody knows). Then upstairs. There she waits till voices are heard. The body is discovered. It is her cue.
‘Down she rushes and out through the window.
‘How well she played her part! Magnificently! Oh, yes, she staged a fine drama here. The maid, Ellen, said this was an evil house. I am inclined to agree with her. It was from the house that Mademoiselle Nick took her inspiration.’
‘But those poisoned sweets,’ said Frederica. ‘I still don’t understand about that.’
‘It was all part of the same scheme. Do you not see that if Nick’s life was attempted after Maggie was dead that absolutely settled the question that Maggie’s death had been a mistake.
‘When she thought the time was ripe she rang up Madame Rice and asked her to get her a box of chocolates.’
‘Then it was her voice?’
‘But, yes! How often the simple explanation is the true one! N’est ce pas? She made her voice sound a little different—that was all. So that you might be in doubt when questioned. Then, when the box arrived—again how simple. She fills three of the chocolates with cocaine (she had cocaine with her, cleverly concealed), eats one of them and is ill—but not too ill. She knows very well how much cocaine to take and just what symptoms to exaggerate.
‘And the card—my card! Ah! Sapristi—she has a nerve! It was my card—the one I sent with the flowers. Simple, was it not? Yes, but it had to be thought of…’
There was a pause and then Frederica asked:
‘Why did she put the pistol in my coat?’
‘I thought you would ask me that, Madame. It was bound to occur to you in time. Tell me—had it ever entered your head that Mademoiselle Nick no longer liked you? Did you ever feel that she might—hate you?’
‘It’s difficult to say,’ said Frederica, slowly. ‘We lived an insincere life. She used to be fond of me.’
‘Tell me, M. Lazarus—it is not a time for false modesty, you understand—was there ever anything between you and her?’
‘No.’ Lazarus shook his head. ‘I was attracted to her at one time. And then—I don’t know why—I went off her.’
‘Ah!’ said Poirot, nodding his head sagely. ‘That was her tragedy. She attracted people—and then they “went off her”. Instead of liking her better and better you fell in love with her friend. She began to hate Madame—Madame who had a rich friend behind her. Last winter when she made a will, she was fond of Madame. Later it was different.
‘She remembered that will. She did not know that Croft had suppressed it—that it had never reached its destination. Madame (or so the world would say) had got a motive for desiring her death. So it was to Madame she telephoned asking her to get the chocolates. Tonight, the will would have been read, naming Madame her residuary legatee—and then the pistol would be found in her coat—the pistol with which Maggie Buckley was shot. If Madame found it, she might incriminate herself by trying to get rid of it.’
‘She must have hated me,’ murmured Frederica.
‘Yes, Madame. You had what she had not—the knack of winning love, and keeping it.’
‘I’m rather dense,’ said Challenger, ‘but I haven’t quite fathomed the will business yet.’
‘No? That’s a different business altogether—a very simple one. The Crofts are lying low down here. Madmoiselle Nick has to have an operation. She has made