Poirot investigates - Agatha Christie [3]
‘I said I’d call round for you, Mary,’ said Gregory Rolf, ‘and here I am. Well, what does Monsieur Poirot say to our little problem? Just one big hoax, same as I do?’
Poirot smiled up at the big actor. They made a ridiculous contrast.
‘Hoax or no hoax, Mr Rolf,’ he said dryly, ‘I have advised Madame your wife not to take the jewel with her to Yardly Chase on Friday.’
‘I’m with you there, sir. I’ve already said so to Mary. But there! She’s a woman through and through, and I guess she can’t bear to think of another woman outshining her in the jewel line.’
‘What nonsense, Gregory!’ said Mary Marvell sharply. But she flushed angrily.
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘Madame, I have advised. I can do no more. C’est fini.’
He bowed them both to the door.
‘Ah! la la,’ he observed, returning. ‘Histoire des femmes! The good husband, he hit the nail–tout de même, but he was not tactful! Assuredly not.’
I imparted to him my vague remembrances, and he nodded vigorously.
‘So I thought. All the same, there is something curious underneath all this. With your permission, mon ami, I will take the air. Await my return, I beg of you, I shall not be long.’
I was half asleep in my chair when the landlady tapped on the door, and put her head in.
‘It’s another lady to see Mr Poirot, sir. I’ve told her he was out, but she says as how she’ll wait, seeing as she’s come up from the country.’
‘Oh, show her in here, Mrs Murchinson. Perhaps I can do something for her.’
In another moment the lady had been ushered in. My heart gave a leap as I recognized her. Lady Yardly’s portrait had figured too often in the Society papers to allow her to remain unknown.
‘Do sit down, Lady Yardly,’ I said, drawing forward a chair. ‘My friend, Poirot, is out, but I know for a fact that he’ll be back very shortly.’
She thanked me and sat down. A very different type, this, from Miss Mary Marvell. Tall, dark, with flashing eyes, and a pale proud face–yet something wistful in the curves of the mouth.
I felt a desire to rise to the occasion. Why not? In Poirot’s presence I have frequently felt a difficulty–I do not appear at my best. And yet there is no doubt that I, too, possess the deductive sense in a marked degree. I leant forward on a sudden impulse.
‘Lady Yardly,’ I said, ‘I know why you have come here. You have received blackmailing letters about the diamond.’
There was no doubt as to my bolt having shot home. She stared at me open-mouthed, all colour banished from her cheeks.
‘You know?’ she gasped. ‘How?’
I smiled.
‘By a perfectly logical process. If Miss Marvell has had warning letters–’
‘Miss Marvell? She has been here?’
‘She has just left. As I was saying, if she, as the holder of one of the twin diamonds, has received a mysterious series of warnings, you, as the holder of the other stone, must necessarily have done the same. You see how simple it is? I am right, then, you have received these strange communications also?’
For a moment she hesitated, as though in doubt whether to trust me or not, then she bowed her head in assent with a little smile.
‘That is so,’ she acknowledged.
‘Were yours, too, left by hand–by a Chinaman?’
‘No, they came by post; but tell me, has Miss Marvell undergone the same experience, then?’
I recounted to her the events of the morning. She listened attentively.
‘It all fits in. My letters are the duplicate of hers. It is true that they came by post, but there is a curious perfume impregnating them–something in the nature of joss-stick–that at once suggested the East to me. What does it all mean?’
I shook my head.
‘That is what we must find out. You have the letters with you? We might learn something from the postmarks.’
‘Unfortunately I destroyed them. You understand, at the time I regarded it as some foolish joke. Can it be true that some Chinese gang are really trying to recover the diamonds? It seems too incredible.’
We went over the facts again and again, but could get no further towards the elucidation of the mystery.