Poirot's Early Cases - Agatha Christie [54]
‘Diabolical!’ I murmured with a shiver. ‘And so cleverly planned!’
‘Yes, mon ami, there is nothing more amazing than the extraordinary sanity of the insane! Unless it is the extraordinary eccentricity of the sane! I imagine that it is only lately that he has completely gone over the borderline, there was method in his madness to begin with.’
‘And to think that I suspected Roger—that splendid fellow.’
‘It was the natural assumption, mon ami. We knew that he also travelled north with Vincent that night. We knew, too, that he was the next heir after Hugo and Hugo’s children. But our assumption was not borne out by the facts. The ivy was sawn through when only little Ronald was at home—but it would be to Roger’s interest that both children should perish. In the same way, it was only Ronald’s food that was poisoned. And today when they came home and I found that there was only his father’s word for it that Ronald had been stung, I remembered the other death from a wasp sting—and I knew!’
VIII
Hugo Lemesurier died a few months later in the private asylum to which he was removed. His widow was remarried a year later to Mr John Gardiner, the auburn-haired secretary. Ronald inherited the broad acres of his father, and continues to flourish.
‘Well, well,’ I remarked to Poirot. ‘Another illusion gone. You have disposed very successfully of the curse of the Lemesuriers.’
‘I wonder,’ said Poirot very thoughtfully. ‘I wonder very much indeed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mon ami, I will answer you with one significant word—red!’
‘Blood?’ I queried, dropping my voice to an awe-stricken whisper.
‘Always you have the imagination melodramatic, Hastings! I refer to something much more prosaic—the colour of little Ronald Lemesurier’s hair.’
The Lost Mine
I laid down my bank book with a sigh.
‘It is a curious thing,’ I observed, ‘but my overdraft never seems to grow any less.’
‘And it perturbs you not? Me, if I had an overdraft, never should I close my eyes all night,’ declared Poirot.
‘You deal in comfortable balances, I suppose!’ I retorted.
‘Four hundred and forty-four pounds, four and fourpence,’ said Poirot with some complacency. ‘A neat figure, is it not?’
‘It must be tact on the part of your bank manager. He is evidently acquainted with your passion for symmetrical details. What about investing, say, three hundred of it in the Porcupine oil-fields? Their prospectus, which is advertised in the papers today, says that they will pay one hundred per cent dividends next year.’
‘Not for me,’ said Poirot, shaking his head. ‘I like not the sensational. For me the safe, the prudent investment—les rentes, the consols, the—how do you call it?—the conversion.’
‘Have you never made a speculative investment?’
‘No, mon ami,’ replied Poirot severely. ‘I have not. And the only shares I own which have not what you call the gilded edge are fourteen thousand shares in the Burma Mines Ltd.’
Poirot paused with an air of waiting to be encouraged to go on.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘And for them I paid no cash—no, they were the reward of the exercise of my little grey cells. You would like to hear the story? Yes?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘These mines are situated in the interior of Burma about two hundred miles inland from Rangoon. They were discovered by the Chinese in the fifteenth century and worked down to the time of the Mohammedan Rebellion, being finally abandoned in the year 1868. The Chinese extracted the rich lead-silver ore from the upper part of the ore body, smelting it for the silver alone, and leaving large quantities of rich lead-bearing slag. This, of course, was soon discovered when prospecting work was carried out in Burma, but owing to the fact that the old workings had become full of loose filling and water, all attempts to find the source of the ore proved fruitless. Many parties were sent out by syndicates, and they dug over a large