Sad cypress - Agatha Christie [58]
Peter Lord demanded angrily:
‘Do you mean to say that you don’t believe someone stood in those bushes watching the window?’
Poirot said:
‘Yes, I believe that…’
‘Then we’ve got to find whoever it was!’
Poirot murmured:
‘We shall not have to look far, I fancy.’
‘Do you mean you know?’
‘I have a very shrewd idea.’
Peter Lord said slowly:
‘Then your minions who made inquiries in Germany did bring you something…’
Hercule Poirot said, tapping his forehead:
‘My friend, it is all here, in my head…Come, let us look over the house.’
III
They stood at last in the room where Mary Gerrard had died.
The house had a strange atmosphere in it: it seemed alive with memories and forebodings.
Peter Lord flung up one of the windows.
He said with a slight shiver:
‘This place feels like a tomb…’
Poirot said:
‘If walls could speak…It is all here, is it not, here in the house – the beginning of the whole story.’
He paused and then said softly:
‘It was here in this room that Mary Gerrard died.’
Peter Lord said:
‘They found her sitting in that chair by the window…’
Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully:
‘A young girl – beautiful – romantic? Did she scheme and intrigue? Was she a superior person who gave herself airs? Was she gentle and sweet, with no thought of intrigue…just a young thing beginning life…a girl like a flower?…’
‘Whatever she was,’ said Peter Lord, ‘someone wished her dead.’
Hercule Poirot murmured:
‘I wonder…’
Lord stared at him.
‘What do you mean?’
Poirot shook his head.
‘Not yet.’
He turned about.
‘We have been all through the house. We have seen all that there is to be seen here. Let us go down to the Lodge.’
Here again all was in order: the rooms dusty, but neat and emptied of personal possessions. The two men stayed only a few minutes. As they came out into the sun, Poirot touched the leaves of a pillar rose growing up a trellis. It was pink and sweet-scented.
He murmured:
‘Do you know the name of this rose? It is Zephyrine Drouhin, my friend.’
Peter Lord said irritably:
‘What of it?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘When I saw Elinor Carlisle, she spoke to me of roses. It was then that I began to see – not daylight, but the little glimpse of light that one gets in a train when one is about to come out of a tunnel. It is not so much daylight, but the promise of daylight.’
Peter Lord said harshly:
‘What did she tell you?’
‘She told me of her childhood, of playing here in this garden, and of how she and Roderick Welman were on different sides. They were enemies, for he preferred the white rose of York – cold and austere – and she, so she told me, loved red roses, the red rose of Lancaster. Red roses that have scent and colour and passion and warmth. And that, my friend, is the difference between Elinor Carlisle and Roderick Welman.’
Peter Lord said:
‘Does that explain – anything?’
Poirot said:
‘It explains Elinor Carlisle – who is passionate and proud and who loved desperately a man who was incapable of loving her…’
Peter Lord said:
‘I don’t understand you…’
Poirot said:
‘But I understand her…I understand both of them. Now my friend, we will go back once more to that little clearing in the shrubbery.’
They went there in silence. Peter Lord’s freckled face was troubled and angry.
When they came to the spot, Poirot stood motionless for some time, and Peter Lord watched him.
Then suddenly the little detective gave a vexed sigh.
He said:
‘It is so simple, really. Do you not see, my friend, the fatal fallacy in your reasoning? According to your theory someone, a man, presumably, who had known Mary Gerrard in Germany came here intent on killing her. But look, my friend, look! Use the two eyes of your body, since the eyes of the mind do not seem to serve you. What do you see from here: a window, is it not? And at that window – a girl. A girl cutting sandwiches. That is to say, Elinor Carlisle. But think for a minute of this: What on earth was to tell the watching man that those sandwiches were going to be offered to Mary Gerrard? No one knew that but Elinor Carlisle