Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [70]
Poirot nodded.
‘Yes. He has a record.’
‘Thought so. Swindling hotels if I remember rightly. Used to arrive at the Ritz, go out and buy a Rolls, subject to a morning’s trial, go round in the Rolls to all the most expensive shops and buy stuff — and I can tell you a man who’s got his Rolls outside waiting to take his purchases back to the Ritz doesn’t get his cheques queried! Besides, he had the manner and the breeding. He’d stay a week or so and then, just when suspicions began to arise, he’d quietly disappear, selling the various items cheap to the pals he’d picked up. Charles Trenton. H’m — ’ He looked at Poirot. ‘You find out things, don’t you?’
‘How does your case progress against David Hunter?’
‘We shall have to let him go. There was a woman there that night with Arden. It doesn’t only depend on that old tartar’s word. Jimmy Pierce was going home, got pushed out of the Load of Hay — he gets quarrelsome after a glass or two. He saw a woman come out of the Stag and go into the telephone box outside the post office — that was just after ten. Said it wasn’t any one he knew, thought it was someone staying at the Stag. “A tart from London,” is what he called her.’
‘He was not very near her?’
‘No, right across the street. Who the devil was she, M. Poirot?’
‘Did he say how she was dressed?’
‘Tweed coat, he said, orange scarf round her head. Trousers and a lot of make-up. Fits with the old lady’s description.’
‘Yes, it fits.’ Poirot was frowning.
Spence asked:
‘Well, who was she, where did she come from, where did she go? You know our train service. The 9.20’s the last train up to London — and the 10.03 the other way. Did that woman hang about all night and go up on the 6.18 in the morning? Had she got a car? Did she hitch-hike? We’ve sent out all over the place — but no results.’
‘What about the 6.18?’
‘It’s always crowded — mostly men, though. I think they’d have noticed a woman — that type of woman, that’s to say. I suppose she might have come and left by car, but a car’s noticed in Warmsley Vale nowadays. We’re off the main road, you see.’
‘No cars noticed out that night?’
‘Only Dr Cloade’s. He was out on a case — over Middlingham way. You’d think someone would have noticed a strange woman in a car.’
‘It need not have been a stranger,’ Poirot said slowly. ‘A man slightly drunk and a hundred yards away might not recognize a local person whom he did not know very well. Someone, perhaps, dressed in a different way from their usual way.’
Spence looked at him questioningly.
‘Would this young Pierce recognize, for instance, Lynn Marchmont? She has been away for some years.’
‘Lynn Marchmont was at the White House with her mother at that time,’ said Spence.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Mrs Lionel Cloade — that’s the scatty one, the doctor’s wife — says she telephoned to her there at ten minutes past ten. Rosaleen Cloade was in London. Mrs Jeremy — well, I’ve never seen her in slacks and she doesn’t use much make-up. Anyway, she isn’t young.’
‘Oh, mon cher. Poirot leaned forward. ‘On a dim night, with feeble street lights, can one tell youth or age under a mask of make-up?’
‘Look here, Poirot,’ said Spence, ‘what are you getting at?’
Poirot leaned back and half-closed his eyes.
‘Slacks, a tweed coat, an orange scarf enveloping the head, a great deal of make-up, a dropped lipstick. It is suggestive.’
‘Think you’re the oracle at Delphi,’ growled the Superintendent. ‘Not that I know what the oracle at Delphi was — sort of thing young Graves gives himself airs about knowing — doesn’t help his police work any. Any more cryptic pronnouncements, M. Poirot?’
‘I told you,’ said Poirot, ‘that this case was the wrong shape. As an instance I said to you that the dead man was all wrong. So he was, as Underhay. Underhay was clearly an eccentric, chivalrous individual, old-fashioned and reactionary. The man at the Stag was a blackmailer; he was neither chivalrous, old-fashioned, nor reactionary, nor was he particularly eccentric — therefore he was not Underhay. He could not be Underhay, for people do not change. The interesting