Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [82]
There was a pause. Poirot said: ‘And then?’
‘It was the lighter,’ said Rowley slowly. ‘It fell out of my pocket. I’d been carrying it about meaning to give it back to Rosaleen when I saw her. It fell down on the body, and I saw the initials, D.H. It was David’s, not hers.
‘Ever since that party at Aunt Kathie’s I’d realized — well, never mind all that. I’ve sometimes thought I’m going mad — perhaps I am a bit mad. First Johnnie going — and then the war — I — I can’t talk about things but sometimes I’d feel blind with rage — and now Lynn — and this fellow. I dragged the dead man into the middle of the room and turned him over on his face. Then I picked up those heavy steel tongs — well, I won’t go into details. I wiped off fingerprints, cleaned up the marble curb — then I deliberately put the hands of the wrist-watch at ten minutes past nine and smashed it. I took away his ration book and his papers — I thought his identity might be traced through them. Then I got out. It seemed to me that with Beatrice’s story of what she’d overheard, David would be for it all right.’
‘And then,’ said Poirot, ‘you came to me. It was a pretty little comedy that you played there, was it not, asking me to produce some witnesses that knew Underhay? It was already clear to me that Jeremy Cloade had repeated to his family the story that Major Porter had told. For nearly two years all the family had cherished a secret hope that Underhay might turn up. That wish influenced Mrs Lionel Cloade in her manipulation of the Ouija board — unconsciously, but it was a very revealing accident.
‘Eh bien, I perform my “conjuring trick”. I flatter myself that I impress you and really it is I who am the complete mug. Yes and there in Major Porter’s room, he says, after he offers me a cigarette, he says to you, “You don’t, do you?”
‘How did he know that you did not smoke? He is supposed only that moment to have met you. Imbecile that I am, I should have seen the truth then — that already you and Major Porter, you had made your little arrangement together! No wonder he was nervous that morning. Yes, I am to be the mug, I am to bring Major Porter down to identify the body. But I do not go on being the mug for ever — no, I am not the mug now, am I?’
He looked round angrily and then went on:
‘But then, Major Porter went back on that arrangement. He does not care to be a witness upon oath in a murder trial, and the strength of the case against David Hunter depends very largely upon the identity of the dead man. So Major Porter backs out.’
‘He wrote to me he wouldn’t go through with it,’ said Rowley thickly. ‘The damned fool. Didn’t he see we’d gone too far to stop? I came up to try to drive some sense into him. I was too late. He’d said he’d rather shoot himself than perjure himself when it was a question of murder. The front door wasn’t locked — I went up and found him.
‘I can’t tell you what I felt like. It was as though I was a murderer twice over. If only he’d waited — if he’d only let me talk to him.’
‘There was a note there?’ Poirot asked. ‘You took it away?’
‘Yes — I was in for things now. Might as well go the whole hog. The note was to the coroner. It simply said that he’d given perjured evidence at the inquest. The dead man was not Robert Underhay. I took the note away and destroyed it.’
Rowley struck his fist on the table. ‘It was like a bad dream — a horrible nightmare! I’d begun this thing and I’d got to go on with it. I wanted the money to get Lynn — and I wanted Hunter to hang. And then — I couldn’t understand it — the case against him broke down. Some story about a woman — a woman who was with Arden later. I couldn’t understand, I still can’t understand. What woman? How could a woman be in there talking to Arden after he was dead?’
‘There was no woman,’ said Poirot.
‘But, M. Poirot,’ Lynn croaked. ‘That old lady. She saw her. She heard her.’
‘Aha,’ said Poirot. ‘But what did she