The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie [53]
‘How is that?’
‘Lady Astwell says that she left her husband at a quarter to twelve, while the secretary had gone to bed at eleven o’clock. The only time he could have committed the crime was between a quarter to twelve and Charles Leverson’s return. Now, if, as you say, you sat with your door open, he could not have come out of his room without your seeing him.’
‘That is so,’ agreed the other.
‘There is no other staircase?’
‘No, to get down to the Tower room he would have had to pass my door, and he didn’t, I am quite sure of that. And, anyway, M. Poirot, as I said just now, the man is as meek as a parson, I assure you.’
‘But yes, but yes,’ said Poirot soothingly, ‘I understand all that.’ He paused. ‘And you will not tell me the subject of your quarrel with Sir Reuben?’
The other’s face turned a dark red.
‘You’ll get nothing out of me.’
Poirot looked at the ceiling.
‘I can always be discreet,’ he murmured, ‘where a lady is concerned.’
Victor Astwell sprang to his feet.
‘Damn you, how did you – what do you mean?’
‘I was thinking,’ said Poirot, ‘of Miss Lily Margrave.’
Victor Astwell stood undecided for a minute or two, then his colour subsided, and he sat down again.
‘You are too clever for me, M. Poirot. Yes, it was Lily we quarrelled about. Reuben had his knife into her; he had ferreted out something or other about the girl – false references, something of that kind. I don’t believe a word of it myself.
‘And then he went further than he had any right to go, talked about her stealing down at night and getting out of the house to meet some fellow or other. My God! I gave it to him; I told him that better men than he had been killed for saying less. That shut him up. Reuben was inclined to be a bit afraid of me when I got going.’
‘I hardly wonder at it,’ murmured Poirot politely.
‘I think a lot of Lily Margrave,’ said Victor in another tone. ‘A nice girl through and through.’
Poirot did not answer. He was staring in front of him, seemingly lost in abstraction. He came out of his brown study with a jerk.
‘I must, I think, promenade myself a little. There is a hotel here, yes?’
‘Two,’ said Victor Astwell, ‘the Golf Hotel up by the links and the Mitre down by the station.’
‘I thank you,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, certainly I must promenade myself a little.’
The Golf Hotel, as befits its name, stands on the golf links almost adjoining the club house. It was to this hostelry that Poirot repaired first in the course of that ‘promenade’ which he had advertised himself as being about to take. The little man had his own way of doing things. Three minutes after he had entered the Golf Hotel he was in private consultation with Miss Langdon, the manageress.
‘I regret to incommode you in any way, Mademoiselle,’ said Poirot, ‘but you see I am a detective.’
Simplicity always appealed to him. In this case the method proved efficacious at once.
‘A detective!’ exclaimed Miss Langdon, looking at him doubtfully.
‘Not from Scotland Yard,’ Poirot assured her. ‘In fact – you may have noticed it? I am not an Englishman. No, I make the private inquiries into the death of Sir Reuben Astwell.’
‘You don’t say, now!’ Miss Langdon goggled at him expectantly.
‘Precisely,’ said Poirot, beaming. ‘Only to someone of discretion like yourself would I reveal the fact. I think, Mademoiselle, you may be able to aid me. Can you tell me of any gentleman staying here on the night of the murder who was absent from the hotel that evening and returned to it about twelve or half past?’
Miss Langdon’s eyes opened wider than ever.
‘You don’t think –?’ she breathed.
‘That you had the murderer here? No, but I have reason to believe that a guest staying here promenaded himself in the direction of Mon Repos that night, and if so he may have seen something which, though conveying no meaning to him, might be very useful to me.’
The manageress nodded her