The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie [57]
‘It was terrible, M. Poirot! I knelt there, and thought and thought, and the more I thought the more my nerve failed me. Presently I noticed Sir Reuben’s keys which had dropped from his pocket as he fell. Among them was the key of the safe, the combination word I already knew, since Lady Astwell had mentioned it once in my hearing. I went over to that safe, M. Poirot, unlocked it and rummaged through the papers I found there.
‘In the end I found what I was looking for. Humphrey had been perfectly right. Sir Reuben was behind the Mpala Gold Fields, and he had deliberately swindled Humphrey. That made it all the worse. It gave a perfectly definite motive for Humphrey having committed the crime. I put the papers back in the safe, left the key in the door of it, and went straight upstairs to my room. In the morning I pretended to be surprised and horror-stricken, like everyone else, when the housemaid discovered the body.’
She stopped and looked piteously across at Poirot.
‘You do believe me, M. Poirot. Oh, do say you believe me!’
‘I believe you, Mademoiselle,’ said Poirot; ‘you have explained many things that puzzled me. Your absolute certainty, for one thing, that Charles Leverson had committed the crime, and at the same time your persistent efforts to keep me from coming down here.’
Lily nodded.
‘I was afraid of you,’ she admitted frankly. ‘Lady Astwell could not know, as I did, that Charles was guilty, and I couldn’t say anything. I hoped against hope that you would refuse to take the case.’
‘But for that obvious anxiety on your part, I might have done so,’ said Poirot drily.
Lily looked at him swiftly, her lips trembled a little.
‘And now, M. Poirot, what – what are you going to do?’
‘As far as you are concerned, Mademoiselle, nothing. I believe your story, and I accept it. The next step is to go to London and see Inspector Miller.’
‘And then?’ asked Lily.
‘And then,’ said Poirot, ‘we shall see.’
Outside the door of the study he looked once more at the little square of stained green chiffon which he held in his hand.
‘Amazing,’ he murmured to himself complacently, ‘the ingenuity of Hercule Poirot.’
VII
Detective-Inspector Miller was not particularly fond of M. Hercule Poirot. He did not belong to that small band of inspectors at the Yard who welcomed the little Belgian’s co-operation. He was wont to say that Hercule Poirot was much over-rated. In this case he felt pretty sure of himself, and greeted Poirot with high good humour in consequence.
‘Acting for Lady Astwell, are you? Well, you have taken up a mare’s nest in that case.’
‘There is, then, no possible doubt about the matter?’
Miller winked. ‘Never was a clearer case, short of catching a murderer absolutely red-handed.’
‘M. Leverson has made a statement, I understand?’
‘He had better have kept his mouth shut,’ said the detective. ‘He repeats over and over again that he went straight up to his room and never went near his uncle. That’s a fool story on the face of it.’
‘It is certainly against the weight of evidence,’ murmured Poirot. ‘How does he strike you, this young M. Leverson?’
‘Darned young fool.’
‘A weak character, eh?’
The inspector nodded.
‘One would hardly think a young man of that type would have the – how do you say it – the bowels to commit such a crime.’
‘On the face of it, no,’ agreed the inspector. ‘But, bless you, I have come across the same thing many times. Get a weak, dissipated young man into a corner, fill him up with a drop too much to drink, and for a limited amount of time you can turn him into a fire-eater. A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man.’
‘That is true; yes; that is true what you say.’
Miller