The Clocks - Agatha Christie [50]
“Naturally.”
“Why must it be simple?”
“Because it appears so complex. If it has necessarily to appear complex, it must be simple. You comprehend that?”
“I don’t really know that I do.”
“Curious,” mused Poirot, “what you have told me—I think—yes, there is something familiar to me there. Now where—when—have I come across something … ” He paused.
“Your memory,” I said, “must be one vast reservoir of crimes. But you can’t possibly remember them all, can you?”
“Unfortunately no,” said Poirot, “but from time to time these reminiscences are helpful. There was a soap boiler, I remember, once, at Liège. He poisoned his wife in order to marry a blonde stenographer. The crime made a pattern. Later, much later, that pattern recurred. I recognized it. This time it was an affair of a kidnapped Pekinese dog, but the pattern was the same. I looked for the equivalent of the blonde stenographer and the soap boiler, and voilà! That is the kind of thing. And here again in what you have told me I have that feeling of recognition.”
“Clocks?” I suggested hopefully. “Bogus insurance agents?”
“No, no,” Poirot shook his head.
“Blind women?”
“No, no, no. Do not confuse me.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Poirot,” I said. “I thought you’d give me the answer straight away.”
“But, my friend, at present you have presented me only with a pattern. There are many more things to find out. Presumably this man will be identified. In that kind of thing the police are excellent. They have their criminal records, they can advertise the man’s picture, they have access to a list of missing persons, there is scientific examination of the dead man’s clothing, and so on and so on. Oh, yes, there are a hundred other ways and means at their disposal. Undoubtedly, this man will be identified.”
“So there’s nothing to do at the moment. Is that what you think?”
“There is always something to do,” said Hercule Poirot, severely.
“Such as?”
He wagged an emphatic forefinger at me.
“Talk to the neighbours,” he said.
“I’ve done that,” I said. “I went with Hardcastle when he was questioning them. They don’t know anything useful.”
“Ah, tcha, tcha, that is what you think. But I assure you, that cannot be so. You go to them, you ask them: ‘Have you seen anything suspicious?’ and they say no, and you think that that is all there is to it. But that is not what I mean when I say talk to the neighbours. I say talk to them. Let them talk to you. And from their conversation always, somewhere, you will find a clue. They may be talking about their gardens or their pets or their hairdressing or their dressmaker, or their friends, or the kind of food they like. Always somewhere there will be a word that sheds light. You say there was nothing in those conversations that was useful. I say that cannot be so. If you could repeat them to me word for word….”
“Well, that’s practically what I can do,” I said. “I took shorthand transcripts of what was said, acting in my role of assistant police officer. I’ve had them transcribed and typed and I’ve brought them along to you. Here they are.”
“Ah, but you are a good boy, you are a very good boy indeed! What you have done is exactly right. Exactly. Je vous remercie infiniment.”
I felt quite embarrassed.
“Have you any more suggestions?” I asked.
“Yes, always I have suggestions. There is this girl. You can talk to this girl. Go and see her. Already you are friends, are you not? Have you not clasped her in your arms when she flew from the house in terror?”
“You’ve been affected by reading Garry Gregson,” I said. “You’ve caught the melodramatic style.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Poirot admitted. “One gets infected, it is true, by the style of a work that one has been reading.”
“As for the girl—” I said, then paused.
Poirot looked at me inquiringly.
“Yes?” he said.
“I shouldn’t like—I don’t want….”
“Ah, so that is it. At the back of your mind you think she is concerned somehow in this case.”
“No, I don’t. It was absolutely pure chance that she happened to be there.”
“No, no, mon ami, it was not pure chance. You