The Clocks - Agatha Christie [97]
“And then—a year later—something happens. What happens? I suggest that someone was coming over from Canada to this country—and that this someone had known the first Mrs. Bland well enough not to be deceived by an impersonation. He may have been an elderly member of the family attorneys, or a close friend of the family—but whoever he was, he will know. Perhaps they thought of ways of avoiding a meeting. Mrs. Bland could feign illness, she could go abroad—but anything of that kind would only arouse suspicion. The visitor would insist on seeing the woman he had come over to see—”
“And so—to murder?”
“Yes. And here, I fancy, Mrs. Bland’s sister may have been the ruling spirit. She thought up and planned the whole thing.”
“You are taking it that Miss Martindale and Mrs. Bland are sisters?”
“It is the only way things make sense.”
“Mrs. Bland did remind me of someone when I saw her,” said Hardcastle. “They’re very different in manner—but it’s true—there is a likeness. But how could they hope to get away with it?” The man would be missed. Inquiries would be made—”
“If this man were travelling abroad—perhaps for pleasure, not for business, his schedule would be vague. A letter from one place—a postcard from another—it would be a little time before people wondered why they had not heard from him. By that time who would connect a man identified and buried as Harry Castleton, with a rich Canadian visitor to the country who has not even been seen in this part of the world? If I had been the murderer, I would have slipped over on a day trip to France or Belgium and discarded the dead man’s passport in a train or a tram so that the inquiry would take place from another country.”
I moved involuntarily, and Poirot’s eyes came round to me.
“Yes?” he said.
“Bland mentioned to me that he had recently taken a day trip to Boulogne—with a blonde, I understand—”
“Which would make it quite a natural thing to do. Doubtless it is a habit of his.”
“This is still conjecture,” Hardcastle objected.
“But inquiries can be made,” said Poirot.
He took a sheet of hotel notepaper from the rack in front of him and handed it to Hardcastle.
“If you will write to Mr. Enderby at 10, Ennismore Gardens, S.W. 7 he has promised to make certain inquiries for me in Canada. He is a well-known international lawyer.”
“And what about the business of the clocks?”
“Oh! The clocks. Those famous clocks!” Poirot smiled. “I think you will find that Miss Martindale was responsible for them. Since the crime, as I said, was a simple crime, it was disguised by making it a fantastic one. That Rosemary clock that Sheila Webb took to be repaired. Did she lose it in the Bureau of Secretarial Studies? Did Miss Martindale take it as the foundation of her rigmarole, and was it partly because of that clock that she chose Sheila as the person to discover the body—?”
Hardcastle burst out:
“And you say this woman is unimaginative? When she concocted all this?”
“But she did not concoct it. That is what is so interesting. It was all there—waiting for her. From the very first I detected a pattern—a pattern I knew. A pattern familiar because I had just been reading such patterns. I have been very fortunate. As Colin here will tell you, I attended this week a sale of authors’ manuscripts. Among them were some of Garry Gregson’s. I hardly dared hope. But luck was with me. Here—” Like a conjuror he whipped from a drawer in the desk two shabby exercise books “—it is all here! Among the many plots of books he planned to write. He did not live to write this one—but Miss Martindale, who was his secretary, knew all about it. She just lifted it bodily to suit