The Hollow - Agatha Christie [66]
‘The words were not intended to be taken seriously?’
‘Certainly not. And I can assure you, Inspector, that it was fifteen years since I had last seen John Christow. You can verify that for yourself.’
She was poised again, detached, sure of herself.
Grange did not argue or pursue the subject. He got up.
‘That’s all for the moment, Miss Cray,’ he said pleasantly.
He went out of Dovecotes and down the lane, and turned in at the gate of Resthaven.
III
Hercule Poirot stared at the inspector in the utmost surprise. He repeated incredulously:
‘The revolver that Gerda Christow was holding and which was subsequently dropped into the pool was not the revolver that fired the fatal shot? But that is extraordinary.’
‘Exactly, M. Poirot. Put bluntly, it just doesn’t make sense.’
Poirot murmured softly:
‘No, it does not make sense. But all the same, Inspector, it has got to make sense, eh?’
The inspector sighed heavily: ‘That’s just it, M. Poirot. We’ve got to find some way that it does make sense–but at the moment I can’t see it. The truth is that we shan’t get much further until we’ve found the gun that was used. It came from Sir Henry’s collection all right–at least, there’s one missing–and that means that the whole thing is still tied up with The Hollow.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Poirot. ‘It is still tied up with The Hollow.’
‘It seemed a simple, straightforward business,’ went on the inspector. ‘Well, it isn’t so simple or so straightforward.’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘it is not simple.’
‘We’ve got to admit the possibility that the thing was a frame-up–that’s to say that it was all set to implicate Gerda Christow. But if that was so, why not leave the right revolver lying by the body for her to pick up?’
‘She might not have picked it up.’
‘That’s true, but even if she didn’t, so long as nobody else’s fingerprints were on the gun–that’s to say if it was wiped after use–she would probably have been suspected all right. And that’s what the murderer wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it?’
Grange stared.
‘Well, if you’d done a murder, you’d want to plant it good and quick on someone else, wouldn’t you? That would be a murderer’s normal reaction.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Poirot. ‘But then perhaps we have here a rather unusual type of murderer. It is possible that that is the solution of our problem.’
‘What is the solution?’
Poirot said thoughtfully:
‘An unusual type of murderer.’
Inspector Grange stared at him curiously. He said:
‘But then–what was the murderer’s idea? What was he or she getting at?’
Poirot spread out his hands with a sigh.
‘I have no idea–I have no idea at all. But it seems to me–dimly–’
‘Yes?’
‘That the murderer is someone who wanted to kill John Christow but who did not want to implicate Gerda Christow.’
‘H’h! Actually, we suspected her right away.’
‘Ah, yes, but it was only a matter of time before the facts about the gun came to light, and that was bound to give a new angle. In the interval the murderer has had time–’ Poirot came to a full stop.
‘Time to do what?’
‘Ah, mon ami, there you have me. Again I have to say I do not know.’
Inspector Grange took a turn or two up and down the room. Then he stopped and came to a stand in front of Poirot.
‘I’ve come to you this afternoon, M. Poirot, for two reasons. One is because I know–it’s pretty well known in the Force–that you’re a man of wide experience who’s done some very tricky work on this type of problem. That’s reason number one. But there’s another reason. You were there. You were an eye-witness. You saw what happened.’
Poirot nodded.
‘Yes, I saw what happened–but the eyes, Inspector Grange, are very unreliable witnesses.’
‘What do you mean, M. Poirot?’
‘The eyes see, sometimes, what they are meant to see.’
‘You think that it was planned out beforehand?’
‘I suspect it. It was exactly, you understand, like a stage scene. What I saw was clear enough. A man who had just been shot and the woman who had shot him holding in her hand the gun she had just used. That is what