The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [46]
The verdict, a foregone conclusion, was given amidst unparalleled scenes. Damages were assessed at an enormous figure. As Mrs. Ferrier and her husband and father left the court they were greeted by the appreciative roars of a vast crowd.
XI
Edward Ferrier grasped Poirot warmly by the hand.
He said:
“I thank you, M. Poirot, a thousand times. Well, that finishes the X-ray News. Dirty little rag. They’re wiped out completely. Serves them right for cooking up such a scurrilous plot. Against Dagmar, too, the kindliest creature in the world. Thank goodness you managed to expose the whole thing for the wicked ramp it was . . . What put you on to the idea that they might be using a double?”
“It is not a new idea,” Poirot reminded him. “It was employed successfully in the case of Jeanne de la Motte when she impersonated Marie Antoinette.”
“I know. I must re-read The Queen’s Necklace. But how did you actually find the woman they were employing?”
“I looked for her in Denmark, and I found her there.”
“But why Denmark?”
“Because Mrs. Ferrier’s grandmother was a Dane, and she herself is a markedly Danish type. And there were other reasons.”
“The resemblance is certainly striking. What a devilish idea! I wonder how the little rat came to think of it?”
Poirot smiled.
“But he did not.”
He tapped himself on the chest.
“I thought of it!”
Edward Ferrier stared.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
Poirot said:
“We must go back to an older story than that of The Queen’s Necklace—to the cleansing of the Augean Stables. What Hercules used was a river—that is to say one of the great forces of Nature. Modernize that! What is a great force of Nature? Sex, is it not? It is the sex angle that sells stories, that makes news. Give people scandal allied to sex and it appeals far more than any mere political chicanery or fraud.
“Eh bien, that was my task! First to put my own hands in the mud like Hercules to build up a dam that should turn the course of that river. A journalistic friend of mine aided me. He searched Denmark until he found a suitable person to attempt the impersonation. He approached her, casually mentioned the X-ray News to her, hoping she would remember it. She did.
“And so, what happened? Mud—a great deal of mud! Cæsar’s wife is bespattered with it. Far more interesting to everybody than any political scandal. And the result—the “dénouement? Why, Reaction! Virtue vindicated! The pure woman cleared! A great tide of Romance and Sentiment sweeping through the Augean Stables.
“If all the newspapers in the country publish the news of John Hammett’s defalcations now, no one will believe it. It will be put down as another political plot to discredit the Government.”
Edward Ferrier took a deep breath. For a moment Hercule Poirot came nearer to being physically assaulted than at any other time in his career.
“My wife! You dared to use her—”
Fortunately, perhaps, Mrs. Ferrier herself entered the room at this moment.
“Well,” she said. “That went off very well.”
“Dagmar, did you—know all along?”
“Of course, dear,” said Dagmar Ferrier.
And she smiled, the gentle, maternal smile of a devoted wife.
“And you never told me!”
“But, Edward, you would never have let M. Poirot do it.”
“Indeed I would not!”
Dagmar smiled.
“That’s what we thought.”
“We?”
“I and M. Poirot.”
She smiled at Hercule Poirot and at her husband.
She added:
“I had a very restful time with the dear Bishop—I feel full of energy now. They want me to christen the new battleship at Liverpool next month—I think it would be a popular thing to do.”
Six
THE STYMPHALEAN BIRDS
Harold Waring noticed them first walking up the path from the lake. He was sitting outside the hotel on the terrace. The day was fine, the lake was blue, and the sun shone. Harold was smoking a pipe and feeling that the world was a pretty good place.
His political career was shaping well. An undersecretaryship