The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie [44]
Seventeen
AN ARISTOCRATIC GENTLEMAN
“You have been to the Riviera before, Georges?” said Poirot to his valet the following morning.
George was an intensely English, rather wooden-faced individual.
“Yes, sir. I was here two years ago when I was in the service of Lord Edward Frampton.”
“And today,” murmured his master, “you are here with Hercule Poirot. How one mounts in the world!”
The valet made no reply to this observation. After a suitable pause he asked:
“The brown lounge suit, sir? The wind is somewhat chilly today.”
“There is a grease spot on the waistcoat,” objected Poirot. “A morceau of filet de sole à la Jeanette alighted there when I was lunching at the Ritz last Tuesday.”
“There is no spot there now, sir,” said George reproachfully. “I have removed it.”
“Très bien!” said Poirot. “I am pleased with you, Georges.”
“Thank you, sir.”
There was a pause, and then Poirot murmured dreamily:
“Supposing, my good Georges, that you had been born in the same social sphere as your late master, Lord Edward Frampton—that, penniless yourself, you had married an extremely wealthy wife, but that wife proposed to divorce you, with excellent reasons, what would you do about it?”
“I should endeavour, sir,” replied George, “to make her change her mind.”
“By peaceful or by forcible methods?”
George looked shocked.
“You will excuse me, sir,” he said, “but a gentleman of the aristocracy would not behave like a Whitechapel coster. He would not do anything low.”
“Would he not, Georges? I wonder now. Well, perhaps you are right.”
There was a knock on the door. George went to it and opened it a discreet inch or two. A low murmured colloquy went on, and then the valet returned to Poirot.
“A note, sir.”
Poirot took it. It was from M. Caux, the Commissary of Police.
“We are about to interrogate the Comte de la Roche. The Juge d’Instruction begs that you will be present.”
“Quickly, my suit, Georges! I must hasten myself.”
A quarter of an hour later, spick and span in his brown suit, Poirot entered the Examining Magistrate’s room. M. Caux was already there, and both he and M. Carrège greeted Poirot with polite empressement.
“The affair is somewhat discouraging,” murmured M. Caux.
“It appears that the Comte arrived in Nice the day before the murder.”
“If that is true, it will settle your affair nicely for you,” responded Poirot.
M. Carrège cleared his throat.
“We must not accept this alibi without very cautious inquiry,” he declared. He struck the bell upon the table with his hand.
In another minute a tall dark man, exquisitely dressed, with a somewhat haughty cast of countenance, entered the room. So very aristocratic-looking was the Count, that it would have seemed sheer heresy even to whisper that his father had been an obscure corn chandler in Nantes—which, as a matter of fact, was the case. Looking at him, one would have been prepared to swear that innumerable ancestors of his must have perished by the guillotine in the French Revolution.
“I am here, gentlemen,” said the Count haughtily. “May I ask why you wish to see me?”
“Pray be seated, Monsieur le Comte,” said the Examining Magistrate politely. “It is the affair of the death of Madame Kettering that we are investigating.”
“The death of Madame Kettering? I do not understand.”
“You were—ahem!—acquainted with the lady, I believe, Monsieur le Comte?”
“Certainly I was acquainted with her. What has that to do with the matter?”
Sticking an eyeglass in his eye, he looked coldly round the room, his glance resting longest on Poirot, who was gazing at him with a kind of simple, innocent admiration which was most pleasing to the Count’s vanity. M. Carrège leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat.
“You do not perhaps know, Monsieur le Comte”—he paused—“that Madame Kettering was murdered?”
“Murdered? Mon Dieu, how terrible!”
The surprise and the sorrow were excellently done—so well done, indeed, as to seem wholly natural.
“Madame Kettering was strangled between Paris