Poirot Investigates
inspector.
“No, sir; it wasn’t. That’s what made me think it must be some
business of a very unusual kind that he was going to discuss with
these gentlemen.”
That finished Graves’s story. He had gone out about 8.30, and,
meeting a friend, had accompanied him to the Metropolitan Music
Hall in Edgware Road.
Nobody had seen the two men leave, but the time of the murder was
fixed clearly enough at 8.47. A small clock on the writing-table
had been swept off by Foscatini’s arm, and had stopped at that
hour, which agreed with Miss Rider’s telephone summons.
The police surgeon had made his examination of the body, and it
was now lying on the couch. I saw the face for the first time—the
olive complexion, the long nose, the luxuriant black moustache,
and the full red lips drawn back from the dazzlingly white teeth.
Not altogether a pleasant face.
“Well,” said the inspector, refastening his notebook. “The case
seems clear enough. The only difficulty will be to lay our hands
on this Signor Ascanio. I suppose his address is not in the dead
man’s pocket-book by any chance?”
As Poirot had said, the late Foscatini was an orderly man. Neatly
written in small, precise handwriting was the inscription, “Signor
Paolo Ascanio, Grosvenor Hotel.”
The inspector busied himself with the telephone, then turned to us
with a grin.
“Just in time. Our fine gentleman was off to catch the boat train
to the Continong. Well, gentlemen, that’s about all we can do here.
It’s a bad business, but straightforward enough. One of these
Italian vendetta things, as likely as not.”
Thus airily dismissed, we found our way downstairs. Dr. Hawker was
full of excitement.
“Like the beginning of a novel, eh? Real exciting stuff. Wouldn’t
believe it if you read about it.”
Poirot did not speak. He was very thoughtful. All the evening he
had hardly opened his lips.
“What says the master detective, eh?” asked Hawker, clapping him
on the back. “Nothing to work your grey cells over this time.”
“You think not?”
“What could there be?”
“Well, for example, there is the window.”
“The window? But it was fastened. Nobody could have got out or in
that way. I noticed it specially.”
“And why were you able to notice it?”
The doctor looked puzzled. Poirot hastened to explain.
“It is to the curtains I refer. They were not drawn. A little odd,
that. And then there was the coffee. It was very black coffee.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Very black,” repeated Poirot. “In conjunction with that let us
remember that very little of the rice soufflé was eaten, and we
get—what?”
“Moonshine,” laughed the doctor. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Never do I pull the leg. Hastings here knows that I am perfectly
serious.”
“I don’t know what you are getting at, all the same,” I confessed.
“You don’t suspect the manservant, do you? He might have been in
with the gang, and put some dope in the coffee. I suppose they’ll
test his alibi?”
“Without doubt, my friend; but it is the alibi of Signor Ascanio
that interests me.”
“You think he has an alibi?”
“That is just what worries me. I have no doubt that we shall soon
be enlightened on that point.”
The _Daily Newsmonger_ enabled us to become conversant with
succeeding events.
Signor Ascanio was arrested and charged with the murder of Count
Foscatini. When arrested, he denied knowing the Count, and declared
he had never been near Regent’s Court either on the evening of the
crime or on the previous morning. The younger man had disappeared
entirely. Signor Ascanio had arrived alone at the Grosvenor Hotel
from the Continent two days before the murder. All efforts to trace
the second man failed.
Ascanio, however, was not sent for trial. No less a personage than
the Italian Ambassador himself came forward and testified at the
police-court proceedings that Ascanio had been with him at the
Embassy from eight till nine that evening. The prisoner was
discharged. Naturally, a lot of people thought that the crime was
a political one, and was being deliberately hushed up.
Poirot had taken a keen interest in all these points. Nevertheless,
I was somewhat surprised when he suddenly informed me one morning
that he was expecting a visitor at eleven o’clock, and that that
visitor was none other than Ascanio himself.
“He wishes to consult you?”
“_Du tout_, Hastings. I wish to consult him.”
“What about?”
“The Regent’s Court murder.”
“You are going to prove that he did it?”
“A man cannot be tried twice for murder, Hastings. Endeavour to
have the common sense. Ah, that is our friend’s ring.”
A few minutes later Signor Ascanio was ushered in—a small, thin
man with a secretive and furtive glance in his eyes. He remained
standing, darting suspicious glances from one to the other of us.
“Monsieur Poirot?”
My little friend tapped himself gently on the chest.
“Be seated, signor. You received my note. I am determined to get
to the bottom of this mystery. In some small measure you can aid
me. Let us commence. You—in company with a friend—visited the late
Count Foscatini on the morning of Tuesday the 9th——”
The Italian made an angry gesture.
“I did nothing of the sort. I have sworn in court——”
“_Précisément_—and I have a little idea that you have sworn
falsely.”
“You threaten me? Bah! I have nothing to fear from you. I have been
acquitted.”
“Exactly; and as I am not an imbecile, it is not with the gallows
I threaten you—but with publicity. Publicity! I see that you do
not like the word. I had an idea that you would not. My little
ideas, you know, they are very valuable to me. Come, signor, your
only chance is to be frank with me. I do not ask to know whose
indiscretions brought you to England. I know this much, you came
for the especial purpose of seeing Count Foscatini.”
“He was not a count,” growled the Italian.
“I have already noted the fact that his name does not appear in
the _Almanach de Gotha_. Never mind, the title of count is often
useful in the profession of blackmailing.”
“I suppose I might as well be frank. You seem to know a good deal.”
“I have employed my grey cells to some advantage. Come, Signor
Ascanio, you visited the dead man on the Tuesday morning—that is
so, is it not?”
“Yes; but I never went there on the following evening. There was
no need. I will tell you all. Certain information concerning a man
of great position in Italy had come into this scoundrel’s
possession. He demanded a big sum of money in return for the
papers. I came over to England to arrange the matter. I called upon
him by appointment that morning. One of the young secretaries of
the Embassy was with me. The Count was more reasonable than I had
hoped, although even then the sum of money I paid him was a huge
one.”
“Pardon, how was it paid?”
“In Italian notes of comparatively small denomination. I paid over
the money then and there. He handed me the incriminating papers.
I never saw him again.”
“Why did you not say all this when you were arrested?”
“In my delicate position I was forced to deny any association with
the man.”
“And how do you account for the events of the evening, then?”
“I can only think that some one must have deliberately impersonated
me. I understand that no money was found in the flat.”
Poirot looked at him and shook his head.
“Strange,” he murmured. “We all have the little grey cells. And so
few of us know how to use them. Good morning, Signor Ascanio. I
believe your story. It is very much as I had imagined. But I had
to make sure.”
After bowing his guest out, Poirot returned to his arm-chair and
smiled at me.
“Let us hear M. le Capitaine Hastings on the case?”
“Well, I suppose Ascanio is right—somebody impersonated him.”
“Never, never will you use the brains the good God has given you.
Recall to yourself some words I uttered after leaving the flat that
night. I referred to the window-curtains not being drawn. We are
in the month of June. It is still light at eight o’clock. The light
is failing by half-past. _Ça vous dit quelque chose?_ I perceive
a struggling impression that you will arrive some day. Now let us
continue. The coffee was, as I said, very black. Count Foscatini’s
teeth were magnificently white. Coffee stains the teeth. We reason
from that that Count Foscatini did not drink any coffee. Yet there
was coffee in all three cups. Why should anyone pretend Count
Foscatini had drunk coffee when he had not done so?”
I shook my head, utterly bewildered.
“Come, I will help you. What evidence have we that Ascanio and his
friend, or two men posing as them, ever came to the flat that
night? Nobody saw them go in; nobody saw them go out. We have the
evidence of one man and of a host of inanimate objects.”
“You mean?”
“I mean knives and forks and plates and empty dishes. Ah, but it
was a clever idea! Graves is a thief and a scoundrel, but what a
man of method! He overhears a portion of the conversation in the
morning, enough to realize that Ascanio will be in awkward position
to defend himself. The following evening, about eight o’clock, he
tells his master he is wanted at the telephone. Foscatini sits
down, stretches out his hand to the telephone, and from behind
Graves strikes him down with the marble figure. Then quickly to
the service telephone—dinner for three! It comes, he lays the
table, dirties the plates, knives, and forks, etc. But he has to
get rid of the food too. Not only is he a man of brain; he has a
resolute and capacious stomach! But after eating three tournedos,
the rice soufflé is too much for him! He even smokes a cigar and
two cigarettes to carry out the illusion. Ah, but it was
magnificently thorough! Then, having moved on the hands of the
clock to 8.47, he smashes it and stops it. The one thing he does
not do is to draw the curtains. But if there had been a real dinner
party the curtains would have been drawn as soon as the light began
to fail. Then he hurries out, mentioning the guests to the lift
man in passing. He hurries to a telephone box, and as near as
possible to 8.47 rings up the doctor with his master’s dying cry.
So successful is his idea that no one ever inquires if a call was
put through from Flat II at that time.”
“Except Hercule Poirot, I suppose?” I said sarcastically.
“Not even Hercule Poirot,” said my friend, with a smile. “I am
about to inquire now. I had to prove my point to you first. But
you will see, I shall be right; and then Japp, to whom I have
already given a hint, will be able to arrest the respectable
Graves. I wonder how much of the money he has spent.”
Poirot _was_ right. He always is, confound him!
XI
The Case of the Missing Will
The problem presented to us by Miss Violet Marsh made rather a
pleasant change from our usual routine work. Poirot had received
a brisk and business-like note from the lady asking for an
appointment, and he had replied asking her to call upon him at
eleven o’clock the following day.
She arrived punctually—a tall, handsome young woman, plainly but
neatly dressed, with an assured and business-like manner. Clearly
a young woman who meant to get on in the world. I am not a great
admirer of the so-called New Woman myself, and, in spite of her
good looks, I was not particularly prepossessed in her favour.
“My business is of a somewhat unusual nature, Monsieur Poirot,”
she began, after she had accepted a chair. “I had better begin at
the beginning and tell you the whole story.”
“If you please, mademoiselle.”
“I am an orphan. My father was one of two brothers, sons of a small
yeoman farmer in Devonshire. The farm was a poor one, and the elder
brother, Andrew, emigrated to Australia, where he did very well
indeed, and by means of successful speculation in land became a