The Big Four
Handford, and prepared to settle down. His first action was to write
to his only relative, a nephew, Gerald Paynter, the son of his younger
brother, and to suggest to him that he should come and make his home
at Croftlands (as the place is called) with his uncle. Gerald Paynter,
who is an impecunious young artist, was glad enough to fall in with the
arrangement, and had been living with his uncle for about seven months
when the tragedy occurred."
"Your narrative style is masterly," murmured Poirot. "I say to myself,
it is a book that talks, not my friend Hastings."
Paying no attention to Poirot, I went on, warming to the story.
"Mr. Paynter kept up a fair staff at Croftlands--six servants as well
as his own Chinese body servant--Ah Ling."
"His Chinese servant, Ah Ling," murmured Poirot.
"On Tuesday last, Mr. Paynter complained of feeling unwell after
dinner, and one of the servants was despatched to fetch the doctor. Mr.
Paynter received the doctor in his study, having refused to go to bed.
What passed between them was not then known, but before Doctor Quentin
left, he asked to see the housekeeper, and mentioned that he had given
Mr. Paynter a hypodermic injection as his heart was in a very weak
state, recommended that he should not be disturbed, and then proceeded
to ask some rather curious questions about the servants--how long they
had been there, from whom they had come, etc.
"The housekeeper answered these questions as best she could, but was
rather puzzled as to their purport. A terrible discovery was made on
the following morning. One of the housemaids, on descending, was met
by a sickening odour of burned flesh which seemed to come from her
master's study. She tried the door, but it was locked on the inside.
With the assistance of Gerald Paynter and the Chinaman that was soon
broken in, but a terrible sight greeted them. Mr. Paynter had fallen
forward into the gas fire, and his face and head were charred beyond
recognition.
"Of course, at the moment, no suspicion was aroused as to its being
anything but a ghastly accident. If blame attached to any one, it was
to Doctor Quentin for giving his patient a narcotic and leaving him in
such a dangerous position. And then a rather curious discovery was made.
"There was a newspaper on the floor, lying where it had slipped from
the old man's knees. On turning it over, words were found to be
scrawled across it, feebly traced in ink. A writing-table stood close
to the chair in which Mr. Paynter had been sitting, and the forefinger
of the victim's right hand was ink-stained up to the second joint. It
was clear that, too weak to hold a pen, Mr. Paynter had dipped his
finger in the ink-pot and managed to scrawl these two words across
the surface of the newspaper he held--but the words themselves seemed
utterly fantastic: _Yellow Jasmine_--just that and nothing more.
"Croftlands has a large quantity of yellow jasmine growing up its
walls, and it was thought that this dying message had some reference to
them, showing that the poor old man's mind was wandering. Of course,
the newspapers, agog for anything out of the common, took up the story
hotly, calling it the Mystery of the Yellow Jasmine--though in all
probability the words are completely unimportant."
"They are unimportant, you say?" said Poirot. "Well, doubtless, since
you say so, it must be so."
I regarded him dubiously, but I could detect no mockery in his eye.
"And then," I continued, "there came the excitements of the inquest."
"This is where you lick your lips, I perceive."
"There was a certain amount of feeling evidenced against Dr. Quentin.
To begin with, he was not the regular doctor, only a locum, putting in
a month's work, whilst Dr. Bolitho was away on a well-earned holiday.
Then it was felt that his carelessness was the direct cause of the
accident. But his evidence was little short of sensational. Mr. Paynter
had been ailing in health ever since his arrival at Croftlands. Dr.
Bolitho had attended him for some time, but when Dr. Quentin first saw
his patient, he was mystified by some of the symptoms. He had only
attended him once before the night when he was sent for after dinner.
As soon as he was alone with Mr. Paynter, the latter had unfolded a
surprising tale. To begin with, he was not feeling ill at all, he
explained, but the taste of some curry that he had been eating at
dinner had struck him as peculiar. Making an excuse to get rid of Ah
Ling for a few minutes, he had turned the contents of his plate into a
bowl, and he now handed it over to the doctor with injunctions to find
out if there were really anything wrong with it.
"In spite of his statement that he was not feeling ill, the doctor
noted that the shock of his suspicions had evidently affected him,
and that his heart was feeling it. Accordingly he administered an
injection--not of a narcotic, but of strychnine.
"That, I think, completes the case--except for _the_ crux of the
whole thing--the fact that the uneaten curry, duly analysed, was found
to contain enough powdered opium to have killed two men!"
I paused.
"And your conclusions, Hastings?" asked Poirot quietly.
"It's difficult to say. It _might_ be an accident--the fact that
some one attempted to poison him the same night might be merely a
coincidence."
"But you don't think so? You prefer to believe it--murder!"
"Don't you?"
"_Mon ami_, you and I do not reason in the same way. I am not
trying to make up my mind between two opposite solutions--murder or
accident--that will come when we have solved the other problem--the
mystery of the 'Yellow Jasmine.' By the way, you have left out
something there."
"You mean the two lines at right angles to each other faintly indicated
under the words? I did not think they could be of any possible
importance."
"What you think is always so important to yourself, Hastings. But let
us pass from the mystery of the Yellow Jasmine to the Mystery of the
Curry."
"I know. Who poisoned it? Why? There are a hundred questions one can
ask. Ah Ling, of course, prepared it. But why should he wish to kill
his master? Is he a member of a _tong_, or something like that.
One reads of such things. The _tong_ of the Yellow Jasmine,
perhaps. Then there is Gerald Paynter."
I came to an abrupt pause.
"Yes," said Poirot, nodding his head. "There is Gerald Paynter, as you
say. He is his uncle's heir. He was dining out that night, though."
"He might have got at some of the ingredients of the curry," I
suggested. "And he would take care to be out, so as not to have to
partake of the dish."
I think my reasoning rather impressed Poirot. He looked at me with a
more respectful attention than he had given me so far.
"He returns late," I mused, pursuing a hypothetical case. "Sees the
light in his uncle's study, enters, and, finding his plan has failed,
thrusts the old man down into the fire."
"Mr. Paynter, who was a fairly hearty man of fifty-five, would not
permit himself to be burnt to death without a struggle, Hastings. Such
a reconstruction is not feasible."
"Well, Poirot," I cried, "we're nearly there, I fancy. Let us hear what
you think?"
Poirot threw me a smile, swelled out his chest, and began in a pompous
manner.
"Assuming murder, the question at once arises, why choose that
particular method? I can think of only one reason--to confuse identity,
the face being charred beyond recognition."
"What?" I cried. "You think--"
"A moment's patience, Hastings. I was going on to say that I examine
that theory. Is there any ground for believing that the body is not
that of Mr. Paynter? Is there any one else whose body it possibly could
be? I examine these two questions and finally I answer them both in the
negative."
"Oh!" I said, rather disappointed. "And then?"
Poirot's eyes twinkled a little.
"And then I say to myself, 'since there is here something that I do not
understand, it would be well that I should investigate the matter. I
must not permit myself to be wholly engrossed by the Big Four.' Ah! we
are just arriving. My little clothes brush, where does it hide itself?
Here it is--brush me down, I pray you, my friend, and then I will
perform the same service for you."
"Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully, as he put away the brush, "one must
not permit oneself to be obsessed by one idea. I have been in danger of
that. Figure to yourself, my friend, that even here, in this case, I am
in danger of it. Those two lines you mentioned, a downstroke and a line
at right angles to it, what are they but the beginning of a 4?"
"Good gracious, Poirot," I cried, laughing.
"Is it not absurd? I see the hand of the Big Four everywhere. It is
well to employ one's wits in a totally different _milieu_. Ah!
there is Japp come to meet us."
10. WE INVESTIGATE AT CROFTLANDS
The Scotland Yard Inspector was, indeed, waiting on the platform, and
greeted us warmly.
"Well, Moosior Poirot, this is good. Thought you'd like to be let in on
this. Tip-top mystery, isn't it?"
I read this aright as showing Japp to be completely puzzled and hoping
to pick up a pointer from Poirot.
Japp had a car waiting, and we drove up in it to Croftlands. It was a
square, white house, quite unpretentious, and covered with creepers,
including the starry yellow jasmine. Japp looked up at it as we did.
"Must have been balmy to go writing that, poor old cove," he remarked.
"Hallucinations, perhaps, and thought he was outside."
Poirot was smiling at him.
"Which was it, my good Japp?" he asked; "accident or murder?"
The Inspector seemed a little embarrassed by the question.
"Well, if it weren't for that curry business, I'd be for accident every
time. There's no sense in holding a live man's head in the fire--why,
he'd scream the house down."
"Ah!" said Poirot in a low voice. "Fool that I have been. Triple
imbecile! You are a cleverer man than I am, Japp."
Japp was rather taken aback by the compliment--Poirot being usually
given to exclusive self praise. He reddened and muttered something
about there being a lot of doubt about that.
He led the way through the house to the room where the tragedy had
occurred--Mr. Paynter's study. It was a wide, low room, with book-lined
walls and big leather arm-chairs.
Poirot looked across at once to the window which gave upon a gravelled
terrace.
"The window, it was unlatched?" he asked.
"That's the whole point, of course. When the doctor left this room,
he merely closed the door behind him. The next morning it was found
locked. Who locked it? Mr. Paynter? Ah Ling declares that the window
was closed and bolted. Dr. Quentin, on the other hand, has an
impression that it was closed, but not fastened, but he won't swear
either way. If he could, it would make a great difference. If the man
_was_ murdered, some one entered the room either through the door
or the window--if through the door, it was an inside job; if through
the window, it might have been any one. First thing when they had
broken the door down, they flung the window open, and the housemaid
who did it thinks that it wasn't fastened, but she's a precious bad
witness--will remember anything you ask her to!"
"What about the key?"
"There you are again. It was on the floor among the wreckage of the
door. Might have fallen from the keyhole, might have been dropped there
by one of the people who entered, might have been slipped underneath
the door from the outside."
"In fact everything is 'might have been'?"
"You've hit it, Moosior Poirot. That's just what it is."
Poirot was looking round him, frowning unhappily.
"I cannot see light," he murmured. "Just now---yes, I got a gleam, but
now all is darkness once more. I have not the clue--the motive."