The Big Four
footmarks--the blood-stained. Robert Grant's footmarks, and his only,
near the body--Robert Grant the only man who went near the house. Yes,
it must be so."
"What about the old woman?" I said suddenly. "She was in the house
alone after Grant had gone for the milk. She might have killed him
and then gone out. Her feet would leave no prints if she hadn't been
outside."
"Very good, Hastings. I wondered whether that hypothesis would occur
to you. I had already thought of it and rejected it. Betsy Andrews is
a local woman, well-known hereabouts. She can have no connection with
the Big Four; and, besides, old Whalley was a powerful fellow, by all
accounts. This is a man's work--not a woman's."
"I suppose the Big Four couldn't have had some diabolical contrivance
concealed in the ceiling--something which descended automatically and
cut the old man's throat and was afterwards drawn up again?"
"Like Jacob's ladder? I know, Hastings, that you have an imagination of
the most fertile--but I implore of you to keep it within bounds."
I subsided, abashed. Poirot continued to wander about, poking into
rooms and cupboards with a profoundly dissatisfied expression on his
face. Suddenly he uttered an excited yelp, reminiscent of a Pomeranian
dog. I rushed to join him. He was standing in the larder in a dramatic
attitude. In his hand he was brandishing a leg of mutton!
"My dear Poirot!" I cried. "What is the matter? Have you suddenly gone
mad?"
"Regard, I pray you, this mutton. But regard it closely!"
I regarded it as closely as I could, but could see nothing unusual
about it. It seemed to me a very ordinary leg of mutton. I said as
much. Poirot threw me a withering glance.
"But do you not see this--and this--and this--"
He illustrated each "this" with a jab at the unoffending joint,
dislodging small icicles as he did so.
Poirot had just accused me of being imaginative, but I now felt that
he was far more wildly so than I had ever been. Did he seriously think
these slivers of ice were crystals of a deadly poison? That was the
only construction I could put upon his extraordinary agitation.
"It's frozen meat," I explained gently. "Imported, you know. New
Zealand."
He stared at me for a moment or two and then broke into a strange laugh.
"How marvellous is my friend Hastings! He knows everything--but
everything! How do they say--Inquire Within Upon Everything. That is my
friend Hastings."
He flung down the leg of mutton onto its dish again and left the
larder. Then he looked through the window.
"Here comes our friend the Inspector. It is well. I have seen all I
want to see here." He drummed on the table absent-mindedly, as though
absorbed in calculation, and then asked suddenly, "What is the day of
the week, _mon ami_?"
"Monday," I said, rather astonished. "What--?"
"Ah! Monday, is it? A bad day of the week. To commit a murder on a
Monday is a mistake."
Passing back to the living-room, he tapped the glass on the wall and
glanced at the thermometer.
"Set fair, and seventy degrees Fahrenheit. An orthodox English summer's
day."
Ingles was still examining various pieces of Chinese pottery.
"You do not take much interest in this inquiry, monsieur?" said Poirot.
The other gave a slow smile.
"It's not my job, you see. I'm a connoisseur of some things, but not
of this. So I just stand back and keep out of the way. I've learnt
patience in the East."
The Inspector came bustling in, apologising for having been so long
away. He insisted on taking us over most of the ground again, but
finally we got away.
"I must appreciate your thousand politenesses, Inspector," said Poirot,
as we were walking down the village street again. "There is just one
more request I should like to put to you."
"You want to see the body, perhaps, sir?"
"Oh, dear me, no! I have not the least interest in the body. I want to
see Robert Grant."
"You'll have to drive back with me to Moreton to see him, sir."
"Very well, I will do so. But I must see him and be able to speak to
him alone."
The Inspector caressed his upper lip.
"Well, I don't know about that, sir."
"I assure you that if you can get through to Scotland Yard you will
receive full authority."
"I've heard of you, of course, sir, and I know you've done us a good
turn now and again. But it's very irregular."
"Nevertheless, it is necessary," said Poirot calmly. "It is necessary
for this reason--Grant is not the murderer."
"What? Who is, then?"
"The murderer was, I should fancy, a youngish man. He drove up
to Granite Bungalow in a trap, which he left outside. He went
in, committed the murder, came out, and drove away again. He was
bare-headed, and his clothing was slightly blood-stained."
"But--but the whole village would have seen him!"
"Not under certain circumstances."
"Not if it was dark, perhaps; but the crime was committed in broad
daylight."
Poirot merely smiled.
"And the horse and trap, sir--how could you tell that? Any amount of
wheeled vehicles have passed along outside. There's no mark of one in
particular to be seen."
"Not with the eyes of the body, perhaps; but with the eyes of the mind,
yes."
The Inspector touched his forehead significantly with a grin at me. I
was utterly bewildered, but I had faith in Poirot. Further discussion
ended in our all driving back to Moreton with the Inspector. Poirot
and I were taken to Grant, but a constable was to be present during the
interview. Poirot went straight to the point.
"Grant, I know you to be innocent of this crime. Relate to me in your
own words exactly what happened."
The prisoner was a man of medium height, with a somewhat unpleasing
cast of features. He looked a jail-bird if ever a man did.
"Honest to God, I never did it," he whined. "Some one put those little
glass figures amongst my traps. It was a frame-up, that's what it was.
I went straight to my rooms when I came in, like I said. I never knew a
thing till Betsy screeched out. S'welp me, God, I didn't."
Poirot rose.
"If you can't tell me the truth, that is the end of it."
"But, guv'nor--"
"You _did_ go into the room--you _did_ know your master was
dead; and you were just preparing to make a bolt of it when the good
Betsy made her terrible discovery."
The man stared at Poirot with a dropped jaw.
"Come now, is it not so? I tell you solemnly--on my word of
honour--that to be frank now is your only chance."
"I'll risk it," said the man suddenly. "It was just as you say. I came
in, and went straight to the master--and there he was, dead on the
floor and blood all round. Then I got the wind up proper. They'd ferret
out my record, and for a certainty they'd say it was me as had done him
in. My only thought was to get away--at once--before he was found--"
"And the jade figures?"
The man hesitated.
"You see--"
"You took them by a kind of reversion to instinct, as it were? You had
heard your master say that they were valuable, and you felt you might
as well go the whole hog. That, I understand. Now, answer me this.
Was it the second time that you went into the room that you took the
figures?"
"I didn't go in a second time. Once was enough for me."
"You are sure of that?"
"Absolutely certain."
"Good. Now, when did you come out of prison?"
"Two months ago."
"How did you obtain this job?"
"Through one of them Prisoners' Help Societies. Bloke met me when I
came out."
"What was he like?"
"Not exactly a parson, but looked like one. Soft black hat and mincing
way of talking. Got a broken front tooth. Spectacled chap. Saunders his
name was. Said he hoped I was repentant, and that he'd find me a good
post. I went to old Whalley on his recommendation."
Poirot rose once more.
"I thank you. I know all now. Have patience." He paused in the doorway
and added: "Saunders gave you a pair of boots, didn't he?"
Grant looked very astonished.
"Why, yes, he did. But how did you know?"
"It is my business to know things," said Poirot gravely.
After a word or two to the Inspector, the three of us went to the White
Hart and discussed eggs and bacon and Devonshire cider.
"Any elucidations yet?" asked Ingles, with a smile.
"Yes, the case is clear enough now; but, see you, I shall have a good
deal of difficulty in proving it. Whalley was killed by order of the
Big Four--but not by Grant. A very clever man got Grant the post
and deliberately planned to make him the scapegoat--an easy matter
with Grant's prison record. He gave him a pair of boots, one of two
duplicate pairs. The other he kept himself. It was all so simple. When
Grant is out of the house, and Betsy is chatting in the village (which
she probably did every day of her life), he drives up wearing the
duplicate boots, enters the kitchen, goes through into the living-room,
fells the old man with a blow, and then cuts his throat. Then he
returns to the kitchen, removes the boots, puts on another pair, and,
carrying the first pair, goes out to his trap and drives off again."
Ingles looked steadily at Poirot.
"There's a catch in it still. Why did nobody see him?"
"Ah! That is where the cleverness of Number Four, I am convinced, comes
in. Everybody saw him--and yet nobody saw him. You see, he drove up in
a butcher's cart!"
I uttered an exclamation.
"The leg of mutton?"
"Exactly, Hastings, the leg of mutton. Everybody swore that no one had
been to Granite Bungalow that morning, but, nevertheless, I found in
the larder a leg of mutton, still frozen. It was Monday, so the meat
must have been delivered that morning; for if on Saturday, in this hot
weather, it would not have remained frozen over Sunday. So some one
_had_ been to the Bungalow, and a man on whom a trace of blood
here and there would attract no attention."
"Damned ingenious!" cried Ingles approvingly.
"Yes, he is clever, Number Four."
"As clever as Hercule Poirot?" I murmured.
My friend threw me a glance of dignified reproach.
"There are some jests that you should not permit yourself, Hastings,"
he said sententiously. "Have I not saved an innocent man from being
sent to the gallows? That is enough for one day."
5. DISAPPEARANCE OF A SCIENTIST
Personally, I don't think that, even when a jury had acquitted Robert
Grant, alias Biggs, of the murder of Jonathan Whalley, Inspector
Meadows was entirely convinced of his innocence. The case which he
had built up against Grant--the man's record, the jade which he had
stolen, the boots which fitted the footprints so exactly--was to his
matter-of-fact mind too complete to be easily upset; but Poirot,
compelled much against his inclination to give evidence, convinced
the jury. Two witnesses were produced who had seen a butcher's cart
drive up to the bungalow on that Monday morning, and the local butcher
testified that his cart only called there on Wednesdays and Fridays.
A woman was actually found who, when questioned, remembered seeing the
butcher's man leaving the bungalow, but she could furnish no useful
description of him. The only impression he seemed to have left on her
mind was that he was clean-shaven, of medium height, and looked exactly
like a butcher's man. At this description Poirot shrugged his shoulders
philosophically.
"It is as I tell you, Hastings," he said to me, after the trial. "He is
an artist, this one. He disguises himself not with the false beard and
the blue spectacles. He alters his features, yes; but that is the least
part. For the time being he _is_ the man he would be. He lives in
his part."
Certainly I was compelled to admit that the man who had visited us from
Hanwell had fitted in exactly with my idea of what an Asylum attendant
should look like. I should never for a moment have dreamt of doubting