The Murder on the Links
desperately to his first theory of jealousy and a stab in the back.
Suddenly the door burst open and the commissary rushed in.
“M. le juge! M. le juge!”
“But yes. What is it?”
“The dagger! It is gone!”
“_Comment___—gone?”
“Vanished. Disappeared. The glass jar that contained it is empty!”
“What?” I cried. “Impossible. Why, only this morning I saw—” The words
died on my tongue.
But the attention of the entire room was diverted to me.
“What is that you say?” cried the commissary. “This morning?”
“I saw it there this morning,” I said slowly. “About an hour and a half
ago, to be accurate.”
“You went to the shed, then? How did you get the key?”
“I asked the _sergent de ville___ for it.”
“And you went there? Why?”
I hesitated, but in the end I decided that the only thing to do was to
make a clean breast of it.
“M. le juge,” I said. “I have committed a grave fault, for which I must
crave your indulgence.”
“_Eh bien!___ Proceed, monsieur.”
“The fact of the matter is,” I said, wishing myself anywhere else than
where I was, “that I met a young lady, an acquaintance of mine. She
displayed a great desire to see everything that was to be seen, and
I—well, in short, I took the key to show her the body.”
“Ah, _par exemple___,” cried the magistrate indignantly. “But it is a
grave fault you have committed there, Captain Hastings. It is
altogether most irregular. You should not have permitted yourself this
folly.”
“I know,” I said meekly. “Nothing that you can say could be too severe,
M. le juge.”
“You did not invite this lady to come here?”
“Certainly not. I met her quite by accident. She is an English lady who
happens to be staying in Merlinville, though I was not aware of that
until my unexpected meeting with her.”
“Well, well,” said the magistrate, softening. “It was most irregular,
but the lady is without doubt young and beautiful, _n’est-ce pas?___
What it is to be young! _O jeunesse, jeunesse!___” And he sighed
sentimentally.
But the commissary, less romantic, and more practical, took up the
tale:
“But did not you reclose and lock the door when you departed.”
“That’s just it,” I said slowly. “That’s what I blame myself for so
terribly. My friend was upset at the sight. She nearly fainted. I got
her some brandy and water, and afterwards insisted on accompanying her
back to town. In the excitement, I forgot to relock the door. I only
did so when I got back to the Villa.”
“Then for twenty minutes at least—” said the commissary slowly. He
stopped.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Twenty minutes,” mused the commissary.
“It is deplorable,” said M. Hautet, his sternness of manner returning.
“Without precedent.”
Suddenly another voice spoke.
“You find it deplorable, M. le juge?” asked Giraud.
“Certainly I do.”
“_Eh bien!___ I find it admirable,” said the other imperturbably.
This unexpected ally quite bewildered me.
“Admirable, M. Giraud?” asked the magistrate, studying him cautiously
out of the corner of his eye.
“Precisely.”
“And why?”
“Because we know now that the assassin, or an accomplice of the
assassin, has been near the Villa only an hour ago. It will be strange
if, with that knowledge, we do not shortly lay hands upon him.” There
was a note of menace in his voice. He continued: “He risked a good deal
to gain possession of that dagger. Perhaps he feared that finger-prints
might be discovered on it.”
Poirot turned to Bex.
“You said there were none?”
Giraud shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps he could not be sure.”
Poirot looked at him.
“You are wrong, M. Giraud. The assassin wore gloves. So he must have
been sure.”
“I do not say it was the assassin himself. It may have been an
accomplice who was not aware of that fact.”
“_Ils sont mal renseignés, les accomplices!___” muttered Poirot, but he
said no more.
The magistrate’s clerk was gathering up the papers on the table. M.
Hautet addressed us:
“Our work here is finished. Perhaps, M. Renauld, you will listen whilst
your evidence is read over to you. I have purposely kept all the
proceedings as informal as possible. I have been called original in my
methods, but I maintain that there is much to be said for originality.
The case is now in the clever hands of the renowned M. Giraud. He will
without doubt distinguish himself. Indeed, I wonder that he has not
already laid his hands upon the murderers! Madame, again let me assure
you of my heart-felt sympathy. Messieurs, I wish you all good day.”
And, accompanied by his clerk and the commissary, he took his
departure.
Poirot tugged out that large turnip of a watch of his, and observed the
time.
“Let us return to the hotel for lunch, my friend,” he said. “And you
shall recount to me in full the indiscretions of this morning. No one
is observing us. We need make no adieux.”
We went quietly out of the room. The examining magistrate had just
driven off in his car. I was going down the steps when Poirot’s voice
arrested me:
“One little moment, my friend.” Dexterously, he whipped out his yard
measure, and proceeded, quite solemnly, to measure an overcoat hanging
in the hall from the collar to the hem. I had not seen it hanging there
before, and guessed that it belonged to either Mr. Stonor, or Jack
Renauld.
Then, with a little satisfied grunt, Poirot returned the measure to his
pocket, and followed me out into the open air.
12 Poirot Elucidates Certain Points
“Why did you measure that overcoat?” I asked, with some curiosity, as
we walked down the hot white road at a leisurely pace.
“_Parbleu!___ to see how long it was,” replied my friend imperturbably.
I was vexed. Poirot’s incurable habit of making a mystery out of
nothing never failed to irritate me. I relapsed into silence, and
followed a train of thought of my own. Although I had not noticed them
specially at the time, certain words Mrs. Renauld had addressed to her
son now recurred to me, fraught with a new significance. “So you did
not sail?” she had said, and then had added: “_After all, it does not
matter—now.___”
What had she meant by that? The words were enigmatical—significant. Was
it possible that she knew more than we supposed? She had denied all
knowledge of the mysterious mission with which her husband was to have
entrusted his son. But was she really less ignorant than she pretended?
Could she enlighten us if she chose, and was her silence part of a
carefully thought out and preconceived plan?
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I was right.
Mrs. Renauld knew more than she chose to tell. In her surprise at
seeing her son, she had momentarily betrayed herself. I felt convinced
that she knew, if not the assassins, at least the motive for the
assassination. But some very powerful considerations must keep her
silent.
“You think profoundly, my friend,” remarked Poirot, breaking in upon my
reflections. “What is it that intrigues you so?”
I told him, sure of my ground, though feeling expectant that he would
ridicule my suspicions. But to my surprise he nodded thoughtfully.
“You are quite right, Hastings. From the beginning I have been sure
that she was keeping something back. At first I suspected her, if not
of inspiring, at least of conniving at the crime.”
“You suspected _her?___” I cried.
“But certainly! She benefits enormously—in fact, by this new will, she
is the only person to benefit. So, from the start, she was singled out
for attention. You may have noticed that I took an early opportunity of
examining her wrists. I wished to see whether there was any possibility
that she had gagged and bound herself. _Eh bien___, I saw at once that
there was no fake, the cords had actually been drawn so tight as to cut
into the flesh. That ruled out the possibility of her having committed
the crime single-handed. But it was still possible for her to have
connived at it, or to have been the instigator with an accomplice.
Moreover, the story, as she told it, was singularly familiar to me—the
masked men that she could not recognize, the mention of ‘the secret’—I
had heard, or read, all these things before. Another little detail
confirmed my belief that she was not speaking the truth. _The wrist
watch, Hastings, the wrist watch!___”
Again that wrist watch! Poirot was eyeing me curiously.
“You see, _mon ami?___ You comprehend?”
“No,” I replied with some ill humour. “I neither see nor comprehend.
You make all these confounded mysteries, and it’s useless asking you to
explain. You always like keeping everything up your sleeve to the last
minute.”
“Do not enrage yourself, my friend,” said Poirot with a smile. “I will
explain if you wish. But not a word to Giraud, _c’est entendu?___ He
treats me as an old one of no importance! _We shall see!___ In common
fairness I gave him a hint. If he does not choose to act upon it, that
is his own look out.”
I assured Poirot that he could rely upon my discretion.
“_C’est bien!___ Let us then employ our little grey cells. Tell me, my
friend, at what time, according to you, did the tragedy take place?”
“Why, at two o’clock or thereabouts,” I said, astonished. “You
remember, Mrs. Renauld told us that she heard the clock strike while
the men were in the room.”
“Exactly, and on the strength of that, you, the examining magistrate,
Bex, and every one else, accept the time without further question. But
I, Hercule Poirot, say that Madame Renauld lied. _The crime took place
at least two hours earlier.___”
“But the doctors—”
“They declared, after examination of the body, that death had taken
place between ten and seven hours previously. _Mon ami___, for some
reason, it was imperative that the crime should seem to have taken
place later than it actually did. You have read of a smashed watch or
clock recording the exact hour of a crime? So that the time should not
rest on Mrs. Renauld’s testimony alone, some one moved on the hands of
that wrist watch to two o’clock, and then dashed it violently to the
ground. But, as is often the case, they defeated their own object. The
glass was smashed, but the mechanism of the watch was uninjured. It was
a most disastrous manoeuvre on their part, for it at once drew my
attention to two points—first, that Madame Renauld was lying: secondly,
that there must be some vital reason for the postponement of the time.”
“But what reason could there be?”
“Ah, that is the question! There we have the whole mystery. As yet, I
cannot explain it. There is only one idea that presents itself to me as
having a possible connection.”
“And that is?”
“The last train left Merlinville at seventeen minutes past twelve.”
I followed it out slowly.
“So that, the crime apparently taking place some two hours later, any
one leaving by that train would have an unimpeachable alibi!”
“Perfect, Hastings! You have it!”
I sprang up.
“But we must inquire at the station. Surely they cannot have failed to
notice two foreigners who left by that train! We must go there at
once!”
“You think so, Hastings?”
“Of course. Let us go there now.”
Poirot restrained my ardour with a light touch upon the arm.
“Go by all means if you wish, _mon ami___—but if you go, I should not
ask for particulars of two foreigners.”
I stared, and he said rather impatiently:
“Là, là, you do not believe all that rigmarole, do you? The masked men
and all the rest of _cette histoire-là!___”
His words took me so much aback that I hardly knew how to respond. He
went on serenely:
“You heard me say to Giraud, did you not, that all the details of this
crime were familiar to me? _Eh bien___, that presupposes one of two
things, either the brain that planned the first crime also planned this
one, or else an account read of a _cause célèbre___ unconsciously