XI

Magdalene Lee paused effectively in the doorway. One long slender hand touched the burnished platinum sheen of her hair. The leaf-green velvet frock she wore clung to the delicate lines of her figure. She looked very young and a little frightened.

The three men were arrested for a moment looking at her. Johnson’s eyes showed a sudden surprised admiration. Superintendent Sugden’s showed no animation, merely the impatience of a man anxious to get on with his job. Hercule Poirot’s eyes were deeply appreciative (as she saw) but the appreciation was not for her beauty, but for the effective use she made of it. She did not know that he was thinking to himself: ‘Jolie mannequin, la petite. Mais elle a les yeux durs.’

Colonel Johnson was thinking: ‘Damned good-looking girl. George Lee will have trouble with her if he doesn’t look out. Got an eye for a man all right.’

Superintendent Sugden was thinking: ‘Emptyheaded vain piece of goods. Hope we get through with her quickly.’

‘Will you sit down, Mrs Lee? Let me see, you are – ?’

‘Mrs George Lee.’

She accepted the chair with a warm smile of thanks. ‘After all,’ the glance seemed to say, ‘although you are a man and a policeman, you are not so dreadful after all.’

The tail-end of the smile included Poirot. Foreigners were so susceptible where women were concerned. About Superintendent Sugden she did not bother.

She murmured, twisting her hands together in a pretty distress: ‘It’s all so terrible. I feel so frightened.’

‘Come, come, Mrs Lee,’ said Colonel Johnson kindly but briskly. ‘It’s been a shock, I know, but it’s all over now. We just want an account from you of what happened this evening.’

She cried out: ‘But I don’t know anything about it – I don’t indeed.’

For a moment the chief constable’s eyes narrowed. He said gently: ‘No, of course not.’

‘We only arrived here yesterday. George would make me come here for Christmas! I wish we hadn’t. I’m sure I shall never feel the same again!’

‘Very upsetting – yes.’

‘I hardly know George’s family, you see. I’ve only seen Mr Lee once or twice – at our wedding and once since. Of course I’ve seen Alfred and Lydia more often, but they’re really all quite strangers to me.’

Again the wide-eyed frightened-child look. Again Hercule Poirot’s eyes were appreciative – and again he thought to himself: ‘Elle joue très bien la comédie, cette petite…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Colonel Johnson. ‘Now just tell me about the last time you saw your father-in-law – Mr Lee – alive.’

‘Oh, that! That was this afternoon. It was dreadful!’

Johnson said quickly: ‘Dreadful? Why?’

‘They were so angry!’

‘Who was angry?’

‘Oh, all of them… I don’t mean George. His father didn’t say anything to him. But all the others.’

‘What happened exactly?’

‘Well, when we got there – he asked for all of us – he was speaking into the telephone – to his lawyers about his will. And then he told Alfred he was looking very glum. I think that was because of Harry coming home to live. Alfred was very upset about that, I believe. You see, Harry did something quite dreadful. And then he said something about his wife – she’s dead long ago – but she had the brains of a louse, he said, and David sprang up and looked as though he’d like to murder him – Oh!’ She stopped suddenly, her eyes alarmed. ‘I didn’t mean that – I didn’t mean it at all!’

Colonel Johnson said soothingly: ‘Quite – quite, figure of speech, that was all.’

‘Hilda, that’s David’s wife, quieted him down and – well, I think that’s all. Mr Lee said he didn’t want to see anyone again that evening. So we all went away.’

‘And that was the last time you saw him?’

‘Yes. Until – until – ’ She shivered.

Colonel Johnson said: ‘Yes, quite so. Now, where were you at the time of the crime?’

‘Oh – let me see, I think I was in the drawing-room.’

‘Aren’t you sure?’

Magdalene’s eyes flickered a little, the lids drooped over them.

She said: ‘Of course! How stupid of me… I’d gone to telephone. One gets so mixed up.’

‘You were telephoning, you say. In this room?’

‘Yes, that’s the only telephone except the one upstairs in my father-in-law’s room.’

Superintendent Sugden said: ‘Was anybody else in the room with you?’

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, no, I was quite alone.’

‘Had you been here long?’

‘Well – a little time. It takes some time to put a call through in the evening.’

‘It was a trunk call, then?’

‘Yes – to Westeringham.’

‘I see.’

‘And then?’

‘And then there was that awful scream – and everybody running – and the door being locked and having to break it down. Oh! It was like a nightmare! I shall always remember it!’

‘No, no,’ Colonel Johnson’s tone was mechanically kind. He went on: ‘Did you know that your father-n-law kept a quantity of valuable diamonds in his safe?’

‘No, did he?’ Her tone was quite frankly thrilled. ‘Real diamonds?’

Hercule Poirot said: ‘Diamonds worth about ten thousand pounds.’

‘Oh!’ It was a soft gasping sound – holding in it the essence of feminine cupidity.

‘Well,’ said Colonel Johnson, ‘I think that’s all for the present. We needn’t bother you any further, Mrs Lee.’

‘Oh, thank you.’

She stood up – smiled from Johnson to Poirot – the smile of a grateful little girl, then she went out walking with her head held high and her palms a little turned outwards.

Colonel Johnson called: ‘Will you ask your brother-in-law, Mr David Lee, to come here?’ Closing the door after her, he came back to the table.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think? We’re getting at some of it now! You notice one thing: George Lee was telephoning when he heard the scream! His wife was telephoning when she heard it! That doesn’t fit – it doesn’t fit at all.’ He added: ‘What do you think, Sugden?’

The superintendent said slowly: ‘I don’t want to speak offensively of the lady, but I should say that though she’s the kind who would be first class at getting money out a gentleman, I don’t think she’s the kind who’d cut a gentleman’s throat. That wouldn’t be her line at all.’

‘Ah, but one never knows, mon vieux,’ murmured Poirot.

The chief constable turned round on him. ‘And you, Poirot, what do you think?’

Hercule Poirot leaned forward. He straightened the blotter in front of him and flicked a minute speck of dust from a candlestick. He answered: ‘I would say that the character of the late Mr Simeon Lee begins to emerge for us. It is there, I think, that the whole importance of the case lies… in the character of the dead man.’

Superintendent Sugden turned a puzzled face to him. ‘I don’t quite get you, Mr Poirot,’ he said. ‘What exactly has the character of the deceased got to do with his murder?’

Poirot said dreamily: ‘The character of the victim has always something to do with his or her murder.

The frank and unsuspicious mind of Desdemona was the direct cause of her death. A more suspicious woman would have seen Iago’s machinations and circumvented them much earlier. The uncleanness of Marat directly invited his end in a bath. From the temper of Mercutio’s mind came his death at the sword’s point.’

Colonel Johnson pulled his moustache. ‘What exactly are you getting at, Poirot?’

‘I am telling you that because Simeon Lee was a certain kind of man, he set in motion certain forces, which forces in the end brought about his death.’

‘You don’t think the diamonds had anything to do with it, then?’

Poirot smiled at the honest perplexity in Johnson’s face. ‘Mon cher,’ he said. ‘It was because of Simeon Lee’s peculiar character that he kept ten thousand pounds worth of uncut diamonds in his safe! You have not there the action of every man.’

‘That’s very true, Mr Poirot,’ said Superintendent Sugden, nodding his head with the air of a man who at last sees what a fellow-conversationalist is driving at. ‘He was a queer one, Mr Lee was. He kept those stones there so he could take them out and handle them and get the feeling of the past back. Depend upon it, that’s why he never had them cut.’

Poirot nodded energetically. ‘Precisely – precisely. I see you have great acumen, Superintendent.’

The superintendent looked a little doubtful at the compliment, but Colonel Johnson cut in: ‘There’s something else, Poirot. I don’t know whether it has struck you – ’

‘Mais oui,’ said Poirot. ‘I know what you mean. Mrs George Lee, she let the cat out of the bag more than she knew! She gave us a pretty impression of that last family meeting. She indicates – oh! so naïvely – that Alfred was angry with his father – and that David looked as “though he could murder him”. Both those statements I think were true. But from them we can draw our own reconstruction. What did Simeon Lee assemble his family for? Why should they have arrived in time to hear him telephoning to his lawyer? Parbleu, it was no error, that. He wanted them to hear it! The poor old one, he sits in his chair and he has lost the diversions of his younger days. So he invents a new diversion for himself. He amuses himself by playing upon the cupidity and the greed of human nature – yes, and on its emotions and its passions, too! But from that arises one further deduction. In his game of rousing the greed and emotion of his children, he would not omit anyone. He must, logically and necessarily, have had his dig at Mr George Lee as well as at the others! His wife is carefully silent about that. At her, too, he may have shot a poisoned arrow or two. We shall find out, I think, from others, what Simeon Lee had to say to George Lee and George Lee’s wife – ’

He broke off. The door opened and David Lee came in.