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Mr Alexander Bonaparte Cust came out with the rest of the audience from the Torquay Palladium, where he had been seeing and hearing that highly emotional film, Not a Sparrow…
He blinked a little as he came out into the afternoon sunshine and peered round him in that lost-dog fashion that was characteristic of him.
He murmured to himself: ‘It’s an idea…’
Newsboys passed along crying out:
‘Latest… Homicidal Maniac at Churston…’
They carried placards on which was written:
CHURSTON MURDER. LATEST.
Mr Cust fumbled in his pocket, found a coin, and bought a paper. He did not open it at once.
Entering the Princess Gardens, he slowly made his way to a shelter facing Torquay harbour. He sat down and opened the paper.
There were big headlines:
SIR CARMICHAEL CLARKE MURDERED. TERRIBLE TRAGEDY AT CHURSTON.
WORK OF A HOMICIDAL MANIAC.
And below them:
Only a month ago England was shocked and startled by the murder of a young girl, Elizabeth Barnard, at Bexhill. It may be remembered that an А В C railway guide figured in the case. An ABC was also found by the dead body of Sir Carmichael Clarke, and the police incline to the belief that both crimes were committed by the same person. Can it be possible that a homicidal murderer is going the round of our seaside resorts?…
A young man in flannel trousers and a bright blue Aertex shirt who was sitting beside Mr. Cust remarked:
‘Nasty business—eh?’
Mr Cust jumped.
‘Oh, very—very —’
His hands, the young man noticed, were trembling so that he could hardly hold the paper.
‘You never know with lunatics,’ said the young man chattily. ‘They don’t always look barmy, you know. Often they seem just the same as you or me…’
‘I suppose they do,’ said Mr Cust.
‘It’s a fact. Sometimes it’s the war what unhinged them—never been right since.’
‘I—I expect you’re right.’
‘I don’t hold with wars,’ said the young man.
His companion turned on him.
‘I don’t hold with plague and sleeping sickness and famine and cancer… but they happen all the same!’
‘War’s preventable,’ said the young man with assurance.
Mr Cust laughed. He laughed for some time.
The young man was slightly alarmed.
‘He’s a bit batty himself,’ he thought.
Aloud he said:
‘Sorry, sir, I expect you were in the war.’
‘I was,’ said Mr Cust. ‘It—it—unsettled me. My head’s never been right since. It aches, you know. Aches terribly.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry about that,’ said the young man awkwardly.
‘Sometimes I hardly know what I’m doing…’
‘Really? Well, I must be getting along,’ said the young man and removed himself hurriedly. He knew what people were once they began to talk about their health.
Mr Cust remained with his paper.
He read and reread…
People passed to and fro in front of him.
Most of them were talking of the murder…
‘Awful… do you think it was anything to do with the Chinese? Wasn’t the waitress in a Chinese café…’
‘Actually on the golf links…’
‘I heard it was on the beach…’
‘– but, darling, we took our tea to Elbury only yesterday…’
‘– police are sure to get him…’
‘– say he may be arrested any minute now…’
‘– quite likely he’s in Torquay… that other woman was who murdered the what do you call ‘ems…’
Mr Cust folded up the paper very neatly and laid it on the seat. Then he rose and walked sedately along towards the town.
Girls passed him, girls in white and pink and blue, in summery frocks and pyjamas and shorts. They laughed and giggled. Their eyes appraised the men they passed.
Not once did their eyes linger for a second on Mr. Cust…
He sat down at a little table and ordered tea and Devonshire cream…
With the murder of Sir Carmichael Clarke the ABC mystery leaped into the fullest prominence.
The newspapers were full of nothing else. All sorts of ‘clues’ were reported to have been discovered. Arrests were announced to be imminent. There were photographs of every person or place remotely connected with the murder. There were interviews with anyone who would give interviews. There were questions asked in Parliament.
The Andover murder was now bracketed with the other two.
It was the belief of Scotland Yard that the fullest publicity was the best chance of laying the murderer by the heels. The population of Great Britain turned itself into an army of amateur sleuths.
The Daily Flicker had the grand inspiration of using the caption:
HE MAY BE IN YOUR TOWN!
Poirot, of course, was in the thick of things. The letters sent to him were published and facsimiled. He was abused wholesale for not having prevented the crimes and defended on the ground that he was on the point of naming the murderer.
Reporters incessantly badgered him for interviews.
What M. Poirot Says Today.
Which was usually followed by a half-column of imbecilities.
M. Poirot Takes Grave View of Situation.
M. Poirot on the Eve of Success.
Captain Hastings, the great friend of M. Poirot,
told our Special Representative…
‘Poirot,’ I would cry. ‘Pray believe me. I never said anything of the kind.’
My friend would reply kindly:
‘I know, Hastings—I know. The spoken word and the written—there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the original meaning.’
‘I wouldn’t like you to think I’d said —’
‘But do not worry yourself. All this is of no importance. These imbecilities, even, may help.’
‘How?’
‘Eh bien,’ said Poirot grimly. ‘If our madman reads what I am supposed to have said to the Daily Blague today, he will lose all respect for me as an opponent!’
I am, perhaps, giving the impression that nothing practical was being done in the way of investigations. On the contrary, Scotland Yard and the local police of the various counties were indefatigable in following up the smallest clues.
Hotels, people who kept lodgings, boarding-houses—all those within a wide radius of the crimes were questioned minutely.
Hundreds of stories from imaginative people who had ‘seen a man looking very queer and rolling his eyes’, or ‘noticed a man with a sinister face slinking along’, were sifted to the last detail. No information, even of the vaguest character, was neglected. Trains, buses, trams, railway porters, conductors, bookstalls, stationers—there was an indefatigable round of questions and verifications.
At least a score of people were detained and questioned until they could satisfy the police as to their movements on the night in question.
The net result was not entirely a blank. Certain statements were borne in mind and noted down as of possible value, but without further evidence they led nowhere.
If Crome and his colleagues were indefatigable, Poirot seemed to me strangely supine. We argued now and again.
‘But what is it that you would have me do, my friend? The routine inquiries, the police make them better than I do. Always—always you want me to run about like the dog.’
‘Instead of which you sit at home like—like—’
‘A sensible man! My force, Hastings, is in my brain, not in my feet! All the time, whilst I seem to you idle, I am reflecting.’
‘Reflecting?’ I cried. ‘Is this a time for reflection?’
‘Yes, a thousand times yes.’
‘But what can you possibly gain by reflection? You know the facts of the three cases by heart.’
‘It is not the facts I reflect upon—but the mind of the murderer.’
‘The mind of a madman!’
‘Precisely. And therefore not to be arrived at in a minute. When I know what the murderer is like, I shall be able to find out who he is. And all the time I learn more. After the Andover crime, what did we know about the murderer? Next to nothing at all. After the Bexhill crime? A little more. After the Churston murder? More still. I begin to see—not what you would like to see—the outlines of a face and form but the outlines of a mind. A mind that moves and works in certain definite directions. After the next crime—’
‘Poirot!’
My friend looked at me dispassionately.
‘But, yes, Hastings, I think it is almost certain there will be another. A lot depends on la chance. So far our inconnu has been lucky. This time the luck may turn against him. But in any case, after another crime, we shall know infinitely more. Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. There are confusing indications—sometimes it is as though there were two intelligences at work—but soon the outline will clear itself, I shall know.’
‘Who it is?’
‘No, Hastings, I shall not know his name and address! I shall know what kind of a man he is…’
‘And then?…’
‘Et alors, je vais à la pêche.’
As I looked rather bewildered, he went on:
‘You comprehend, Hastings, an expert fisherman knows exactly what flies to offer to what fish. I shall offer the right kind of fly.’
‘And then?’
‘And then? And then? You are as bad as the superior Crome with his eternal “Oh, yes?” Eh bien, and then he will take the bait and the hook and we will reel in the line…’
‘In the meantime people are dying right and left.’
‘Three people. And there are, what is it—about 120— road deaths every week?’
‘That is entirely different.’
‘It is probably exactly the same to those who die. For the others, the relations, the friends—yes, there is a difference, but one thing at least rejoices me in this case.’
‘By all means let us hear anything in the nature of rejoicing.’
‘Inutile to be so sarcastic. It rejoices me that there is here no shadow of guilt to distress the innocent.’
‘Isn’t this worse?’
‘No, no, a thousand times no! There is nothing so terrible as to live in an atmosphere of suspicion—to see eyes watching you and the love in them changing to fear—nothing so terrible as to suspect those near and dear to you—It is poisonous—a miasma. No, the poisoning of life for the innocent, that, at least, we cannot lay at A В C’s door.’
‘You’ll soon be making excuses for the man!’ I said bitterly.
‘Why not? He may believe himself fully justified. We may, perhaps, end by having sympathy with his point of view.’
‘Really, Poirot!’
‘Alas! I have shocked you. First my inertia—and then my views.’
I shook my head without replying.
‘All the same,’ said Poirot after a minute or two. ‘I have one project that will please you—since it is active and not passive. Also, it will entail a lot of conversation and practically no thought.’
I did not quite like his tone.
‘What is it?’ I asked cautiously.
‘The extraction from the friends, relations and servants of the victims of all they know.’
‘Do you suspect them of keeping things back, then?’
‘Not intentionally. But telling everything you know always implies selection. If I were to say to you, recount me your day yesterday, you would perhaps reply: “I rose at nine, I breakfasted at half-past, I had eggs and bacon and coffee, I went to my club, etc.” You would not include: “I tore my nail and had to cut it. I rang for shaving water. I spilt a little coffee on the tablecloth. I brushed my hat and put it on.” One cannot tell everything. Therefore one selects. At the time of a murder people select what they think is important. But quite frequently they think wrong!’
‘And how is one to get at the right things?’
‘Simply, as I said just now, by conversation. By talking! By discussing a certain happening, or a certain person, or a certain day, over and over again, extra details are bound to arise.’
‘What kind of details?’
‘Naturally that I do not know or I should not want to find out. But enough time has passed now for ordinary things to reassume their value. It is against all mathematical laws that in three cases of murder there is no single fact nor sentence with a bearing on the case. Some trivial happening, some trivial remark there must be which would be a pointer! It is looking for the needle in the haystack, I grant—but in the haystack there is a needle—of that I am convinced!’
It seemed to me extremely vague and hazy.
‘You do not see it? Your wits are not so sharp as those of a mere servant girl.’
He tossed me over a letter. It was neatly written in a sloping board-school hand.
‘Dear Sir,—I hope you will forgive the liberty I take in writing to you. I have been thinking a lot since these awful two murders like poor auntie’s. It seems as though we’re all in the same boat, as it were. I saw the young lady’s picture in the paper, the young lady, I mean, that is the sister of the young lady that was killed at Bexhill. I made so bold as to write to her and tell her I was coming to London to get a place and asked if I could come to her or her mother as I said two heads might be better than one and I would not want much wages, but only to find out who this awful fiend is and perhaps we might get at it better if we could say what we knew something might come of it.
‘The young lady wrote very nicely and said as how she worked in an office and lived in a hostel, but she suggested I might write to you and she said she’d been thinking something of the same kind as I had. And she said we were in the same trouble and we ought to stand together. So I am writing, sir, to say I am coming to London and this is my address.
‘Hoping I am not troubling you, Yours respectfully,
‘Mary Drower.’
‘Mary Drower,’ said Poirot, ‘is a very intelligent girl.’
He picked up another letter.
‘Read this.’
It was a line from Franklin Clarke, saying that he was coming to London and would call upon Poirot the following day if not inconvenient.
‘Do not despair, mon ami,’ said Poirot. ‘Action is about to begin.’
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