Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mystery 2) (4 page)

A phenomenon I have had cause to notice time and again in both my professional and my social life is that when one meets a large group of people all at once, one somehow knows—as if by otherworldly instinct—which of them one will enjoy speaking to and which are worth avoiding.

So it was that when I returned, after dressing for dinner, to a drawing room full of many more people, I knew instantly that I should endeavour to end up standing next to the lawyer Poirot had described to me, Michael Gathercole. He was taller than even the average tall man, and stood slightly stooped as if to minimize his height.

Poirot was quite right: Gathercole did indeed look as if his physical self was a cause of discomfort to him. His arms hung restlessly by his sides, and each time he moved even slightly, it looked as if he was trying rather clumsily and impatiently to shake something off—something unfortunate that had attached itself to him, but that no one else could see.

He was not handsome in the usual sense of the word. His face made me think of a faithful dog that had been kicked too often by its owner and was certain it would happen again. All the same, he looked by far the cleverest of my new acquaintances.

The other newcomers to the drawing room were also as Poirot had advertised, more or less. Lady Playford was telling a complicated anecdote to nobody in particular as she entered. She made as imposing an impression as I had expected, with a loud, melodic voice and her hair in a sort of coiled leaning tower. After her came the planet-sized lawyer, Orville Rolfe; then Viscount Harry Playford, a blond-haired young man with a flat, square face and an amiable if distant smile—as if he had felt chipper about something once and had been trying ever since to recollect the cause of his good cheer. His wife Dorro was a tall woman with features that brought to mind a bird of prey and a long neck with a deep hollow at its base. One could have set down a teacup in that hollow and it would have nestled there quite satisfactorily.

The last two to arrive for drinks were Joseph Scotcher, Lady Playford’s secretary, and a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. I assumed she was the nurse, Sophie Bourlet, for she had pushed Scotcher into the room in a wheelchair. She had a kindly smile that looked, at the same time, efficient—as if she had decided that a smile of this exact sort would be suitable for the occasion—and a modest manner. Of everyone in the room, she was the one to whom one might go with a practical problem. She carried a bundle of papers under one arm, I noticed, and as soon as she had the chance, she put them down on a small writing desk by one of the windows. Having done so, she approached Lady Playford and said something to her. Lady Playford looked over at the papers on the desk and nodded.

I wondered if, in the face of Scotcher’s declining vigour, Sophie had taken over some of the secretarial duties at Lillieoak. She was dressed more like a secretary than a nurse. All the other women wore evening gowns, but Sophie looked as if she had dressed smartly for a meeting at the office.

Scotcher was as light, in his physical appearance, as his nurse was dark. His hair was the colour of spun gold, and his skin was pale. He had delicate features, almost like a girl’s, and looked dangerously thin: a fading angel. I wondered if he had been sturdier before his health failed.

I managed to put myself in front of Gathercole reasonably swiftly, and the usual introductions followed. He turned out to be friendlier than he had looked from a distance. He told me he had first discovered Athelinda Playford’s Shrimp Seddon books in the orphanage that had housed him for most of his childhood, and that he was now her lawyer. He spoke of her with admiration and a little awe.

‘You are evidently extremely fond of her,’ I remarked at one point and he replied, ‘Everybody is who has read her work. She is, I believe, a genius.’

I thought about the profoundly unconvincing Sergeant Halfwit and Inspector Imbecile, and decided it would be injudicious to criticize the creative efforts of my host when she was standing only a few feet away.

‘A lot of the big houses belonging to English families were burnt to the ground in the recent … unpleasant business over here.’

I nodded. It was not something that an Englishman at the beginning of a week’s holiday in Clonakilty cared to discuss.

‘No one came near Lillieoak,’ said Gathercole. ‘Lady Playford’s books are so well loved that even the lawless hordes could not bring themselves to attack her home—or else they were restrained by those better than themselves, to whom the name Athelinda Playford means something.’

This sounded unlikely to me. What lawless horde, after all, would cancel its plans to wreak havoc on account of Shrimp Seddon and her fictional chums? Was young Shrimp really so influential? Could her fat, long-haired dog, Anita, bring a smile to the face of an angry rebel and make him forget all about the cause? I doubted it.

‘I see you are unconvinced,’ said Gathercole. ‘What you forget is that people fall for Lady Playford’s books
as children
. That sort of attachment is difficult, later, to talk yourself out of, no matter what your political affiliation might be.’

He spoke as an orphan, I reminded myself; Shrimp Seddon and her gang were probably the closest thing he had had to a family.

An orphan
…

It struck me that this was another connection between a guest at Lillieoak and death. Michael Gathercole’s parents had died. Did Poirot know? Although of course Gathercole was already connected—by his firm’s specialism, the estates of the wealthy. And—I was a fool!—everybody in the world has a relative who has died. Poirot’s idea of a death-themed gathering was ludicrous, I decided.

Gathercole left me to go and refill his glass. Behind me, Harry Playford was talking enthusiastically to Orville Rolfe about taxidermy. I did not care to hear a step-by-step account of his method, so I crossed the room and listened instead to Randall Kimpton’s conversation with Poirot.

‘I hear you set great store by psychology in your solving of crimes, what?’

‘I do.’

‘Ah! Well, if you will permit me, I should like to disagree with you. Psychology is so intangible a thing. Who knows if it is even real?’

‘It is real, monsieur. Let me assure you, it is real.’

‘Is it? I do not deny that people have thoughts in their heads, of course, but the notion that one can deduce anything from one’s assumptions about what those thoughts might be and why they are there—I’m not convinced by that, I’m afraid. And even when a murderer confirms that you’re right—even when he says, “Quite so. I did it because I was wild with jealousy, or because the old lady I coshed over the head reminded me of a nanny who was cruel to me”—how do you know the blighter’s telling the truth?’

This was accompanied by many a triumphant eye-flare, each one seeming to revel in the superiority of Kimpton’s arguments. The doctor sounded, furthermore, as if he was not about to drop or change the subject. I thought of what Claudia had said about him winning her over twice and wondered if there had been an element of browbeating involved. She did not seem the type who would allow herself to be coerced, but all the same … there was something frightening about the unswerving and arrogant determination exuded by Kimpton—to win, to prevail, to be right.

Perhaps, after all, it would be more relaxing to listen to Harry describing how he had removed the dead leopard’s brain.

I was saved by Joseph Scotcher, who had been wheeled over to me by Sophie Bourlet. ‘You must be Catchpool,’ said Scotcher warmly. ‘I have so looked forward to meeting you.’ He extended a hand, and I shook it as gently as I could. His voice was more robust than his outward appearance had led me to expect. ‘You seem surprised that I know who you are. I have heard of you, of course. The Bloxham Hotel murders in London, February of this year.’

I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. Poor Scotcher; he could not have known his words would have this effect.

‘Sorry, I have neglected to introduce myself: Joseph Scotcher. And this is the light of my life—my nurse, friend and good luck charm, Sophie Bourlet. It is thanks to her and her alone that I am still here. A patient who has Sophie to look after him scarcely needs medicine.’ At these lavish compliments, the nurse looked overcome by emotion, and had to turn away.
She loves him
, I thought.
She loves him and she cannot bear it.

Scotcher said, ‘Cunningly, Sophie keeps me alive by refusing to become my wife.’ He winked at me. ‘You see, I can’t possibly die until she has agreed.’

Sophie turned back to face me with pink spots on her cheeks and her sensible smile restored. ‘Pay no attention, Mr Catchpool,’ she said. ‘The truth is that Joseph has never asked me to marry him. Not once.’

Scotcher laughed. ‘Only because if I were to go down on one knee, it is unlikely I should be able to rise again. It’s easy for the sun, but not so easy for me in my condition.’

‘Rising or setting, Joseph, you shine more brightly than the sun ever could.’

‘See what I mean, Catchpool? She is worth staying for, even though I have to contend with what I like to call my
devilled
kidneys.’

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Sophie. She walked over to the writing desk, sat down at it and busied herself with the papers she had put there earlier.

‘What a selfish oaf I am!’ Scotcher declared. ‘You don’t want to talk about my kidneys, and I should far rather talk about you than about myself. It must be terribly difficult for you.’ He nodded in the direction of Poirot. ‘I was sorry to see the newspapers ridicule you so cruelly. It was almost as if they didn’t notice the part you played in wrapping up that nasty Bloxham affair. I hope you don’t object to the mention of it?’

‘Not at all,’ I was obliged to say.

‘I read all about it, you see. The whole story. I found it fascinating—and without your brilliant deduction in the graveyard, the case might never have been solved. It seems to me that everybody missed that aspect of the matter.’

‘They did, rather,’ I mumbled.

Scotcher had left me with no alternative: I was forced to think once again about the killings that were known at the time—and doubtless always would be—as the Monogram Murders. The case had been solved most ingeniously by Poirot, but it had also attracted much unfortunate publicity—unfortunate if you were me, at any rate. Poirot came out of it all very well, but I was not so lucky. Newspapermen had accused me of being inadequate as a detective and relying too much on Poirot to get me out of a tight spot. Naïvely, I had made some remarks when interviewed that were a little too honest, about how I would have been lost without Poirot’s help, and these had appeared in the papers. A few letters were published asking why Edward Catchpool was employed by Scotland Yard if he couldn’t handle the work without bringing in a friend of his who was not even a policeman. In short, I became an object of ridicule for a few weeks, until everybody forgot about me.

Since then—as I found myself telling Joseph Scotcher, who seemed truly to care about my predicament—my work had brought me into contact with another murder case, one that I was ultimately unable to solve, but this time I was praised for doing everything I could, and doggedly pursuing the elusive truth. I was astonished to read in the letters pages of the newspapers that I was a plucky hero; no one could have been braver or more conscientious than I had been—that was the general consensus.

I drew the only possible conclusion: that I was better off failing alone than succeeding with the help of Hercule Poirot. That was why I had been avoiding him (I refrained from sharing this particular revelation with Joseph Scotcher): because I could not trust myself not to ask for help with the murder I had failed to solve. There was simply no way to explain this to Poirot that would not lead to him demanding to know all the details.

‘I’m sure many people noticed the shoddy way the newspapers treated you and thought it was jolly unfair,’ said Scotcher. ‘Indeed, I wish I had written a letter to the
Times
to that effect. I meant to, but—’

‘You must concentrate on looking after yourself and not worry about me,’ I told him.

‘Well, you should know that I admire you inordinately,’ he said with a smile. ‘I could never have slotted that piece of the puzzle into place the way you did. It would not have occurred to me, nor to most people. You evidently have an extraordinary mind. Poirot too, of course.’

Embarrassed, I thanked him. I knew that my mind was nothing special and that Poirot would have solved the Bloxham Hotel murders with or without my solitary moment of insight, but I was nevertheless greatly heartened by Scotcher’s kind words. That he was dying made it all the more touching, somehow. I don’t mind admitting that I was quite overcome.

A hush began to spread across the room, like a flood of silence. I turned and saw that Hatton the butler was standing in the doorway, looking as if there was something important that he must on no account tell us. ‘Oh!’ declared Lady Playford, who was standing with Sophie next to the writing desk. ‘Hatton has come to announce—or to hear
me
announce—that dinner is about to be served. Thank you, Hatton.’

The butler looked mortified to be accused of almost saying something to so many people. He gave a small bow and withdrew.

As everyone moved towards the door, I hung back. Once I was alone in the room, I made for the writing desk. The pages laid upon it were handwritten and almost illegible, but I did see what I thought was ‘Shrimp’ in several places. There were two inks, blue and red: red circles around blue words. It seemed that Sophie was indeed doing some secretarial work for Lady Playford.

I read a line that seemed to say ‘Shrimp a patch sever ration and the parasols.’ Or was it ‘parasite’?

I gave up and went in search of dinner.

I emerged from the drawing room with not the faintest idea of where to go, though distant voices coming from a certain direction gave me a clue. I was about to follow the sound of laughter and chatter when I heard, from the other side of the house, a more disturbing noise: loud sobbing.

I stopped, wondering what was the best thing to do. I was famished after my long journey, having been offered nothing since I arrived, but I did not feel I could ignore a display of distress so close to where I stood. Scotcher’s kind words to me in the drawing room—and the knowledge that he, a complete stranger, held me in such high regard and that therefore there might be other strangers out there who did not think too badly of me—had made me feel altogether jollier and more buoyant than I had for a considerable time. I was determined to hunt down and be similarly kind to whomever was crying so piteously.

Sighing, I went in search of the sobber and soon found her. It was the maid, Phyllis—the poor unfortunate described by Claudia as scatter-witted. She was sitting on the staircase, rubbing at her tears with her sleeve.

‘Here,’ I said, passing her a clean handkerchief. ‘It can’t be all that bad, surely.’

She looked up at me doubtfully. ‘She says it’s for me own good. Yells at me morning to night, she does—for me own good! I’ve had enough of me own good, if that’s what it is! I want to go home!’

‘Are you new here, then?’ I asked her.

‘No. Been here four years. She’s worse every year! Every day, I sometimes think.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Cook. “Get out of my kitchen!” she screams, when I’ve done nothing wrong. I can’t help it, I says to her—I try, but I can’t help it!’

‘Oh dear. Well, look—’

‘And then she comes after me, as if I’ve run away instead of been thrown out by her! “Where the blazes have you got to, girl? Dinner won’t serve itself!” She’ll be after me any second now, you watch!’

Was Phyllis supposed to be serving our dinner, then? She did not seem in a fit state to do so. This alarmed me more than her tears and tirades. I was starting to feel light-headed from hunger.

‘I
would
have run away by now if it weren’t for Joseph!’ Phyllis declared.

‘Joseph Scotcher?’

She nodded. ‘D’you know about him, Mr …?’

‘Catchpool. Know what about him? Do you mean his state of health?’

‘He hasn’t long. Crying shame, I call it.’

‘Indeed.’

‘He’s the only one as cares about me. Why can’t one of the others die? One of them as never so much as looks at me.’

‘I say, steady on. You really ought not to—’

‘Nasty snooty-nosed Claudia or bossy Dorro—they all look past me like I don’t exist, or talk to me like I’m dirt on their shoes! I swear it, once Joseph’s gone, I’ll be gone too. I couldn’t stay here without him. He says to me all the time, he says, “Phyllis, you have great strength and beauty inside you. Silly old Brigid’s not half the woman you are.” That’s Cook, that is—he calls her Brigid, which is her name. “She’s not a patch on you, Phyllis,” he says to me. He says, “That’s why she needs to shout and you don’t.” It’s the weakest as have to shout the loudest, make others suffer, he says.’

‘I expect there is some truth in that.’

Phyllis giggled.

‘Did I say something funny?’ I asked.

‘Not you. Joseph. He says to me, he says, “Phyllis, I don’t have a kitchen, but if I ever do, if I am ever the proud owner of a kitchen …”—because that’s how he talks! Oh, it makes me laugh, the way he says things. And, d’you know, I think that pompous Randall Kimpton copies him, the way he comes out with things, but he’s not got Joseph’s charm and he’ll never have it, no matter how he tries. “If I am ever the proud owner of a kitchen,” Joseph says to me, he says, “I hereby solemnly swear that I shall never throw you out of it. On the contrary, I should want you to be in it all of the time and not least because I cannot so much as poach an egg!” See what I mean? He’s so kind, is Joseph. I only stay for him.’

Joseph Scotcher appeared to know precisely what to say in order to make others feel better. It was jolly decent of him to take the trouble, I thought—with strangers like me who happened to be visiting; with the servants.

As for Phyllis’s contention that Randall Kimpton had it in mind to copy Scotcher, I found that rather puzzling. Kimpton struck me as very much himself and the sort of purposeful, fully formed chap who had always been that same self. From what little I had seen of him, I could not imagine him changing course for anybody. Well, perhaps for his beloved Claudia—but certainly not for Joseph Scotcher. Still, I had to concede that Phyllis probably knew both men far better than I did.

I wondered how many ripples of discomfort at Lillieoak Scotcher had been skilfully smoothing away since he had arrived. How would the other inhabitants of the house manage after his death?

Some people were more virtuous and self-sacrificing than others, there was no doubt about it. Claudia Playford, for instance, struck me as a woman who would do and say nothing for the benefit of anyone but herself.

At that moment the floor beneath me started to shake. Phyllis leapt to her feet. ‘She’s coming!’ she whispered, frantic. ‘Don’t say I’ve told you anything or she’ll have my guts for garters!’

A short, compact barrel of a woman came into view, stomping towards us. She had a red face and curly, iron-grey hair that formed a stiff sort of circle around her head, like a wire crown.

‘There you are!’ She wiped her chunky red hands on her apron. ‘I’ve got better things to do than run around looking for you! Do you think the dinner’s going to grow legs and walk to the dining room on its own? Do you?’

‘No, Cook.’

‘No, Cook! Then get in there and serve it like a good girl!’

Phyllis scuttled away. I tried to make my escape at the same time, but Brigid moved to block my way. After looking me up and down for a few seconds, she said, ‘Meeting with the likes of you, bottom of the stairs when there’s no one about—just what that girl needs! On and on she goes about that Scotcher fellow—wasting her time, whichever way you slice it—but next time, not when I’m trying to get dinner started, if you don’t mind.’

I think my mouth might well have fallen open.

Before I could protest, Brigid was marching away at speed, shaking the ground as she went.