Sad Cypress (9 page)

“Where's the phone? Get hold of Dr. Lord as soon as you can.”

Elinor said:

“What's the matter?”

“The matter? The girl's ill. She's dying.”

Elinor recoiled a step.

“Dying?”

Nurse Hopkins said:

“She's been poisoned….”

Her eyes, hard with suspicion, glared at Elinor.

H
ercule Poirot, his egg-shaped head gently tilted to one side, his eyebrows raised inquiringly, his fingertips joined together, watched the young man who was striding so savagely up and down the room, his pleasant freckled face puckered and drawn.

Hercule Poirot said:

“
Eh bien,
my friend, what
is
all this?”

Peter Lord stopped dead in his pacing.

He said:

“M. Poirot. You're the only man in the world who can help me. I've heard Stillingfleet talk about you; he's told me what you did in that Benedict Farley case. How every mortal soul thought it was suicide and you showed that it was murder.”

Hercule Poirot said:

“Have you, then, a case of suicide among your patients about which you are not satisfied?”

Peter Lord shook his head.

He sat down opposite Poirot.

He said:

“There's a young woman. She's been arrested and she's going to be tried for murder! I want you to find evidence that will prove that she didn't do it!”

Poirot's eyebrows rose a little higher. Then he assumed a discreet and confidential manner.

He said:

“You and this young lady—you are affianced—yes? You are in love with each other?”

Peter Lord laughed—a sharp, bitter laugh.

He said:

“No, it's not like that! She has the bad taste to prefer a long-nosed supercilious ass with a face like a melancholy horse! Stupid of her, but there it is!”

Poirot said:

“I see.”

Lord said bitterly:

“Oh, yes, you see all right! No need to be so tactful about it. I fell for her straightaway. And because of that I don't want her hanged. See?”

Poirot said:

“What is the charge against her?”

“She's accused of murdering a girl called Mary Gerrard, by poisoning her with morphine hydrochloride. You've probably read the account of the inquest in the papers.”

Poirot said:

“And the motive?”

“Jealousy!”

“And in your opinion she didn't do it?”

“No, of course not.”

Hercule Poirot looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two, then he said:

“What is it exactly that you want me to do? To investigate this matter?”

“I want you to get her off.”

“I am not a defending counsel,
mon cher.
”

“I'll put it more clearly:
I want you to find evidence that will enable her counsel to get her off.
”

Hercule Poirot said:

“You put this a little curiously.”

Peter Lord said:

“Because I don't wrap it up, you mean? It seems simple enough to me.
I want this girl acquitted.
I think
you
are the only man who can do it!”

“You wish me to look into the facts? To find out the truth? To discover what really happened?”

“I want you to find any facts that will tell in her favour.”

Hercule Poirot, with care and precision, lighted a very tiny cigarette. He said:

“But is it not a little unethical what you say there? To arrive at the truth, yes, that always interests me. But the truth is a two-edged weapon. Supposing that I find facts
against
the lady? Do you demand that I suppress them?”

Peter Lord stood up. He was very white. He said:

“That's impossible! Nothing that you could find could be more against her than the facts are already! They're utterly and completely damning! There's any amount of evidence against her
black and plain for all the world to see! You couldn't find anything that would damn her more completely than she is already! I'm asking you to use all your ingenuity—Stillfleet says you're damned ingenious—to ferret out a loophole, a possible alternative.”

Hercule Poirot said:

“Surely her lawyers will do that?”

“Will they?” the young man laughed scornfully. “They're licked before they start! Think it's hopeless! They've briefed Bulmer, K.C.—the forlorn hope man; that's a giveaway in itself! Big orator—sob stuff—stressing the prisoner's youth—all that! But the judge won't let him get away with it. Not a hope!”

Hercule Poirot said:

“Supposing she
is
guilty—do you still want to get her acquitted?”

Peter Lord said quietly:

“Yes.”

Hercule Poirot moved in his chair. He said:

“You interest me….”

After a minute or two he said:

“You had better, I think, tell me the exact facts of the case.”

“Haven't you read anything about it in the papers?”

Hercule Poirot waved a hand.

“A mention of it—yes. But the newspapers, they are so inaccurate, I never go by what they say.”

Peter Lord said:

“It's quite simple. Horribly simple. This girl, Elinor Carlisle, had just come into a place near here—Hunterbury Hall—and a fortune from her aunt, who died intestate. Aunt's name was Welman. Aunt had a nephew by marriage Roderick Welman. He was
engaged to Elinor Carlisle—long-standing business, known each other since children. There was a girl down at Hunterbury: Mary Gerrard, daughter of the lodgekeeper. Old Mrs. Welman had made a lot of fuss about her, paid for her education, etc. Consequence is, girl was to outward seeming a lady. Roderick Welman, it seems, fell for her. In consequence, engagement was broken off.

“Now we come to the doings. Elinor Carlisle put up the place for sale and a man called Somervell bought it. Elinor came down to clear out her aunt's personal possessions and so on. Mary Gerrard, whose father had just died, was clearing out the Lodge. That brings us to the morning of July 27th.

“Elinor Carlisle was staying at the local pub. In the street she met the former housekeeper, Mrs. Bishop. Mrs. Bishop suggested coming up to the house to help her. Elinor refused—rather over-vehemently. Then she went into the grocer's shop and bought some fish paste, and there she made a remark about food poisoning. You see? Perfectly innocent thing to do; but, of course, it tells against her! She went up to the house, and about one o'clock she went down to the Lodge, where Mary Gerrard was busy with the District Nurse, a Nosey Parker of a woman called Hopkins, helping her, and told them that she had some sandwiches ready up at the house. They came up to the house with her, ate sandwiches, and about an hour or so later I was sent for and found Mary Gerrard unconscious. Did all I could, but it was no good. Autopsy revealed large dose of morphine had been taken a short time previously. And the police found a scrap of a label with morphia hydrochlor on it just where Elinor Carlisle had been spreading the sandwiches.”

“What else did Mary Gerrard eat or drink?”

“She and the District Nurse drank tea with the sandwiches.
Nurse made it and Mary poured it out. Couldn't have been anything there. Of course, I understand Counsel will make a song and dance about sandwiches, too, saying all three ate them, therefore
impossible
to ensure that only one person should be poisoned. They said that in the Hearne case, you remember.”

Poirot nodded. He said:

“But actually it is very simple. You make your pile of sandwiches.
In one of them is the poison.
You hand the plate. In our state of civilization it is a foregone conclusion that the person to whom the plate is offered will take
the sandwich that is nearest to them.
I presume that Elinor Carlisle handed the plate to Mary Gerrard first?”

“Exactly.”

“Although the nurse, who was an older woman, was in the room?”

“Yes.”

“That does not look very good.”

“It doesn't mean a thing, really. You don't stand on ceremony at a picnic lunch.”

“Who cut the sandwiches?”

“Elinor Carlisle.”

“Was there anyone else in the house?”

“No one.”

Poirot shook his head.

“It is bad, that. And the girl had
nothing
but the tea and the sandwiches?”

“Nothing. Stomach contents tell us that.”

Poirot said:

“It is suggested that Elinor Carlisle hoped the girl's death would
be taken for food poisoning? How did she propose to explain the fact that only
one
member of the party was affected?”

Peter Lord said:

“It does happen that way sometimes. Also, there were two pots of paste—both much alike in appearance. The idea would be that one pot was all right and that by a coincidence all the bad paste was eaten by Mary.”

“An interesting study in the laws of probability,” said Poirot. “The mathematical chances against that happening would be high, I fancy. But another point, if food poisoning was to be suggested:
Why not choose a different poison?
The symptoms of morphine are not in the least like those of food poisoning. Atropine, surely, would have been a better choice!”

Peter Lord said slowly:

“Yes, that's true. But there's something more. That damned District Nurse swears she lost a tube of morphine!”

“When?”

“Oh, weeks earlier, the night old Mrs. Welman died. The nurse says she left her case in the hall and found a tube of morphine missing in the morning. All bunkum, I believe. Probably smashed it at home some time before and forgot about it.”

“She has only remembered it
since
the death of Mary Gerrard?”

Peter Lord said reluctantly:

“As a matter of fact, she
did
mention it at the time—to the nurse on duty.”

Hercule Poirot was looking at Peter Lord with some interest.

He said gently:

“I think,
mon cher,
there is something else—something that you have not yet told me.”

Peter Lord said:

“Oh, well, I suppose you'd better have it all. They're applying for an exhumation order and going to dig up old Mrs. Welman.”

Poirot said:

“Eh bien?”

Peter Lord said:

“When they do,
they'll probably find what they're looking for—morphine!
”

“You knew that?”

Peter Lord, his face white under the freckles, muttered:

“I suspected it.”

Hercule Poirot beat with his hand on the arm of his chair. He cried out:

“
Mon Dieu,
I do not understand you! You
knew
when she died that she had been murdered?”

Peter Lord shouted:

“Good lord, no! I never dreamt of such a thing! I thought she'd taken it herself.”

Poirot sank back in his chair.

“Ah! You thought
that
….”

“Of course I did! She'd talked to me about it. Asked me more than once if I couldn't ‘finish her off.' She hated illness, the helplessness of it—the—what she called the
indignity
of lying there tended like a baby. And she was a very determined woman.”

He was silent a moment, then he went on:

“I was surprised at her death. I hadn't expected it. I sent the nurse out of the room and made as thorough an investigation as I could. Of course, it was impossible to be sure without an autopsy. Well, what was the good of that?
If
she'd taken a shortcut, why
make a song and dance about it and create a scandal? Better sign the certificate and let her be buried in peace. After all, I couldn't be sure. I decided wrong, I suppose. But I never dreamed for one moment of foul play. I was quite sure she'd done it herself.”

Poirot asked:

“How do you think she had got hold of the morphine?”

“I hadn't the least idea. But, as I tell you, she was a clever, resourceful woman, with plenty of ingenuity and remarkable determination.”

“Would she have got it from the nurses?”

Peter Lord shook his head.

“Never on your life! You don't know nurses!”

“From her family?”

“Possibly. Might have worked on their feelings.”

Hercule Poirot said:

“You have told me that Mrs. Welman died intestate. If she had lived, would she have made a will?”

Peter Lord grinned suddenly.

“Putting your finger with fiendish accuracy on all the vital spots, aren't you? Yes, she was going to make a will; very agitated about it. Couldn't speak intelligently, but made her wishes clear. Elinor Carlisle was to have telephoned the lawyer first thing in the morning.”

“So Elinor Carlisle knew that her aunt wanted to make a will? And if her aunt died without making one, Elinor Carlisle inherited everything?”

Peter Lord said quickly:

“She didn't know that. She'd no idea her aunt had never made a will.”

“That, my friend, is what she
says.
She
may
have known.”

“Look here, Poirot, are you the Prosecuting Counsel?”

“At the moment, yes. I must know the full strength of the case against her. Could Elinor Carlisle have taken the morphine from the attaché case?”

“Yes. So could anyone else. Roderick Welman. Nurse O'Brien. Any of the servants.”

“Or Dr. Lord?”

Peter Lord's eyes opened wide. He said:

“Certainly… But what would be the idea?”

“Mercy, perhaps.”

Peter Lord shook his head.

“Nothing doing there! You'll have to believe me!”

Hercule Poirot leaned back in his chair. He said:

“Let us entertain a supposition. Let us say that Elinor Carlisle did take that morphine from the attaché case and did administer it to her aunt. Was anything said about the loss of the morphine?”

“Not to the household. The two nurses kept it to themselves.”

Poirot said:

“What, in your opinion, will be the action of the Crown?”

“You mean if they find morphine in Mrs. Welman's body?”

“Yes.”