Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie
Jane said, ‘Don’t we know it!’
Poirot looked from one to the other.
‘I see. Already you have been finding that out for yourselves.’
He became suddenly brisk.
‘Come now, I have affairs to see to. Since our aims are the same, we three, let us combine together. I am about to call upon our ingenious friend, Mr Clancy. I would suggest that Mademoiselle accompanies me—in the guise of my secretary. Here, Mademoiselle, is a notebook and a pencil for the shorthand.’
‘I can’t write shorthand,’ gasped Jane.
‘But naturally not. But you have the quick wits—the intelligence—you can make plausible signs in pencil in the book, can you not? Good. As for Mr Gale, I suggest that he meets us in, say, an hour’s time. Shall we say upstairs at Monseigneur’s? Bon! We will compare notes then.’
And forthwith he advanced to the bell and pressed it.
Slightly dazed, Jane followed him, clutching the notebook.
Gale opened his mouth as though to protest, then seemed to think better of it.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘In an hour, at Monseigneur’s.’
The door was opened by a rather forbidding-looking elderly woman attired in severe black.
Poirot said, ‘Mr Clancy?’
She drew back and Poirot and Jane entered.
‘What name, sir?’
‘Mr Hercule Poirot.’
The severe woman led them upstairs and into a room on the first floor.
‘Mr Air Kule Prott,’ she announced.
Poirot realized at once the force of Mr Clancy’s announcement at Croydon to the effect that he was not a tidy man. The room, a long one, with three windows along its length and shelves and bookcases on the other walls, was in a state of chaos. There were papers strewn about, cardboard files, bananas, bottles of beer, open books, sofa cushions, a trombone, miscellaneous china, etchings, and a bewildering assortment of fountain-pens.
In the middle of this confusion Mr Clancy was struggling with a camera and a roll of film.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Clancy, looking up as the visitors were announced. He put the camera down and the roll of film promptly fell on the floor and unwound itself. He came forward with outstretched hand. ‘Very glad to see you, I’m sure.’
‘You remember me, I hope?’ said Poirot. ‘This is my secretary, Miss Grey.’
‘How d’you do, Miss Grey.’ He shook her by the hand and then turned back to Poirot. ‘Yes, of course I remember you—at least—now, where was it exactly? Was it at the Skull and Crossbones Club?’
‘We were fellow passengers on an aeroplane from Paris on a certain fatal occasion.’
‘Why, of course,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘And Miss Grey too! Only I hadn’t realized she was your secretary. In fact, I had some idea that she was in a beauty parlour—something of that kind.’
Jane looked anxiously at Poirot.
The latter was quite equal to the situation.
‘Perfectly correct,’ he said. ‘As an efficient secretary, Miss Grey has at times to undertake certain work of a temporary nature—you understand?’
‘Of course,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I was forgetting. You’re a detective—the real thing. Not Scotland Yard. Private investigation. Do sit down, Miss Grey. No, not there; I think there’s orange juice on that chair. If I shift this file—Oh, dear, now everything’s tumbled out. Never mind. You sit here, M. Poirot—that’s right, isn’t it?—Poirot? The back’s not really broken. It only creaks a little as you lean against it. Well, perhaps it’s best not to lean too hard. Yes, a private investigator like my Wilbraham Rice. The public have taken very strongly to Wilbraham Rice. He bites his nails and eats a lot of bananas. I don’t know why I made him bite his nails to start with—it’s really rather disgusting—but there it is. He started by biting his nails, and now he has to do it in every single book. So monotonous. The bananas aren’t so bad; you get a bit of fun out of them—criminals slipping on the skin. I eat bananas myself—that’s what put it into my head. But I don’t bite my nails. Have some beer?’
‘I thank you, no.’
Mr Clancy sighed, sat down himself, and gazed earnestly at Poirot.
‘I can guess what you’ve come about—the murder of Giselle. I’ve thought and thought about that case. You can say what you like, it’s amazing—poisoned darts and a blowpipe in an aeroplane. An idea I have used myself, as I told you, both in book and short story form. Of course it was a very shocking occurrence, but I must confess, M. Poirot, that I was thrilled, positively thrilled.’
‘I can quite see,’ said Poirot, ‘that the crime must have appealed to you professionally, Mr Clancy.’
Mr Clancy beamed.
‘Exactly. You would think that anyone—even the official police—could have understood that! But not at all. Suspicion—that is all I got, both from the inspector and at the inquest. I go out of my way to assist the course of justice, and all I get for my pains is palpable thick-headed suspicion!’
‘All the same,’ said Poirot, smiling, ‘it does not seem to affect you very much.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But, you see, I have my methods, Watson. If you’ll excuse my calling you Watson. No offence intended. Interesting, by the way, how the technique of the idiot friend has hung on. Personally I myself think the Sherlock Holmes stories grossly overrated. The fallacies—the really amazing fallacies that there are in those stories—But what was I saying?’
‘You said that you had your methods.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Mr Clancy leaned forward. ‘I’m putting that inspector—what is his name, Japp?—yes, I’m putting him in my next book. You should see the way Wilbraham Rice deals with him.’
‘In between bananas, as one might say.’
‘In between bananas—that’s very good, that.’ Mr Clancy chuckled.
‘You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,’ said Poirot. ‘You can relieve your feelings by the expedient of the printed word. You have the power of the pen over your enemies.’
Mr Clancy rocked gently back in his chair.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I begin to think this murder is going to be a really fortunate thing for me. I’m writing the whole thing exactly as it happened—only as fiction, of course, and I shall call it The Air Mail Mystery. Perfect pen portraits of all the passengers. It ought to sell like wildfire—if only I can get it out in time.’
‘Won’t you be had up for libel, or something?’ asked Jane.
Mr Clancy turned a beaming face upon her.
‘No, no, my dear lady. Of course, if I were to make one of the passengers the murderer—well, then, I might be liable for damages. But that is the strong part of it all—an entirely unexpected solution is revealed in the last chapter.’
Poirot leaned forward eagerly.
‘And that solution is?’
Again Mr Clancy chuckled.
‘Ingenious,’ he said. ‘Ingenious and sensational. Disguised as the pilot, a girl gets into the plane at Le Bourget and successfully stows herself away under Madame Giselle’s seat. She has with her an ampoule of the newest gas. She releases this—everybody becomes unconscious for three minutes—she squirms out—fires the poisoned dart, and makes a parachute descent from the rear door of the car.’
Both Jane and Poirot blinked.
Jane said, ‘Why doesn’t she become unconscious from the gas too?’
‘Respirator,’ said Mr Clancy.
‘And she descends into the Channel?’
‘It needn’t be the Channel—I shall make it the French coast.’
‘And, anyway, nobody could hide under a seat; there wouldn’t be room.’
‘There will be room in my aeroplane,’ said Mr Clancy firmly.
‘Epatant,’ said Poirot. ‘And the motive of the lady?’
‘I haven’t quite decided,’ said Mr Clancy meditatively. ‘Probably Giselle ruined the girl’s lover, who killed himself.’
‘And how did she get hold of the poison?’
‘Mon Dieu!’ said Hercule Poirot.
He said, ‘You don’t think, perhaps, it is just a little sensational?’
‘You can’t write anything too sensational,’ said Mr Clancy firmly. ‘Especially when you’re dealing with the arrow poison of the South American Indians. I know it was snake juice, really; but the principle is the same. After all, you don’t want a detective story to be like real life? Look at the things in the papers—dull as ditchwater.’
‘Come, now, Monsieur, would you say this little affair of ours is dull as ditchwater?’
‘No,’ admitted Mr Clancy. ‘Sometimes, you know, I can’t believe it really happened.’
Poirot drew the creaking chair a little nearer to his host. His voice lowered itself confidentially.
‘M. Clancy, you are a man of brains and imagination. The police, as you say, have regarded you with suspicion. They have not sought your advice. But I, Hercule Poirot, desire to consult you.’
Mr Clancy flushed with pleasure.
‘I’m sure that’s very nice of you.’
He looked flustered and pleased.
‘You have studied the criminology. Your ideas will be of value. It would be of great interest to me to know who, in your opinion, committed the crime.’
‘Well—’ Mr Clancy hesitated, reached automatically for a banana and began to eat it. Then, the animation dying out of his face, he shook his head. ‘You see, M. Poirot, it’s an entirely different thing. When you’re writing you can make it anyone you like; but, of course, in real life there is a real person. You haven’t any command over the facts. I’m afraid, you know, that I’d be absolutely no good as a real detective.’
He shook his head sadly and threw the banana skin into the grate.
‘It might be amusing, however, to consider the case together?’ suggested Poirot.
‘Oh, that, yes.’
‘To begin with, supposing you had to make a sporting guess, who would you choose?’
‘Oh, well, I suppose one of the two Frenchmen.’
‘Now, why?’
‘Well, she was French. It seems more likely, somehow. And they were sitting on the opposite side not too far away from her. But really I don’t know.’
‘It depends,’ said Poirot thoughtfully, ‘so much on motive.’
‘Of course—of course. I suppose you tabulate all the motives very scientifically?’
‘I am old-fashioned in my methods. I follow the old adage: seek whom the crime benefits.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But I take it that’s a little difficult in a case like this. There’s a daughter who comes into money, so I’ve heard. But a lot of the people on board might benefit, for all we know—that is if they owed her money and haven’t got to pay it back.’
‘True,’ said Poirot. ‘And I can think of other solutions. Let us suppose that Madame Giselle knew of something—attempted murder, shall we say?—on the part of one of those people.’
‘Attempted murder?’ said Mr Clancy. ‘Now, why attempted murder? What a very curious suggestion.’
‘In cases such as these,’ said Poirot, ‘one must think of everything.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But it’s no good thinking. You’ve got to know.’
‘You have reason—you have reason. A very just observation.’
Then he said, ‘I ask your pardon, but this blowpipe that you bought—’
‘Damn that blowpipe,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I wish I’d never mentioned it.’
‘You bought it, you say, at a shop in the Charing Cross Road? Do you, by any chance, remember the name of that shop?’
‘Well,’ said Mr Clancy, ‘it might have been Absolom’s—or there’s Mitchell & Smith. I don’t know. But I’ve already told all this to that pestilential inspector. He must have checked up on it by this time.’
‘Ah,’ said Poirot, ‘but I ask for quite another reason. I desire to purchase such a thing and make a little experiment.’
‘Oh, I see. But I don’t know that you’ll find one all the same. They don’t keep sets of them, you know.’
‘All the same I can try. Perhaps, Miss Grey, you would be so obliging as to take down those two names?’
Jane opened her notebook and rapidly performed a series of (she hoped) professional-looking squiggles. Then she surreptitiously wrote the names in longhand on the reverse side of the sheet in case these instructions of Poirot’s should be genuine.
‘And now,’ said Poirot, ‘I have trespassed on your time too long. I will take my departure with a thousand thanks for your amiability.’
‘Not at all. Not at all,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I wish you would have had a banana.’
‘You are most amiable.’
‘Not at all. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling rather happy tonight. I’d been held up in a short story I was writing—the thing wouldn’t pan out properly, and I couldn’t get a good name for the criminal. I wanted something with a flavour. Well, just a bit of luck, I saw just the name I wanted over a butcher’s shop. Pargiter. Just the name I was looking for. There’s a sort of genuine sound to it; and about five minutes later I got the other thing. There’s always the same snag in stories—why won’t the girl speak? The young man tries to make her and she says her lips are sealed. There’s never any real reason, of course, why she shouldn’t blurt out the whole thing at once, but you have to try to think of something that’s not too definitely idiotic. Unfortunately it has to be a different thing every time!’
He smiled gently at Jane.
‘The trials of an author!’
He darted past her to a bookcase.
‘One thing you must allow me to give you.’
He came back with a book in his hand.
‘The Clue of the Scarlet Petal. I think I mentioned at Croydon that that book of mine dealt with arrow poison and native darts.’
‘A thousand thanks. You are too amiable.’
‘Not at all. I see,’ said Mr Clancy suddenly to Jane, ‘that you don’t use the Pitman system of shorthand.’
Jane flushed scarlet. Poirot came to her rescue.
‘Miss Grey is very up to date. She uses the most recent system invented by a Czecho-Slovakian.’
‘You don’t say so? What an amazing place Czecho-Slovakia must be. Everything seems to come from there—shoes, glass, gloves, and now a shorthand system. Quite amazing.’
He shook hands with them both.
‘I wish I could have been more helpful.’
They left him in the littered room smiling wistfully after them.
Chapter 16
Plan of Campaign
From Mr Clancy’s house they took a taxi to the Monseigneur, where they found Norman Gale awaiting them.
Poirot ordered some consommé and a chaud-froid of chicken.
‘Well?’ said Norman. ‘How did you get on?’
‘Miss Grey,’ said Poirot, ‘has proved herself the super-secretary.’
‘I don’t think I did so very well,’ said Jane. ‘He spotted my stuff when he passed behind me. You know, he must be very observant.’
‘Ah, you noticed that? This good Mr Clancy is not quite so absent-minded as one might imagine.’
‘Did you really want those addresses?’ asked Jane.
‘I think they might be useful—yes.’
‘But if the police—’
‘Ah, the police! I should not ask the same questions as the police have asked. Though, as a matter of fact, I doubt whether the police have asked any questions at all. You see, they know that the blowpipe found in the plane was purchased in Paris by an American.’
‘In Paris? An American? But there wasn’t any American in the aeroplane.’
Poirot smiled kindly on her.
‘Precisely. We have here an American just to make it more difficult. Voilà tout.’
‘
Poirot looked at him with rather an odd expression.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was bought by a man.’
Norman looked puzzled.
‘Anyway,’ said Jane, ‘it wasn’t Mr Clancy. He’d got one blowpipe already, so he wouldn’t want to go about buying another.’
Poirot nodded his head.
‘That is how one must proceed. Suspect everyone in turn and then wipe him or her off the list.’
‘How many have you wiped off so far?’ asked Jane.
‘Not so many as you might think, Mademoiselle,’ said Poirot with a twinkle. ‘It depends, you see, on the motive.’
‘Has there been—?’ Norman Gale stopped and then added apologetically: ‘I don’t want to butt in on official secrets, but is there no record of this woman’s dealings?’
Poirot shook his head.
‘All the records are burnt.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’
‘Evidemment! But it seems that Madame Giselle combined a little blackmailing with her profession of moneylending, and that opens up a wider field. Supposing, for instance, that Madame Giselle had knowledge of a certain criminal offence—say, attempted murder on the part of someone.’
‘Is there any reason to suppose such a thing?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Poirot slowly. ‘There is—one of the few pieces of documentary evidence that we have in this case.’
He looked from one to the other of their interested faces and gave a little sigh.
‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘that is that. Let us talk of other matters—for instance, of how this tragedy has affected the lives of you two young people.’
‘It sounds horrible to say so, but I’ve done well out of it,’ said Jane.
She related her rise of salary.
‘As you say, Mademoiselle, you have done well, but probably only for the time being. Even a nine-days’ wonder does not last longer than nine days, remember.’
Jane laughed. ‘That’s very true.’
‘I’m afraid it’s going to last more than nine days in my case,’ said Norman.
He explained the position. Poirot listened sympathetically.
‘As you say,’ he observed thoughtfully, ‘it will take more than nine days—or nine weeks—or nine months. Sensationalism dies quickly—fear is long-lived.’