Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
“But what’s happened, Miss Lawson? Is is just that Mrs. Tanios left the hotel without telling you?”
“Oh, no, it’s not that! Oh, dear me, no. If that were all it would be quite all right. Though I do think it was odd, you know. Dr. Tanios did say that he was afraid she wasn’t quite—not quite—if you know what I mean. Persecution mania, he called it.”
“Yes.” (Damn the woman!) “But what’s happened?”
“Oh, dear—it is terrible. Died in her sleep. An overdose of some sleeping stuff. And those poor children! It all seems so dreadfully sad! I’ve done nothing but cry since I heard.”
“How did you hear? Tell me all about it.”
Out of the tail of my eye I noticed that Poirot had stopped opening his letters. He was listening to my side of the conversation. I did not like to cede my place to him. If I did it seemed highly probable that Miss Lawson would start with lamentations all over again.
“They rang me up. From the hotel. The Coniston it’s called. It seems they found my name and address in her bag. Oh, dear, M. Poirot—Captain Hastings, I mean, isn’t it terrible? Those poor children left motherless.”
“Look here,” I said. “Are you sure it’s an accident? They didn’t think it could be suicide?”
“Oh, what a dreadful idea, Captain Hastings! Oh, dear, I don’t know, I’m sure. Do you think it could be? That would be dreadful. Of course she did seem very depressed. But she needn’t have. I mean there wouldn’t have been any difficulty about money. I was going to share with her—indeed I was. Dear Miss Arundell would have wished it. I’m sure of that! It seems so awful to think of her taking her own life—but perhaps she didn’t… The hotel people seemed to think it was an accident?”
“What did she take?”
“One of those sleeping things. Veronal, I think. No, chloral. Yes, that was it. Chloral. Oh, dear, Captain Hastings, do you think—”
Unceremoniously I banged down the receiver. I turned to Poirot.
“Mrs. Tanios—”
He raised a hand.
“Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say. She is dead, is she not?”
“Yes. Overdose of sleeping draught. Chloral.”
Poirot got up.
“Come, Hastings, we must go there at once.”
“Is this what you feared—last night? When you said you were always nervous towards the end of a case?”
“I feared another death—yes.”
Poirot’s face was set and stern. We said very little as we drove towards Euston. Once or twice Poirot shook his head.
I said timidly:
“You don’t think—? Could it be an accident?”
“No, Hastings—no. It was not an accident.”
“How on earth did he find out where she had gone?”
Poirot only shook his head without replying.
The Coniston was an unsavoury-looking place quite near Euston station. Poirot, with his card, and a suddenly bullying manner, soon fought his way into the manager’s office.
The facts were quite simple.
Mrs. Peters as she had called herself and her two children had arrived about half past twelve. They had had lunch at one o’clock.
At four o’clock a man had arrived with a note for Mrs. Peters. The note had been sent up to her. A few minutes later she had come down with the two children and a suitcase. The children had then left with the visitor. Mrs. Peters had gone to the office and explained that she should only want the one room after all.
She had not appeared exceptionally distressed or upset, indeed she had seemed quite calm and collected. She had had dinner about seven thirty and had gone to her room soon afterwards.
On calling her in the morning the chambermaid had found her dead.
A doctor had been sent for and had pronounced her to have been dead for some hours. An empty glass was found on the table by the bed. It seemed fairly obvious that she had taken a sleeping draught, and by mistake, taken an overdose. Chloral hydrate, the doctor said, was a somewhat uncertain drug. There were no indications of suicide. No letter had been left. Searching for means of notifying her relations, Miss Lawson’s name and address had been found and she had been communicated with by telephone.
Poirot asked if anything had been found in the way of letters or papers. The letter, for instance, brought by the man who had called for the children.
No papers of any kind had been found, the man said, but there was a pile of charred paper on the hearth.
Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
As far as anyone could say, Mrs. Peters had had no visitors and no one had come to her room—with the solitary exception of the man who had called for the two children.
I questioned the porter myself as to his appearance, but the man was very vague. A man of medium height—he thought fair-haired—rather military build—of somewhat nondescript appearance. No, he was positive the man had no beard.
“It wasn’t Tanios,” I murmured to Poirot.
“My dear Hastings! Do you really believe that Mrs. Tanios, after all the trouble she was taking to get the children away from their father, would quite meekly hand them over to him without the least fuss or protest? Ah, that, no!”
“Then who was the man?”
“Clearly it was someone in whom Mrs. Tanios had confidence or rather it was someone sent by a third person in whom Mrs. Tanios had confidence.”
“A man of medium height,” I mused.
“You need hardly trouble yourself about his appearance, Hastings. I am quite sure that the man who actually called for the children was some quite unimportant personage. The real agent kept himself in the background!”
“And the note was from this third person?”
“Yes.”
“Someone in whom Mrs. Tanios had confidence?”
“Obviously.”
“And the note is now burnt?”
“Yes, she was instructed to burn it.”
“What about that résumé of the case that you gave her?”
Poirot’s face looked unusually grim.
“That, too, is burned. But that does not matter!”
“No?”
“No. For you see—it is all in the head of Hercule Poirot.”
He took me by the arm.
“Come, Hastings, let us leave here. Our concern is not with the dead but with the living. It is with them I have to deal.”
Twenty-nine
INQUEST AT LITTLEGREEN HOUSE
It was eleven o’clock the following morning.
Seven people were assembled at Littlegreen House.
Hercule Poirot stood by the mantelpiece. Charles and Theresa were on the sofa, Charles on the arm of it with his hand on Theresa’s shoulder. Dr. Tanios sat in a grandfather chair. His eyes were red rimmed and he wore a black band round his arm.
On an upright chair by a round table sat the owner of the house, Miss Lawson. She, too, had red eyes. Her hair was even untidier than usual. Dr. Donaldson sat directly facing Poirot. His face was quite expressionless.
My interest quickened as I looked at each face in turn.
In the course of my association with Poirot I had assisted at many such a scene. A little company of people, all outwardly composed with well-bred masks for faces. And I had seen Poirot strip the mask from one face and show it for what it was—the face of a killer!
Yes, there was no doubt of it. One of these people was a murderer! But which? Even now I was not sure.
Poirot cleared his throat—a little pompously as was his habit—and began to speak.
“We are assembled here, ladies and gentlemen, to inquire into the death of Emily Arundell on the first of May last. There are four possibilities—that she died naturally—that she died as the result of an accident—that she took her own life—or lastly that she met her death at the hands of some person known or unknown.
“No inquest was held at the time of her death, since it was assumed that she died from natural causes and a medical certificate to that effect
“In a case where suspicion arises after burial has taken place it is usual to exhume the body of the person in question. There are reasons why I have not advocated that course. The chief of them is that my client would not have liked it.”
It was Dr. Donaldson who interrupted. He said:
“Your client?”
Poirot turned to him.
“My client is Miss Emily Arundell. I am acting for her. Her greatest desire was that there should be no scandal.”
I will pass over the next ten minutes since it would involve much needless repetition. Poirot told of the letter he had received, and producing it he read it aloud. He went on to explain the steps he had taken on coming to Market Basing, and of his discovery of the means taken to bring about the accident.
Then he paused, cleared his throat once more, and went on:
“I am now going to take you over the ground I travelled to get at the truth. I am going to show you what I believe to be a true reconstruction of the facts of the case.
“To begin with it is necessary to picture exactly what passed in Miss Arundell’s mind. That, I think, is fairly easy. She has a fall, her fall is supposed to be occasioned by a dog’s ball, but she herself knows better. Lying there on her bed her active and shrewd mind goes over the circumstances of her fall and she comes to a very definite conclusion about it. Someone has deliberately tried to injure—perhaps to kill her.
“From that conclusion she passes to a consideration of who that person can be. There were seven people in the house—four guests, her companion and two servants. Of these seven people only one can be entirely exonerated—since to that one person no advantage could accrue. She does not seriously suspect the two servants, both of whom have been with her for many years and whom she knows to be devoted to her. There remain then, four persons, three of them members of her family, and one of them a connection by marriage. Each of those four persons benefit, three directly, one indirectly, by her death.
“She is in a difficult position since she is a woman with a strong sense of family feeling. Essentially she is not one who wishes to wash the dirty linen in public, as the saying goes. On the other hand, she is not one to submit tamely to attempted murder!
“She takes her decision and writes to me. She also takes a further step. That further step was, I believe, actuated by two motives. One, I think, was a distinct feeling of spite against her entire family! She suspected them all impartially, and she determined at all costs to score off them! The second and more reasoned motive was a wish to protect herself and a realization of how this could be accomplished. As you know, she wrote to her lawyer, Mr. Purvis, and directed him to draw up a will in favour of the one person in the house whom, she felt convinced, could have had no hand in her accident.
“Now I may say that, from the terms of her letter to me and from her subsequent actions, I am quite sure that Miss Arundell passed from indefinite suspicion of four people to definite suspicion of one of those four. The whole tenor of her letter to me is an insistence that this business must be kept strictly private since the honour of the family is involved.
“I think that, from a Victorian point of view, this means that a person of her own name was indicated—and preferably a man.
“If she had suspected Mrs. Tanios she would have been quite as anxious to secure her own safety, but not quite as concerned for the family honour. She might have felt much the same about Theresa Arundell, but not nearly as intensely as she would feel about Charles.
“Charles was an Arundell. He bore the family name! Her reasons for suspecting him seem quite clear. To begin with, she had no illusions about Charles. He had come near to disgracing the family once before. That is, she knew him to be not only a potential but an actual criminal! He had already forged her name to a cheque. After forgery—a step further—murder!
“Also she had had a somewhat suggestive conversation with him only two days before her accident. He had asked her for money and she had refused and he had thereupon remarked—oh, lightly enough—that she was going the right way to get herself bumped off. To this she had responded that she could take care of herself! To this, we are told, her nephew responded, ‘Don’t be too sure.’ And two days later this sinister accident takes place.
“It is hardly to be wondered at that lying there and brooding over the occurrence, Miss Arundell came definitely to the conclusion that it was Charles Arundell who had made an attempt upon her life.
“The sequence of events is perfectly clear. The conversation with Charles. The accident. The letter written to me in great distress of mind. The letter to the lawyer. On the following Tuesday, the 21st, Mr. Purvis brings the will and she signs it.
“Charles and Theresa Arundell come down the following weekend and Miss Arundell at once takes the necessary steps to safeguard herself. She tells Charles about the will. She not only tells him but she actually shows it to him! That, to my mind, is absolutely conclusive. She is making it quite clear to a would-be murderer that murder would bring him nothing whatever!
“She probably thought that Charles would pass on that information to his sister. But he did not do so. Why? I fancy that he had a very good reason—he felt guilty! He believed that it was his doing that the will had been made. But why did he feel guilty? Because he had really attempted murder? Or merely because he had helped himself to a small sum of ready cash? Either the serious crime or the petty one might account for his reluctance. He said nothing, hoping that his aunt would relent and change her mind.
“As far as Miss Arundell’s state of mind was concerned I felt that I had reconstructed events with a fair amount of correctness. I had next to make up my mind if her suspicions were, in actual fact, justified.
“Just as she had done, I realized that my suspicions were limited to a narrow circle—seven people to be exact. Charles and Theresa Arundell, Dr. Tanios and Mrs. Tanios. The two servants, Miss Lawson. There was an eighth person who had to be taken into account—namely, Dr. Donaldson, who dined there that night, but I did not learn of his presence until later.
“These seven persons that I was considering fell easily into two categories. Six of them stood to benefit in a greater or lesser degree by Miss Arundell’s death. If any one of those six had committed the crime the reason was probably a plain matter of gain. The second category contained one person only—Miss Lawson. Miss Lawson did not stand to gain by Miss Arundell’s death, but as a result of the accident, she did benefit considerably later!
“That meant that if Miss Lawson staged the so-called accident—”
“I never did anything of the kind!” Miss Lawson interrupted. “It’s disgraceful! Standing up there and saying such things!”
“A little patience, mademoiselle. And be kind enough not to interrupt,” said Poirot.
Miss Lawson tossed her head angrily.
“I insist on making my protest! Disgraceful, that’s what it is! Disgraceful!”
Poirot went on unheeding.
“I was saying that if Miss Lawson staged that accident she did so for an entirely different reason—that is, she engineered it so that Miss Arundell would naturally suspect her own family and become alienated from them. That was a possibility! I searched to see if there were any confirmation or otherwise and I unearthed one very definite fact. If Miss Lawson wanted Miss Arundell to suspect her own family, she would have stressed the fact of the dog, Bob, being out that night. But on the contrary Miss Lawson took the utmost pains to prevent Miss Arundell hearing of that. Therefore, I argued, Miss Lawson must be innocent.”
Miss Lawson said sharply:
“I should hope so!”
“I next considered the problem of Miss Arundell’s death. If one attempt to murder a person is made, a second attempt usually follows. It seemed to me significant that within a fortnight of the first attempt Miss Arundell should have died. I began to make inquiries.
“Dr. Grainger did not seem to think there was anything unusual about his pa
“Obviously, though described somewhat differently by two different observers, the actual fact was the same. What it amounted to, shorn of spiritualistic significance, was this: On the night in question Miss Arundell’s breath was phosphorescent!”
Dr. Donaldson moved a little in his chair.
Poirot nodded to him.
“Yes, you begin to see. There are not very many phosphorescent substances. The first and most common one gave me exactly what I was looking for. I will read you a short extract from an article on phosphorus poisoning.
“The person’s breath may be phosphorescent before he feels in any way affected. That is what Miss Lawson and the Misses Tripp saw in the dark—Miss Arundell’s phosphorescent breath—‘a luminous haze.’ And here I will read you again. The jaundice having thoroughly pronounced itself, the system may be considered as not only under the influence of the toxic action of phosphorus, but as suffering in addition from all the accidents incidental to the retention of the biliary secretion in the blood, nor is there from this point any special difference between phosphorus poisoning and certain affections of the liver—such for example as yellow atrophy.
“You see the cleverness of that? Miss Arundell has suffered for years from liver trouble. The symptoms of phosphorus poisoning would only look like another attack of the same complaint. There will be nothing new, nothing startling about it.