The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie
Seventeen
MARKING TIME
With the murder of Sir Carmichael Clarke the A B C 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 B 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
“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.”
Eighteen
POIROT MAKES A SPEECH
Franklin Clarke arrived at three o’clock on the following afternoon and came straight to the point without beating about the bush.
“M. Poirot,” he said, “I’m not satisfied.”
“No, Mr. Clarke?”
“I’ve no doubt that Crome is a very efficient officer, but, frankly, he puts my back up. That air of his of knowing best! I hinted something of what I had in mind to your friend here when he was down at Churston, but I’ve had all my brother’s affairs to settle up and I haven’t been free until now. My idea is, M. Poirot, that we oughtn’t to let the grass grow under our feet—”
“Just what Hastings is always saying!”
“—but go right ahead. We’ve got to get ready for the next crime.”
“So you think there will be a next crime?”
“Don’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well, then. I want to get organized.”
“Tell me your idea exactly?”
“I propose, M. Poirot, a kind of special legion—to work under your orders—composed of the friends and relatives of the murdered people.”
“Une bonne idée.”
“I’m glad you approve. By putting our heads together I feel we might get at something. Also, when the next warning comes, by being on the spot, one of us might—I don’t say it’s probable—but we might recognize some person as having been near the scene of a previous crime.”
“I see your idea, and I approve, but you must remember, Mr. Clarke, the relations and friends of the other victims are hardly in your sphere of life. They are employed persons and though they might be given a short vacation—”
Franklin Clarke interrupted.
“That’s just it. I’m the only person in a position to foot the bill. Not that I’m particularly well off myself, but my brother died a rich man and it will eventually come to me. I propose, as I say, to enrol a special legion, the members to be paid for their services at the same rate as they get habitually, with, of course, the additional expenses.”
“Who do you propose should form this legion?”
“I’ve been into that. As a matter of fact, I wrote to Miss Megan Barnard—indeed, this is partly her idea. I suggest myself, Miss Barnard, Mr. Donald Fraser, who was engaged to the dead girl. Then there is a niece of the Andover woman—Miss Barnard knows her address. I don’t think the husband would be of any use to us—I hear he’s usually drunk. I also think the Barnards—the father and mother—are a bit old for active campaigning.”
“Nobody else?”
“Well—er—Miss Grey.”
He flushed slightly as he spoke the name.
“Oh! Miss Grey?”
Nobody in the world could put a gentle nuance of irony into a couple of words better than Poirot. About thirty-five years fell away from Franklin Clarke. He looked suddenly like a shy schoolboy.
“Yes. You see, Miss Grey was with my brother for over two years. She knows the countryside and the people round, and everything. I’ve been away for a year and a half.”
Poirot took pity on him and turned the conversation.
“You have been in the East? In China?”
“Yes. I had a kind of roving commission to purchase things for my brother.”
“Very interesting it must have been. Eh bien, Mr. Clarke, I approve very highly of your idea. I was saying to Hastings only yesterday that a rapprochement of the people concerned was needed. It is necessary to pool reminiscences, to compare notes—enfin to talk the thing over—to talk—to talk—and again to talk. Out of some innocent phrase may come enlightenment.”
A few days later the “Special Legion” met at Poirot’s rooms.
As they sat round looking obediently towards Poirot, who had his place, like the chairman at a board meeting, at the head of the table, I myself passed them, as it were, in review, confirming or revising my first impressions of them.
The three girls were all of them striking-looking—the extraordinary fair beauty of Thora Grey, the dark intensity of Megan Barnard, with her strange Red Indian immobility of face—Mary Drower, neatly dressed in a black coat and skirt, with her pretty, intelligent face. Of the two men, Franklin Clarke, big, bronzed and talkative, Donald Fraser, self-contained and quiet, made an interesting contrast to each other.
Poirot, unable, of course, to resist the occasion, made a little speech.
“Mesdames and Messieurs, you know what we are here for. The police are doing their utmost to track down the criminal. I, too, in my different way. But it seems to me a reunion of those who have a personal interest in the matter—and also, I may say, a personal knowledge of the victims—might have results that an outside investigation cannot pretend to attain.
“Here we have three murders—an old woman, a young girl, an elderly man. Only one thing links these three people together—the fact that the same person killed them. That means that the same person was present in three different localities and was seen necessarily by a large number of people. That he is a madman in an advanced stage of mania goes without saying. That his appearance and behaviour give no suggestion of such a fact is equally certain. This person—and though I say he, remember it may be a man or a woman—has all the devilish cunning of insanity. He has succeeded so far in covering his traces completely. The police have certain vague indications but nothing upon which they can act.
“Nevertheless, there must exist indications which are not vague but certain. To take one particular point—this assassin, he
“Must we go into that?”
It was Donald Fraser who spoke—the words wrung from him, it seemed, by some inner anguish.
“It is necessary to go into everything, monsieur,” said Poirot, turning to him. “You are here, not to save your feelings by refusing to think of details, but if necessary to harrow them by going into the matter au fond. As I say, it was not chance that provided A B C with a victim in Betty Barnard. There must have been deliberate selection on his part—and therefore premeditation. That is to say, he must have reconnoitred the ground beforehand. There were facts of which he had informed himself—the best hour for the committing of the crime at Andover—the mise en scène at Bexhill—the habits of Sir Carmichael Clarke at Churston. Me, for one, I refuse to believe that there is no indication—no slightest hint—that might help to establish his identity.
“I make the assumption that one—or possibly all of you—knows something that they do not know they know.
“Sooner or later, by reason of your association with one another, something will come to light, will take on a significance as yet undreamed of. It is like the jig-saw puzzle—each of you may have a piece apparently without meaning, but which when reunited may show a definite portion of the picture as a whole.”
“Words!” said Megan Barnard.
“Eh?” Poirot looked at her inquiringly.
“What you’ve been saying. It’s just words. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She spoke with that kind of desperate intensity that I had come to associate with her personality.
“Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”
“Well, I think it’s sense,” said Mary Drower. “I do really, miss. It’s often when you’re talking over things that you seem to see your way clear. Your mind gets made up for you sometimes without your knowing how it’s happened. Talking leads to a lot of things one way and another.”
“If ‘least said is soonest mended,’ it’s the converse we want here,” said Franklin Clarke.