The Big Four by Agatha Christie
A sudden sound behind us made me spin round, and Poirot sprang nimbly to his feet. A girl was standing in the doorway. Her eyes, full upon us, were dark with suspicion. She was of medium height, with a beautiful, rather sullen face, dark blue eyes, and very black hair which was cut short. Her voice, when she spoke, was rich and sonorous, and completely un-English.
“I fear my uncle will be unable to see you. He is a great invalid.”
“That is a pity, but perhaps you will kindly help me instead. You are Mademoiselle Daviloff, are you not?”
“Yes, I am Sonia Daviloff. What is it you want to know?”
“I am making some inquiries about that sad affair the night before last—the death of M. Gilmour Wilson. What can you tell me about it?”
The girl’s eyes opened wide.
“He died of heart failure—as he was playing chess.”
“The police are not so sure that it was—heart failure, mademoiselle.”
The girl gave a terrified gesture.
“It was true then,” she cried. “Ivan was right.”
“Who is Ivan, and why do you say he was right?”
“It was Ivan who opened the door to you—and he has already said to me that in his opinion Gilmour Wilson did not die a natural death—that he was poisoned by mistake.”
“By mistake.”
“Yes, the poison was meant for my uncle.”
She had quite forgotten her first distrust now, and was speaking eagerly.
“Why do you say that, mademoiselle? Who should wish to poison Dr. Savaronoff?”
She shook her head.
“I do not know. I am in the dark. And my uncle, he will not trust me. It is natural, perhaps. You see, he hardly knows me. He saw me as a child, and not since till I came to live with him here in London. But this much I do know, he is in fear of something. We have many secret societies in Russia, and one day I overheard something which made me think it was of just such a society he went in fear. Tell me, monsieur”—she came a step nearer, and dropped her voice—“have you ever heard of a society called the ‘Big Four?’”
Poirot jumped nearly out of his skin. His eyes positively bulged with astonishment.
“Why do you—what do you know of the Big Four, mademoiselle?”
“There is such an association, then! I overheard a reference to them, and asked my uncle about it afterwards. Never have I seen a man so afraid. He turned all white and shaking. He was in fear of them, monsieur, in great fear, I am sure of it. And, by mistake, they killed the American, Wilson.”
“The Big Four,” murmured Poirot. “Always the Big Four! An astonishing coincidence, mademoiselle, your uncle is still in danger. I must save him. Now recount to me exactly the events of that fatal evening. Show me the chessboard, the table, how the two men sat—everything.”
She went to the side of the room and brought out a small table. The top of it was exquisite, inlaid with squares of silver and black to represent a chessboard.
“This was sent to my uncle a few weeks ago as a present, with the request that he would use it in the next match he played. It was in the middle of the room—so.”
Poirot examined the table with what seemed to me quite unnecessary attention. He was not conducting the inquiry at all as I would have done. Many of the questions seemed to me pointless, and upon really vital matters he seemed to have no questions to ask. I concluded that the unexpected mention of the Big Four had thrown him completely off his balance.
After a minute examination of the table and the exact position it had occupied, he asked to see the chessmen. Sonia Daviloff brought them to him in a box. He examined one or two of them in a perfunctory manner.
“An exquisite set,” he murmured absentmindedly.
Still not a question as to what refreshments there had been, or what people had been present.
I cleared my throat significantly.
“Don’t you think, Poirot, that—”
He interrupted me peremptorily.
“Do not think, my friend. Leave all to me. Mademoiselle, is it quite impossible that I should see your uncle?”
A faint smile showed itself on her face.
“He will see you, yes. You understand, it is my part to interview all strangers first.”
She disappeared. I heard a murmur of voices in the next room, and a minute later she came back and motioned us to pass into the adjoining room.
The man who lay there on a couch was an imposing figure. Tall, gaunt, with huge bushy eyebrows and white beard, and a face haggard as the result of starvation and hardships, Dr. Savaronoff was a distinct personality. I noted the peculiar formation of his head, its unusual height. A great chess player must have a great brain, I knew. I could easily understand Dr. Savaronoff being the second greatest player in the world.
Poirot bowed.
“M. le Docteur, may I speak to you alone?”
Savaronoff turned to his niece.
“Leave us, Sonia.”
She disappeared obediently.
“Now, sir, what is it?”
“Dr. Savaronoff, you have recently come into an enormous fortune. If you should—die unexpectedly, who inherits it?”
“I have made a will leaving everything to my niece, Sonia Daviloff. You do not suggest—”
“I suggest nothing, but you have not seen your niece since she was a child. It would have been easy for anyone to impersonate her.”
Savaronoff seemed thunderstruck by the suggestion. Poirot went on easily.
“Enough as to that: I give you the word of warning, that is all. What I want you to do now is to describe to me the game of chess the other evening.”
“How do you mean—describe it?”
“Well, I do not play the chess myself, but I understand that there are various regular ways of beginning—the gambit, do they not call it?”
Dr. Savaronoff smiled a little.
“Ah! I comprehend you now. Wilson opened Ruy Lopez—one of the soundest openings there is, and one frequently adopted in tournaments and matches.”
“And how long had you been playing when the tragedy happened?”
“It must have been about the third or fourth move when Wilson suddenly fell forward over the table, stone dead.”
Poirot rose to depart. He flung out his last question as though it was of absolutely no importance, but I knew better.
“Had he anything to eat or drink?”
“A whisky and soda, I think.”
“Thank you, Dr. Savaronoff. I will disturb you no longer.”
Ivan was in the hall to show us out. Poirot lingered on the threshold.
“The flat below this, do you know who lives there?”
“Sir Charles Kingwell, a member of Parliament, sir. It has been let furnished lately, though.”
“Thank you.”
We went out into the bright winter sunlight.
“Well, really, Poirot,” I burst out. “I don’t think you’ve distinguished yourself this time. Surely your questions were very inadequate.”
“You think so, Hastings?” Poirot looked at me appealingly. “I was bouleversé, yes. What would you have asked?”
I considered the question carefully, and then outlined my scheme to Poirot. He listened with what seemed to be close interest. My monologue lasted until we had nearly reached home.
“Very excellent, very searching, Hastings,” said Poirot, as he inserted his key in the door and preceded me up the stairs. “But quite unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary!” I cried, amazed. “If the man was poisoned—”
“Aha,” cried Poirot, pouncing upon a note which lay on the table. “From Japp. Just as I thought.” He flung it over to me. It was brief and to the point. No traces of poison had been found, and there was nothing to show how the man came by his death.
“You see,” said Poirot, “our questions would have been quite unnecessary.”
“You guessed this beforehand?”
“‘Forecast the probable result of t
“Don’t let’s split hairs,” I said impatiently. “You foresaw this?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Poirot put his hand into his pocket and pulled out—a white bishop.
“Why,” I cried, “you forgot to give it back to Dr. Savaronoff.”
“You are in error, my friend. That bishop still reposes in my left-hand pocket. I took its fellow from the box of chessmen Mademoiselle Daviloff kindly permitted me to examine. The plural of one bishop is two bishops.”
He sounded the final “s” with a great hiss. I was completely mystified.
“But why did you take it?”
“Parbleu, I wanted to see if they were exactly alike.”
Poirot looked at them with his head on one side.
“They seem so, I admit. But one should take no fact for granted until it is proved. Bring me, I pray you, my little scales.”
With infinite care he weighed the two chessmen, then turned to me with a face alight with triumph.
“I was right. See you, I was right. Impossible to deceive Hercule Poirot!”
He rushed to the telephone—waited impatiently.
“Is that Japp? Ah! Japp, it is you. Hercule Poirot speaks. Watch the manservant. Ivan. On no account let him slip through your fingers. Yes, yes, it is as I say.”
He dashed down the receiver and turned to me.
“You see it not, Hastings? I will explain. Wilson was not poisoned, he was electrocuted. A thin metal rod passes up the middle of one of those chessmen. The table was prepared beforehand and set upon a certain spot on the floor. When the bishop was placed upon one of the silver squares, the current passed through Wilson’s body, killing him instantly. The only mark was the electric burn upon his hand—his left hand, because he was left-handed. The ‘special table’ was an extremely cunning piece of mechanism. The table I examined was a duplicate, perfectly innocent. It was substituted for the other immediately after the murder. The thing was worked from the flat below, which, if you remember, was let furnished. But one accomplice at least was in Savaronoff’s flat. The girl is an agent of the Big Four, working to inherit Savaronoff’s money.”
“And Ivan?”
“I strongly suspect that Ivan is none other than the famous Number Four.”
“What?”
“Yes. The man is a marvellous character actor. He can assume any part he pleases.”
I thought back over past adventures, the lunatic asylum keeper, the butcher’s young man, the suave doctor, all the same man, and all totally unlike each other.
“It’s amazing,” I said at last. “Everything fits in. Savaronoff had an inkling of the plot, and that’s why he was so averse to playing the match.”
Poirot looked at me without speaking. Then he turned abruptly away, and began pacing up and down.
“Have you a book on chess by any chance, mon ami?” he asked suddenly.
“I believe I have somewhere.”
It took me some time to ferret it out, but I found it at last, and brought it to Poirot, who sank down in a chair and started reading it with the greatest attention.
In about a quarter of an hour the telephone rang. I answered it. It was Japp. Ivan had left the flat, carrying a large bundle. He had sprung into a waiting taxi, and the chase had begun. He was evidently trying to lose his pursuers. In the end he seemed to fancy that he had done so, and had then driven to a big empty house at Hampstead. The house was surrounded.
I recounted all this to Poirot. He merely stared at me as though he scarcely took in what I was saying. He held out the chess book.
“Listen to this, my friend. This is the Ruy Lopez opening. 1 P-K4, P-K4; 2 Kt-KB3, K-QB3; 3 B-Kt5. Then there comes a question as to Black’s best third move. He has the choice of various defences. It was White’s third move that killed Gilmour Wilson, 3 B-Kt5. Only the third move—does that say nothing to you?”
I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, and told him so.
“Suppose, Hastings, that, while you were sitting in this chair, you heard the front door being opened and shut, what would you think?”
“I should think someone had gone out, I suppose.”
“Yes—but there are always two ways of looking at things. Someone gone out—someone come in—two totally different things, Hastings. But if you assumed the wrong one, presently some little discrepancy would creep in and show you that you were on the wrong track.”
“What does all this mean, Poirot?”
Poirot sprang to his feet with sudden energy.
“It means that I have been a triple imbecile. Quick, quick, to the flat in Westminster. We may yet be in time.”
We tore off in a taxi. Poirot returned no answer to my excited questions. We raced up the stairs. Repeated rings and knocks brought no reply, but listening closely I could distinguish a hollow groan coming from within.
The hall porter proved to have a master key, and after a few difficulties he consented to use it.
Poirot went straight to the inner room. A whiff of chloroform met us. On the floor was Sonia Daviloff, gagged and bound, with a great wad of saturated cotton wool over her nose and mouth. Poirot tore it off and began to take measures to restore her. Presently a doctor arrived, and Poirot handed her over to his charge and drew aside with me. There was no sign of Dr. Savaronoff.
“What does it all mean?” I asked, bewildered.
“It means that before two equal deductions I chose the wrong one. You heard me say that it would be easy for anyone to impersonate Sonia Daviloff because her uncle had not seen her for so many years?”
“Yes?”
“Well, precisely the opposite held good also. It was equally easy for anyone to impersonate the uncle.”
“What?”
“Savaronoff did die at the outbreak of the Revolution. The man who pretended to have escaped with such terrible hardships, the man so changed ‘that his own friends could hardly recognize him,’ the man who successfully laid claim to an enormous fortune—”
“Yes. Who was he?”
“Number Four. No wonder he was frightened when Sonia let him know she had overheard one of his private conversations about the ‘Big Four.’ Again he has slipped through my fingers. He guessed I should get on the right track in the end, so he sent off the honest Ivan on a tortuous wild goose chase, chloroformed the girl, and got out, having by now doubtless realized most of the securities left by Madame Gospoja.”
“But—but who tried to kill him then?”
“Nobody tried to kill him. Wilson was the intended victim all along.”
“But why?”
“My friend, Savaronoff was the second-greatest chess player in the world. In all probability Number Four did not even know the rudiments of the game. Certainly he could not sustain the fiction of a match. He tried all he knew to avoid the contest. When that failed, Wilson’s doom was sealed. At all costs he must be prevented from discovering that the great Savaronoff did not even know how to play chess. Wilson was fond of the Ruy Lopez opening, and was certain to use it. Number Four arranged for death to come with the third move, before any complications of defence set in.”
“But, my dear Poirot,” I persisted, “are we dealing with a lunatic? I quite follow your reasoning, and admit that you must be right, but to kill a man just to sustain his role! Surely there were simpler ways out of the difficulty than that? He could have said that his doctor forbade the strain of a match.”
Poirot wrinkled his forehead.
“Certainement, Hastings,” he said, “there were other ways, but none so convincing. Besides, you are assuming that to kill a man is a thing to avoid, are you not? Number Four’s mind, it does not act that way. I put myself in his place, a thing impossible for you. I picture his thoughts. He enjoys himself as the professor at that match, I doubt not he has visited the chess tourney
I shrugged.
“Well, I suppose you’re right, but I can’t understand anyone running a risk he could so easily avoid.”
“Risk!” Poirot snorted. “Where then lay the risk? Would Japp have solved the problem? No; if Number Four had not made one small mistake he would have run no risk.”
“And his mistake?” I asked, although I suspected the answer.
“Mon ami, he overlooked the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot.”
Poirot has his virtues, but modesty is not one of them.
Twelve
THE BAITED TRAP
It was mid-January—a typical English winter day in London, damp and dirty. Poirot and I were sitting in two chairs well drawn up to the fire. I was aware of my friend looking at me with a quizzical smile, the meaning of which I could not fathom.
“A penny for your thoughts,” I said lightly.
“I was thinking, my friend, that at midsummer, when you first arrived, you told me that you proposed to be in this country for a couple of months only.”
“Did I say that?” I asked, rather awkwardly. “I don’t remember.”
Poirot’s smile broadened.
“You did, mon ami. Since then, you have changed your plan, is it not so?”
“Er—yes, I have.”
“And why is that?”
“Dash it all, Poirot, you don’t think I’m going to leave you all alone when you’re up against a thing like the ‘Big Four,’ do you?”
Poirot nodded gently.
“Just as I thought. You are a staunch friend, Hastings. It is to serve me that you remain on here. And your wife—little Cinderella as you call her, what does she say?”