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‘I think it would depend on the setting, my friend. If she is the centre of the play, if all revolves round her—yes, then she could play her part. I doubt if she could play a small part adequately or even what is called a character part. The play must be written about her and for her. She appears to me of the type of women who are interested only in themselves.’ He paused and then added rather unexpectedly: ‘Such people go through life in great danger.’
‘Danger?’ I said, surprised.
‘I have used a word that surprises you, I see, mon ami. Yes, danger. Because, you see, a woman like that sees only one thing—herself. Such women see nothing of the dangers and hazards that surround them—the million conflicting interests and relationships of life. No, they see only their own forward path. And so—sooner or later—disaster.’
I was interested. I confessed to myself that such a point of view would not have struck me.
‘And the other?’ I asked.
‘Miss Adams?’
His gaze swept to her table.
‘Well?’ he said, smiling. ‘What do you want me to say about her?’
‘Only how she strikes you.’
‘Mon cher, am I tonight the fortune-teller who reads the palm and tells the character?’
‘You could do it better than most,’ I rejoined.
‘It is a very pretty faith that you have in me, Hastings. It touches me. Do you not know, my friend, that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desires and aptitudes? Mais oui, c’est vrai. One makes one’s little judgments—but nine times out of ten one is wrong.’
‘Not Hercule Poirot,’ I said, smiling.
‘Even Hercule Poirot! Oh! I know very well that you have always a little idea that I am conceited, but, indeed, I assure you, I am really a very humble person.’
I laughed.
‘You—humble!’
‘It is so. Except—I confess it—that I am a little proud of my moustaches. Nowhere in London have I observed anything to compare with them.’
‘You are quite safe,’ I said dryly. ‘You won’t. So you are not going to risk judgment on Carlotta Adams?’
‘Elle est artiste!’ said Poirot simply. ‘That covers nearly all, does it not?’
‘Anyway, you don’t consider that she walks through life in peril?’
‘We all do that, my friend,’ said Poirot gravely. ‘Misfortune may always be waiting to rush out upon us. But as to your question, Miss Adams, I think, will succeed. She is shrewd and she is something more. You observed without doubt that she is a Jewess?’
I had not. But now that he mentioned it, I saw the faint traces of Semitic ancestry. Poirot nodded.
‘It makes for success—that. Though there is still one avenue of danger—since it is of danger we are talking.’
‘You mean?’
‘Love of money. Love of money might lead such a one from the prudent and cautious path.’
‘It might do that to all of us,’ I said.
‘That is true, but at any rate you or I would see the danger involved. We could weigh the pros and cons. If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow.’
I laughed at his serious manner.
‘Esmeralda, the gipsy queen, is in good form,’ I remarked teasingly.
‘The psychology of character is interesting,’ returned Poirot unmoved. ‘One cannot be interested in crime without being interested in psychology. It is not the mere act of killing, it is what lies behind it that appeals to the expert. You follow me, Hastings?’
I said that I followed him perfectly.
‘I have noticed that when we work on a case together, you are always urging me on to physical action, Hastings. You wish me to measure footprints, to analyse cigarette-ash, to prostrate myself on my stomach for the examination of detail. You never realize that by lying back in an arm-chair with the eyes closed one can come nearer to the solution of any problem. One sees then with the eyes of the mind.’
‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘When I lie back in an arm-chair with my eyes closed one thing happens to me and one thing only!’
‘I have noticed it!’ said Poirot. ‘It is strange. At such moments the brain should be working feverishly, not sinking into sluggish repose. The mental activity, it is so interesting, so stimulating! The employment of the little grey cells is a mental pleasure. They and they only can be trusted to lead one through fog to the truth…’
I am afraid that I have got into the habit of averting my attention whenever Poirot mentions his little grey cells. I have heard it all so often before.
In this instance my attention wandered to the four people sitting at the next table. When Poirot’s monologue drew to a close I remarked with a chuckle:
‘You have made a hit, Poirot. The fair Lady Edgware can hardly take her eyes off you.’
‘Doubtless she has been informed of my identity,’ said Poirot, trying to look modest and failing.
‘I think it is the famous moustaches,’ I said. ‘She is carried away by their beauty.’
Poirot caressed them surreptitiously.
‘It is true that they are unique,’ he admitted. ‘Oh, my friend, the “tooth-brush” as you call it, that you wear—it is a horror—an atrocity—a wilful stunting of the bounties of nature. Abandon it, my friend, I pray of you.’
‘By Jove,’ I said, disregarding Poirot’s appeal. ‘The lady’s getting up. I believe she’s coming to speak to us. Bryan Martin is protesting, but she won’t listen to him.’
Sure enough, Jane Wilkinson swept impetuously from her seat and came over to our table. Poirot rose to his feet bowing, and I rose also.
‘M. Hercule Poirot, isn’t it?’ said the soft husky voice.
‘At your service.’
‘M. Poirot, I want to talk to you. I must talk to you.’
‘But certainly, Madame, will you not sit down?’
‘No, no, not here. I want to talk to you privately. We’ll go right upstairs to my suite.’
Bryan Martin had joined her, he spoke now with a deprecating laugh.
‘You must wait a little, Jane. We’re in the middle of supper. So is M. Poirot.’
But Jane Wilkinson was not so easily turned from her purpose.
‘Why, Bryan, what does that matter? We’ll have supper sent up to the suite. Speak to them about it, will you? And, Bryan—’
She went after him as he was turning away and appeared to urge some course upon him. He stood out about it, I gathered, shaking his head and frowning. But she spoke even more emphatically and finally with a shrug of the shoulders he gave way.
Once or twice during her speech to him she had glanced at the table where Carlotta Adams sat, and I wondered if what she were suggesting had anything to do with the American girl.
Her point gained, Jane came back, radiant.
‘We’ll go right up now,’ she said, and included me in a dazzling smile.
The question of our agreeing or not agreeing to her plan didn’t seem to occur to her mind. She swept us off without a shade of apology.
‘It’s the greatest luck just seeing you here this evening, M. Poirot,’ she said as she led the way to the lift. ‘It’s wonderful how everything seems to turn out right for me. I’d just been thinking and wondering what on earth I was going to do and I looked up and there you were at the next table, and I said to myself: “M. Poirot will tell me what to do.”’
She broke off to say ‘Second Floor’ to the lift-boy.
‘If I can be of aid to you—’ began Poirot.
‘I’m sure you can. I’ve heard you’re just the most marvellous man that ever existed. Somebody’s got to get me out of the tangle I’m in and I feel you’re just the man to do it.’
We got out at the second floor and she led the way along the corridor, paused at a door and entered one of the most opulent of the Savoy suites.
Casting her white fur wrap on one chair, and her small jewelled bag on the table, the actress sank on to a chair and exclaimed:
‘M. Poirot, somehow or other I’ve just got to get rid of my husband!’
CHAPTER 2 (#ubde09f20-740f-569f-8828-ef77a7642829)
A Supper Party (#ubde09f20-740f-569f-8828-ef77a7642829)
After a moment’s astonishment Poirot recovered himself!
‘But, Madame,’ he said, his eyes twinkling, ‘getting rid of husbands is not my speciality.’
‘Well, of course I know that.’
‘It is a lawyer you require.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong. I’m just about sick and tired of lawyers. I’ve had straight lawyers and crooked lawyers, and not one of them’s done me any good. Lawyers just know the law, they don’t seem to have any kind of natural sense.’
‘And you think I have?’
She laughed.
‘I’ve heard that you’re the cat’s whiskers, M. Poirot.’
‘Comment? The cat’s whiskers? I do not understand.’
‘Well—that you’re It.’
‘Madame, I may or may not have brains—as a matter of fact I have—why pretend? But your little affair, it is not my genre.’
‘I don’t see why not. It’s a problem.’
‘Oh! a problem!’
‘And it’s difficult,’ went on Jane Wilkinson. ‘I should say you weren’t the man to shy at difficulties.’
‘Let me compliment you on your insight, Madame. But all the same, me, I do not make the investigations for divorce. It is not pretty—ce métier là.’
‘My dear man, I’m not asking you to do spying work. It wouldn’t be any good. But I’ve just got to get rid of the man, and I’m sure you could tell me how to do it.’
Poirot paused awhile before replying. When he did, there was a new note in his voice.
‘First tell me, Madame, why are you so anxious to “get rid” of Lord Edgware?’
There was no delay or hesitation about her answer. It came swift and pat.
‘Why, of course. I want to get married again. What other reason could there be?’
Her great blue eyes opened ingenuously.
‘But surely a divorce should be easy to obtain?’
‘You don’t know my husband, M. Poirot. He’s—he’s—’ she shivered. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. He’s a queer man—he’s not like other people.’
She paused and then went on.
‘He should never have married—anyone. I know what I’m talking about. I just can’t describe him, but he’s—queer. His first wife, you know, ran away from him. Left a baby of three months behind. He never divorced her and she died miserably abroad somewhere. Then he married me. Well—I couldn’t stick it. I was frightened. I left him and went to the States. I’ve no grounds for a divorce, and if I’ve given him grounds for one, he won’t take any notice of them. He’s—he’s a kind of fanatic.’
‘In certain American states you could obtain a divorce, Madame.’
‘That’s no good to me—not if I’m going to live in England.’
‘You want to live in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is the man you want to marry?’
‘That’s just it. The Duke of Merton.’
I drew in my breath sharply. The Duke of Merton had so far been the despair of matchmaking mammas. A young man of monkish tendencies, a violent Anglo-Catholic, he was reported to be completely under the thumb of his mother, the redoubtable dowager duchess. His life was austere in the extreme. He collected Chinese porcelain and was reputed to be of aesthetic tastes. He was supposed to care nothing for women.
‘I’m just crazy about him,’ said Jane sentimentally. ‘He’s unlike anyone I ever met, and Merton Castle is too wonderful. The whole thing is the most romantic business that ever happened. He’s so good-looking too—like a dreamy kind of monk.’
She paused.
