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The girl was no fool. The significance of his tone was not lost on her.
‘Is—anything the matter?’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle. This…’
He held out his hand to her with the bullet on the palm of it. She picked it up with a puzzled frown.
‘You know what that is?’
‘Yes, of course I know. It’s a bullet.’
‘Exactly. Mademoiselle—it was not a wasp that flew past your face this morning—it was this bullet.’
‘Do you mean—was some criminal idiot shooting bullets in a hotel garden?’
‘It would seem so.’
‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Nick frankly. ‘I do seem to bear a charmed life. That’s number four.’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot. ‘That is number four. I want, Mademoiselle, to hear about the other three—accidents.’
She stared at him.
‘I want to be very sure, Mademoiselle, that they were—accidents.’
‘Why, of course! What else could they be?’
‘Mademoiselle, prepare yourself, I beg, for a great shock. What if someone is attempting your life?’
All Nick’s response to this was a burst of laughter. The idea seemed to amuse her hugely.
‘What a marvellous idea! My dear man, who on earth do you think would attempt my life? I’m not the beautiful young heiress whose death releases millions. I wish somebody was trying to kill me—that would be a thrill, if you like—but I’m afraid there’s not a hope!’
‘Will you tell me, Mademoiselle, about those accidents?’
‘Of course—but there’s nothing in it. They were just stupid things. There’s a heavy picture hangs over my bed. It fell in the night. Just by pure chance I had happened to hear a door banging somewhere in the house and went down to find it and shut it—and so I escaped. It would probably have bashed my head in. That’s No. 1.’
Poirot did not smile.
‘Continue, Mademoiselle. Let us pass to No. 2.’
‘Oh, that’s weaker still. There’s a scrambly cliff path down to the sea. I go down that way to bathe. There’s a rock you can dive off. A boulder got dislodged somehow and came roaring down just missing me. The third thing was quite different. Something went wrong with the brakes of the car—I don’t know quite what—the garage man explained, but I didn’t follow it. Anyway if I’d gone through the gate and down the hill, they wouldn’t have held and I suppose I’d have gone slap into the Town Hall and there would have been the devil of a smash. Slight defacement of the Town Hall, complete obliteration of me. But owing to my always leaving something behind, I turned back and merely ran into the laurel hedge.’
‘And you cannot tell me what the trouble was?’
‘You can go and ask them at Mott’s Garage. They’ll know. It was something quite simple and mechanical that had been unscrewed, I think. I wondered if Ellen’s boy (my stand-by who opened the door to you, has got a small boy) had tinkered with it. Boys do like messing about with cars. Of course Ellen swore he’d never been near the car. I think something must just have worked loose in spite of what Mott said.’
‘Where is your garage, Mademoiselle?’
‘Round the other side of the house.’
‘Is it kept locked?’
Nick’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘Oh! no. Of course not.’
‘Anyone could tamper with the car unobserved?’
‘Well—yes—I suppose so. But it’s so silly.’
‘No, Mademoiselle. It is not silly. You do not understand. You are in danger—grave danger. I tell it to you. I! And you do not know who I am?’
‘No?’ said Nick, breathlessly.
‘I am Hercule Poirot.’
‘Oh!’ said Nick, in rather a flat tone. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘You know my name, eh?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She wriggled uncomfortably. A hunted look came into her eyes. Poirot observed her keenly.
‘You are not at ease. That means, I suppose, that you have not read my books.’
‘Well—no—not all of them. But I know the name, of course.’
‘Mademoiselle, you are a polite little liar.’ (I started, remembering the words spoken at the Majestic Hotel that day after lunch.) ‘I forget—you are only a child—you would not have heard. So quickly does fame pass. My friend there—he will tell you.’
Nick looked at me. I cleared my throat, somewhat embarrassed.
‘Monsieur Poirot is—er—was—a great detective,’ I explained.
‘Ah! my friend,’ cried Poirot. ‘Is that all you can find to say? Mais dis donc! Say then to Mademoiselle that I am a detective unique, unsurpassed, the greatest that ever lived!’
‘That is now unnecessary,’ I said coldly. ‘You have told her yourself.’
‘Ah, yes, but it is more agreeable to have been able to preserve the modesty. One should not sing one’s own praises.’
‘One should not keep a dog and have to bark oneself,’ agreed Nick, with mock sympathy. ‘Who is the dog, by the way? Dr Watson, I presume.’
‘My name is Hastings,’ I said coldly.
‘Battle of—1066,’ said Nick. ‘Who said I wasn’t educated? Well, this is all too, too marvellous! Do you think someone really wants to do away with me? It would be thrilling. But, of course, that sort of thing doesn’t really happen. Only in books. I expect Monsieur Poirot is like a surgeon who’s invented an operation or a doctor who’s found an obscure disease and wants everyone to have it.’
‘Sacré tonnerre!’ thundered Poirot. ‘Will you be serious? You young people of today, will nothing make you serious? It would not have been a joke, Mademoiselle, if you had been lying in the hotel garden a pretty little corpse with a nice little hole through your head instead of your hat. You would not have laughed then—eh?’
‘Unearthly laughter heard at a séance,’ said Nick. ‘But seriously, M. Poirot—it’s very kind of you and all that—but the whole thing must be an accident.’
‘You are as obstinate as the devil!’
‘That’s where I got my name from. My grandfather was popularly supposed to have sold his soul to the devil. Everyone round here called him Old Nick. He was a wicked old man—but great fun. I adored him. I went everywhere with him and so they called us Old Nick and Young Nick. My real name is Magdala.’
‘That is an uncommon name.’
‘Yes, it’s a kind of family one. There have been lots of Magdalas in the Buckley family. There’s one up there.’ She nodded at a picture on the wall.
‘Ah!’ said Poirot. Then looking at a portrait hanging over the mantelpiece, he said:
‘Is that your grandfather, Mademoiselle?’
‘Yes, rather an arresting portait, isn’t it? Jim Lazarus offered to buy it, I wouldn’t sell. I’ve got an affection for Old Nick.’
‘Ah!’ Poirot was silent for a minute, then he said very earnestly:
‘Revenons à nos moutons. Listen, Mademoiselle. I implore you to be serious. You are in danger. Today, somebody shot at you with a Mauser pistol—’
‘A Mauser pistol?—’
For a moment she was startled.
‘Yes, why? Do you know of anyone who has a Mauser pistol?’
She smiled.
‘I’ve got one myself.’
‘You have?’
‘Yes—it was Dad’s. He brought it back from the War. It’s been knocking round here ever since. I saw it only the other day in that drawer.’
She indicated an old-fashioned bureau. Now, as though suddenly struck by an idea, she crossed to it and pulled the drawer open. She turned rather blankly. Her voice held a new note.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘It’s—it’s gone.’
CHAPTER 3 (#u103a12f1-b330-5e08-9a43-f39a6c8349fd)
Accidents? (#u103a12f1-b330-5e08-9a43-f39a6c8349fd)
It was from that moment that the conversation took on a different tone. Up to now, Poirot and the girl had been at cross-purposes. They were separated by a gulf of years. His fame and reputation meant nothing to her—she was of the generation that knows only the great names of the immediate moment. She was, therefore, unimpressed by his warnings. He was to her only a rather comic elderly foreigner with an amusingly melodramatic mind.
And this attitude baffled Poirot. To begin with, his vanity suffered. It was his constant dictum that all the world knew Hercule Poirot. Here was someone who did not. Very good for him, I could not but feel—but not precisely helpful to the object in view!
With the discovery of the missing pistol, however, the affair took on a new phase. Nick ceased to treat it as a mildly amusing joke. She still treated the matter lightly, because it was her habit and her creed to treat all occurrences lightly, but there was a distinct difference in her manner.
She came back and sat down on the arm of a chair, frowning thoughtfully.
‘That’s odd,’ she said.
Poirot whirled round on me.
‘You remember, Hastings, the little idea I mentioned? Well, it was correct, my little idea! Supposing Mademoiselle had been found shot lying in the hotel garden? She might not have been found for some hours—few people pass that way. And beside her hand—just fallen from it—is her own pistol. Doubtless the good Madame Ellen would identify it. There would be suggestions, no doubt, of worry or of sleeplessness—’
Nick moved uneasily.
‘That’s true. I have been worried to death. Everybody’s been telling me I’m nervy. Yes—they’d say all that…’
‘And bring in a verdict of suicide. Mademoiselle’s fingerprints conveniently on the pistol and nobody else’s—but yes, it would be very simple and convincing.’
‘How terribly amusing!’ said Nick, but not, I was glad to note, as though she were terribly amused.
Poirot accepted her words in the conventional sense in which they were uttered.
‘N’est ce pas? But you understand, Mademoiselle, there must be no more of this. Four failures—yes—but the fifth time there may be a success.’
‘Bring out your rubber-tyred hearses,’ murmured Nick.
‘But we are here, my friend and I, to obviate all that!’
I felt grateful for the ‘we’. Poirot has a habit of sometimes ignoring my existence.
‘Yes,’ I put in. ‘You mustn’t be alarmed, Miss Buckley. We will protect you.’
‘How frightfully nice of you,’ said Nick. ‘I think the whole thing is perfectly marvellous. Too, too thrilling.’
She still preserved her airy detached manner, but her eyes, I thought, looked troubled.
‘And the first thing to do,’ said Poirot, ‘is to have the consultation.’
He sat down and beamed upon her in a friendly manner.
‘To begin with, Mademoiselle, a conventional question—but—have you any enemies?’
Nick shook her head rather regretfully.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said apologetically.
‘Bon. We will dismiss that possibility then. And now we ask the question of the cinema, of the detective novel—Who profits by your death, Mademoiselle?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Nick. ‘That’s why it all seems such nonsense. There’s this beastly old barn, of course, but it’s mortgaged up to the hilt, the roof leaks and there can’t be a coal mine or anything exciting like that hidden in the cliff.’
‘It is mortgaged—hein?’
‘Yes. I had to mortgage it. You see there were two lots of death duties—quite soon after each other. First my grandfather died—just six years ago, and then my brother. That just about put the lid on the financial position.’
‘And your father?’
