Читать книгу The Mystery of Three Quarters - Sophie Hannah - Страница 10

The next morning felt peculiar to Hercule Poirot. By ten o’clock, no stranger had telephoned. Nobody had appeared at Whitehaven Mansions to accuse him of accusing them of the murder of Barnabas Pandy. He waited in until forty minutes after eleven (one never knew when a faulty alarm clock might cause an accusee to oversleep), then set off across town to Pleasant’s Coffee House.

Unofficially in charge at Pleasant’s was a young waitress by the name of Euphemia Spring. Everyone called her Fee for short. Poirot liked her enormously. She said the most unexpected things. Her flyaway hair defied gravity by refusing to lie flat against her head, though there was nothing floaty or flighty about her mind, which was always sharply in focus. She made the finest coffee in London, then did all she could to discourage customers from drinking it. Tea, she was fond of proclaiming, was a far superior beverage and beneficial to health, whereas coffee apparently led to sleepless nights and ruination of every sort.

Poirot continued to drink Fee’s excellent coffee in spite of her warnings and entreaties, and had noticed that on many subjects (other than the aforementioned) she had much wisdom to impart. One of her areas of expertise was Poirot’s friend and occasional helper Inspector Edward Catchpool—which was why he was here.

The coffee house was starting to fill with people. Moisture dripped down the insides of the windows. Fee was serving a gentleman on the other side of the room when Poirot walked in, but she waved at him with her left hand: an eloquent gesture that told him precisely where to sit and wait for her.

Poirot sat. He straightened the cutlery on the table in front of him as he always did, and tried not to look at the teapot collection that filled the high shelves on the walls. He found the sight of them unbearable: all angled differently and apparently at random. There was no logic to it. To be someone who cared about teapots, enough to collect so many, and yet not to see the need to point all the spouts in the same direction … Poirot had long suspected Fee of creating a deliberately haphazard arrangement solely to cause him distress. He had once, when the teapots were lined up in a more conventional fashion, remarked that one was positioned incorrectly. Each time he had come to Pleasant’s since that day, there had been no pattern at all. Fee Spring did not respond well to criticism.

She appeared by his side and slammed a plate down between his knife and fork. There was a slice of cake on it, one Poirot had not ordered. ‘I’ll be needing your help,’ she said, before he could ask her about Catchpool, ‘but you’ll have to eat up first.’

It was her famous Church Window Cake, so called because each slice comprised two yellow and two pink squares that were supposed to resemble the stained glass of a church window. Poirot found the name bothersome. Church windows were coloured, yes, but they were also transparent and made of glass. One might as well call it ‘Chess Board Cake’—that was what it brought to Poirot’s mind when he saw it: a chess board, albeit too small and in the wrong colours.

‘I telephoned to Scotland Yard this morning,’ he told Fee. ‘They say that Catchpool is at the seaside on holiday, with his mother. This did not sound to me likely.’

‘Eat,’ said Fee.

‘Oui, mais—’

‘But you want to know where Edward is. Why? Has something happened?’ She had started, in recent months, to refer to Catchpool as ‘Edward’, though never when he was present, Poirot noticed.

‘Do you know where he is?’ Poirot asked her.

‘Might do.’ Fee grinned. ‘I’ll gladly tell all’s I know, once you’ve said you’ll help me. Now, eat.’

Poirot sighed. ‘How will it help you if I eat a slice of your cake?’

Fee sat down beside him and rested both her elbows on the table. ‘It’s not my cake,’ she whispered, as if talking about something shameful. ‘Looks the same, tastes the same, but it isn’t mine. That’s the problem.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Were you ever served by a girl here, name of Philippa—all bones, teeth like a horse?’

‘Non. She does not sound familiar.’

‘She wasn’t here long. I caught her pilfering food and had to have words. Not that she didn’t need feeding up, but I wasn’t having her taking food from plates of those who’d paid fair and square. I told her she was welcome to leftovers, but that weren’t good enough for her. Didn’t like being spoken to like a thief—thieves never do—and so she never came back after. Well, now she’s at the new coffee house, Kemble’s, near the wine merchants’ place on Oxford Street. They can keep her and good luck to ’em—but then customers start telling me she’s making my cake. I didn’t believe ’em at first. How could she know the recipe? Passed down from my great-granny, it were, to my granny, then my ma, then to me. I’d cut out my own tongue before I’d tell it to anyone outside the family, and I haven’t, to no one—certainly not to her. I’ve not written it down. Only way she could know’s if she’s secretly watched me making it … and when I thought carefully, I thought, yes, she might’ve. She’d have only needed to do it once if she’d paid attention, and I can’t swear she didn’t. All that time, the two of us together in a tiny kitchen …’

Fee pointed an accusatory finger, as if the kitchen of Pleasant’s were to blame. ‘Easy enough to look like she’s busy with somethin’ else. And she was a proper little sneak-about. Anyhow, I had to go and try it, didn’t I? And I think they’re right, those who’ve told me she’s making my cake. I think they’re dead right!’ Her eyes blazed with indignation.

‘What would you like me to do, mademoiselle?’

‘Haven’t I said? Haven’t I been saying? Eat that and tell me if I’m right or wrong. That’s hers, not mine. I shoved it in a coat pocket when she wasn’t looking. She never even knew I was in her coffee house, that’s how careful I was. I went in disguise—wore a proper costume!’

Poirot did not wish to eat a slice of cake that had been in anybody’s pocket. ‘I have not sampled your Church Window Cake for many months,’ he told Fee. ‘My memory of it is not strong enough to judge. Besides, one does not remember taste accurately—it is impossible.’

‘D’you think I don’t know that?’ said Fee impatiently. ‘I’ll give you a slice of mine next, won’t I? I’ll get it right now.’ She stood up. ‘Have a little bite of one, then the other. Then do it again, a little bite from each. Tell me if they couldn’t all come from the same slice.’

‘If I do this, you will tell me where is Catchpool?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I said I’d tell you where Edward is if you’ll help me.’

‘And I have agreed to taste—’

‘The tasting’s not the helping,’ Fee said firmly. ‘That’ll come after.’

Hercule Poirot rarely allowed himself to be bent to the will of others, but to resist Fee Spring was a fool’s enterprise. He waited until she returned with another slice of Church Window Cake that looked identical to the first and then, obediently, sampled both. To be certain, he tasted three pieces from each one.

Fee watched him closely. Finally she could control herself no longer and demanded, ‘Well? Is it the same or not?’

‘I can taste no difference,’ Poirot told her. ‘None at all. But, mademoiselle, I am afraid that there is no statute that prevents one person from making the same cake as another, if she has observed with her own eyes—’

‘Oh, I’m not after using the law against her. All’s I want to know is if she thinks she’s stolen from me or not.’

‘I see,’ said Poirot. ‘You are interested not in the legal offence but in the moral one.’

‘I want you to go to her coffee house, order her cake, and then ask her about it. Ask where she got the recipe.’

‘What if she says, “It is the one used by Fee Spring of Pleasant’s”?’

‘Then I’ll go see her myself, and tell her what she doesn’t know: that the Spring family recipe’s not to be used by anyone else. If it’s an honest mistake, that’s how I’ll treat it.’

‘And what will you do if she answers more evasively?’ Poirot asked. ‘Or if she says boldly that she got the recipe for her cake from somewhere else, and you do not believe her?’

Fee smiled and narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, I’ll soon have her regretting it,’ she said, then quickly added, ‘Not in a way as’d make you wish you hadn’t helped me, mind.’

‘I am glad to hear that, mademoiselle. If you will allow Poirot to offer you a piece of wise advice: the pursuit of revenge is rarely a good idea.’

‘Neither’s sitting around twiddling your thumbs when folks have made off with what’s rightfully yours,’ said Fee decisively. ‘What I want from you’s the help I’ve asked for, not advice I didn’t asked for.’

‘Je comprends,’ said Poirot.

‘Good.’

‘Please. Where is Catchpool?’

Fee grinned. ‘At the seaside with his ma, just like Scotland Yard said.’

Poirot’s face assumed a stern look. ‘I see that I have been tricked,’ he said.

‘Hardly! You didn’t believe it when they told you. Now I’m telling you it’s true, so’s you know. That’s where he is. Great Yarmouth, out east.’

‘As I said before … this does not sound likely.’

‘He didn’t want to go but he had to, to get the old girl to leave him be. She’d found another perfect wife for him.’

‘Ah!’ Poirot was familiar with Catchpool’s mother’s ambition to see her son settled with a nice young lady.

‘And this one had so much going in her favour—a right looker, Edward said she was, and from a respectable family. Kind, too, and cultivated. He found it harder than usual to say no.’

‘To his mother? Or did the jolie femme make to him the proposal of marriage?’

Fee laughed. ‘No—it was his ma’s notion and that was all. It knocked the stuffing out of the old girl when he said he wasn’t interested. She must’ve thought, “If he won’t be persuaded, even for this one …” Edward decided he had to do something to lift her spirits, and she loves Great Yarmouth, so that’s where they are.’

‘It is February,’ said Poirot crossly. ‘To go to an English seaside resort in February is to invite misery, is it not?’ What a dismal time Catchpool must be having, he thought. He ought to return to London at once so that Poirot could discuss with him the matter of Barnabas Pandy.

‘Excuse me, M. Poirot? M. Hercule Poirot?’ A tentative voice interrupted his thoughts. He turned to find a smartly attired man beaming at him as if suffused with the greatest joy.

‘Hercule Poirot, c’est moi,’ he confirmed.

The man extended his hand. ‘How delightful to meet you,’ he said. ‘Your reputation is formidable. It’s hard to judge what one ought to say to such a great man. I’m Dockerill—Hugo Dockerill.’

Fee eyed the new arrival suspiciously. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget you’ve promised to help me,’ she warned Poirot before leaving the table. He assured her that he would not forget, then invited the smiling man to sit.

Hugo Dockerill was almost completely bald, though not yet fifty, Poirot guessed.

‘I’m terribly sorry to accost you in this manner,’ Dockerill said, sounding jolly and not at all regretful. ‘Your valet told me I might find you here. He encouraged me to make an appointment for later this afternoon, but I’m awfully anxious to clear up the misunderstanding. So I told him I’d rather seek you out sooner, and when I explained to him what it was all about, he seemed to think that you might want to see me rather urgently—so here I am!’ He guffawed loudly, as if he’d told a hilarious anecdote.

‘Misunderstanding?’ Poirot said. He was starting to wonder if perhaps a fourth letter … but no, how could that be? Would any person, even the most enthusiastic and optimistic, beam with delight in such circumstances?

‘Yes. I received your letter two days ago, and … well, I’m sure the fault is entirely mine and I’d hate you to think I’m levelling any sort of criticism at you—I’m absolutely not,’ Hugo Dockerill chattered on. ‘In fact, I’m a keen admirer of your work, from what I’ve heard of it, but … well, I must have unwittingly done something that’s given you the wrong idea. For that, I apologize. I do sometimes get into a bit of a muddle. You’d only need to ask my wife Jane—she’d tell you. I planned to track you down at once, after I got your letter, but I misplaced it almost immediately—’

‘Monsieur,’ said Poirot sternly. ‘To which letter are you referring?’

‘The one about … well, about old Barnabas Pandy,’ said Hugo Dockerill, beaming with renewed vitality now that the crucial name had been uttered. ‘I wouldn’t normally dare to suggest that the amazing Hercule Poirot might be wrong about something, but on this occasion … I’m afraid it wasn’t me. I thought that … well, if you could tell me what has led you to believe it was, maybe between us we could get this funny mess ironed out. As I say, I’m sure the misunderstanding is entirely my fault.’

‘You say it was not you, monsieur. What was not you?’

‘The person who murdered Barnabas Pandy,’ said Hugo Dockerill.

Having declared himself innocent of murder, Hugo Dockerill picked up an unused fork from the place setting opposite Poirot and helped himself to a chunk of Fee Spring’s Church Window Cake. Or perhaps it was Philippa the pilferer’s slice; Poirot could no longer remember which was which.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Dockerill said. ‘Shame for it to go to waste. Don’t tell my wife! She’s always complaining I’ve got the table manners of a guttersnipe. But we boys are a bit more robust when it comes to filling our bellies, eh?’

Poirot, aghast that anyone would find a half-eaten slice of cake tempting, made a tactfully non-specific noise. He permitted himself to reflect, briefly, upon similarity and difference. When many people do or say precisely the same thing, the effect is the opposite of what one might expect. Now two women and two men had come forward to communicate the same message: that they had received a letter signed in the name of Hercule Poirot and accusing them of the murder of Barnabas Pandy. Instead of pondering the similarities between these four encounters, Poirot found himself intrigued by the differences. He was now firmly of the view that if you wanted to see clearly how one person’s character diverged from that of another, the most efficient method was to place both in identical situations.

Sylvia Rule was egotistical and full of proud rage. Like John McCrodden, she was in the grip of a powerful obsession with a particular person. Both believed Poirot must have done the bidding of that person in writing the letters, be it Rowland ‘Rope’ McCrodden or the mysterious Eustace. John McCrodden’s anger, Poirot thought, was equal to Sylvia Rule’s but different: less explosive, more enduring. He would not forget, whereas she might if a new and more pressing drama occurred.

Of the four, Annabel Treadway was the hardest to fathom. She had not been angry at all, but she was withholding something. And afflicted, somehow.

Hugo Dockerill was the first and only letter-recipient to remain cheerful in the face of his predicament, and certainly the first to demonstrate a belief that all the world’s problems could be solved if only decent people sat down at a table together and set things straight. If he objected to being accused of murder, he concealed it well. He was still doing his best to split his face across the middle with a radiant smile, and muttering, between mouthfuls of Church Window Cake, about how sorry he was if anything he’d done had created the impression that he might be a killer.

‘Do not keep apologizing,’ Poirot told him. ‘You spoke of “old Barnabas Pandy” a moment ago. Why did you refer to him in that way?’

‘Well, he was on his way to being a hundred years old when he died, wasn’t he?’

‘So you knew Monsieur Pandy?’

‘I had never met him, but I knew about him, of course—because of Timothy.’

‘Who is Timothy?’ asked Poirot. ‘I should explain, monsieur, that the letter you received did not come from me. I knew nothing of a Barnabas Pandy until I was visited by three people who were all sent the same letter. And now a fourth: you. These letters were signed “Hercule Poirot” by a deceiver. A fraud! They did not come from me. I have accused nobody of the murder of Monsieur Pandy—who, I believe, died of natural causes.’

‘Golly!’ Hugo Dockerill’s broad smile dipped a little as his eyes filled with confusion. ‘What a rum do. Silly prank, was it?’

‘Who is Timothy?’ Poirot asked again.

‘Timothy Lavington—he’s old Pandy’s great-grandson. I’m his housemaster at school. Turville. Pandy himself was a pupil there, as was Timothy’s father—both Old Turvillians. As am I. Only difference is, I never left the place!’ Dockerill chortled.

‘I see. So you are acquainted with Timothy Lavington’s family?’

‘Yes. But, as I say, I never met old Pandy.’

‘When did Barnabas Pandy die?’

‘I couldn’t tell you the exact date. It was late last year, I think. November or December.’ This matched what Annabel Treadway had said.

‘In your capacity as housemaster, you were told, I assume, that the great-grandfather of one of your charges was deceased?’

‘Yes, I was. We were all a bit glum about it. Still, the old boy lived to a ripe old age. We should all be so lucky!’ The joyous smile was back in place. ‘And if one has to go, I suppose there are worse ways than drowning.’

‘Drowning?’

‘Yes. Poor old Pandy fell asleep in his bath and sank down under the water. Drowned. Horrible accident. There was never any talk of it being anything else.’

Annabel Treadway had spoken of her grandfather falling asleep. Poirot had assumed this meant he had died naturally in the night. She had said nothing about a bath or drowning. Had she deliberately withheld that part of the story?

‘This was what you believed until you received a letter signed in the name of Hercule Poirot—that Monsieur Pandy drowned in his bathtub, accidentally?’

‘It’s what everybody believes,’ said Hugo Dockerill. ‘There was an inquest that returned a verdict of accidental death. I remember hearing Jane, my wife, commiserating with young Timothy. I suppose the inquest must have got it wrong, what?’

‘Do you have the letter with you?’ Poirot asked him.

‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t. As I said, I mislaid it. I lost it twice, in fact. I found it the first time—that’s how I had your address—but then it went astray again. I looked for the blasted thing before I set off for London, but couldn’t lay my hands on it. I do hope one of our boys hasn’t got his grubby mitts on it. I should hate for anybody to think I stand accused of murder—especially when, as it turns out, you have accused me of no such thing!’

‘Do you and your wife have children?’

‘Not yet. We’re hoping to. Oh—I’m speaking as a housemaster when I say “our boys”. We’ve got seventy-five of the little blighters! My wife is a saint to put up with them, I always say, and she always says that they’re no trouble at all, and if she’s a saint then it’s for putting up with me.’ A predictable guffaw followed.

‘Perhaps you could ask your wife to help you search the house?’ said Poirot. ‘So far, not one person has brought me their letter. It would be very helpful if I could see at least one.’

‘Of course. I should have thought of that. Jane’ll find it, I have no doubt. She’s tremendous! She has a talent for finding things, though she denies it. She says to me, “You’d find all the same things I find, Hugo, if you’d only open your eyes and engage your brain.” She’s marvellous!’

‘Do you know a woman by the name of Annabel Treadway, monsieur?’

Hugo’s smile widened. ‘Annabel! Of course. She’s Timothy’s aunt, and old Pandy’s—what would it be? Let me think. Timothy’s mother Lenore is Pandy’s granddaughter, so … yes, Annabel was his … erm … She’s Lenore’s sister, so … she was also Pandy’s grand-daughter.’

Poirot suspected that Hugo Dockerill was one of the stupidest people he had ever met.

‘Lenore is usually accompanied by both Annabel and her daughter Ivy—Timothy’s sister—when she comes to Turville, so I’ve got to know Annabel rather well over the years. I’m afraid, M. Poirot, that therein lies a tale, as they say. I proposed to Annabel some years ago. Marriage, you know. Quite head over heels, I was. Oh—I wasn’t married to my wife at the time,’ Dockerill clarified.

‘I am glad to hear, monsieur, that you did not make a bigamous proposal.’

‘What? Golly, no. I was a bachelor then. It was peculiar, actually. To this day I can’t make sense of it. Annabel seemed thrilled when I asked her, and then, almost immediately, she burst into tears and refused me. Women are nothing if not changeable, as every man knows—apart from Jane. She’s tremendously reliable. But still … saying no seemed to upset Annabel dreadfully—so much so, I suggested to her that changing her “no” to a “yes” might make her feel more chipper.’

‘What was her reaction?’

‘A firm “no”, I’m afraid. Ah, well, these things have a way of working out for the best, don’t they? Jane’s so wonderful with our boys. Annabel assured me when she rejected me that she would have been hopeless with them. I don’t know why she thought that, devoted to Timothy and Ivy as she is. And she truly is—like a second mother to them. I’ve wondered more than once if she was secretly afraid of having her own children—in case it weakened her motherly bond with her niece and nephew. Or maybe it was the sheer number of boys in my house that discouraged her. They are rather like a herd of beasts sometimes, and Annabel’s a quiet creature. But then, as I say, she dotes on young Timothy, who’s hardly the easiest of boys. He’s given us a spot of trouble over the years.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Poirot.

‘Oh, nothing serious. I’m sure he’ll shake out all right. Like a lot of Turville boys, he can be rather self-congratulatory when no such congratulations are in order. Sometimes carries on as if school rules don’t apply to him. As if he’s above them. Jane blames it on …’ Hugo Dockerill broke off. ‘Whoops!’ he laughed. ‘Mustn’t be indiscreet.’

‘Nothing you tell me will go any further,’ Poirot assured him.

‘I was only going to say that as far as his mother is concerned, nothing is ever Timothy’s fault. Once when I felt I absolutely had to punish him for insubordination—Jane insisted—I got punished myself by Lenore Lavington. She didn’t speak to me for nearly six months. Not one word!’

‘Do you know a John McCrodden?’ Poirot asked.

‘No, I’m afraid not. Should I?’

‘What about Sylvia Rule?’

‘Yes, I know Sylvia.’ Hugo beamed, happy to be able to answer in the affirmative.

Poirot was surprised. He had been wrong again. There was nothing he found more disconcerting. He had assumed that there were two pairs of two, he mused, like the two yellow squares and two pink squares in a slice of Church Window Cake: Sylvia Rule and John McCrodden, who did not know Barnabas Pandy and had never heard his name; and the other pair, the pair who had known Pandy or at least known of him, Annabel Treadway and Hugo Dockerill.

Incorrectly, Poirot had assumed these pairs would remain neatly separate, as distinct as the yellow squares and the pink squares of the cake. Now, however, things were messy: Hugo Dockerill knew Sylvia Rule.

‘How do you know her?’

‘Her son Freddie is a pupil at Turville. He’s in the same year as Timothy Lavington.’

‘How old are these two boys?’

‘Twelve, I think. Both in the Second Form, at any rate, and both in my house. Very different boys. Goodness me, they couldn’t be more different! Timothy’s a popular, gregarious young fellow, always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Poor Freddie is a loner. He doesn’t seem to have any friends. Spends a lot of time helping Jane, in fact. She’s tremendous. “No boy here will be lonely if I’ve got anything to do with it,” she often says. Means it, too!’

Had Sylvia Rule lied about not knowing Pandy? Poirot wondered. Would a person necessarily know the name of their son’s school acquaintance’s great-grandfather, particularly when the surnames were different? Timothy’s last name was Lavington, not Pandy.

‘So Madame Rule has a son who is in the same house at school as the great-grandson of Barnabas Pandy,’ Poirot muttered, more to himself than to Hugo Dockerill.

‘Golly. Does she?’

‘That is what we have established, monsieur.’ Perhaps it was only family relationships that Hugo Dockerill struggled with. That and knowing where things were—things like important letters.

Dockerill’s smile dimmed as he struggled to make sense of Poirot’s announcement. ‘A son who … the great-grandson of … Of course! Yes, she does. She does indeed!’

This meant, thought Poirot, that it was not so simple as two pink squares and two yellow; it was not a case of pairs. Three recipients of the letter could be linked to Barnabas Pandy most definitively, and one could not—at least, not yet.

Two questions interested Poirot: had Barnabas Pandy been murdered? And was John McCrodden the odd one out? Or was he also connected to the deceased Pandy in a manner that was not yet clear?