Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mystery 2) (15 page)

An hour later, unable to find Claudia Playford in the house or the gardens immediately around it, I walked to the highest point I could find in Lillieoak’s grounds, which was also the most exposed. Up here, the wind hit the skin like something solid and hard. For some reason, I found myself thinking again about Phyllis’s claim that Randall Kimpton had copied Scotcher. I was torn between concluding that this imitation must have been obvious enough to be noticeable to Phyllis, since she had noticed it, and thinking that if Kimpton had set out to copy anybody, he would surely have done it more successfully.

Really, he and Scotcher were not at all alike. Fundamentally, they were opposites. Scotcher’s defining characteristic, it seemed to me, was that he tried hard, always, to make others feel better about themselves and about life in general, whereas Kimpton sought only to make himself feel better and appear superior.

I don’t know how long I stood there pondering, but in due course I heard a voice behind me: Claudia’s. ‘Have you been looking for me?’ she asked.

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, startled. How the devil had she got up here without my seeing her? Had she been up here already? ‘Sergeant O’Dwyer and I wanted to speak to you, yes.’

‘Then why hide away here where the wind might blow you away? I assume you wish to know if Sophie Bourlet is telling the truth about what she says she saw me do? You will have heard what I have told others, but you wish to put the question yourself, and watch my expression as I answer.’

‘Yes.’

Claudia smiled. She seemed to enjoy making me wait for her answer. ‘Sophie is not telling the truth,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s a lie—unless someone else dressed in my clothes and wore a wig, and kept their face turned away, and Sophie saw that person attacking Joseph and assumed it must be me. Have you thought of that?’

‘No. Did you like Joseph Scotcher, Miss Playford?’

She laughed. ‘Like him? Not at all. I did, however,
enjoy
him. I found his presence at Lillieoak wonderfully entertaining. It’s going to be awfully colourless without him here.’

‘You mean that he was a talented raconteur?’

‘He had a singular way with words—but no, I meant that everybody was in love with him and it was quite funny to watch. Phyllis slobbered over him like a helpless creature, and Sophie fainted with desire every time he looked in her direction. And then there was Mother, of course. I found it fascinating to observe how Joseph did it, how he reeled them in and kept them all adoring him while he felt nothing for any of them, really. He loved the idea of everybody falling in love with Joseph Scotcher more than he loved any real people.’

‘You counted your mother among Scotcher’s admirers,’ I said. ‘Surely you mean she loved him in a motherly way?’

‘Oh, heavens, not you as well! You must pay no attention to Dorro and her ridiculous substitute-for-dead-child theory. Everything is about babies for Dorro, ever since she failed to have any herself. If you listen to her, a boiled egg looks like a baby! Mother might be an old bird but there is plenty of pep left in her. She loved Joseph in the same way that Phyllis and Sophie loved him. Oh, she would die rather than admit it. She knew the feelings she ought to have had for him were those of a mother figure, so she pretended they were. Not for the sake of convention, you understand—Mother loves to be unconventional—but to avoid being spurned and laughed at. She is a very proud woman.’ Claudia’s eyes narrowed. ‘I see you are not convinced.’

‘Well …’

‘You are aware that I am not as fond of her as a daughter ought to be of her mother, and so you wonder if I am simply being cruel. I would too, in your position. I assure you, this is my clear-eyed assessment of the facts. I shall be cruel about Mother a little later, perhaps—I do so enjoy it, and she amply deserves it—but at the moment I am trying to help you understand. Mother was desperately in love with Joseph. Why else do you think she changed her will to leave him every last penny? He was due to die of Bright’s disease in the very near future.’

‘Scotcher did not respond well to the news of the new will,’ I said. ‘He became severely agitated.’

Claudia made an impatient noise. ‘He
pretended
to be aghast, but that’s all it was: a charade. What would you expect him to do: leap up and shout, “Hip hip hooray, I’m going to be divinely rich!”?’

‘He was not going to be rich unless Lady Playford predeceased him and, even if she had, he would then only have been rich for a few weeks or months.’

Claudia laughed. ‘Which was it—weeks or months? I take it you are an expert on Bright’s disease?’

‘Far from it.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Scotcher’s distress that you call a pretence was as convincing as any true distress I have witnessed,’ I said.

‘Well, of course it was,’ said Claudia. ‘That’s why I’m sorry he is no longer around. Joseph was a magician!’

‘Do you mean that he lied habitually?’

‘Oh, no—nothing as ordinary as that.
Everybody
lies habitually. Oh, look—Monsieur Poirot is here.’

I looked down through the branches of a cluster of hawthorn trees to the sweep of Lillieoak’s driveway. Claudia was right: Poirot, Inspector Conree and Sophie Bourlet had returned from Ballygurteen.

‘Joseph really was a marvel,’ Claudia went on. ‘He cast powerful spells with nothing more than words. If he were here now, he could convince you in less than five minutes that you are not a Scotland Yard policeman but a lion tamer escaped from a travelling circus. Oh, Mother lost no time in falling in love with him. She too is a words person, you see. Until she met Joseph, she had not encountered anybody who was as adept with words as she herself was.’

‘Do you know of a woman named Iris?’ I asked.

‘Iris Gillow?’ said Claudia at once. ‘Iris Morphet?’

I blinked several times. ‘You know of
two
Irises! Nobody else has been able to suggest any.’

‘You have not asked Randall, then?’ said Claudia.

‘Not yet, no.’

‘I see. Iris Morphet and Iris Gillow are the same person. Were. She died. Randall will be able to tell you all about her. I could tell you myself, but it’s his story. You ought to hear it from him. Look, here he comes now!’ The burst of joy in her voice suggested that a saviour had arrived from on high. Kimpton was still some way off, too. The mere sight of him in the distance was apparently enough to send Claudia into raptures.

‘What are you thinking about me?’ She eyed me with suspicion. ‘Perhaps you have trouble believing that I love Randall as much as I seem to, when I do nothing but denounce and deride everybody else.’

‘I have no trouble believing that you are as fond of him as you purport to be. It is obvious that you love him very much. I suppose …’

Claudia tilted her head and almost smiled. ‘There is something you would like to ask me?’

‘The first time we met, you mentioned that Dr Kimpton had won your affection twice.’

‘Yes. And my affection is not easily won.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘It took him
years
the first time. I knew I would accept him eventually—I
adored
him from our first conversation—but if I succumbed too readily, I feared he might stop trying. And Randall trying—a man of his intelligence and single-minded determination—well, there is nothing more satisfying than watching him put every effort into his campaign to win me over.’ Her smile faded, and was replaced by a more mundane expression. ‘But of course I had to let him succeed in due course, and I did. And then five—no, nearly six years ago—his manner towards me suddenly changed. He seemed to have lost his confidence—it was repulsive! Confidence is the nature of a man like Randall. It is his essence. I did not want him without it—he was no longer himself, I thought—and so I called for its return.’

‘What happened?’

‘He confessed to uncertainty about whether he wanted to marry me. Doubts!’ Claudia waved her diamond ring in front of my face. ‘I took this off and threw it at him. Naturally, I told him I never wanted to see him again as long as I lived. But the very next day, there he was, outside my window. Oh, not at Lillieoak. I lived in Oxford then. I was one of the first women to matriculate from the university there—I don’t suppose anyone bothered to tell you that, did they? My achievements are recognized by nobody but me. I moved back here to get away from Randall—who was desperately sorry and regretting his moment of doubt. “Well,” I thought to myself, “I intend to make you regret it a hundred times more than you could ever manage on your own.” That was when I moved back to Lillieoak. It didn’t deter Randall. He was always cluttering up the drawing room, weeping and begging to be forgiven, brandishing his diamond in the hope that it might prove to be a lucky charm.’

Claudia glanced at her ring. ‘It was pathetic.
He
was pathetic and I told him so. I was so foul to him, it made him angry and almost tyrannical in his insistence that I would wither and perish without his love. He said that I must choose him or nobody, because he would surely throttle any other man I chose. I liked him a little bit more once he stopped crying and drooling over me and started trying to lay down the law. He insisted that I would end up marrying him whether I wanted to or not. It struck me that I probably did want to, in fact. Randall is adorable when he’s fierce, and he had never been more so.’

The sort of mutual unpleasantness she was describing sounded nothing like love to me, but I was wise enough not to say so. ‘So you forgave him and became engaged to him a second time?’

‘After
years
of making him suffer the torments of the damned, yes. And he is still suffering, every day. I have not yet agreed to set a wedding date. Perhaps I never will. One doesn’t
absolutely
need to, you know.’ Claudia laughed at my shock, which I must have done a poor job of concealing.

Not caring if I approved of her or not, she went on, ‘One can still have fun and be just as deeply in love, without any danger of it wearing thin. Besides, Randall and I can’t marry until we’ve decided where we would live. I mean, live for the most part—we would have more than one house, of course. Randall can’t wait to get out of Oxford. He insists he will find a new job in County Cork and join me at Lillieoak, but I rather like Oxford. In Oxford, there are things to do besides stare at trees and sheep. Or we might try London—that would be thrilling! Do you enjoy living in London? Darling! You’re here at last!’

‘Hello, divine creature.’ Kimpton strode towards us. ‘I wish I could linger, and spend the rest of the day covering your beautiful face with kisses. But I can’t. Catchpool, make haste—you are needed.’

‘By whom?’ I asked. Something about his tone told me it was important.

‘By me, though I suppose I ought to say: by Joseph Scotcher most of all. Poirot, Conree and O’Dwyer await us in the parlour—or they will, by the time we get there.’

‘The parlour?’ I echoed.

‘Yes.’ Kimpton turned on his heel. I hurried after him towards the house.

‘Count yourself lucky to be invited,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘That puffed-up pest Conree did all he could to persuade me I should leave you and Poirot out of it and speak only to him and his halfwit toady. I told him: if he wants to hear what I’ve got to say, he had better not stand in the way of you and Poirot hearing it too. If I’m to perform, I would like to have at least a couple of decent brains in the audience.’

‘Perform? Kimpton, what is all this about?’

‘About? Why, Joseph Scotcher’s murder, of course,’ he said. ‘You’re all quite wrong about it—all you crime-solving chaps. Very, very wrong—and I shall prove it to you.’

Scotcher’s body had been removed from the parlour. I assumed it had been taken to a nearby mortuary, though all Conree was willing to offer us was the word ‘removed’. Having been forced by Kimpton to include Poirot and me in this little gathering, he was retaliating by withholding as much mundane information as possible—like a more virulent counterpart of Hatton, the butler.

Though Scotcher was gone, his wheelchair was still in the same spot, forlorn in the absence of its former occupant. The bloodstain on the oriental carpet marked where his head had lain, or what was left of it.

Poirot, Inspector Conree and Sergeant O’Dwyer sat on the chairs furthest from the blood, like tense audience members waiting for a show to begin.

‘I am confident that I know what this is about,’ Conree said as Kimpton and I entered the room. ‘You have my permission to raise the matter, Dr Kimpton. Poirot, Catchpool, I hope I can rely on your discretion.’

Stepping directly over the bloodstain, Kimpton approached Scotcher’s wheelchair and put his hand on it. ‘“Here I and sorrows sit,”’ he murmured. ‘“Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.”’

‘A quotation from Shakespeare’s
King John
?’ Poirot asked him.

‘At a time like this, old boy, I would draw upon no other dramatic work.’

‘You saw Scotcher’s wheelchair as a throne?’

‘Not really. Do not be so literal-minded. Ha!’ Kimpton’s eyes flared to underline the irony. ‘I, of course, am a fine one to talk!’

‘But you saw Joseph Scotcher as a king—the king of Lillieoak?’ Poirot persisted.

Kimpton smiled faintly. ‘Heir to Athie’s kingdom, yes. Monarch-in-waiting. I like that! You are quite right, Poirot. The crime is regicide, though no newspaper will report it as such.’

‘Would you have been a loyal subject of King Joseph, I wonder,’ Poirot mused aloud.

‘Wonder away, old stick. Have fun with your psychological confabulations. What harm can it do? Though I’m afraid I have brought us all here to talk about rather more pedestrian matters of fact.’

‘Come to the point,’ ordered Inspector Conree.

‘I shall. The bloodstain—look at it. Does anything strike you?’

‘Well, you may accuse me of fearing the worst, if you wish,’ said O’Dwyer, ‘but I can see it never coming out of that carpet. Lady Playford will need a new one.’

‘Quiet, O’Dwyer,’ Conree growled at him.

‘Oh, yes,’ the sergeant agreed, as if keeping quiet were next on his list of activities, and always had been.

‘Anything else?’ Kimpton looked at Poirot and me. ‘Shall I tell you? All right, then. I would swear to it that there is not enough blood for a murder committed in the way we have all been assuming it was committed. All except me, I should say. I wondered as soon as I saw Scotcher lying there. But it was only once his body was removed that I became sure.’

‘Sure of what?’ said Poirot.

‘That Scotcher wasn’t clubbed to death. Yes, somebody smashed his head to pieces with a club, but that was not what killed him. He must already have been dead when it happened.’

‘Well, I never,’ said O’Dwyer quietly.

‘If I had to guess, I’d say that he’d been dead around an hour by the time the club got to him,’ said Kimpton. ‘Sergeant O’Dwyer, did the police doctor say something similar? I saw you talking to him. Frankly, I find it hard to credit that any medical man would miss it.’

‘It would have been improper for Dr Clouder to say anything before performing the post-mortem,’ Inspector Conree huffed. His mood was deteriorating fast in the face of Kimpton attempting to take charge. ‘I discouraged him from speculating. There is to be an inquest, and, since we cannot anticipate its verdict, it would be indecorous of any of us to try.’

‘Indecorous?’ Kimpton guffawed at the ludicrous pronouncement. ‘Tommyrot—unless you are set on impeding your own investigation, Inspector.’

He walked around the wheelchair, positioned himself in front of Poirot and said, ‘If Scotcher had been killed by the blows from the club, there would be twice as much blood on the carpet as there is.’

‘Are you saying that Mr Scotcher died from his illness, and his murderer was unaware that he was dead already?’ O’Dwyer asked. ‘Now, if you are—and I’d be the first to allow that strange happenings are more common than people would think, but having said that—’

‘I do not believe Scotcher died from any illness,’ Kimpton cut him off impatiently. ‘Poirot, how well do you remember the scene as we saw it on the night of the murder? We ran down the stairs and were confronted by a monstrous sight. Scotcher’s head had taken a pretty thorough beating. There was not much left of it, but it was not entirely destroyed, if you recall.’

‘The lower part of his face was still intact,’ I said. ‘His mouth was fixed in a terrible grimace of pain.’

‘Full marks, Catchpool,’ said Kimpton. ‘I’m pleased you mentioned the grimace.’

‘
Mon Dieu
,’ Poirot said under his breath. ‘I have been a fool—a blind fool.’

‘Here, gentlemen, is my guess,’ said Kimpton. ‘It has as its foundation certain observations I have made in the course of my work as a pathologist. I have performed many post-mortems in cases of suspicious death, at the behest of the police. In one such case—a murder—the cause of death was poisoning. Strychnine.’

Inspector Conree hauled himself to his feet, red in the face. ‘We must stop this at once. I am in charge of—’

‘The victim of a strychnine death dies with what looks like a ghastly grin on his face,’ said Poirot as if Conree had not spoken. ‘Yet I did not think of it.
Je suis imbecile!
’

‘Indeed, the facial muscles spasm,’ said Kimpton. ‘That’s what causes the grimace or grin. It is also said of strychnine deaths that one ends up with a back so arched that both one’s head and one’s feet are on the floor. That’s an exaggeration, but there is some truth in it.’

‘Scotcher’s body lay in a most unnatural position,’ said Poirot. ‘Both were present: the arched back, the grin. I am ashamed that I did not see straight away what must have occurred.’

‘Well, I didn’t think of it, and I’m a doctor,’ Kimpton said. ‘It was only once the body had been removed and I was able to look at the amount of blood left behind that I was certain.’

‘Come along, O’Dwyer,’ said Conree. ‘You and I will not be part of this unsavoury exercise.’ He marched from the room, having first re-attached his chin to the top of his chest. O’Dwyer shrugged helplessly before following him.

‘Test every liquid you can find in Scotcher’s bedroom,’ Kimpton called after them. To Poirot and me, he said, ‘What an insufferable fustilugs! Might Sergeant O’Dwyer chop off his head with an axe, do we think? Here’s hoping. Back to Scotcher, now that we can speak freely. The inquest will tell us that he died from strychnine poisoning. What it won’t tell us is why somebody clubbed him about the head post-mortem. Rather a waste of time, expending all that energy trying to murder someone who is already dead, I should say. Any theories, Poirot? I have one if you don’t.’

‘I am interested to hear yours, monsieur.’

Kimpton smiled. ‘You must promise not to hold it against me if I turn out to be wrong.’

‘Naturally
.
Even Hercule Poirot is, on the very rare occasion, wrong.’

Kimpton walked over to the window and looked out. ‘I think our club-wielding culprit is Sophie Bourlet,’ he said. ‘That would explain her eagerness to blame it on Claudia. She must have believed she could fool the garda’s medical examiner. She wrongly assumed that he would see a mess of blood and brains, and conclude that the cause of death was obvious, and there was no need for a post-mortem or an inquest. Unpardonably foolish of her. As a nurse with a modicum of medical knowledge, she should have known better than to leave the lower part Scotcher’s face intact. The strychnine grin is a well-known phenomenon.’

‘Why should she wish to mislead anyone about the cause of death?’ I asked.

‘
Because
…’
Kimpton began with a sigh, as if my question were idiotic and the answer as plain as day, ‘… it was common knowledge that Sophie was in charge of administering all Scotcher’s medicines and tonics and whatever else he took. If she had wanted him dead, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for her to slip something into one of those bottles of his. If he’d turned up dead and it was a clear case of poisoning, the first name in everybody’s mind would have been Sophie’s. She had the opportunity several times each day.’

‘So, if you are correct, Sophie Bourlet did two things in order to divert suspicion from herself,’ said Poirot. ‘First, she bludgeoned Scotcher with a club after killing him with poison, in order to disguise the method that would suggest her as the most likely killer. Second, she took the further precaution of pretending to have witnessed Mademoiselle Claudia attacking him with the club.’

‘Quite so,’ said Kimpton.

‘Sophie claims to have heard as well as seen certain things,’ Poirot told him.

‘Heard?’

‘
Oui.
A conversation between Mademoiselle Claudia and Mr Scotcher, immediately before she attacked him with the club.’

A heavy sigh came from Kimpton. ‘Which must be a lie if Scotcher was already dead when the attack took place. Do continue, Poirot.’

‘Sophie swears that she heard Mr Scotcher beg for his life, and that, in response, Mademoiselle Claudia said, “This is what Iris should have done.”’

‘Iris?’ Kimpton spun round to face us. ‘Iris Gillow?’

The same name I had heard from Claudia Playford. Who was she?

‘I do not know which Iris, and Sophie Bourlet told me she did not know either,’ said Poirot.

‘What else did she hear?’ Kimpton demanded.

‘She did not recall precisely the words. “This is what Iris should have done.” And then “But she was too weak. She let you live, and so you killed her.” Or something similar. Does this mean something to you, Dr Kimpton? Who is Iris Gillow?’

Kimpton had lowered himself into an armchair and dropped his head into his hands. ‘I shall tell you, but … please, give me a moment to gather my thoughts,’ he murmured. ‘Iris. After all these years … But this is nonsense!’ He sounded, for the first time since I had met him, uncertain and confused. ‘Claudia was with me upstairs. Whomever Sophie Bourlet heard talking about Iris, it cannot have been her. It must have been someone else.’

Poirot smoothed his moustache with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. ‘Then you do not believe that Sophie lied about the words she overheard? Surely if she is capable of administering lethal poison, and of lying about seeing Claudia murder Joseph Scotcher, she might also lie about other things?’

‘The words she claims to have heard have a ring of truth to them,’ Kimpton said darkly. Rallying, he added, ‘That means nothing, of course. The best lies always sound true.’

I had been waiting for a while to raise something that was bothering me. Now seemed the perfect moment. ‘Dr Kimpton, if your suspicions about Sophie Bourlet are correct, was it not rather reckless of her to leave the lower part of Scotcher’s face intact?’

‘She might have intended to obliterate the strychnine grin, but something prevented her from doing so,’ said Kimpton. ‘What if she heard footsteps and suddenly found herself with less time to set the scene than she had anticipated?’

‘That is possible,’ Poirot agreed. ‘The trouble is that everything is still possible. Dr Kimpton, if you believe that Sophie Bourlet murdered Joseph Scotcher, please tell me: what do you think was her motive?’

‘Motive?’ Kimpton snorted, as if the discussion of such a thing were unworthy of him.

‘Yes, the motive. Scotcher had proposed marriage to her that very evening. Why should she murder the man she loved, who was, in any case, dying from an illness?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t much care,’ said Kimpton. ‘Make her admit she did it and then ask her why. Motive! You persist in your folly of imagining that human beings can be made to make sense, Poirot.’

‘I do, monsieur.’

‘There is no sense. There is no consistency. I am living proof: I accuse Sophie Bourlet of lying, but I am convinced, for no good reason, that she heard the words she says she heard, about Iris. And I am considerably more rational than most people, I assure you.’

‘Who is Iris Gillow?’ I asked.

Kimpton’s mouth set in a hard line. ‘I should very much like to tell you about her. And tell you I shall—immediately after the inquest.’

‘Why not now?’ Poirot asked.

‘It is easier to wait,’ said Kimpton. He made to leave the parlour, then stopped at the door. ‘Prepare yourselves for a surprise, gentlemen. A big one.’

‘Do you mean the surprise of the cause of death being poison?’ I asked.

‘No. Something quite other. I will say no more, for I might be wrong. But I don’t think I am.’ And with that, Randall Kimpton left the room.