Death in the Clouds (11 page)

His mimicry was good. Jane laughed at the drawling, well-bred tones.

‘And then—me,’ she said.

‘And then you. And I say to myself, “How nice, how very nice it would be if I were to see her again one day.” And here I am sitting opposite you. The gods arrange things very well sometimes.’

Jane said, ‘You’re an archaeologist, aren’t you? You dig up things?’

And she listened with keen attention while Jean Dupont talked of his work.

Jane gave a little sigh at last.

‘You’ve been in so many countries. You’ve seen so much. It all sounds so fascinating. And I shall never go anywhere or see anything.’

‘You would like that—to go abroad—to see wild parts of the earth? You would not be able to get your hair waved, remember.’

‘It waves by itself,’ said Jane, laughing.

She looked up at the clock and hastily summoned the waitress for her bill.

Jean Dupont said with a little embarrassment, ‘Mademoiselle, I wonder if you would permit—as I have told you, I return to France tomorrow—if you would dine with me tonight.’

‘I’m so sorry, I can’t. I’m dining with someone.’

‘Ah! I’m sorry, very sorry. You will come again to Paris, soon?’

‘I don’t expect so.’

‘And me, I do not know when I shall be in London again! It is sad!’

He stood a moment, holding Jane’s hand in his.

‘I shall hope to see you again, very much,’ he said, and sounded as though he meant it.

At about the time that Jane was leaving Antoine’s, Norman Gale was saying in a hearty professional tone, ‘Just a little tender, I’m afraid…Guide me if I hurt you—’

His expert hand guided the electric drill.

‘There, that’s all over. Miss Ross?’

Miss Ross was immediately at his elbow stirring a minute white concoction on a slab.

Norman Gale completed his filling and said, ‘Let me see, it’s next Tuesday you’re coming for those others?’

His patient, rinsing her mouth ardently, burst into a fluent explanation. She was going away—so sorry—would have to cancel the next appointment. Yes, she would let him know when she got back.

And she escaped hurriedly from the room.

‘Well,’ said Gale, ‘that’s all for today.’

Miss Ross said, ‘Lady Higginson rang up to say she must give up her appointment next week. She wouldn’t make another. Oh, and Colonel Blunt can’t come on Thursday.’

Norman Gale nodded. His face hardened.

Every day was the same. People ringing up. Cancelled appointments. All varieties of excuses—going away—going abroad—got a cold—may not be here—

It didn’t matter what reason they gave, the real reason Norman had just seen quite unmistakably in his last patient’s eye as he reached for the drill…a look of sudden panic…

He could have written down the woman’s thoughts on paper.

‘Oh, dear, of course he was in that aeroplane when that woman was murdered…I wonder…You do hear of people going off their heads and doing the most senseless crimes. It really isn’t safe. The man might be a homicidal lunatic. They look the same as other people, I’ve always heard…I believe I always felt there was rather a peculiar look in his eye…’

‘Well,’ said Gale, ‘it looks like being a quiet week next week, Miss Ross.’

‘Yes, a lot of people have dropped out. Oh, well, you can do with a rest. You worked so hard earlier in the summer.’

‘It doesn’t look as though I were going to have a chance of working very hard in the autumn, does it?’

Miss Ross did not reply. She was saved from having to do so by the telephone ringing. She went out of the room to answer it.

Norman dropped some instruments into the sterilizer, thinking hard.

‘Let’s see how we stand. No beating about the bush. This business has about done for me professionally. Funny, it’s done well for Jane. People come on purpose to gape at her. Come to think of it, that’s what’s wrong here—they
have
to gape at me, and they don’t like it! Nasty helpless feeling you have in a dentist’s chair. If the dentist were to run amuck…

‘What a strange business murder is! You’d think it was a perfectly straightforward issue—and it isn’t. It affects all sorts of queer things you’d never think of…Come back to facts. As a dentist I seem to be about done for…What would happen, I wonder, if they arrested the Horbury woman? Would my patients come trooping back? Hard to say. Once the rot’s set in…Oh, well, what does it matter? I don’t care. Yes, I do—because of Jane…Jane’s adorable. I want her. And I can’t have her—yet…A damnable nuisance.’

He smiled. ‘I feel it’s going to be all right…She
cares…She’ll wait…Damn it, I shall go to Canada—yes, that’s it—and make money there.’

He laughed to himself.

Miss Ross came back into the room.

‘That was Mrs Lorrie. She’s sorry—’

‘—but she may be going to Timbuctoo,’ finished Norman. ‘
Vive les rats
! You’d better look out for another post, Miss Ross. This seems to be a sinking ship.’

‘Oh, Mr Gale, I shouldn’t think of deserting you…’

‘Good girl. You’re not a rat, anyway. But seriously I mean it. If something doesn’t happen to clear up this mess I’m done for.’

‘Something
ought
to be done about it!’ said Miss Ross with energy. ‘I think the police are
disgraceful
. They’re not
trying
.’

Norman laughed. ‘I expect they’re trying all right.’

‘Somebody ought to do something.’

‘Quite right. I’ve rather thought of trying to do something myself—though I don’t quite know what.’

‘Oh, Mr Gale, I should. You’re so clever.’

‘I’m a hero to that girl all right,’ thought Norman Gale. ‘She’d like to help me in my sleuth stuff; but I’ve got another partner in view.’

It was that same evening that he dined with Jane. Half-unconsciously he pretended to be in very high spirits, but Jane was too astute to be deceived. She
noted his sudden moments of absent-mindedness, the little frown that showed between his brows, the sudden strained line of his mouth.

She said at last, ‘Norman, are things going badly?’

He shot a quick glance at her, then looked away.

‘Well, not too frightfully well. It’s a bad time of year.’

‘Don’t be idiotic,’ said Jane sharply.

‘Jane!’

‘I mean it. Don’t you think I can see that you’re worried to death?’

‘I’m not worried to death. I’m just annoyed.’

‘You mean people are fighting shy—’

‘Of having their teeth attended to by a possible murderer? Yes.’

‘How cruelly unfair!’

‘It is, rather. Because frankly, Jane, I’m a jolly good dentist. And I’m not a murderer.’

‘It’s wicked. Somebody ought to do something.’

‘That’s what my secretary, Miss Ross, said this morning.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Miss Ross?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Big—lots of bones—nose rather like a rocking horse—frightfully competent.’

‘She sounds quite nice,’ said Jane graciously.

Norman rightly took this as a tribute to his diplomacy. Miss Ross’s bones were not really quite as formidable as stated, and she had an extremely attractive head of red hair, but he felt, and rightly, that it was just as well not to dwell on the latter point to Jane.

‘I’d like to do
something
,’ he said. ‘If I was a young man in a book I’d find a clue or I’d shadow somebody.’

Jane tugged suddenly at his sleeve.

‘Look, there’s Mr Clancy—you know, the author—sitting over there by the wall by himself. We might shadow him.’

‘But we were going to the flicks?’

‘Never mind the flicks. I feel somehow this might be
meant
. You said you wanted to shadow somebody, and here’s somebody to shadow. You never know. We might find out something.’

Jane’s enthusiasm was infectious. Norman fell in with the plan readily enough.

‘As you say, one never knows,’ he said. ‘Whereabouts has he got to in his dinner? I can’t see properly without turning my head, and I don’t want to stare.’

‘He’s about level with us,’ said Jane. ‘We’d better hurry a bit and get ahead and then we can pay the bill and be ready to leave when he does.’

They adopted this plan. When at last little Mr Clancy rose and passed out into Dean Street, Norman and Jane were fairly close on his heels.

‘In case he takes a taxi,’ Jane explained.

But Mr Clancy did not take a taxi. Carrying an overcoat over one arm (and, occasionally allowing it to trail on the ground), he ambled gently through the London streets. His progress was somewhat erratic. Sometimes he moved forward at a brisk trot, sometimes he slowed down till he almost came to a stop. Once, on the very brink of crossing a road, he did come to a standstill, standing there with one foot hanging over the kerb and looking exactly like a slow-motion picture.

His direction, too, was erratic. Once he actually took so many right-angle turns that he traversed the same streets twice over.

Jane felt her spirits rise.

‘You see?’ she said excitedly. ‘He’s afraid of being followed. He’s trying to put us off the scent.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course. Nobody would go round in circles otherwise.’

‘Oh!’

They had turned a corner rather quickly and had almost cannoned into their quarry. He was standing staring up at a butcher’s shop. The shop itself was naturally closed, but it seemed to be something about the level of the first floor that was riveting Mr Clancy’s attention.

He said aloud, ‘Perfect. The very thing. What a piece of luck!’

He took out a little book and wrote something down very carefully. Then he started off again at a brisk pace, humming a little tune.

He was now heading definitely for Bloomsbury. Sometimes, when he turned his head, the two behind could see his lips moving.

‘There is something up,’ said Jane. ‘He’s in great distress of mind. He’s talking to himself and he doesn’t know it.’

As he waited to cross by some traffic lights, Norman and Jane drew abreast.

It was quite true; Mr Clancy was talking to himself. His face looked white and strained. Norman and Jane caught a few muttered words:

‘Why doesn’t she speak? Why? There must be a
reason
…’

The lights went green. As they reached the opposite pavement Mr Clancy said, ‘I see now. Of course. That’s why she’s got to be silenced!’

Jane pinched Norman ferociously.

Mr Clancy set off at a great pace now. The overcoat dragged hopelessly. With great strides the little author covered the ground, apparently oblivious of the two people on his tracks.

Finally, with disconcerting abruptness, he stopped
at a house, opened the door with a key and went in.

Norman and Jane looked at each other.

‘It’s his own house,’ said Norman. ‘47 Cardington Square. That’s the address he gave at the inquest.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Jane, ‘perhaps he’ll come out again by and by. And, anyway, we have heard
something
. Somebody—a woman—is going to be silenced, and some other woman won’t speak. Oh, dear, it sounds dreadfully like a detective story.’

A voice came out of the darkness. ‘Good evening,’ it said.

The owner of the voice stepped forward. A pair of magnificent moustaches showed in the lamplight.

‘
Eh bien
,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘A fine evening for the chase, is it not?’

Of the two startled young people, it was Norman Gale who recovered himself first.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s Monsieur—Monsieur Poirot. Are you still trying to clear your character, M. Poirot?’

‘Ah, you remember our little conversation? And it is the poor Mr Clancy you suspect?’

‘So do you,’ said Jane acutely, ‘or you wouldn’t be here.’

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment.

‘Have you ever thought about murder, Mademoiselle? Thought about it, I mean, in the abstract—cold-bloodedly and dispassionately?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it at all until just lately,’ said Jane.

Hercule Poirot nodded.

‘Yes, you think about it now because a murder has
touched you personally. But me, I have dealt with crime for many years now. I have my own way of regarding things. What should you say the most important thing was to bear in mind when you are trying to solve a murder?’

‘Finding the murderer,’ said Jane.

Norman Gale said, ‘Justice.’

Poirot shook his head. ‘There are more important things than finding the murderer. And justice is a fine word, but it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what one means by it. In my opinion the important thing is to clear the innocent.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ said Jane. ‘That goes without saying. If anyone is falsely accused—’

‘Not even that.
There may be no accusation
. But until one person is proved guilty beyond any possible doubt, everyone else who is associated with the crime is liable to suffer in varying degrees.’

Norman Gale said with emphasis, ‘How true that is.’

Jane said, ‘Don’t we know it!’

Poirot looked from one to the other.

‘I see. Already you have been finding that out for yourselves.’

He became suddenly brisk.

‘Come now, I have affairs to see to. Since our aims are the same, we three, let us combine together. I am
about to call upon our ingenious friend, Mr Clancy. I would suggest that Mademoiselle accompanies me—in the guise of my secretary. Here, Mademoiselle, is a notebook and a pencil for the shorthand.’

‘I can’t write shorthand,’ gasped Jane.

‘But naturally not. But you have the quick wits—the intelligence—you can make plausible signs in pencil in the book, can you not? Good. As for Mr Gale, I suggest that he meets us in, say, an hour’s time. Shall we say upstairs at Monseigneur’s?
Bon!
We will compare notes then.’

And forthwith he advanced to the bell and pressed it.

Slightly dazed, Jane followed him, clutching the notebook.

Gale opened his mouth as though to protest, then seemed to think better of it.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘In an hour, at Monseigneur’s.’

The door was opened by a rather forbidding-looking elderly woman attired in severe black.

Poirot said, ‘Mr Clancy?’

She drew back and Poirot and Jane entered.

‘What name, sir?’

‘Mr Hercule Poirot.’

The severe woman led them upstairs and into a room on the first floor.

‘Mr Air Kule Prott,’ she announced.

Poirot realized at once the force of Mr Clancy’s
announcement at Croydon to the effect that he was not a tidy man. The room, a long one, with three windows along its length and shelves and bookcases on the other walls, was in a state of chaos. There were papers strewn about, cardboard files, bananas, bottles of beer, open books, sofa cushions, a trombone, miscellaneous china, etchings, and a bewildering assortment of fountain-pens.

In the middle of this confusion Mr Clancy was struggling with a camera and a roll of film.

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Clancy, looking up as the visitors were announced. He put the camera down and the roll of film promptly fell on the floor and unwound itself. He came forward with outstretched hand. ‘Very glad to see you, I’m sure.’

‘You remember me, I hope?’ said Poirot. ‘This is my secretary, Miss Grey.’

‘How d’you do, Miss Grey.’ He shook her by the hand and then turned back to Poirot. ‘Yes, of course I remember you—at least—now, where was it exactly? Was it at the Skull and Crossbones Club?’

‘We were fellow passengers on an aeroplane from Paris on a certain fatal occasion.’

‘Why, of course,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘And Miss Grey too! Only I hadn’t realized she was your secretary. In fact, I had some idea that she was in a beauty parlour—something of that kind.’

Jane looked anxiously at Poirot.

The latter was quite equal to the situation.

‘Perfectly correct,’ he said. ‘As an efficient secretary, Miss Grey has at times to undertake certain work of a temporary nature—you understand?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I was forgetting. You’re a detective—the real thing. Not Scotland Yard. Private investigation. Do sit down, Miss Grey. No, not there; I think there’s orange juice on that chair. If I shift this file—Oh, dear, now everything’s tumbled out. Never mind. You sit here, M. Poirot—that’s right, isn’t it?—Poirot? The back’s not
really
broken. It only creaks a little as you lean against it. Well, perhaps it’s best not to lean
too
hard. Yes, a private investigator like my Wilbraham Rice. The public have taken very strongly to Wilbraham Rice. He bites his nails and eats a lot of bananas. I don’t know why I made him bite his nails to start with—it’s really rather disgusting—but there it is. He started by biting his nails, and now he has to do it in every single book. So monotonous. The bananas aren’t so bad; you get a bit of fun out of them—criminals slipping on the skin. I eat bananas myself—that’s what put it into my head. But I don’t bite my nails. Have some beer?’

‘I thank you, no.’

Mr Clancy sighed, sat down himself, and gazed earnestly at Poirot.

‘I can guess what you’ve come about—the murder of Giselle. I’ve thought and thought about that case. You can say what you like, it’s amazing—poisoned darts and a blowpipe in an aeroplane. An idea I have used myself, as I told you, both in book and short story form. Of course it was a very shocking occurrence, but I must confess, M. Poirot, that I was thrilled, positively thrilled.’

‘I can quite see,’ said Poirot, ‘that the crime must have appealed to you professionally, Mr Clancy.’

Mr Clancy beamed.

‘Exactly. You would think that anyone—even the official police—could have understood that! But not at all. Suspicion—that is all I got, both from the inspector and at the inquest. I go out of my way to assist the course of justice, and all I get for my pains is palpable thick-headed suspicion!’

‘All the same,’ said Poirot, smiling, ‘it does not seem to affect you very much.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But, you see, I have my methods, Watson. If you’ll excuse my calling you Watson. No offence intended. Interesting, by the way, how the technique of the idiot friend has hung on. Personally I myself think the Sherlock Holmes stories grossly overrated. The fallacies—the really amazing fallacies that there are in those stories—But what was I saying?’

‘You said that you had your methods.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Mr Clancy leaned forward. ‘I’m putting that inspector—what is his name, Japp?—yes, I’m putting him in my next book. You should see the way Wilbraham Rice deals with him.’

‘In between bananas, as one might say.’

‘In between bananas—that’s very good, that.’ Mr Clancy chuckled.

‘You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,’ said Poirot. ‘You can relieve your feelings by the expedient of the printed word. You have the power of the pen over your enemies.’

Mr Clancy rocked gently back in his chair.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I begin to think this murder is going to be a really fortunate thing for me. I’m writing the whole thing exactly as it happened—only as fiction, of course, and I shall call it
The Air Mail Mystery
. Perfect pen portraits of all the passengers. It ought to sell like wildfire—if only I can get it out in time.’

‘Won’t you be had up for libel, or something?’ asked Jane.

Mr Clancy turned a beaming face upon her.

‘No, no, my dear lady. Of course, if I were to make one of the passengers the murderer—well, then, I might be liable for damages. But that is the strong part of it all—an entirely unexpected solution is revealed in the last chapter.’

Poirot leaned forward eagerly.

‘And that solution is?’

Again Mr Clancy chuckled.

‘Ingenious,’ he said. ‘Ingenious and sensational. Disguised as the pilot, a girl gets into the plane at Le Bourget and successfully stows herself away under Madame Giselle’s seat. She has with her an ampoule of the newest gas. She releases this—everybody becomes unconscious for three minutes—she squirms out—fires the poisoned dart, and makes a parachute descent from the rear door of the car.’

Both Jane and Poirot blinked.

Jane said, ‘Why doesn’t she become unconscious from the gas too?’

‘Respirator,’ said Mr Clancy.

‘And she descends into the Channel?’

‘It needn’t be the Channel—I shall make it the French coast.’

‘And, anyway, nobody could hide under a seat; there wouldn’t be room.’

‘There will be room in my aeroplane,’ said Mr Clancy firmly.

‘
Epatant
,’ said Poirot. ‘And the motive of the lady?’

‘I haven’t quite decided,’ said Mr Clancy meditatively. ‘Probably Giselle ruined the girl’s lover, who killed himself.’

‘And how did she get hold of the poison?’

‘That’s the really clever part,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘The girl’s a snake charmer. She extracts the stuff from her favourite python.’

‘
Mon Dieu!
’ said Hercule Poirot.

He said, ‘You don’t think, perhaps, it is just a
little
sensational?’

‘You can’t write anything too sensational,’ said Mr Clancy firmly. ‘Especially when you’re dealing with the arrow poison of the South American Indians. I know it was snake juice, really; but the principle is the same. After all, you don’t want a detective story to be like real life? Look at the things in the papers—dull as ditchwater.’

‘Come, now, Monsieur, would you say this little affair of ours is dull as ditchwater?’

‘No,’ admitted Mr Clancy. ‘Sometimes, you know, I can’t believe it really happened.’

Poirot drew the creaking chair a little nearer to his host. His voice lowered itself confidentially.

‘M. Clancy, you are a man of brains and imagination. The police, as you say, have regarded you with suspicion. They have not sought your advice. But I, Hercule Poirot, desire to consult you.’

Mr Clancy flushed with pleasure.

‘I’m sure that’s very nice of you.’

He looked flustered and pleased.

‘You have studied the criminology. Your ideas will
be of value. It would be of great interest to me to know who, in your opinion, committed the crime.’

‘Well—’ Mr Clancy hesitated, reached automatically for a banana and began to eat it. Then, the animation dying out of his face, he shook his head. ‘You see, M. Poirot, it’s an entirely different thing. When you’re writing you can make it anyone you like; but, of course, in real life there is a real person. You haven’t any command over the facts. I’m afraid, you know, that I’d be absolutely no good as a real detective.’

He shook his head sadly and threw the banana skin into the grate.

‘It might be amusing, however, to consider the case together?’ suggested Poirot.

‘Oh, that, yes.’

‘To begin with, supposing you had to make a sporting guess, who would you choose?’

‘Oh, well, I suppose one of the two Frenchmen.’

‘Now, why?’

‘Well, she was French. It seems more likely, somehow. And they were sitting on the opposite side not too far away from her. But really I don’t know.’

‘It depends,’ said Poirot thoughtfully, ‘so much on motive.’

‘Of course—of course. I suppose you tabulate all the motives very scientifically?’

‘I am old-fashioned in my methods. I follow the old adage: seek whom the crime benefits.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But I take it that’s a little difficult in a case like this. There’s a daughter who comes into money, so I’ve heard. But a lot of the people on board might benefit, for all we know—that is if they owed her money and haven’t got to pay it back.’

‘True,’ said Poirot. ‘And I can think of other solutions. Let us suppose that Madame Giselle knew of something—attempted murder, shall we say?—on the part of one of those people.’

‘Attempted murder?’ said Mr Clancy. ‘Now, why attempted murder? What a very curious suggestion.’

‘In cases such as these,’ said Poirot, ‘one must think of everything.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Clancy. ‘But it’s no good thinking. You’ve got to
know
.’

‘You have reason—you have reason. A very just observation.’

Then he said, ‘I ask your pardon, but this blowpipe that you bought—’

‘Damn that blowpipe,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I wish I’d never mentioned it.’

‘You bought it, you say, at a shop in the Charing Cross Road? Do you, by any chance, remember the name of that shop?’

‘Well,’ said Mr Clancy, ‘it might have been Absolom’s—or there’s Mitchell & Smith. I don’t know. But I’ve already told all this to that pestilential inspector. He must have checked up on it by this time.’

‘Ah,’ said Poirot, ‘but I ask for quite another reason. I desire to purchase such a thing and make a little experiment.’

‘Oh, I see. But I don’t know that you’ll find one all the same. They don’t keep sets of them, you know.’

‘All the same I can try. Perhaps, Miss Grey, you would be so obliging as to take down those two names?’

Jane opened her notebook and rapidly performed a series of (she hoped) professional-looking squiggles. Then she surreptitiously wrote the names in longhand on the reverse side of the sheet in case these instructions of Poirot’s should be genuine.

‘And now,’ said Poirot, ‘I have trespassed on your time too long. I will take my departure with a thousand thanks for your amiability.’

‘Not at all. Not at all,’ said Mr Clancy. ‘I wish you would have had a banana.’

‘You are most amiable.’

‘Not at all. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling rather happy tonight. I’d been held up in a short story I was writing—the thing wouldn’t pan out properly, and I couldn’t get a good name for the criminal. I wanted something with a flavour. Well, just a bit of luck, I
saw just the name I wanted over a butcher’s shop. Pargiter. Just the name I was looking for. There’s a sort of genuine sound to it; and about five minutes later I got the other thing. There’s always the same snag in stories—why won’t the girl speak? The young man tries to make her and she says her lips are sealed. There’s never any real reason, of course, why she shouldn’t blurt out the whole thing at once, but you have to try to think of something that’s not too definitely idiotic. Unfortunately it has to be a different thing every time!’