Agatha Christie – Poirot’s Early Cases

Poirot had arranged seats for the party facing the screen. This was illuminated by a bright light. Poirot switched out the other lights so that the room was in darkness except for the screen.

Poirot’s voice rose out of the gloom.

‘Messieurs, mesdames, a word of explanation. Six figures in turn will pass across the screen. They are familiar to you. Pierrot and his Pierrette; Punchinello the buffoon, and elegant Pulcinella; beautiful Columbine, lightly dancing, Harlequin, the sprite, invisible to manl’

With these words of introduction, the show began. In turn each figure that Poirot had mentioned bounded before the screen, stayed there a moment poised, and then vanished. The lights went up, and a sigh of relief went round. Everyone had been nervous, fearing they knew not what. It seemed to me that the proceedings had gone singularly flat. If the criminal was among us, and Poirot expected him to break down at the mere sight of a familiar figure, the device had failed signally – as it was almost bound to do. Poirot, however, appeared not a whit discomposed.

He stepped forward, beaming.

‘Now, messieurs and mesdames, will you be so good as to tell me, one at a time what it is that we have just seen? Will you begin, milor’?’

The gentleman looked rather puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’

‘Just tell me what we have been seeing.’

‘I – er – well, I should say we have seen six figures passing in front of a screen and dressed to represent the personages in the old Italian Comedy, or – er – ourselves the other night.’

‘Never mind the other night, milor’,’ broke in Poirot. ‘The first part of your speech was what I wanted. Madame you agree with Milor’ Cronshaw?;

He had turned as he spoke to Mrs Mallaby.

‘I – er – yes, of course.’

‘You agree that you have seen six figures representing the Italian Comedy?’

‘Why, certainly.’

‘Monsieur Davidson? You too?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Madame?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Hastings? Japp? Yes? You are all in accord?’

He looked around upon us; his face grew rather pale, and his eyes were green as any cat’s.

‘And yet – you are all wrong/Your eyes have lied to you – as they lied to you on the night of the Victory Ball. To “see things with your own eyes”, as they say, is not always to see the truth.

One must see with eyes of the mind; one must employ the little cells of grey! Know, then, that tonight and on the night of the Victory Ball, you saw not six figures but five! Seel’

The lights went out again. A figure bounded in front of the screen – Pierrotl

‘Who is that?’ demanded Poirot. ‘Is it Pierrot?’ ‘Yes,’ we all cried.

‘Look again[‘

With a swift movement the man divested himself of his loose Pierrot garb. There in the limelight stood glittering Harlequinl At the same moment there was a cry and an overturned chair.

‘Curse you,’ snarled Davidson’s voice. ‘Curse youl How did you gue?’

When came the clink of handcuffs and Japp’s calm official voice.

‘I arrest you, Christopher Davidson – charge of murdering

Viscount Cronshaw – anything you say used in evidence against you.’

It was a quarter of an hour later. A recherch little supper had appeared; and Poirot, beaming all over his face, was dispensing hospitality and answering our eager questions.

‘It was all very simple. The circumstances in which the green pompon was found suggested at once that it had been torn from the costume of the murderer. I dismissed Pierrette from my mind (since it takes considerable strength to drive a table-knife home) and fixed upon Pierrot as the criminal. But Pierrot left the ball nearly two hours before the murder was committed. So he must either have returned to the ball later to kill Lord Cronshaw, or eh bien, he must have killed him before he left! Wras that impossible?

Who had seen Lord Cronshaw after supper that evening? Only Mrs Davidson, whose statement, I suspected, was a deliberate fabrication uttered with the object of accounting for the missing pompon, which, of course, she cut from her own dress to replace the one missing on her husband’s costume. But then, Harlequin, who was seen in the box at one-thirty, must have been an impersonation.