Agatha Christie – Poirot’s Early Cases

‘A quick death,’ he said. ‘A very quick death.’ Harrison found his voice. ‘How much do you know?’ Poirot looked straight ahead. ‘As I told you, I saw Claude Langton’s name in the book. What I did not tell you was that almost immediately afterwards, I happened to meet him. He told me he had been buying cyanide of potassium at your request – to take a wasps’ nest. That struck me as a little odd, my friend, because I remember that at that dinner of which you spoke, you held forth on the superior merits of petrol and denounced the buying of cyanide as dangerous and unnecessary.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘I knew something else. I had seen Claude Langton and Molly Deane together when they thought no one saw them. I do not know what lovers’ quarrel it was that originally parted them and drove her into your arms, but I realized that misunderstandings were over and that Miss Deane was drifting back to her love.’ Go on.’ ‘I knew something more, my fricnd. I was in Harley Street the

other day, and I saw you come out of a certain doctor’s house. I know that doctor and for what disease one consults him, and I read the expression on your face. I have seen it only once or twice in my lifetime, but it is not easily mistaken. It was the face of a man under sentence of death. I am right, am I not?’ ‘Quite right. He gave me two months.’ ‘You did not see me, my friend, for you had other things to think about. I saw something else on your face – the thing that I told you this afternoon men try to conceal. I saw hate there, my friend. You did not trouble to conceal it, because you thought there were none to observe.’ ‘Go on,’ said Harrison.

‘There is not much more to say. I came down here, saw Lang-ton’s name by accident in the poison book as I tell you, met him, and came here to you. I laid traps for you. You denied having asked Langton to get cyanide, or rather you expressed surprise at his having done so. You were taken aback at first at my appearance, but presently you saw how well it would fit in and you encouraged my suspicions. I knew from Langton himself that he was coming at half past eight. You told me nine o’clock, thinking I should come and find everything over. And so I knew everything.’ ‘Why did you come?’ cried Harrison. ‘If only you hadn’t comel’ Poirot drew himself up. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘murder is my business.’ ‘Murder? Suicide, you mean.’ ‘No.’ Poirot’s voice rang out sharply and clearly. ‘I mean murder.

Your death was to be quick and easy, but the death you planned for Langton was the worst death any man can die. He bought the poison; he comes to see you, and he is alone with you. You die suddenly, and the cyznide is found in your glass, and Claude Langton hangs. That was your plan.’ Again Harrison moaned.

‘Why did you come? Why did you come?’ ‘I have told you, but there is another reason. I liked you.

Listen, rnon ami, you are a dying man; you have lost the girl you loved, but there is one thing that you are not: you are not a murderer. Tell me now: are you glad or sorry that I came?’

There was a moment’s pause and Harrison drew himself up.

There was a new dignity in his face – the look of a man who has conquered his own baser self. He stretched out his hand across the table.

‘Thank goodness you came,’ he cried. ‘Oh, thank goodness you came.’

CHAPTER XVI THE VEILED LADY

I had noticed that for some time Poirot had been growing in-creasingly dissatisfied and restless. We had had no interesting cases of late, nothing on which my little friend could exercise his keen wits and remarkable powers of deduction. This morning he flung down the newspaper with an impatient ‘Tchah!’ – a favourite exclamation of his which sounded exactly like a cat sneezing.

‘They fear me, Hastings; the criminals of your England they fear mci When the cat is there, the little mice, they come no more to the cheesel’