You explained to the aunt that, to allay the suspicions of her husband, you had to pretend to pay court to the niece. And the younger lady needed little convincing – she would never seriously consider her aunt as a rival.
‘But then Mrs Pengelley made up her mind, without saying anything to you, to consult me. If she could be really assured, beyond any possible doubt, that her husband was trying to poison her, she would feel justified in leaving him, and linking her life with yours – which is what she imagined you wanted her to do.
But that did not suit your book at all. You did not want a detective prying around. A favourable minute occurs. You are in the house when Mr Pengelley is getting some gruel for his wife, and you introduce the fatal dose. The rest is easy. Apparently anxious to hush matters up, you secretly foment them. But you reckoned without Hercule Poirot, my intelligent young friend.’
Radnor was deadly pale, but he still endeavoured to carry off matters with a high hand.
‘Very interesting and ingenious, but why tell me all this?’ ‘Because, monsieur, I represent – not the law, but Mrs Pen-gelley.
For her sake, I give you a chance of escape. Sign this paper, and you shall have twenty-four hours’ start – twenty-four hours before I place it in the hands of the police.’
Radnor hesitated.
‘You can’t prove anything.’
‘Can’t I? I am Hercule Poirot. Look out of the window, monsieur.
There are two men in the street. They have orders not to lose sight of you.’
Radnor strode across to the window and pulled aside the blind, then shrank back with an oath.
‘You see, monsieur? Sign – it is your best chance.’
‘What guarantee have I – ‘
‘That I shall keep faith? The word of Hercule Poirot. You will sign? Good. Hastings, be so kind as to pull that left-hand blind half-way up. That is the signal that Mr Radnor may leave unmolested.’
White, muttering oaths. Radnor hurried from the room. Poirot nodded gently.
‘A cowardl I always knew it.’
‘It seems to me, Poirot, that you’ve acted in a criminal manner,’ I cried angrily. ‘You always preach against sentiment. And here you are letting a dangerous criminal escape out of sheer senti-mentality.’
‘That was not sentiment – that was business,’ replied Poirot.
‘Do you not see, my friend, that we have no shadow of proof against him? Shall I get up and say to twelve stolid Cornishmen that/, Hercule Poirot, knova? They would laugh at me. The only chance was to frighten him and get a confession that way. Those two loafers that I noticed out:ide came in very useful. Pull down the blind again, will you, Hastings? Not that there was
any reason for raising it. It was part of the raise en scdne.
‘Well, well, we must keep our word. Twenty-four hours, did I say? So much longer for poor Mr Pengelley – and it is not more than he deserves; for mark you, he deceived his wife. I am very strong on the family life, as you know. Ah, well, twenty-four houri – and then? I have great faith in Scotland Yard. They will get him, raon ami; they will get him.’
CHAPTER IV THE ADVENTURE OF JOHNNIE WAVERLY
‘You can understand the feelings of a mother,’ said Mrs Waverly for perhaps the sixth time.
She looked appealingly at Poirot. My little friend, always sympathetic to motherhood in distress, gesticulated reassuringly.
‘But yes, but yes, I comprehend perfectly. Have faith in Papa Poirot.’
‘The police – ‘ began Mr Waverly.
His wife waved the interruption aside. ‘I won’t have anything more to do with the police. We trusted to them and look what happened! But I’d heard so much of M. Poirot and the wonderful things he’d done, that I felt he might possibly be able to help us.
A mother’s feelings -‘
Poirot hastily stemmed the reiteration with an eloquent gesture.
Mrs Waverly’s emotion was obviously genuine, but it assorted strangely with her shrewd, rather hard type of countenance. When I heard later that she was the daughter of a prominent steel manufacturer of Birmingham who had worked his way up in the world from an office boy to his present eminence, I realized that ahe had inherited many of the paternal qualities.