Poirot’s Early Cases by Agatha Christie

‘Why couldn’t you leave it as you found it?’ he grumbled.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

‘We thought it a clear case of suicide.’

‘H’m!’ said Japp. ‘Bullet entered the head behind the left ear.’

‘Exactly,’ said the doctor. ‘Clearly impossible for him to have fired it himself. He’d have had to twist his hand right round his head. It couldn’t have been done.’

‘Yet you found the pistol clasped in his hand? Where is it, by the way?’

The doctor nodded to the table.

‘But it wasn’t clasped in his hand,’ he said. ‘It was inside the hand, but the fingers weren’t closed over it.’

‘Put there afterwards,’ said Japp; ‘that’s clear enough.’ He was examining the weapon. ‘One cartridge fired. We’ll test it for fingerprints, but I doubt if we’ll find any but yours, Dr Giles. How long has he been dead?’

‘Some time last night. I can’t give the time to an hour or so, as those wonderful doctors in detective stories do. Roughly, he’s been dead about twelve hours.’

So far, Poirot had not made a move of any kind. He had remained by my side, watching Japp at work and listening to his questions. Only, from time to time, he had sniffed the air very delicately, and as if puzzled. I too had sniffed, but could detect nothing to arouse interest. The air seemed perfectly fresh and devoid of odour. And yet, from time to time, Poirot continued to sniff it dubiously, as though his keener nose detected something I had missed.

Now, as Japp moved away from the body, Poirot knelt down by it. He took no interest in the wound. I thought at first that he was examining the fingers of the hand that had held the pistol, but in a minute I saw that it was a handkerchief carried in the coat-sleeve that interested him. Mr Protheroe was dressed in a dark grey lounge-suit. Finally Poirot got up from his knees, but his eyes still strayed back to the handkerchief as though puzzled.

Japp called to him to come and help to lift the door. Seizing my opportunity, I too knelt down, and taking the handkerchief from the sleeve, scrutinized it minutely. It was a perfectly plain handkerchief of white cambric; there was no mark or stain on it of any kind. I replaced it, shaking my head and confessing myself baffled.

The others had raised the door. I realized that they were hunting for the key. They looked in vain.

‘That settles it,’ said Japp. ‘The window’s shut and bolted. The murderer left by the door, locking it and taking the key with him. He thought it would be accepted that Protheroe had locked himself in and shot himself, and that the absence of the key would not be noticed. You agree, M. Poirot?’

‘I agree, yes; but it would have been simpler and better to slip the key back inside the room under the door. Then it would look as though it had fallen from the lock.’

‘Ah, well, you can’t expect everybody to have the bright ideas that you have. You’d have been a holy terror if you’d taken to crime. Any remarks to make, M. Poirot?’

Poirot, it seemed to me, was somewhat at a loss. He looked round the room and remarked mildly and almost apologetically: ‘He smoked a lot, this monsieur.’

True enough, the grate was filled with cigarette-stubs, as was an ashtray that stood on a small table near the big armchair.

‘He must have got through about twenty cigarettes last night,’ remarked Japp. Stooping down, he examined the contents of the grate carefully, then transferred his attention to the ashtray. ‘They’re all the same kind,’ he announced, ‘and smoked by the same man. There’s nothing there, M. Poirot.’

‘I did not suggest that there was,’ murmured my friend.

‘Ha,’ cried Japp, ‘what’s this?’ He pounced on something bright and glittering that lay on the floor near the dead man. ‘A broken cuff-link. I wonder who this belongs to. Dr Giles, I’d be obliged if you’d go down and send up the housekeeper.’

‘What about the Parkers? He’s very anxious to leave the house—says he’s got urgent business in London.’