After the Funeral

Chapter Eighteen
From his seat by the fireplace in the library, Hercule Poirot looked at the assembled company.

His eyes passed thoughtfully over Susan, sitting upright, looking vivid and animated, over her husband, sitting near her, his expression rather vacant and his fingers twisting a loop of string; they went on to George Crossfield, debonair and distinctly pleased with himself, talking about card sharpers on atlantic cruises to Rosamund, who said mechanically, "How extraordinary, darling. But why?" in a completely uninterested voice; went on to Michael with his very individual type of haggard good looks and his very apparent charm; to Helen, poised and slightly remote; to Timothy, comfortably settled in the best armchair with an extra cushion at his back; and Maude, sturdy and thick-set, in devoted attendance, and finally to the figure sitting with a tinge of apology just beyond the range of the family circle - the figure of Miss Gilchrist wearing a rather peculiar "dressy" blouse. Presently, he judged, she would get up, murmur an excuse and leave the family gathering and go up to her room. Miss Gilchrist, he thought, knew her place. She had learned it the hard way.

Hercule Poirot sipped his after-dinner coffee and between half-closed lids made his appraisal.

He had wanted them there - all together, and he had got them. And what, he thought to himself, was he going to do with them now? He felt a sudden weary distaste for going on with the business. Why was that, he wondered? Was it the influence of Helen Abernethie? There was a quality of passive resistance about her that seemed unexpectedly strong. Had she, while apparently graceful and unconcerned, managed to impress her own reluctance upon him? She was averse to

this raking up of the details of old Richard's death, he knew that. She wanted it left alone, left to die out into oblivion. Poirot was not surprised by that. What did surprise him was his own disposition to agree with her.

Mr Entwhistle's account of the family had, he realised, been admirable. He had described all these people shrewdly and well. With the old lawyer's knowledge and appraisal to guide him, Poirot had wanted to see for himself. He had fancied that, meeting these people intimately, he would have a very shrewd idea - not of how and when - (those were questions with which he did not propose to concern himself. Murder had been possible - that was all he needed to know!) but of who. For Hercule Poirot had a lifetime of experience behind him, and as a man who deals with pictures can recognise the artist, so Poirot believed he could recognise a likely type of the amateur criminal who will - if his own particular need arises be prepared to kill.

But it was not to be so easy.

Because he could visualise almost all of those people as a possible - though not a probable - murderer. George might kill - as the cornered rat kills. Susan calmly - efficiently - to further a plan. Gregory because he had that queer morbid streak which discounts and invites, almost craves, punishment. Michael because he was ambitious and had a murderer's cocksure vanity. Rosamund because she was frighteningly simple in outlook. Timothy because he had hated and resented his brother and had craved the power his brother's money would give. Maude because Timothy was her child and where her child was concerned she would be ruthless. Even Miss Gilchrist, he thought, might have contemplated murder if it could have restored to her the Willow Tree in its ladylike glory!

And Helen? He could not see Helen as committing murder. She was too civilised - too removed from violence. And she and her husband had surely loved Richard Abernethie.

Poirot sighed to himself. There were to be no short cuts to the truth, Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away...

He had been introduced by Helen to the gathering, and had set to work to overcome the almost universal annoyance caused by his presence - a foreign stranger! - in this family gathering. He had used his eyes and his ears. He had watched and listened - openly and behind doors! He had noticed affinities, antagonisms, the unguarded words that arose as always when property was to be divided. He had engineered adroitly tete-a-tetes, walks upon the terrace, and had made his deductions and observations. He had talked with Miss Gilchrist about the vanished glories of her tea-shop and about the correct composition of brioches and chocolate eclairs and had visited the kitchen garden with her to discuss the proper use of herbs in cooking. He had spent some long half-hours listening to Timothy talking about his own health and about the effect upon it of paint.

Paint? Poirot frowned. Somebody else had said some thing about paint

-Mr Entwhistle?

There had also been discussion of a different kind of painting. Pierre Lansquenet as a painter. Cora Lansquenet's paintings, rapturised over by Miss Gilchrist, dismissed scornfully by Susan. "Just like picture postcards," she had said. "She did them from postcards, too."

Miss Gilchrist had been quite upset by that and had said sharply that dear Mrs Lansquenet always painted from Nature.

"But I bet she cheated," said Susan to Poirot when Miss Gilchrist had gone out of the room. "In fact I know she did, though I won't upset the old p-ssy by saying so."

"And how do you know?"

Poirot watched the strong confident line of Susan's chin.

"She will always be sure, this one," he thought. "And perhaps sometime, she will be too sure..."

Susan was going on.

"I'll tell you, but don't pass it on to the Gilchrist. One picture is of Polflexan, the cove and the lighthouse and the pier - the usual aspect that all amateur artists sit down and sketch. But the pier was blown up in the war, and since Aunt Cora's sketch was done a couple of years ago, it can't very well be from Nature, can it? But the postcards they sell there still show the pier as it used to be. There was one in her bedroom drawer. So Aunt Cora started her 'rough sketch' down there, I expect, and then finished it surreptitiously later at home from a postcard! It's funny, isn't it, the way people get caught out?"

"Yes, it is, as you say, funny." He paused, and then thought that the opening was a good one.

"You do not remember me, Madame," he said, "but I remember you. This is not the first time that I have seen you."

She stared at him. Poirot nodded with great gusto.

"Yes, yes, it is so. I was inside an automobile, well wrapped up and from the window I saw you. You were talking to one of the mechanics in the garage. You do not notice me - it is natural I am inside the car - an elderly muffled-up foreigner! But I notice you, for you are young and agreeable to look at and you stand there in the sun. So when I arrive here, I say to myself, 'Tiens! what a coincidence!'"

"A garage? Where? When was this?"

"Oh, a little time ago - a week - no, more. For the moment," said Poirot disingenuously and with a full recollection of the King's Arms garage in his mind, "I cannot remember where. I travel so much all over this country."

"Looking for a suitable house to buy for your refugees?"

"Yes. There is so much to take into consideration, you see. Price - neighbourhood - suitability for conversion."

"I suppose you'll have to pull the house about a lot? Lots of horrible partitions."

"In the bedrooms, yes, certainly. But most of the ground floor rooms we shall not touch." He paused before going on. "Does it sadden you, Madame, that this old family mansion of yours should go this way - to strangers?"

"Of course not." Susan looked amused. "I think it's an excellent idea. It's an impossible place for anybody to think of living in as it is. And I've nothing to be sentimental about. It's not my old home. My mother and father lived in London. We just came here for Christmas sometimes. Actually I've always thought it quite hideous - an almost indecent temple to wealth."

"The altars are different now. There is the building in, and the concealed lighting and the expensive simplicity. But wealth still has its temples, Madame. I understand - I am not, I hope, indiscreet - that you yourself are planning such an edifice? Everything de luxe - and no expense spared."

Susan laughed.

"Hardly a temple - it's just a place of business."

"Perhaps the name does not matter... But it will cost much money - that is true, is it not?"

"Everything's wickedly expensive nowadays. But the initial outlay will be worth while, I think."

"Tell me something about these plans of yours. It amazes me to find a beautiful young woman so practical, so competent. In my young days - a long time ago, I admit - beautiful women thought only of their pleasures, of cosmetics, of la toilette."

"Women still think a great deal about their faces - that's where I come in."

"Tell me."

And she had told him. Told him with a wealth of detail and with a great deal of unconscious self-revelation. He appreciated her business acumen, her boldness of planning and her grasp of detail. A good bold planner, sweeping all side issues away. Perhaps a little ruthless as all those who plan boldly must be...

Watching her, he had said:

"Yes, you will succeed. You will go ahead. How fortunate that you are not restricted, as so many are, by poverty. One cannot go far without the capital outlay. To have had these creative ideas and to have been frustrated by lack of means - that would have been unbearable."

"I couldn't have borne it! But I'd have raised money somehow or other - got someone to back me."

"Ah! of course. Your uncle, whose house this was, was rich. Even if he had not died, he would, as you express it, have 'staked' you."

"Oh no, he wouldn't. Uncle Richard was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud where women were concerned. If I'd been a man -" A quick flash of anger swept across her face. "He made me very angry."

"I see - yes, I see..."

"The old shouldn't stand in the way of the young. I - oh, I beg your pardon."

Hercule Poirot laughed easily and twirled his moustache.

"I am old, yes. But I do not impede youth. There is no one who needs to wait for my death."

"What a horrid idea."

"But you are a realist, Madame. Let us admit without more ado that the world is full of the young - or even the middle-aged - who wait, patiently or impatiently, for the death of someone whose decease will give them if not affluence - then opportunity."

"Opportunity!" Susan said, taking a deep breath. "That's what one needs."

Poirot who had been looking beyond her, said gaily:

"And here is your husband come to join our little discussion We talk, Mr Banks, of opportunity. Opportunity the golden - opportunity, who must be grasped with both hands. How far in conscience can one go?

Let us hear your views?"

But he was not destined to hear the views of Gregory Banks on opportunity or on anything else. In fact he had found it next to impossible to talk to Gregory Banks at all. Banks had a curious fluid quality. Whether by his own wish, or by that of his wife, he seemed to have no liking for tete-a-tetes or quiet discussions. No, "conversation" with Gregory had failed.

Poirot had talked with Maude Abernethie - also about paint (the smell of) and how fortunate it had been that Timothy had been able to come to Enderby, and how kind it had been of Helen to extend an invitation to Miss Gilchrist also.

"For really she is most useful. Timothy so often feels like a snack - and one cannot ask too much of other people's servants but there is a gas ring in a little room off the pantry, so that Miss Gilchrist can warm up Ovaltine or Benger's there without disturbing anybody. And she's so willing about fetching things, she's quite willing to run up and down stairs a dozen times a day. Oh yes, I feel that it was really quite providential that she should have lost her nerve about staying alone in the house as she did, though I admit it vexed me at the time."

"Lost her nerve?" Poirot was interested.

He listened whilst Maude gave him an account of Miss Gilchrist's sudden collapse.

"She was frightened, you say? And yet could not exactly say why? That is interesting. Very interesting."

"I put it down myself to delayed shock."

"Perhaps."

"Once, during the war, when a bomb dropped about a mile away from us, I remember Timothy -"

Poirot abstracted his mind from Timothy.

"Had anything particular happened that day?" he asked.

"On what day?" Maude looked blank.

"The day that Miss Gilchrist was upset."

"Oh, that - no, I don't think so. It seems to have been coming on ever since she left Lychett St Mary, or so she said. She didn't seem to mind when she was there."

And the result, Poirot thought, had been a piece of poisoned wedding cake. Not so very surprising that Miss Gilchrist was frightened after that. And even when she had removed herself to the peaceful country round Stansfield Grange, the fear had lingered. More than lingered. Grown. Why grown? Surely attending on an exacting hypochondriac like Timothy must be so exhausting that nervous fears would be likely to be swallowed up in exasperation?

But something in that house had made Miss Gilchrist afraid. What? Did she know herself?

Finding himself alone with Miss Gilchrist for a brief space before dinner, Poirot had sailed into the subject with an exaggerated foreign curiosity.

"Impossible, you comprehend, for me to mention the matter of murder to members of the family. But I am intrigued. Who would not be? A brutal crime - a sensitive artist attacked in a lonely cottage. Terrible for her family. But terrible, also, I imagine, for you. Since Mrs Timothy Abernethie gives me to understand that you were there at the time?"

"Yes, I was. And if you'll excuse me, M. Pontarlier, I don't want to talk about it."

"I understand - oh yes, I completely understand."

Having said this, Poirot waited. And, as he had thought, Miss Gilchrist immediately did begin to talk about it.

He heard nothing from her that he had not heard before, but he played his part with perfect sympathy, uttering little cries of comprehension and listening with an absorbed interest which Miss Gilchrist could not but help enjoy.

Not until she had exhausted the subject of what she herself had felt, and what the doctor had said, and how kind Mr Entwhistle had been, did Poirot proceed cautiously to the next point.

"You were wise, I think, not to remain alone down in that cottage."

"I couldn't have done it, M. Pontarlier. I really couldn't have done it."

"No. I understand even that you were afraid to remain alone in the house of Mr Timothy Abernethie whilst they came here?"

Miss Gilchrist looked guilty.

"I'm terribly ashamed about that. So foolish really. It was just a kind of panic I had - I really don't know why."

"But of course one knows why. You had just recovered from a dastardly attempt to poison you -"

Miss Gilchrist here sighed and said she simply couldn't understand it. Why should anyone try to poison her?

"But obviously, my dear lady, because this criminal, this assassin, thought that you knew something that might lead to his apprehension by the police."

"But what could I know? Some dreadful tramp, or semi-crazed creature."

"If it was a tramp. It seems to me unlikely -"

"Oh, please, M. Pontarlier -" Miss Gilchrist became suddenly very upset. "Don't suggest such things. I don't want to believe it."

"You do not want to believe what?"

"I don't want to believe that it wasn't - I mean - that it was -"

She paused, confused.

"And yet," said Poirot shrewdly, "you do believe."

"Oh, I don't. I don't!"

"But I think you do. That is why you are frightened... You are still frightened, are you not?"

"Oh, no, not since I came here. So many people. And such a nice family atmosphere. Oh, no, everything seems quite all right here."

"It seems to me - you must excuse my interest - I am an old man, somewhat infirm and a great part of my time is given to idle speculation on matters which interest me - it seems to me that there must have been some definite occurrence at Stansfield Grange which, so to speak, brought your fears to a head. Doctors recognise nowadays how much takes place in our subconscious."

"Yes, yes - I know they say so."

"And I think your subconscious fears might have been brought to a point by some small concrete happening, something, perhaps, quite extraneous, serving, shall we say, as a focal point."

Miss Gilchrist seemed to lap this up eagerly.

"I'm sure you are right," she said.

"Now what, should you think, was this - er - extraneous circumstance?"

Miss Gilchrist pondered a moment, and then said, unexpectedly:

"I think, you know, M. Pontarlier, it was the nun."

Before Poirot could take this up, Susan and her husband came in, closely followed by Helen.

"A nun," thought Poirot... "Now where, in all this, have I heard something about a nun?"

He resolved to lead the conversation on to nuns sometime in the course of the evening.