“He was a small gentleman, well dressed, very neat, very spotless, the moustache very stiff, the head of a peculiar shape, and the eyes green.”
Poirot! So that was why he refused to let me accompany him to the station. The impertinence of it! I would thank him not to meddle in my concerns. Did he fancy I needed a nurse to look after me?
Thanking the man, I departed, somewhat at a loss, and still much incensed with my meddlesome friend.
But where was the lady? I set aside my wrath and tried to puzzle it out. Evidently, through inadvertence, she had named the wrong hotel. Then another thought struck me. Was it inadvertence? Or had she deliberately withheld her name and given me the wrong address?
The more I thought about it, the more I felt convinced that this last surmise of mine was right. For some reason or other she did not wish to let the acquaintance ripen into friendship. And, though half an hour earlier this had been precisely my own view, I did not enjoy having the tables turned upon me. The whole affair was profoundly unsatisfactory, and I went up to the Villa Geneviève in a condition of distinct ill humour. I did not go to the house, but went up the path to the little bench by the shed, and sat there moodily enough.
I was distracted from my thoughts by the sound of voices close at hand. In a second or two I realized that they came, not from the garden I was in, but from the adjoining garden of the Villa Marguerite, and that they were approaching rapidly. A girl’s voice was speaking, a voice that I recognized as that of the beautiful Marthe.
“Chéri,” she was saying, “is it really true? Are all our troubles over?”
“You know it, Marthe,” Jack Renauld replied. “Nothing can part us now, beloved. The last obstacle to our union is removed. Nothing can take you from me.”
“Nothing?” the girl murmured. “Oh Jack, Jack—I am afraid.”
I had moved to depart, realizing that I was quite unintentionally eavesdropping. As I rose to my feet, I caught sight of them through a gap in the hedge. They stood together facing me, the man’s arm round the girl, his eyes looking into hers. They were a splendid-looking couple, the dark, well-knit boy, and the fair young goddess. They seemed made for each other as they stood there, happy in spite of the terrible tragedy that overshadowed their young lives.
But the girl’s face was troubled, and Jack Renauld seemed to recognize it, as he held her closer to him and asked:
“But what are you afraid of, darling? What is there to fear—now?”
And then I saw the look in her eyes, the look Poirot had spoken of, as she murmured, so that I almost guessed at the words:
“I am afraid—for you.”
I did not hear young Renauld’s answer, for my attention was distracted by an unusual appearance a little farther down the hedge. There appeared to be a brown bush there, which seemed odd, to say the least of it, so early in the summer. I stepped along to investigate, but, at my advance, the brown bush withdrew itself precipitately, and faced me with a finger to its lips. It was Giraud.
Enjoining caution, he led the way round the shed until we were out of ear-shot.
“What were you doing there?” I asked.
“Exactly what you were doing—listening.”
“But I was not there on purpose!”
“Ah!” said Giraud. “I was.”
As always, I admired the man while disliking him. He looked me up and down with a sort of contemptuous disfavour.
“You didn’t help matters by butting in. I might have heard something useful in a minute. What have you done with your old fossil?”
“Monsieur Poirot has gone to Paris,” I replied coldly.
Giraud snapped his fingers disdainfully. “So he has gone to Paris, has he? Well, a good thing. The longer he stays there the better. But what does he think he will find there?”
I thought I read in the question a tinge of uneasiness. I drew myself up.
“That I am not at liberty to say,” I said quietly.
Giraud subjected me to a piercing stare.
“He has probably enough sense not to tell you,” he remarked rudely. “Good afternoon. I’m busy.” And with that he turned on his heel, and left me without ceremony.
Matters seemed at a standstill at the Villa Geneviève. Giraud evidently did not desire my company and, from what I had seen, it seemed fairly certain that Jack Renauld did not either.
I went back to the town, had an enjoyable bathe, and returned to the hotel. I turned in early, wondering whether the following day would bring forth anything of interest.
I was wholly unprepared for what it did bring forth. I was eating my petit déjeuner in the dining room, when the waiter, who had been talking to someone outside, came back in obvious excitement. He hesitated for a minute, fidgeting with his napkin, and then burst out:
“Monsieur will pardon me, but he is connected, is he not, with the affair at the Villa Geneviève?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly. “Why?”
“Monsieur has not heard the news, though?”
“What news?”
“That there has been another murder there last night!”
“What?”
Leaving my breakfast, I caught up my hat and ran as fast as I could. Another murder—and Poirot away! What fatality. But who had been murdered?
I dashed in at the gate. A group of servants were in the drive, talking and gesticulating. I caught hold of Françoise.
“What has happened?”
“Oh, monsieur! monsieur! Another death! It is terrible. There is a curse upon the house. But yes, I say it, a curse! They should send for Monsieur le Curé to bring some holy water. Never will I sleep another night under that roof. It might be my turn, who knows?”
She crossed herself.
“Yes,” I cried, “but who has been killed?”
“Do I know—me? A man—a stranger. They found him up there—in the shed—not a hundred yards from where they found poor Monsieur. And that is not all. He is stabbed—stabbed to the heart with the same dagger!”
Fourteen
THE SECOND BODY
Waiting for no more, I turned and ran up the path to the shed. The two men on guard there stood aside to let me pass and, filled with excitement, I entered.
The light was dim, the place was a mere rough wooden erection to keep old pots and tools in. I had entered impetuously, but on the threshold I checked myself, fascinated by the spectacle before me.
Giraud was on his hands and knees, a pocket torch in his hand with which he was examining every inch of the ground. He looked up with a frown at my entrance, then his face relaxed a little in a sort of good-humoured contempt.
“There he is,” said Giraud, flashing his torch to the far corner.
I stepped across.
The dead man lay straight upon his back. He was of medium height, swarthy of complexion, and possibly about fifty years of age. He was neatly dressed in a dark blue suit, well cut, and probably made by an expensive tailor, but not new. His face was terribly convulsed, and on his left side, just over the heart, the hilt of a dagger stood up, black and shining. I recognized it. It was the same dagger I had seen reposing in the glass jar the preceding morning!
“I’m expecting the doctor any minute,” explained Giraud. “Although we hardly need him. There’s no doubt what the man died of. He was stabbed to the heart, and death must have been pretty well instantaneous.”
“When was it done? Last night?”
Giraud shook his head.
“Hardly. I don’t lay down the law on medica
l evidence, but the man’s been dead well over twelve hours. When do you say you last saw that dagger?”
“About ten o’clock yesterday morning.”
“Then I should be inclined to fix the crime as being done not long after that.”
“But people were passing and repassing this shed continually.”
Giraud laughed disagreeably.
“You progress to a marvel! Who told you he was killed in this shed?”
“Well—” I felt flustered. “I—I assumed it.”
“Oh, what a fine detective! Look at him. Does a man stabbed to the heart fall like that—neatly with his feet together, and his arms to his sides? No. Again, does a man lie down on his back and permit himself to be stabbed without raising a hand to defend himself? It is absurd, is it not? But see here—and here—” He flashed the torch along the ground. I saw curious irregular marks in the soft dirt. “He was dragged here after he was dead. Half dragged, half carried by two people. Their tracks do not show on the hard ground outside, and here they have been careful to obliterate them; but one of the two was a woman, my young friend.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“But if the tracks are obliterated, how do you know?”
“Because, blurred as they are, the prints of the woman’s shoe are unmistakable. Also, by this.” And, leaning forward, he drew something from the handle of the dagger and held it up for me to see. It was a woman’s long black hair, similar to the one Poirot had taken from the armchair in the library.
With a slightly ironic smile he wound it round the dagger again.
“We will leave things as they are as much as possible,” he explained. “It pleases the examining magistrate. Well, do you notice anything else?”
I was forced to shake my head.
“Look at his hands.”
I did. The nails were broken and discoloured and the skin was hard. It hardly enlightened me as much as I should have liked it to have done. I looked up at Giraud.
“They are not the hands of a gentleman,” he said, answering my look. “On the contrary, his clothes are those of a well-to-do man. That is curious, is it not?”