“Very well, I will go straight to the station.”
He rose to his feet. Poirot’s voice stopped him:
“One moment, Monsieur Renauld, there is one little matter that puzzles me. Why did you not mention to Monsieur Hautet this morning that you were in Merlinville on the night of the crime?”
Jack Renauld’s face went crimson. With an effort he controlled himself.
“You have made a mistake. I was in Cherbourg as I told the examining magistrate this morning.”
Poirot looked at him, his eyes narrowed, catlike, until they only showed a gleam of green.
“Then it is a singular mistake that I have made there—for it is shared by the station staff. They say you arrived by the 11:40 train.”
For a moment Jack Renauld hesitated, then he made up his mind.
“And if I did? I suppose you do not mean to accuse me of participating in my father’s murder?” He asked the question haughtily, his head thrown back.
“I should like an explanation of the reason that brought you here.”
“That is simple enough. I came to see my fiancée, Mademoiselle Daubreuil. I was on the eve of a long voyage, uncertain as to when I should return. I wished to see her before I went, to assure her of my unchanging devotion.”
“And did you see her?” Poirot’s eyes never left the other’s face.
There was an appreciable pause before Renauld replied. Then he said:
“Yes.”
“And afterwards?”
“I found I had missed the last train. I walked to St. Beauvais, where I knocked up a garage and got a car to take me back to Cherbourg.”
“St. Beauvais? That is fifteen kilometres. A long walk, M. Renauld.”
“I—I felt like walking.”
Poirot bowed his head as a sign that he accepted the explanation. Jack Renauld took up his hat and cane and departed. In a trice Poirot jumped to his feet.
“Quick, Hastings. We will go after him.”
Keeping a discreet distance behind our quarry, we followed him through the streets of Merlinville. But when Poirot saw that he took the turning to the station he checked himself.
“All is well. He has taken the bait. He will go to Abbalac, and will inquire for the mythical valise left by the mythical foreigners. Yes, mon ami, all that was a little invention of my own.”
“You wanted him out of the way!” I exclaimed.
“Your penetration is amazing, Hastings! Now, if you please, we will go up to the Villa Geneviève.”
Eighteen
GIRAUD ACTS
Arrived at the villa, Poirot led the way up to the shed where the second body had been discovered. He did not, however, go in, but paused by the bench which I have mentioned before as being set some few yards away from it. After contemplating it for a moment or two, he paced carefully from it to the hedge which marked the boundary between the Villa Geneviève and the Villa Marguerite. Then he paced back again, nodding his head as he did so. Returning again to the hedge, he parted the bushes with his hands.
“With good fortune,” he remarked to me over his shoulder, “Mademoiselle Marthe may find herself in the garden. I desire to speak to her and would prefer not to call formally at the Villa Marguerite. Ah, all is well, there she is. Pst, Mademoiselle! Pst! Un moment, s’il vous plaît.”
I joined him at the moment that Marthe Daubreuil, looking slightly startled, came running up to the hedge at his call.
“A little word with you, mademoiselle, if it is permitted?”
“Certainly, Monsieur Poirot.”
Despite her acquiescence, her eyes looked troubled and afraid.
“Mademoiselle, do you remember running after me on the road the day that I came to your house with the examining magistrate? You asked me if anyone were suspected of the crime.”
“And you told me two Chileans.” Her voice sounded rather breathless, and her left hand stole to her breast.
“Will you ask me the same question again, mademoiselle?”
“What do you mean?”
“This. If you were to ask me that question again, I should give you a different answer. Someone is suspected—but not a Chilean.”
“Who?” The word came faintly between her parted lips.
“Monsieur Jack Renauld.”
“What?” It was a cry. “Jack? Impossible. Who dares to suspect him?”
“Giraud.”
“Giraud!” The girl’s face was ashy. “I am afraid of that man. He is cruel. He will—he will—” She broke off. There was courage gathering in her face, and determination. I realized in that moment that she was a fighter. Poirot, too, watched her intently.
“You know, of course, that he was here on the night of the murder?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied mechanically. “He told me.”
“It was unwise to have tried to conceal the fact,” ventured Poirot.
“Yes, yes,” she replied impatiently. “But we cannot waste time on regrets. We must find something to save him. He is innocent, of course; but that will not help him with a man like Giraud, who has his reputation to think of. He must arrest someone, and that someone will be Jack.”
“The facts will tell against him,” said Poirot. “You realize that?”
She faced him squarely.
“I am not a child, monsieur. I can be brave and look facts in the face. He is innocent, and we must save him.”
She spoke with a kind of desperate energy, then was silent, frowning as she thought.
“Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, observing her keenly, “is there not something that you are keeping back that you could tell us?”
She nodded perplexedly.
“Yes, there is something, but I hardly know whether you will believe it—it seems so absurd.”
“At any rate, tell us, mademoiselle.”
“It is this. M. Giraud sent for me, as an afterthought, to see if I could identify the man in there.” She signed with her head towards the shed. “I could not. At least I could not at the moment. But since I have been thinking—”
“Well?”
“It seems so queer, and yet I am almost sure. I will tell you. On the morning of the day Monsieur Renauld was murdered, I was walking in the garden here, when I heard a sound of men’s voices quarrelling. I pushed aside the bushes and looked through. One of the men was Monsieur Renauld and the other was a tramp, a dreadful-looking creature in filthy rags. He was alternately whining and threatening. I gathered he was asking for money, but at that moment maman called me from the house, and I had to go. That is all, only—I am almost sure that the tramp and the dead man in the shed are one and the same.”
Poirot uttered an exclamation.
“But why did you not say at the time, mademoiselle?”
“Because at first it only struck me that the face was vaguely familiar in some way. The man was differently dressed, and apparently belonged to a superior station in life.”
A voice called from the house.
“Maman,” whispered Marthe: “I must go.” And she slipped away through the trees.
“Come,” said Poirot and, taking my arm, turned in the direction of the villa.
“What do you really think?” I asked in some curiosity. “Was that story true, or did the girl make it up in order to divert suspicion from her lover?”
“It is a curious tale,” said Poirot, “but I believe it to be the absolute truth. Unwittingly, Mademoiselle Marthe told us the truth on another point—and incidentally gave Jack Renauld the lie. Did you notice his hesitation when I asked him if he saw Marthe Daubreuil on the night of the crime? He paused and then said ‘Yes.’ I suspected that he was lying. It was necessary for me to see Mademoiselle Marthe before he could put her on her guard. Three little words gave me the information I wanted. When I asked her if she knew that Jack Renauld was here that night, she answered, ‘He told me.’ Now, Hastings, what was Jack Renauld doing here on that eventful evening, and if he did not see Mademoiselle Marthe whom did he see?
”
“Surely, Poirot,” I cried, aghast, “you cannot believe that a boy like that would murder his own father!”
“Mon ami,” said Poirot. “You continue to be of a sentimentality unbelievable! I have seen mothers who murdered their little children for the sake of the insurance money! After that, one can believe anything.”
“And the motive?”
“Money of course. Remember that Jack Renauld thought that he would come into half his father’s fortune at the latter’s death.”
“But the tramp. Where does he come in?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“Giraud would say that he was an accomplice—an apache who helped young Renauld to commit the crime, and who was conveniently put out of the way afterwards.”
“But the hair round the dagger? The woman’s hair?”