He betrayed no emotion of any kind. At the moment he was engaged in methodically recording facts.
“Monsieur Kettering has told the police that he neither saw nor spoke to his wife on the journey from England. Are you inclined to believe that statement, Monsieur?”
“Yes, I am,” said Van Aldin. “He would take particular pains to keep out of her way, I should say.”
“Why?”
“Because he had got that woman with him.”
“Mirelle?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know that fact?”
“A man of mine, whom I had put on to watch him, reported to me that they both left by that train.”
“I see,” said Poirot. “In that case, as you said before, he would not be likely to attempt to hold any communication with Madame Kettering.”
The little man fell silent for some time. Van Aldin did not interrupt his meditation.
Seventeen
AN ARISTOCRATIC GENTLEMAN
“You have been to the Riviera before, Georges?” said Poirot to his valet the following morning.
George was an intensely English, rather wooden-faced individual.
“Yes, sir. I was here two years ago when I was in the service of Lord Edward Frampton.”
“And today,” murmured his master, “you are here with Hercule Poirot. How one mounts in the world!”
The valet made no reply to this observation. After a suitable pause he asked:
“The brown lounge suit, sir? The wind is somewhat chilly today.”
“There is a grease spot on the waistcoat,” objected Poirot. “A morceau of filet de sole à la Jeanette alighted there when I was lunching at the Ritz last Tuesday.”
“There is no spot there now, sir,” said George reproachfully. “I have removed it.”
“Très bien!” said Poirot. “I am pleased with you, Georges.”
“Thank you, sir.”
There was a pause, and then Poirot murmured dreamily:
“Supposing, my good Georges, that you had been born in the same social sphere as your late master, Lord Edward Frampton—that, penniless yourself, you had married an extremely wealthy wife, but that wife proposed to divorce you, with excellent reasons, what would you do about it?”
“I should endeavour, sir,” replied George, “to make her change her mind.”
“By peaceful or by forcible methods?”
George looked shocked.
“You will excuse me, sir,” he said, “but a gentleman of the aristocracy would not behave like a Whitechapel coster. He would not do anything low.”
“Would he not, Georges? I wonder now. Well, perhaps you are right.”
There was a knock on the door. George went to it and opened it a discreet inch or two. A low murmured colloquy went on, and then the valet returned to Poirot.
“A note, sir.”
Poirot took it. It was from M. Caux, the Commissary of Police.
“We are about to interrogate the Comte de la Roche. The Juge d’Instruction begs that you will be present.”
“Quickly, my suit, Georges! I must hasten myself.”
A quarter of an hour later, spick and span in his brown suit, Poirot entered the Examining Magistrate’s room. M. Caux was already there, and both he and M. Carrège greeted Poirot with polite empressement.
“The affair is somewhat discouraging,” murmured M. Caux.
“It appears that the Comte arrived in Nice the day before the murder.”
“If that is true, it will settle your affair nicely for you,” responded Poirot.
M. Carrège cleared his throat.
“We must not accept this alibi without very cautious inquiry,” he declared. He struck the bell upon the table with his hand.
In another minute a tall dark man, exquisitely dressed, with a somewhat haughty cast of countenance, entered the room. So very aristocratic-looking was the Count, that it would have seemed sheer heresy even to whisper that his father had been an obscure corn chandler in Nantes—which, as a matter of fact, was the case. Looking at him, one would have been prepared to swear that innumerable ancestors of his must have perished by the guillotine in the French Revolution.
“I am here, gentlemen,” said the Count haughtily. “May I ask why you wish to see me?”
“Pray be seated, Monsieur le Comte,” said the Examining Magistrate politely. “It is the affair of the death of Madame Kettering that we are investigating.”
“The death of Madame Kettering? I do not understand.”
“You were—ahem!—acquainted with the lady, I believe, Monsieur le Comte?”
“Certainly I was acquainted with her. What has that to do with the matter?”
Sticking an eyeglass in his eye, he looked coldly round the room, his glance resting longest on Poirot, who was gazing at him with a kind of simple, innocent admiration which was most pleasing to the Count’s vanity. M. Carrège leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat.
“You do not perhaps know, Monsieur le Comte”—he paused—“that Madame Kettering was murdered?”
“Murdered? Mon Dieu, how terrible!”
The surprise and the sorrow were excellently done—so well done, indeed, as to seem wholly natural.
“Madame Kettering was strangled between Paris and Lyons,” continued M. Carrège, “and her jewels were stolen.”
“It is iniquitous!” cried the Count warmly; “the police should do something about these train bandits. Nowadays no one is safe.”
“In Madame’s handbag,” continued the Judge, “we found a letter to her from you. She had, it seemed, arranged to meet you?”
The Count shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
“Of what use are concealments,” he said frankly. “We are all men of the world. Privately and between ourselves, I admit the affair.”
“You met her in Paris and travelled down with her, I believe?” said M. Carrège.
“That was the original arrangement, but by Madame’s wish it was changed. I was to meet her at Hyères.”
“You did not meet her on the train at Gare de Lyon on the evening of the 14th?”
“On the contrary, I arrived in Nice on the morning of that day, so what you suggest is impossible.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said M. Carrège. “As a matter of form, you would perhaps give me an account of your movements during the evening and night of the 14th.”
The Count reflected for a minute.
“I dined in Monte Carlo at the Café de Paris. Afterwards I went to the Le Sporting. I won a few thousand francs,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I returned home at perhaps one o’clock.”
“Pardon me, Monsieur, but how did you return home?”
“In my own two-seater car.”
“No one was with you?”
“No one.”
“You could produce witnesses in support of this statement?”
“Doubtless many of my friends saw me there that evening. I dined alone.”
“Your servant admitted you on your return to your villa?”
“I
let myself in with my own latchkey.”
“Ah!” murmured the Magistrate.
Again he struck the bell on the table with his hand. The door opened, and a messenger appeared.
“Bring in the maid, Mason,” said M. Carrège.
“Very good, Monsieur le Juge.”
Ada Mason was brought in.
“Will you be so good, Mademoiselle, as to look at this gentleman. To the best of your ability was it he who entered your mistress’s compartment in Paris?”
The woman looked long and searchingly at the Count, who was, Poirot fancied, rather uneasy under this scrutiny.
“I could not say, sir, I am sure,” said Mason at last. “It might be and again it might not. Seeing as how I only saw his back, it’s hard to say. I rather think it was the gentleman.”
“But you are not sure?”
“No-o,” said Mason unwillingly; “n-no, I am not sure.”
“You have seen this gentleman before in Curzon Street?”
Mason shook her head.
“I should not be likely to see any visitors that come to Curzon Street,” she explained, “unless they were staying in the house.”
“Very well, that will do,” said the Examining Magistrate sharply.
Evidently he was disappointed.
“One moment,” said Poirot. “There is a question I would like to put to Mademoiselle, if I may?”
“Certainly, M. Poirot—certainly, by all means.”
Poirot addressed himself to the maid.
“What happened to the tickets?”
“The tickets, sir?”
“Yes; the tickets from London to Nice. Did you or your mistress have them?”
“The mistress had her own Pullman ticket, sir; the others were in my charge.”
“What happened to them?”
“I gave them to the conductor on the French train, sir; he said it was usual. I hope I did right, sir?”
“Oh, quite right, quite right. A mere matter of detail.”
Both M. Caux and the Examining Magistrate looked at him curiously. Mason stood uncertainly for a minute or two, and then the magistrate gave her a brief nod of dismissal, and she went out. Poirot scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it across to M. Carrège. The latter read it and his brow cleared.
“Well, gentlemen,” demanded the Count haughtily, “am I to be detained further?”
“Assuredly not, assuredly not,” M. Carrège hastened to say, with a great deal of amiability. “Everything is now cleared up as regards your own position in this affair. Naturally, in view of Madame’s letter, we were bound to question you.”