He sat down at a little table and ordered tea and Devonshire cream….
Seventeen
MARKING TIME
With the murder of Sir Carmichael Clarke the A B C mystery leaped into the fullest prominence.
The newspapers were full of nothing else. All sorts of “clues” were reported to have been discovered. Arrests were announced to be imminent. There were photographs of every person or place remotely connected with the murder. There were interviews with anyone who would give interviews. There were questions asked in Parliament.
The Andover murder was now bracketed with the other two.
It was the belief of Scotland Yard that the fullest publicity was the best chance of laying the murderer by the heels. The population of Great Britain turned itself into an army of amateur sleuths.
The Daily Flicker had the grand inspiration of using the caption:
HE MAY BE IN YOUR TOWN!
Poirot, of course, was in the thick of things. The letters sent to him were published and facsimiled. He was abused wholesale for not having prevented the crimes and defended on the ground that he was on the point of naming the murderer.
Reporters incessantly badgered him for interviews.
What M. Poirot Says Today.
Which was usually followed by a half column of imbecilities.
M. Poirot Takes Grave View of Situation.
M. Poirot on the Eve of Success.
Captain Hastings, the great friend of M. Poirot, told our Special Representative….
“Poirot,” I would cry. “Pray believe me. I never said anything of the kind.”
My friend would reply kindly:
“I know, Hastings—I know. The spoken word and the written—there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the original meaning.”
“I wouldn’t like you to think I’d said—”
“But do not worry yourself. All this is of no importance. These imbecilities, even, may help.”
“How?”
“Eh bien,” said Poirot grimly. “If our madman reads what I am supposed to have said to the Daily Blague today, he will lose all respect for me as an opponent!”
I am, perhaps, giving the impression that nothing practical was being done in the way of investigations. On the contrary, Scotland Yard and the local police of the various counties were indefatigable in following up the smallest clues.
Hotels, people who kept lodgings, boarding-houses—all those within a wide radius of the crimes were questioned minutely.
Hundreds of stories from imaginative people who had “seen a man looking very queer and rolling his eyes,” or “noticed a man with a sinister face slinking along,” were sifted to the last detail. No information, even of the vaguest character, was neglected. Trains, buses, trams, railway porters, conductors, bookstalls, stationers—there was an indefatigable round of questions and verifications.
At least a score of people were detained and questioned until they could satisfy the police as to their movements on the night in question.
The net result was not entirely a blank. Certain statements were borne in mind and noted down as of possible value, but without further evidence they led nowhere.
If Crome and his colleagues were indefatigable, Poirot seemed to me strangely supine. We argued now and again.
“But what is it that you would have me do, my friend? The routine inquiries, the police make them better than I do. Always—always you want me to run about like the dog.”