“Do you yourself approve of Mr. Burrows?”
The colonel delivered himself of the opinion that Godfrey Burrows was slightly hairy at the heel, a pronouncement which baffled Poirot completely, but made Major Riddle smile into his moustache.
A few more questions were asked and answered, and then Colonel Bury departed.
Riddle glanced over at Poirot who was sitting absorbed in thought.
“What do you make of it all, M. Poirot?”
The little man raised his hands.
“I seem to see a pattern—a purposeful design.”
Riddle said, “It’s difficult.”
“Yes, it is difficult. But more and more one phrase, lightly uttered, strikes me as significant.”
“What was that?”
“That laughing sentence spoken by Hugo Trent: ‘There’s always murder . . . ’ ”
Riddle said sharply:
“Yes, I can see that you’ve been leaning that way all along.”
“Do you not agree, my friend, that the more we learn, the less and less motive we find for suicide? But for murder, we begin to have a surprising collection of motives!”
“Still, you’ve got to remember the facts—door locked, key in dead man’s pocket. Oh, I know there are ways and means. Bent pins, strings—all sorts of devices. It would, I suppose, be possible . . . But do those things really work? That’s what I very much
doubt.”
“At all events, let us examine the position from the point of view of murder, not of suicide.”
“Oh, all right. As you are on the scene, it probably would be murder!”
For a moment Poirot smiled.
“I hardly like that remark.”
Then he became grave once more.
“Yes, let us examine the case from the standpoint of murder. The shot is heard, four people are in the hall, Miss Lingard, Hugo Trent, Miss Cardwell and Snell. Where are all the others?”
“Burrows was in the library, according to his own story. No one to check that statement. The others were presumably in their rooms, but who is to know if they were really there? Everybody seems to have come down separately. Even Lady Chevenix-Gore and Bury only met in the hall. Lady Chevenix-Gore came from the dining room. Where did Bury come from? Isn’t it possible that he came, not from upstairs, but from the study? There’s that pencil.”
“Yes, the pencil is interesting. He showed no emotion when I produced it, but that might be because he did not know where I found it and was unaware himself of having dropped it. Let us see, who else was playing bridge when the pencil was in use? Hugo Trent and Miss Cardwell. They’re out of it. Miss Lingard and the butler can vouch for their alibis. The fourth was Lady Chevenix-Gore.”
“You can’t seriously suspect her.”
“Why not, my friend? I tell you, me, I can suspect everybody! Supposing that, in spite of her apparent devotion to her husband, it is the faithful Bury she really loves?”
“H’m,” said Riddle. “In a way it has been a kind of ménage à trois for years.”
“And there is some trouble about this company between Sir Gervase and Colonel Bury.”
“It’s true that Sir Gervase might have been meaning to turn really nasty. We don’t know the ins-and-outs of it. It might fit in with that summons to you. Say Sir Gervase suspects that Bury has deliberately fleeced him, but he doesn’t want publicity because of a suspicion that his wife may be mixed up in it. Yes, that’s possible. That gives either of those two a possible motive. And it is a bit odd really that Lady Chevenix-Gore should take her husband’s death so calmly. All this spirit business may be acting!”
“Then there is the other complication,” said Poirot. “Miss Chevenix-Gore and Burrows. It is very much to their interest that Sir Gervase should not sign the new will. As it is, she gets everything on condition that her husband takes the family name—”