Death in the Clouds (5 page)

Hercule Poirot rejoined his friend Inspector Japp. The latter had a grin on his face.

‘Hullo, old boy,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a pretty near squeak of being locked up in a police cell.’

‘I fear,’ said Poirot gravely, ‘that such an occurrence might have damaged me professionally.’

‘Well,’ said Japp with a grin, ‘detectives do turn out to be criminals sometimes—in story books.’

A tall thin man with an intelligent, melancholy face joined them, and Japp introduced him.

‘This is Monsieur Fournier of the Sûreté. He has come over to collaborate with us about this business.’

‘I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you once some years ago, M. Poirot,’ said Fournier, bowing and shaking hands. ‘I have also heard of you from M. Giraud.’

A very faint smile seemed to hover on his lips. And
Poirot, who could well imagine the terms in which Giraud (whom he himself had been in the habit of referring to disparagingly as the ‘human fox-hound’) had spoken of him, permitted himself a small discreet smile in reply.

‘I suggest,’ said Poirot, ‘that both you gentlemen should dine with me at my rooms. I have already invited Maître Thibault. That is, if you and my friend Japp do not object to my collaboration.’

‘That’s all right, old cock,’ said Japp, slapping him heartily on the back. ‘You’re in on this on the ground floor.’

‘We shall be indeed honoured,’ murmured the Frenchman ceremoniously.

‘You see,’ said Poirot, ‘as I said to a very charming young lady just now, I am anxious to clear my character.’

‘That jury certainly didn’t like the look of you,’ agreed Japp with a renewal of his grin. ‘Best joke I’ve heard for a long time.’

By common consent no mention of the case was made during the very excellent meal which the little Belgian provided for his friends.

‘After all, it
is
possible to eat well in England,’ murmured Fournier appreciatively as he made delicate use of a thoughtfully provided toothpick.

‘A delicious meal, M. Poirot,’ said Thibault.

‘Bit Frenchified, but damn good,’ pronounced Japp.

‘A meal should always lie lightly on the
estomac
,’ said Poirot. ‘It should not be so heavy as to paralyse thought.’

‘I can’t say my stomach ever gives me much trouble,’ said Japp. ‘But I won’t argue the point. Well, we’d better get down to business. I know that M. Thibault has got an appointment this evening, so I suggest that we should start by consulting him on any point that seems likely to be useful.’

‘I am at your service, gentlemen. Naturally I can speak more freely here than in a coroner’s court. I had a hurried conversation with Inspector Japp before the inquest, and he indicated a policy of reticence—the bare necessary facts.’

‘Quite right,’ said Japp. ‘Don’t ever spill the beans too soon. But now let’s hear all you can tell us of this Giselle woman.’

‘To speak the truth, I know very little. I know her as the world knew her—as a public character. Of her private life as an individual I know very little. Probably M. Fournier here can tell you more than I can. But I will say to you this: Madame Giselle was what you call in this country “a character”. She was unique. Of her antecedents nothing is known. I have an idea that as a young woman she was good-looking. I believe that as a result of smallpox she lost her looks. She
was—I am giving you my impressions—a woman who enjoyed power; she had power. She was a keen woman of business. She was the type of hard-headed Frenchwoman who would never allow sentiment to affect her business interests; but she had the reputation of carrying on her profession with scrupulous honesty.’

He looked for assent to Fournier. That gentleman nodded his dark melancholic head.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She was honest—according to her lights. Yet the law could have called her to account if only evidence had been forthcoming; but that—’ He shrugged his shoulders despondently. ‘It is too much to ask, with human nature what it is.’

‘You mean?’

‘
Chantage.
’

‘Blackmail?’ echoed Japp.

‘Yes, blackmail of a peculiar and specialized kind. It was Madame Giselle’s custom to lend money on what I think you call in this country “note of hand alone”. She used her discretion as to the sums she lent and the methods of repayment; but I may tell you that she had her own methods of getting paid.’

Poirot leaned forward interestedly.

‘As Maître Thibault said today, Madame Giselle’s clientèle lay amongst the upper and professional classes. Those classes are particularly vulnerable to the force
of public opinion. Madame Giselle had her own intelligence service…It was her custom before lending money (that is, in the case of a large sum) to collect as many facts as possible about the client in question; and her intelligence system, I may say, was an extraordinarily good one. I will echo what our friend has said: according to her lights Madame Giselle was scrupulously honest. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. I honestly believe that she has never made use of her secret knowledge to obtain money from anyone unless that money was already owed to her.’

‘You mean,’ said Poirot, ‘that this secret knowledge was her form of security?’

‘Exactly; and in using it she was perfectly ruthless and deaf to any finer shades of feeling; and I will tell you this, gentlemen:
her system paid!
Very, very rarely did she have to write off a bad debt. A man or woman in a prominent position would go to desperate lengths to obtain the money which would obviate a public scandal. As I say, we knew of her activities; but as for prosecution—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That is a more difficult matter. Human nature is human nature.’

‘And supposing,’ said Poirot, ‘that she did, as you say happened occasionally, have to write off a bad debt—what then?’

‘In that case,’ said Fournier slowly, ‘the information she held was published, or was given to the person concerned in the matter.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Poirot said:

‘Financially, that did not benefit her?’

‘No,’ said Fournier—‘not directly, that is.’

‘But indirectly?’

‘Indirectly,’ said Japp, ‘it made the others pay up, eh?’

‘Exactly,’ said Fournier. ‘It was valuable for what you call the moral effect.’

‘Immoral effect, I should call it,’ said Japp. ‘Well’—he rubbed his nose thoughtfully—‘it opens up a very pretty line in motives for murder—a very pretty line. Then there’s the question of who is going to come into her money.’ He appealed to Thibault. ‘Can you help us there at all?’

‘There was a daughter,’ said the lawyer. ‘She did not live with her mother—indeed I fancy that her mother has never seen her since she was a tiny child; but she made a will many years ago now leaving everything, with the exception of a small legacy to her maid, to her daughter Anne Morisot. As far as I know she has never made another.’

‘And her fortune is large?’ asked Poirot.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.

‘At a guess eight or nine million francs.’

Poirot pursed his lips to a whistle. Japp said, ‘Lord, she didn’t look it. Let me see, what’s the exchange—that’s—why, that must be well over a hundred thousand pounds. Whew!’

‘Mademoiselle Anne Morisot will be a very wealthy young woman,’ said Poirot.

‘Just as well she wasn’t on that plane,’ said Japp drily. ‘She might have been suspected of bumping off her mother to get the dibs. How old would she be?’

‘I really cannot say. I should imagine about twenty-four or five.’

‘Well, there doesn’t seem anything to connect her with the crime. We’ll have to get down to this blackmailing business. Everyone on that plane denies knowing Madame Giselle. One of them is lying. We’ve got to find out which. An examination of her private papers might help, eh, Fournier?’

‘My friend,’ said the Frenchman, ‘immediately the news came through, after I had conversed with Scotland Yard on the telephone, I went straight to her house. There was a safe there containing papers. All those papers had been burnt.’

‘Burnt? Who by? Why?’

‘Madame Giselle had a confidential maid, Elise. Elise had instructions in the event of anything happening to her mistress to open the safe (the combination of which she knew) and burn the contents.’

‘What? But that’s amazing!’ Japp stared.

‘You see,’ said Fournier, ‘Madame Giselle had her own code. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. She gave her promise to her clients that she would deal honestly with them. She was ruthless, but she was also a woman of her word.’

Japp shook his head dumbly. The four men were silent, ruminating on the strange character of the dead woman…

Maître Thibault rose.

‘I must leave you, Messieurs. I have to keep an appointment. If there is any further information I can give you at any time, you know my address.’

He shook hands with them ceremoniously and left the apartment.

With the departure of Maître Thibault, the three men drew their chairs a little closer to the table.

‘Now, then,’ said Japp, ‘let’s get down to it.’ He unscrewed the cap of his fountain-pen. ‘There were eleven passengers in that plane—in the rear car, I mean; the other doesn’t come into it—eleven passengers and two stewards—that’s thirteen people we’ve got.
One of the remaining twelve did the old woman in
. Some of the passengers were English, some were French. The latter I shall hand over to M. Fournier. The English ones I’ll take on. Then there are inquiries to be made in Paris—that’s your job too, Fournier.’

‘And not only in Paris,’ said Fournier. ‘In the summer Giselle did a lot of business at the French watering-places—Deauville, Le Pinet, Wimereux. She went down south too, to Antibes and Nice, and all those places.’

‘A good point; one or two of the people in the
Prometheus
mentioned Le Pinet, I remember. Well, that’s one line. Then we’ve got to get down to the actual murder itself—prove who could possibly be in a position to use that blowpipe.’ He unrolled a large sketch plan of the car of the aeroplane and placed it in the centre of the table. ‘Now, then, we’re ready for the preliminary work. And, to begin with, let’s go through the people one by one, and decide on the probabilities and—even more important—the possibilities.

‘To begin with, we can eliminate M. Poirot here. That brings the number down to eleven.’

Poirot shook his head sadly.

‘You are of too trustful a nature, my friend. You should trust nobody—nobody at all.’

‘Well, we’ll leave you in if you like,’ said Japp good-temperedly. ‘Then there are the stewards. Seems to me very unlikely it should be either of them from the probability point of view. They’re not likely to have borrowed money on a grand scale and they’ve both got a good record—decent, sober men, both of them. It would surprise me very much if either of them had anything to do with this. On the other hand, from the possibility point of view we’ve got to include them. They were up and down the car. They could actually have taken up a position from which they could have used that blowpipe—from the right
angle, I mean—though I don’t believe that a steward could shoot a poisoned dart out of a blowpipe in a car full of people without someone noticing him do it. I know by experience that most people are blind as bats; but there are limits. Of course, in a way, the same thing applies to every blessed person. It was madness, absolute madness, to commit a crime that way. Only about a chance in a hundred that it would come off without being spotted. The fellow that did it must have had the luck of the devil. Of all the damn fool ways to commit a murder—’

Poirot, who had been sitting with his eyes down, smoking quietly, interposed a question.

‘You think it was a foolish way of committing a murder, yes?’

‘Of course it was. It was absolute madness.’

‘And yet—it
succeeded
. We sit here, we three, we talk about it, but we have no knowledge of
who committed the crime
! That is success!’

‘That’s pure luck,’ argued Japp. ‘The murderer ought to have been spotted five or six times over.’

Poirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner.

Fournier looked at him curiously.

‘What is it that is in your mind, M. Poirot?’

‘
Mon ami
,’ said Poirot, ‘my point is this: an affair must be judged by its results. This affair has succeeded. That is my point.’

‘And yet,’ said the Frenchman thoughtfully, ‘it seems almost a miracle.’

‘Miracle or no miracle, there it is,’ said Japp. ‘We’ve got the medical evidence, we’ve got the weapon; and if anyone had told me a week ago that I should be investigating a crime where a woman was killed with a poisoned dart with snake venom on it—well, I’d have laughed in his face! It’s an insult—that’s what this murder is—an insult.’

He breathed deeply. Poirot smiled.

‘It is, perhaps, a murder committed by a person with a perverted sense of humour,’ said Fournier thoughtfully. ‘It is most important in a crime to get an idea of the psychology of the murderer.’

Japp snorted slightly at the word psychology, which he disliked and mistrusted.

‘That’s the sort of stuff M. Poirot likes to hear,’ he said.

‘I am very interested, yes, in what you both say.’

‘You don’t doubt that she was killed that way, I suppose?’ Japp asked him suspiciously. ‘I know your tortuous mind.’

‘No, no, my friend. My mind is quite at ease on that point. The poisoned thorn that I picked up was the cause of death—that is quite certain. But nevertheless there are points about this case—’

He paused, shaking his head perplexedly.

Japp went on:

‘Well, to get back to our Irish stew, we can’t wash out the stewards absolutely, but I think myself it’s very unlikely that either of them had anything to do with it. Do you agree, M. Poirot?’

‘Oh, you remember what I said. Me—I would not wash out—what a term,
mon Dieu
!—anybody at this stage.’

‘Have it your own way. Now, the passengers. Let’s start up the end by the stewards’ pantry and the toilets. Seat No. 16.’ He jabbed a pencil on the plan. ‘That’s the hairdressing girl, Jane Grey. Got a ticket in the Irish Sweep—blued it at Le Pinet. That means the girl’s a gambler. She
might
have been hard up and borrowed from the old dame—doesn’t seem likely, either, that she borrowed a large sum, or that Giselle could have a “hold” over her. Seems rather too small a fish for what we’re looking for. And I don’t think a hairdresser’s assistant had the remotest chance of laying her hands on snake venom. They don’t use it as a hair dye or for face massage.

‘In a way it was rather a mistake to use snake venom; it narrows things down a lot. Only about two people in a hundred would be likely to have any knowledge of it and be able to lay hands on the stuff.’

‘Which makes one thing, at least, perfectly clear,’ said Poirot.

It was Fournier who shot a quick glance of inquiry at him.

Japp was busy with his own ideas.

‘I look at it like this,’ he said. ‘The murderer has got to fall into one of two categories: either he’s a man who’s knocked about the world in queer places—a man who knows something of snakes and of the more deadly varieties and of the habits of the native tribes who use the venom to dispose of their enemies—that’s category No. 1.’

‘And the other?’

‘The scientific line. Research. This boomslang stuff is the kind of thing they experiment with in high-class laboratories. I had a talk with Winterspoon. Apparently snake venom—cobra venom, to be exact—is sometimes used in medicine. It’s used in the treatment of epilepsy with a fair amount of success. There’s a lot being done in the way of scientific investigation into snake bite.’

‘Interesting and suggestive,’ said Fournier.

‘Yes, but let’s go on. Neither of those categories fit the Grey girl. As far as she’s concerned, motive seems unlikely, chances of getting the poison—poor. Actual possibility of doing the blowpipe act very doubtful indeed—almost impossible. See here.’

The three men bent over the plan.

‘Here’s 16,’ said Japp. ‘And here’s 2, where Giselle was sitting with a lot of people and seats intervening.
If the girl didn’t move from her seat—and everybody says she didn’t—she couldn’t possibly have aimed the thorn to catch Giselle on the side of the neck. I think we can take it she’s pretty well out of it.

‘Now then, 12, opposite. That’s the dentist, Norman Gale. Very much the same applies to him. Small fry. I suppose he’d have a slightly better chance of getting hold of snake venom.’

‘It is not an injection usually favoured by dentists,’ murmured Poirot gently. ‘It would be a case of kill rather than cure.’

‘A dentist has enough fun with his patients as it is,’ said Japp, grinning. ‘Still, I suppose he might move in circles where you could get access to some funny business in drugs. He might have a scientific friend. But as regards
possibility
he’s pretty well out of it. He
did
leave his seat, but only to go to the toilet—that’s in the opposite direction. On his way back to his seat he couldn’t be farther than the gangway here, and to shoot off a thorn from a blowpipe so as to catch the old lady in the neck he’d have to have a kind of pet thorn that would do tricks and make a right-angle turn. So
he’s
pretty well out of it.’

‘I agree,’ said Fournier. ‘Let us proceed.’

‘We’ll cross the gangway now. 17.’

‘That was my seat originally,’ said Poirot. ‘I yielded
it to one of the ladies since she desired to be near her friend.’

‘That’s the Honourable Venetia. Well, what about her? She’s a big bug. She might have borrowed from Giselle. Doesn’t look as though she had any guilty secrets in her life—but perhaps she pulled a horse in a point-to-point, or whatever they call it. We’ll have to pay a little attention to her. The
position’s
possible. If Giselle had got her head turned a little looking out of the window the Hon. Venetia could take a sporting shot (or do you call it a sporting puff?) diagonally across down the car. It would be a bit of a fluke, though. I rather think she’d have to stand up to do it. She’s the sort of woman who goes out with the guns in the autumn. I don’t know whether shooting with a gun is any help to you with a native blowpipe? I suppose it’s a question of eye just the same—eye and practice; and she’s probably got friends—men—who’ve been big-game hunting in odd parts of the globe. She might have got hold of some queer native stuff that way. What balderdash it all sounds, though! It doesn’t make
sense
.’

‘It does indeed seem unlikely,’ said Fournier. ‘Mademoiselle Kerr—I saw her at the inquest today—’ He shook his head. ‘One does not readily connect her with murder.’

‘Seat 13,’ said Japp. ‘Lady Horbury.
She’s
a bit of a
dark horse. I know something about her I’ll tell you presently. I shouldn’t be surprised if she had a guilty secret or two.’

‘I happen to know,’ said Fournier, ‘that the lady in question has been losing very heavily at the baccarat table at Le Pinet.’

‘That’s smart of you. Yes, she’s the type of pigeon to be mixed up with Giselle.’

‘I agree absolutely.’

‘Very well, then—so far, so good.
But how did she do it?
She didn’t leave her seat either, you remember. She’d have had to have knelt up in her seat and leaned over the top—with ten people looking at her. Oh, hell, let’s get on.’

‘9 and 10,’ said Fournier, moving his finger on the plan.

‘M. Hercule Poirot and Dr Bryant,’ said Japp. ‘What has M. Poirot to say for himself?’

Poirot shook his head sadly.

‘
Mon estomac
,’ he said pathetically. ‘Alas, that the brain should be the servant of the stomach.’

‘I, too,’ said Fournier with sympathy. ‘In the air I do not feel well.’

He closed his eyes and shook his head expressively.

‘Now then, Dr Bryant. What about Dr Bryant? Big bug in Harley Street. Not very likely to go to a French woman moneylender; but you never know. And if any
funny business crops up with a doctor he’s done for life! Here’s where my scientific theory comes in. A man like Bryant, at the top of the tree, is in with all the medical research people. He could pinch a test-tube of snake venom as easy as winking when he happens to be in some swell laboratory.’

‘They check these things, my friend,’ objected Poirot. ‘It would not be just like plucking a buttercup in a meadow.’

‘Even if they do check ’em, a clever man could substitute something harmless. It could be done, simply because a man like Bryant would be above suspicion.’

‘There is much in what you say,’ agreed Fournier.

‘The only thing is, why did he draw attention to the thing? Why not say the woman died from heart failure—natural death?’

Poirot coughed. The other two looked at him inquiringly.

‘I fancy,’ he said, ‘that that was the doctor’s first—well, shall we say impression? After all, it looked very like natural death, possibly as the result of a wasp sting; there was a wasp, remember—’

‘Not likely to forget that wasp,’ put in Japp. ‘You’re always harping on it.’

‘However,’ continued Poirot, ‘
I
happened to notice the fatal thorn on the ground and picked it up. Once we had found that, everything pointed to murder.’

‘The thorn would be bound to be found anyway.’

Poirot shook his head.

‘There is just a chance that the murderer might have been able to pick it up unobserved.’

‘Bryant?’

‘Bryant or another.’

‘H’m—rather risky.’

Fournier disagreed.

‘You think so now,’ he said, ‘because you know that it is murder. But when a lady dies suddenly of heart failure, if a man is to drop his handkerchief and stoop to pick it up, who will notice the action or think twice about it?’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Japp. ‘Well, I fancy Bryant is definitely on the list of suspects. He could lean his head round the corner of his seat and do the blowpipe act—again diagonally across the car. But why nobody saw him—! However, I won’t go into that again. Whoever did it
wasn’t
seen!’

‘And for that, I fancy, there must be a reason,’ said Fournier. ‘A reason that, by all I have heard,’ he smiled, ‘will appeal to M. Poirot. I mean a psychological reason.’

‘Continue, my friend,’ said Poirot. ‘It is interesting what you say there.’

‘Supposing,’ said Fournier, ‘that when travelling in a train you were to pass a house in flames. Everyone’s
eyes would at once be drawn to the window. Everyone would have their attention fixed on a certain point. A man in such a moment might whip out a dagger and stab a man, and nobody would see him do it.’

‘That is true,’ said Poirot. ‘I remember a case in which I was concerned—a case of poison, where that very point arose. There was, as you call it, a psychological moment. If we discover that there was such a moment during the journey of the
Prometheus
—’

‘We ought to find that out by questioning the stewards and the passengers,’ said Japp.