The Mysterious Affair at Styles
by Agatha Christie
THE LAST LINK
CHAPTER XII
Poirot’s abrupt departure had intrigued us all greatly. Sunday morning
wore away, and still he did not reappear. But about three o’clock a
ferocious and prolonged hooting outside drove us to the window, to see
Poirot alighting from a car, accompanied by Japp and Summerhaye. The
little man was transformed. He radiated an absurd complacency. He bowed
with exaggerated respect to Mary Cavendish.
“Madame, I have your permission to hold a little _réunion_ in the
_salon_? It is necessary for everyone to attend.”
Mary smiled sadly.
“You know, Monsieur Poirot, that you have _carte blanche_ in every
way.”
“You are too amiable, madame.”
Still beaming, Poirot marshalled us all into the drawing-room, bringing
forward chairs as he did so.
“Miss Howard—here. Mademoiselle Cynthia. Monsieur Lawrence. The good
Dorcas. And Annie. _Bien!_ We must delay our proceedings a few minutes
until Mr. Inglethorp arrives. I have sent him a note.”
Miss Howard rose immediately from her seat.
“If that man comes into the house, I leave it!”
“No, no!” Poirot went up to her and pleaded in a low voice.
Finally Miss Howard consented to return to her chair. A few minutes
later Alfred Inglethorp entered the room.
The company once assembled, Poirot rose from his seat with the air of a
popular lecturer, and bowed politely to his audience.
“_Messieurs, mesdames_, as you all know, I was called in by Monsieur
John Cavendish to investigate this case. I at once examined the bedroom
of the deceased which, by the advice of the doctors, had been kept
locked, and was consequently exactly as it had been when the tragedy
occurred. I found: first, a fragment of green material; second, a stain
on the carpet near the window, still damp; thirdly, an empty box of
bromide powders.
“To take the fragment of green material first, I found it caught in the
bolt of the communicating door between that room and the adjoining one
occupied by Mademoiselle Cynthia. I handed the fragment over to the
police who did not consider it of much importance. Nor did they
recognize it for what it was—a piece torn from a green land armlet.”
There was a little stir of excitement.
“Now there was only one person at Styles who worked on the land—Mrs.
Cavendish. Therefore it must have been Mrs. Cavendish who entered the
deceased’s room through the door communicating with Mademoiselle
Cynthia’s room.”
“But that door was bolted on the inside!” I cried.
“When I examined the room, yes. But in the first place we have only her
word for it, since it was she who tried that particular door and
reported it fastened. In the ensuing confusion she would have had ample
opportunity to shoot the bolt across. I took an early opportunity of
verifying my conjectures. To begin with, the fragment corresponds
exactly with a tear in Mrs. Cavendish’s armlet. Also, at the inquest,
Mrs. Cavendish declared that she had heard, from her own room, the fall
of the table by the bed. I took an early opportunity of testing that
statement by stationing my friend Monsieur Hastings in the left wing of
the building, just outside Mrs. Cavendish’s door. I myself, in company
with the police, went to the deceased’s room, and whilst there I,
apparently accidentally, knocked over the table in question, but found
that, as I had expected, Monsieur Hastings had heard no sound at all.
This confirmed my belief that Mrs. Cavendish was not speaking the truth
when she declared that she had been dressing in her room at the time of
the tragedy. In fact, I was convinced that, far from having been in her
own room, Mrs. Cavendish was actually in the deceased’s room when the
alarm was given.”
I shot a quick glance at Mary. She was very pale, but smiling.
“I proceeded to reason on that assumption. Mrs. Cavendish is in her
mother-in-law’s room. We will say that she is seeking for something and
has not yet found it. Suddenly Mrs. Inglethorp awakens and is seized
with an alarming paroxysm. She flings out her arm, overturning the bed
table, and then pulls desperately at the bell. Mrs. Cavendish,
startled, drops her candle, scattering the grease on the carpet. She
picks it up, and retreats quickly to Mademoiselle Cynthia’s room,
closing the door behind her. She hurries out into the passage, for the
servants must not find her where she is. But it is too late! Already
footsteps are echoing along the gallery which connects the two wings.
What can she do? Quick as thought, she hurries back to the young girl’s
room, and starts shaking her awake. The hastily aroused household come
trooping down the passage. They are all busily battering at Mrs.
Inglethorp’s door. It occurs to nobody that Mrs. Cavendish has not
arrived with the rest, but—and this is significant—I can find no one
who saw her come from the other wing.” He looked at Mary Cavendish. “Am
I right, madame?”
She bowed her head.
“Quite right, monsieur. You understand that, if I had thought I would
do my husband any good by revealing these facts, I would have done so.
But it did not seem to me to bear upon the question of his guilt or
innocence.”
“In a sense, that is correct, madame. But it cleared my mind of many
misconceptions, and left me free to see other facts in their true
significance.”
“The will!” cried Lawrence. “Then it was you, Mary, who destroyed the
will?”
She shook her head, and Poirot shook his also.
“No,” he said quietly. “There is only one person who could possibly
have destroyed that will—Mrs. Inglethorp herself!”
“Impossible!” I exclaimed. “She had only made it out that very
afternoon!”
“Nevertheless, _mon ami_, it was Mrs. Inglethorp. Because, in no other
way can you account for the fact that, on one of the hottest days of
the year, Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire to be lighted in her room.”
I gave a gasp. What idiots we had been never to think of that fire as
being incongruous! Poirot was continuing:
“The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade.
Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy
something, and could think of no other way. You will remember that, in
consequence of the War economics practiced at Styles, no waste paper
was thrown away. There was therefore no means of destroying a thick
document such as a will. The moment I heard of a fire being lighted in
Mrs. Inglethorp’s room, I leaped to the conclusion that it was to
destroy some important document—possibly a will. So the discovery of
the charred fragment in the grate was no surprise to me. I did not, of
course, know at the time that the will in question had only been made
this afternoon, and I will admit that, when I learnt that fact, I fell
into a grievous error. I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Inglethorp’s
determination to destroy her will arose as a direct consequence of the
quarrel she had that afternoon, and that therefore the quarrel took
place after, and not before the making of the will.
“Here, as we know, I was wrong, and I was forced to abandon that idea.
I faced the problem from a new standpoint. Now, at four o’clock, Dorcas
overheard her mistress saying angrily: ‘You need not think that any
fear of publicity, or scandal between husband and wife will deter me.”
I conjectured, and conjectured rightly, that these words were
addressed, not to her husband, but to Mr. John Cavendish. At five
o’clock, an hour later, she uses almost the same words, but the
standpoint is different. She admits to Dorcas, ‘I don’t know what to
do; scandal between husband and wife is a dreadful thing.’ At four
o’clock she has been angry, but completely mistress of herself. At five
o’clock she is in violent distress, and speaks of having had a great
shock.
“Looking at the matter psychologically, I drew one deduction which I
was convinced was correct. The second ‘scandal’ she spoke of was not
the same as the first—and it concerned herself!
“Let us reconstruct. At four o’clock, Mrs. Inglethorp quarrels with her
son, and threatens to denounce him to his wife—who, by the way,
overheard the greater part of the conversation. At four-thirty, Mrs.
Inglethorp, in consequence of a conversation on the validity of wills,
makes a will in favour of her husband, which the two gardeners witness.
At five o’clock, Dorcas finds her mistress in a state of considerable
agitation, with a slip of paper—‘a letter,’ Dorcas thinks—in her hand,
and it is then that she orders the fire in her room to be lighted.
Presumably, then, between four-thirty and five o’clock, something has
occurred to occasion a complete revolution of feeling, since she is now
as anxious to destroy the will, as she was before to make it. What was
that something?
“As far as we know, she was quite alone during that half-hour. Nobody
entered or left that boudoir. What then occasioned this sudden change
of sentiment?
“One can only guess, but I believe my guess to be correct. Mrs.
Inglethorp had no stamps in her desk. We know this, because later she
asked Dorcas to bring her some. Now in the opposite corner of the room
stood her husband’s desk—locked. She was anxious to find some stamps,
and, according to my theory, she tried her own keys in the desk. That
one of them fitted I know. She therefore opened the desk, and in
searching for the stamps she came across something else—that slip of
paper which Dorcas saw in her hand, and which assuredly was never meant
for Mrs. Inglethorp’s eyes. On the other hand, Mrs. Cavendish believed
that the slip of paper to which her mother-in-law clung so tenaciously
was a written proof of her own husband’s infidelity. She demanded it
from Mrs. Inglethorp who assured her, quite truly, that it had nothing
to do with that matter. Mrs. Cavendish did not believe her. She thought
that Mrs. Inglethorp was shielding her stepson. Now Mrs. Cavendish is a
very resolute woman, and, behind her mask of reserve, she was madly
jealous of her husband. She determined to get hold of that paper at all
costs, and in this resolution chance came to her aid. She happened to
pick up the key of Mrs. Inglethorp’s despatch-case, which had been lost
that morning. She knew that her mother-in-law invariably kept all
important papers in this particular case.
“Mrs. Cavendish, therefore, made her plans as only a woman driven
desperate through jealousy could have done. Some time in the evening
she unbolted the door leading into Mademoiselle Cynthia’s room.
Possibly she applied oil to the hinges, for I found that it opened
quite noiselessly when I tried it. She put off her project until the
early hours of the morning as being safer, since the servants were
accustomed to hearing her move about her room at that time. She dressed
completely in her land kit, and made her way quietly through
Mademoiselle Cynthia’s room into that of Mrs. Inglethorp.”
He paused a moment, and Cynthia interrupted:
“But I should have woken up if anyone had come through my room?”
“Not if you were drugged, mademoiselle.”
“Drugged?”
“_Mais, oui!_”
“You remember”—he addressed us collectively again—“that through all the
tumult and noise next door Mademoiselle Cynthia slept. That admitted of
two possibilities. Either her sleep was feigned—which I did not
believe—or her unconsciousness was indeed by artificial means.
“With this latter idea in my mind, I examined all the coffee-cups most
carefully, remembering that it was Mrs. Cavendish who had brought
Mademoiselle Cynthia her coffee the night before. I took a sample from
each cup, and had them analysed—with no result. I had counted the cups
carefully, in the event of one having been removed. Six persons had
taken coffee, and six cups were duly found. I had to confess myself
mistaken.
“Then I discovered that I had been guilty of a very grave oversight.
Coffee had been brought in for seven persons, not six, for Dr.
Bauerstein had been there that evening. This changed the face of the
whole affair, for there was now one cup missing. The servants noticed
nothing, since Annie, the housemaid, who took in the coffee, brought in
seven cups, not knowing that Mr. Inglethorp never drank it, whereas
Dorcas, who cleared them away the following morning, found six as
usual—or strictly speaking she found five, the sixth being the one
found broken in Mrs. Inglethorp’s room.
“I was confident that the missing cup was that of Mademoiselle Cynthia.
I had an additional reason for that belief in the fact that all the
cups found contained sugar, which Mademoiselle Cynthia never took in
her coffee. My attention was attracted by the story of Annie about some
‘salt’ on the tray of cocoa which she took every night to Mrs.
Inglethorp’s room. I accordingly secured a sample of that cocoa, and
sent it to be analysed.”
“But that had already been done by Dr. Bauerstein,” said Lawrence
quickly.
“Not exactly. The analyst was asked by him to report whether strychnine
was, or was not, present. He did not have it tested, as I did, for a
narcotic.”
“For a narcotic?”
“Yes. Here is the analyst’s report. Mrs. Cavendish administered a safe,
but effectual, narcotic to both Mrs. Inglethorp and Mademoiselle
Cynthia. And it is possible that she had a _mauvais quart d’heure_ in
consequence! Imagine her feelings when her mother-in-law is suddenly
taken ill and dies, and immediately after she hears the word ‘Poison’!
She has believed that the sleeping draught she administered was
perfectly harmless, but there is no doubt that for one terrible moment
she must have feared that Mrs. Inglethorp’s death lay at her door. She
is seized with panic, and under its influence she hurries downstairs,
and quickly drops the coffee-cup and saucer used by Mademoiselle
Cynthia into a large brass vase, where it is discovered later by
Monsieur Lawrence. The remains of the cocoa she dare not touch. Too
many eyes are upon her. Guess at her relief when strychnine is
mentioned, and she discovers that after all the tragedy is not her
doing.
“We are now able to account for the symptoms of strychnine poisoning
being so long in making their appearance. A narcotic taken with
strychnine will delay the action of the poison for some hours.”
Poirot paused. Mary looked up at him, the colour slowly rising in her
face.
“All you have said is quite true, Monsieur Poirot. It was the most
awful hour of my life. I shall never forget it. But you are wonderful.
I understand now——”
“What I meant when I told you that you could safely confess to Papa
Poirot, eh? But you would not trust me.”
“I see everything now,” said Lawrence. “The drugged cocoa, taken on top
of the poisoned coffee, amply accounts for the delay.”
“Exactly. But was the coffee poisoned, or was it not? We come to a
little difficulty here, since Mrs. Inglethorp never drank it.”
“What?” The cry of surprise was universal.
“No. You will remember my speaking of a stain on the carpet in Mrs.
Inglethorp’s room? There were some peculiar points about that stain. It
was still damp, it exhaled a strong odour of coffee, and imbedded in
the nap of the carpet I found some little splinters of china. What had
happened was plain to me, for not two minutes before I had placed my
little case on the table near the window, and the table, tilting up,
had deposited it upon the floor on precisely the identical spot. In
exactly the same way, Mrs. Inglethorp had laid down her cup of coffee
on reaching her room the night before, and the treacherous table had
played her the same trick.
“What happened next is mere guess work on my part, but I should say
that Mrs. Inglethorp picked up the broken cup and placed it on the
table by the bed. Feeling in need of a stimulant of some kind, she
heated up her cocoa, and drank it off then and there. Now we are faced
with a new problem. We know the cocoa contained no strychnine. The
coffee was never drunk. Yet the strychnine must have been administered
between seven and nine o’clock that evening. What third medium was
there—a medium so suitable for disguising the taste of strychnine that
it is extraordinary no one has thought of it?” Poirot looked round the
room, and then answered himself impressively. “Her medicine!”
“Do you mean that the murderer introduced the strychnine into her
tonic?” I cried.
“There was no need to introduce it. It was already there—in the
mixture. The strychnine that killed Mrs. Inglethorp was the identical
strychnine prescribed by Dr. Wilkins. To make that clear to you, I will
read you an extract from a book on dispensing which I found in the
Dispensary of the Red Cross Hospital at Tadminster:
“‘The following prescription has become famous in text books:
Strychninae Sulph. . . . . . 1 gr.
Potass Bromide . . . . . . . 3vi
Aqua ad. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3viii
Fiat Mistura
_This solution deposits in a few hours the greater part of the
strychnine salt as an insoluble bromide in transparent crystals. A lady
in England lost her life by taking a similar mixture: the precipitated
strychnine collected at the bottom, and in taking the last dose she
swallowed nearly all of it!_
“Now there was, of course, no bromide in Dr. Wilkins’ prescription, but
you will remember that I mentioned an empty box of bromide powders. One
or two of those powders introduced into the full bottle of medicine
would effectually precipitate the strychnine, as the book describes,
and cause it to be taken in the last dose. You will learn later that
the person who usually poured out Mrs. Inglethorp’s medicine was always
extremely careful not to shake the bottle, but to leave the sediment at
the bottom of it undisturbed.
“Throughout the case, there have been evidences that the tragedy was
intended to take place on Monday evening. On that day, Mrs.
Inglethorp’s bell wire was neatly cut, and on Monday evening
Mademoiselle Cynthia was spending the night with friends, so that Mrs.
Inglethorp would have been quite alone in the right wing, completely
shut off from help of any kind, and would have died, in all
probability, before medical aid could have been summoned. But in her
hurry to be in time for the village entertainment Mrs. Inglethorp
forgot to take her medicine, and the next day she lunched away from
home, so that the last—and fatal—dose was actually taken twenty-four
hours later than had been anticipated by the murderer; and it is owing
to that delay that the final proof—the last link of the chain—is now in
my hands.”
Amid breathless excitement, he held out three thin strips of paper.
“A letter in the murderer’s own hand-writing, _mes amis!_ Had it been a
little clearer in its terms, it is possible that Mrs. Inglethorp,
warned in time, would have escaped. As it was, she realized her danger,
but not the manner of it.”
In the deathly silence, Poirot pieced together the slips of paper and,
clearing his throat, read:
Dearest Evelyn:
‘You will be anxious at hearing nothing. It is all right—only it
will be to-night instead of last night. You understand. There’s a
good time coming once the old woman is dead and out of the way. No
one can possibly bring home the crime to me. That idea of yours
about the bromides was a stroke of genius! But we must be very
circumspect. A false step——’
“Here, my friends, the letter breaks off. Doubtless the writer was
interrupted; but there can be no question as to his identity. We all
know this hand-writing and——”
A howl that was almost a scream broke the silence.
“You devil! How did you get it?”
A chair was overturned. Poirot skipped nimbly aside. A quick movement
on his part, and his assailant fell with a crash.
“_Messieurs, mesdames_,” said Poirot, with a flourish, “let me
introduce you to the murderer, Mr. Alfred Inglethorp!”
*****
