is certainly a very unpleasant business.’
‘To be stabbed to death and stowed away in a Spanish chest is certainly unpleasant for the victim – supremely so. But when I say this is a remarkable case, I refer to the remarkable behaviour of Major Rich.’
Miss Lemon said with faint distaste:
‘There seems to be a suggestion that Major Rich and Mrs Clayton were very close friends … It was a suggestion and not a proved fact, so I did not include it.’
‘That was very correct of you. But it is an inference that leaps to the eye. Is that all you have to say?’
Miss Lemon looked blank. Poirot sighed, and missed the rich colourful imagination of his friend Hastings. Discussing a case with Miss Lemon was uphill work.
‘Consider for a moment this Major Rich. He is in love with Mrs Clayton – granted … He wants to dispose of her husband – that, too, we grant, though if Mrs Clayton is in love with him, and they are having the affair together, where is the urgency? It is, perhaps, that Mr Clayton will not give his wife the divorce? But it is not of all this that I talk. Major Rich, he is a retired soldier, and it is said sometimes that soldiers are not brainy. But, tout de même, this Major Rich, is he, can he be, a complete imbecile?’
Miss Lemon did not reply. She took this to be a purely rhetorical question.
‘Well,’ demanded Poirot. ‘What do you think about it all?’
‘What do I think?’ Miss Lemon was startled.
‘Mais oui – you!’
Miss Lemon adjusted her mind to the strain put upon it. She was not given to mental speculation of any kind unless asked for it. In such leisure moments as she had, her mind was filled with the details of a superlatively perfect filing-system. It was her only mental recreation.
‘Well –’ she began, and paused.
‘Tell me just what happened – what you think happened, on that evening. Mr Clayton is in the sitting-room writing a note, Major Rich comes back – what then?’
‘He finds Mr Clayton there. They – I suppose they have a quarrel. Major Rich stabs him. Then, when he sees what he has done, he – he puts the body in the chest. After all, the guests, I suppose, might be arriving any minute.’
‘Yes, yes. The guests arrive! The body is in the chest. The evening passes. The guests depart. And then –’
‘Well, then, I suppose Major Rich goes to bed and – Oh!’
‘Ah,’ said Poirot. ‘You see it now. You have murdered a man. You have concealed his body in a chest. And then – you go peacefully to bed, quite unperturbed by the fact that your valet will discover the crime in the morning.’
‘I suppose it’s possible that the valet might never have looked inside the chest?’
‘With an enormous pool of blood on the carpet underneath it?’
‘Perhaps Major Rich didn’t realize that the blood was there.’
‘Was it not somewhat careless of him not to look and see?’
‘I dare say he was upset,’ said Miss Lemon.
Poirot threw up his hands in despair.
Miss Lemon seized the opportunity to hurry from the room.
The Mystery of the Spanish chest was, strictly speaking, no business of Poirot’s. He was engaged at the moment in a delicate mission for one of the large oil companies where one of the high ups was possibly involved in some questionable transaction. It was hush-hush, important and exceedingly lucrative. It was sufficiently involved to command Poirot’s attention, and had the great advantage that it required very little physical activity. It was sophisticated and bloodless. Crime at the highest levels.
The mystery of the Spanish chest was dramatic and emotional; two qualities which Poirot had often declared to Hastings could be much overrated – and indeed frequently were so by the latter. He had been severe with ce cher Hastings on this point, and now here he was, behaving much as his friend might have done, obsessed with beautiful women, crimes of passion, jealousy, hatred and all the other romantic causes of murder! He wanted to know about it all. He wanted to know what Major Rich was like, and what his manservant, Burgess, was like, and what Margharita Clayton was like (though that, he thought, he knew) and what the late Arnold Clayton had been like (since he held that the character of the victim was of the first importance in a murder case), and even what Commander McLaren, the faithful friend, and Mr and Mrs Spence, the recently acquired acquaintances, were like.
And he did not see exactly how he was going to gratify his curiosity!
He reflected on the matter later in the day.
Why did the whole business intrigue him so much? He decided, after reflection, that it was because – as the facts were related – the whole thing was more or less impossible! Yes, there was a Euclidean flavour.
Starting from what one could accept, there had been a quarrel between two men. Cause, presumably, a woman. One man killed the other in the heat of rage. Yes, that happened – though it would be more acceptable if the husband had killed the lover. Still – the lover had killed the husband, stabbed him with a dagger (?) – somehow a rather unlikely weapon. Perhaps Major Rich had had an Italian mother? Somewhere – surely – there should be something to explain the choice of a dagger as a weapon. Anyway, one must accept the dagger (some papers called it a stiletto!) It was to hand and was used. The body was concealed in the chest. That was common sense and inevitable. The crime had not been premeditated, and as the valet was returning at any moment, and four guests would be arriving before very long, it seemed the only course indicated.
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