is inconceivable that Hercule Poirot should write and send such a thing as this, Catchpool. It is so poorly formulated and inelegantly written! I am insulted to think that anyone could believe it came from me.’
I tried to cheer him: ‘None of the recipients knows you. If they did, they would have known, as I did the moment I saw it, that it was not your handiwork.’
‘There is much to consider. I will make a list. We must get to work, Catchpool.’
‘I’m afraid I must get to work, Poirot. By all means, speak to Rowland Rope—he is eager to speak to you—but I’m afraid you will have to count me out if you’re planning to take any further action with regard to Barnabas Pandy.’
‘How can I not act, mon ami? Why do you think the four letters were sent? Someone wishes to put in my head the idea that Barnabas Pandy was murdered. Is it not understandable that I am curious? Now, there is something I need you to do for me.’
‘Poirot—’
‘Yes, yes, you need to do your work. Je comprends. This I will allow you to do, once you have helped me. It is only a small task, and one that can be accomplished far more easily by you than by me. Find out where all four were on the day that Barnabas Pandy died: Sylvia Rule, Hugo Dockerill, Annabel Treadway and John McCrodden. The solicitor, Vout, told me that Mademoiselle Treadway was at home when her grandfather died, at Combingham Hall. Find out if she says the same thing. Now, it is of vital importance that you ask each of them in precisely the same way: the same questions, in the same order. Is that clear? I have realized that this is the way to distinguish most effectively one person’s character from another’s. Also, I am interested in this Eustace with whom Madame Rule is so obsessed. If you could—’
I waved at him to stop, like a railway signalman in the face of an out-of-control train hurtling towards him.
‘Poirot, please! Who is Eustace? No—don’t answer that. I have work to do. Barnabas Pandy’s death has been officially recorded as an accident. I’m afraid that means I can’t very well go around demanding that people furnish me with alibis.’
‘Not straightforwardly, of course,’ Poirot agreed. He stood up and started to smooth imaginary creases from his clothing. ‘I am sure you will find an ingenious way around the problem. Good day, mon ami. Come and see me when you are able to give me the information I require. And—yes, yes!—then you will do your work assigned to you by Scotland Yard.’
Later that same evening, John McCrodden received a telephone call at the house where he lived. His landlady answered.
‘It’s John McCrodden you’re after, is it? Not John Webber? McCrodden, yes? All right, I’ll get him. Saw him a minute ago. He’s probably upstairs in his room. You need to talk to him, do you? Then I’ll get him. You wait there. I’ll get him.’
The caller waited nearly five minutes, imagining a startlingly inefficacious woman who could well fail to find a person in the same house as herself.
Eventually a male voice came on the line: ‘McCrodden here. Who is this?’
‘I’m telephoning on behalf of Inspector Edward Catchpool,’ said the caller. ‘From Scotland Yard.’
There was a pause. Then John McCrodden said, ‘Are you now?’ He sounded as if he might be amused by the notion if he were not so weary.
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘And who might you be? His wife?’ he asked sarcastically.
The caller would not have minded telling McCrodden who she was, but she had been given explicit instructions not to do so. She had in front of her, on small cards, the precise words she was supposed to say and she intended to stick to them.
‘I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you, questions to which Inspector Catchpool would like to know the answers. If you—’
‘Then why doesn’t he ask me himself? What is your name? Tell me at once, or this conversation is at an end.’
‘If you provide me with satisfactory answers, then Inspector Catchpool hopes it won’t be necessary for him to interview you at the police station. All I want to know is this: where were you on the day that Barnabas Pandy died?’
McCrodden laughed. ‘Kindly tell my father that I’m not willing to put up with his campaign of harassment for one second longer. If he will not cease his devious persecution of me, then he is strongly advised to take precautions to ensure his own safety. Tell him I haven’t the slightest clue when Barnabas Pandy died because I know no Barnabas Pandy. I don’t know that he lived, died or joined the circus as a trapeze artist, and I don’t know when he did those things, if he did them at all.’
The caller had been warned that John McCrodden might respond uncooperatively. She listened patiently as he continued to address her with icy disgust.
‘Additionally, you may tell him I’m not as stupid as he thinks I am, and that I’m quite certain that if Scotland Yard employs an inspector by the name of “Edward Catchpool”—which I very much doubt—then that man knows nothing about this telephone call, and that you are in no way authorized to make it. Which is why you refuse to tell me your name.’
‘Barnabas Pandy died on the seventh of December last year.’
‘Did he? I’m delighted to hear it.’
‘Where were you on that date, sir? Inspector Catchpool believes that Mr Pandy died at his home in the country, Combingham Hall—’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘—so if you can tell me your whereabouts on that date, and if anyone can vouch for you, then Inspector Catchpool might not need—’
‘My whereabouts? Why, of course! Seconds before Barnabas Pandy breathed his last, I was standing over his prone body with a carving knife in my hand, ready to plunge it into his heart. Is that what my father would like me to say?’
There was a loud banging sound, and then the line went dead.
On the back of one of her question cards, the caller made a note of what she felt were the essential points: that John McCrodden believed his father to be behind the telephone call, that he had questioned the existence of Edward Catchpool and—most importantly, the caller thought—that he had not known, or had claimed not to know, the date of Barnabas Pandy’s death.
‘No alibi given,’ she wrote. ‘Said he was standing over Pandy with a knife just before Pandy died, but he said it like I was not supposed to believe it.’
After twice reading through what she had written, and after thinking for a few minutes, the caller picked up her pencil again and added, ‘But maybe it was true, and the lie was the way he made his voice sound when he said it.’
‘Is that Mrs Rule? Mrs Sylvia Rule?’
