Chapter 3
I had been impressed at the time by Poirot’s forebodings about the anonymous letter he had received, but I must admit that the matter had passed from my mind when the 21st actually arrived and the first reminder of it came with a visit paid to my friend by Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard. The CID inspector had been known to us for many years and he gave me a hearty welcome.
‘Well, I never,’ he exclaimed. ‘If it isn’t Captain Hastings back from the wilds of the what do you call it! Quite like old days seeing you here with Monsieur Poirot. You’re looking well, too. Just a little bit thin on top, eh? Well, that’s what we’re all coming to. I’m the same.’
I winced slightly. I was under the impression that owing to the careful way I brushed my hair across the top of my head the thinness referred to by Japp was quite unnoticeable. However, Japp had never been remarkable for tact where I was concerned, so I put a good face upon it and agreed that we were none of us getting any younger.
‘Except Monsieur Poirot here,’ said Japp. ‘Quite a good advertisement for a hair tonic, he’d be. Face fungus sprouting finer than ever. Coming out into the limelight, too, in his old age. Mixed up in all the celebrated cases of the day. Train mysteries, air mysteries, high society deaths—oh, he’s here, there and everywhere. Never been so celebrated as since he retired.’
‘I have already told Hastings that I am like the prima donna who makes always one more appearance,’ said Poirot, smiling.
‘I shouldn’t wonder if you ended by detecting your own death,’ said Japp, laughing heartily. ‘That’s an idea, that is. Ought to be put in a book.’
‘It will be Hastings who will have to do that,’ said Poirot, twinkling at me.
‘Ha ha! That would be a joke, that would,’ laughed Japp.
I failed to see why the idea was so extremely amusing, and in any case I thought the joke was in poor taste. Poirot, poor old chap, is getting on. Jokes about his approaching demise can hardly be agreeable to him.
Perhaps my manner showed my feelings, for Japp changed the subject.
‘Have you heard about Monsieur Poirot’s anonymous letter?’
‘I showed it to Hastings the other day,’ said my friend.
‘Of course,’ I exclaimed. ‘It had quite slipped my memory. Let me see, what was the date mentioned?’
‘The 21st,’ said Japp. ‘That’s what I dropped in about. Yesterday was the 21st and just out of curiosity I rang up Andover last night. It was a hoax all right. Nothing doing. One broken shop window—kid throwing stones—and a couple of drunk and disorderlies. So just for once our Belgian friend was barking up the wrong tree.’
‘I am relieved, I must confess,’ acknowledged Poirot.
‘You’d quite got the wind up about it, hadn’t you?’ said Japp affectionately. ‘Bless you, we get dozens of letters like that coming in every day! People with nothing better to do and a bit weak in the top storey sit down and write ’em. They don’t mean any harm! Just a kind of excitement.’
‘I have indeed been foolish to take the matter so seriously,’ said Poirot. ‘It is the nest of the horse that I put my nose into there.’
‘You’re mixing up mares and wasps,’ said Japp.
‘Pardon?’
‘Just a couple of proverbs. Well, I must be off. Got a little business in the next street to see to—receiving stolen jewellery. I thought I’d just drop in on my way and put your mind at rest. Pity to let those grey cells function unnecessarily.’
With which words and a hearty laugh, Japp departed.
‘He does not change much, the good Japp, eh?’ asked Poirot.
‘He looks much older,’ I said. ‘Getting as grey as a badger,’ I added vindictively.
Poirot coughed and said:
‘You know, Hastings, there is a little device—my hairdresser is a man of great ingenuity—one attaches it to the scalp and brushes one’s own hair over it—it is not a wig, you comprehend—but—’
‘Poirot,’ I roared. ‘Once and for all I will have nothing to do with the beastly inventions of your confounded hairdresser. What’s the matter with the top of my head?’
‘Nothing—nothing at all.’
‘It’s not as though I were going bald.’
‘Of course not! Of course not!’
‘The hot summers out there naturally cause the hair to fall out a bit. I shall take back a really good hair tonic.’
‘Précisément.’
‘And, anyway, what business is it of Japp’s? He always was an offensive kind of devil. And no sense of humour. The kind of man who laughs when a chair is pulled away just as a man is about to sit down.’
‘A great many people would laugh at that.’
‘It’s utterly senseless.’
‘From the point of view of the man about to sit, certainly it is.’
‘Well,’ I said, slightly recovering my temper. (I admit that I am touchy about the thinness of my hair.) ‘I’m sorry that anonymous letter business came to nothing.’
‘I have indeed been in the wrong over that. About that letter, there was, I thought, the odour of the fish. Instead a mere stupidity. Alas, I grow old and suspicious like the blind watch-dog who growls when there is nothing there.’
‘If I’m going to co-operate with you, we must look about for some other “creamy” crime,’ I said with a laugh.
‘You remember your remark of the other day? If you could order a crime as one orders a dinner, what would you choose?’
I fell in with his humour.
‘Let me see now. Let’s review the menu. Robbery? Forgery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder—red-blooded murder—with trimmings, of course.’
‘Naturally. The hors d’oeuvres.’
‘Who shall the victim be—man or woman? Man, I think. Some big-wig. American millionaire. Prime Minister. Newspaper proprietor. Scene of the crime—well, what’s wrong with the good old library? Nothing like it for atmosphere. As for the weapon—well, it might be a curiously twisted dagger—or some blunt instrument—a carved stone idol—’
Poirot sighed.
‘Or, of course,’ I said, ‘there’s poison—but that’s always so technical. Or a revolver shot echoing in the night. Then there must be a beautiful girl or two—’
