"It"s the sort of game would have amused our late friend," said Battle, nodding.
"We may a.s.sume, then, that such was the procedure in one or more cases: He may have come across a piece of actual evidence in another case and followed it up.
Cards on be Tab 411
I doubt whether, in any of the cases, he had sufficient actual knowledge with which, for instance, to have gone to the police."
"Or it mayn"t have been the kind of case," said Battle. "Often enough there"s a fishy business--we suspect foul play, but we can"t ever prove it. Anyway, the course is clear. We"ve got to go through the records of all these people--and note any deaths that may be significant. I expect you noticed, just as the Colonel did, what Shaitana said at dinner."
"The black angel," murmured Mrs. Oliver.
"A neat little reference to poison, to accidents, to a doctor"s opportunities, to shooting accidents. I shouldn"t be surprised if he signed his death-warrant when he said those words."
"It was a nasty sort of pause," said Mrs. Oliver.
"Yes," said Poirot. "Those words went home to one person at least--that person probably thought that Shaitana knew far more than he really did. That licner thought that they were the prelude to the end--that the party was a dramahe entertainment arranged by Shaitana leading up to arrest for murder as its climax! Yes, as you say, he signed his death-warrant when he baited his guests with these words."
There was a moment"s silence.
"This will be a long business," said Battle with a sigh. "We can"t find out all we want in a moment--and we"ve got to be careful. We don"t want any of the four to suspect what we"re doing. All our questioning and so on must seem to have to do with this murder. There mustn"t be a suspicion that we"ve got any idea of the motive for the crime. And the devil of it is we"ve got to check up on four possible murders in the past, not one."
Poirot demurred.
"Our friend Mr. Shaitana was not infallible," he said. "He may--it is just possible have made a mistake."
"About all four?"
"No--he was more intelligent than that."
"Call it fifty-fifty?"
"Not even that. For me, I say one in four."
"One innocent and three guilty? That"s bad enough. And the devil of it is, even if we get at the truth it mayn"t help us. Even if somebody did push their great-aunt down the stairs in 1912, it won"t be much use to us in 1937."
"Yes, yes, it will be of use to us." Poirot encouraged him. "You know that. You know it as well as I do."
Battle nodded slowly.
"I know what you mean," he said. "Same hallmark."
"Do you mean," said Mrs. Oliver, "that the former victim will have been stabbed with a dagger too?"
"Not quite as crude as that, Mrs. Oliver," said Battle turning to her. "But I don"t doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them will be the same. It"s odd, but a criminal gives himself away every time by that."
"Man is an unoriginal animal," said Hercule Poirot.
"Women," said Mrs. Oliver, "are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running."
"Don"t you ever write the same plot twice running?" asked Battle.
"The Lotus Murder," murmured Poirot. "The Clue of the Candle Wax."
412 Agatha Chrtie
Mrs. Oliver turned on him, her eyes beaming appreciation.
"That"s clever of you--that"s really very clever of you. Because, of course,
those two are exactly the same plot--but n.o.body else has seen it. One is stolen
papers at an informal week-end party of the Cabinet, and the other"s a murder in
Borneo in a rubber planter"s bungalow."
"But the essential point on which the story turns is the same," said Poirot.
"One of your neatest tricks. The rubber planter arranges his own murder--the
Cabinet Minister arranges the robbery of his own papers. At the last minute the
third person steps in and turns deception into reality."
"I enjoyed your last, Mrs. Oliver," said Superintendent Battle kindly. "The
one where all the Chief Constables were shot simultaneously. You just slipped up
once or twice on official details. I know you"re keen on accuracy, so I wondered
if-"
Mrs. Oliver interrupted him.
"As a matter of fact I don"t care two pins about accuracy. Who is accurate?
n.o.body nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by
turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite labrador,
Bob, good-bye, does anybody make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the
room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? If a journalist
can do that sort of thing, I don"t see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a
revolver when I mean an automatic, and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph,
and use a poison that just allows you to gasp one dying sentence and no more.
What really matters is plenty of bodies! If the thing"s getting a little dull, some more blood cheers it up. Somebody is going to tell something--and then they"re
killed first! That always goes down well. It comes in all my books-camoufiaged
different ways, of course. And people like untraceable poisons, and idiotic police
inspectors and girls tied up in cellars with sewer gas or water pouring in (such a
troublesome way of killing any one really) and a hero who can dispose of anything
from three to seven villains single-handed. I"ve written thirty-two books by now--
and of course they"re all exactly the same really, as M. Poirot seems to have
noticed--but n.o.body else has--and I only regret one thing--making my detective
a Finn. I don"t really know anything about Finns and I"m always getting letters
from Finland pointing out something impossible that he"s said or done. They seem
to read detective stories a good deal in Finland. I suppose it"s the long winters with
no daylight. In Bulgaria and Roumania they don"t seem to read at all. I"d have done better to have made him a Bulgar."
She broke off.