'She's so gushing with it all,' I complained.
Boyd Carrington looked amused.
'I know. All sweetness. But have you played bridge with them?'
I replied feelingly that I had.
'On the whole I steer clear of women bridge players,' said Boyd Carrington. 'And if you take my tip, you'll do the same.'
I told him how uncomfortable Norton and myself had felt on the first evening of my arrival.
'Exactly. One doesn't know where to look!'
He added:
'Nice fellow, Norton. Very quiet though. Always looking at birds and things. Doesn't care for shooting them, he told me. Extraordinary! No feeling for sport. I told him he missed a lot. Can't see myself what excitement there can be stalking about through cold woods peering at birds through glasses.'
How little we realized then that Norton's hobby might have an important part to play in the events that were to come.
Chapter 8
I
The days passed. It was an unsatisfactory time – with its uneasy feeling of waiting for something.
Nothing, if I may put it in such a way, actually happened. Yet there were incidents, scraps of odd conversations, sidelights upon the various inmates of Styles, elucidating remarks. They all mounted up and, if properly pieced together, could have done a lot towards enlightening me.
It was Poirot who, with a few forceful words showed me something to which I had been criminally blind.
I was complaining, for the umpteenth time, of his wilful refusal to admit me to his confidence. It was not fair, I told him. Always he and I had had equal knowledge – even if I had been dense and he had been astute in drawing the right conclusions from that knowledge.
He waved an impatient hand.
'Quite so, my friend. It is not fair! It is not sporting! It is not playing the game! Admit all that and pass from it. This is not a game – it is not le sport. For you, you occupy yourself in guessing wildly at the identity of X. It is not for that that I asked you to come here. Unnecessary for you to occupy yourself with that. I know the answer to that question. But what I do not know and what I must know is this: 'Who is going to die – very soon?' It is a question, mon vieux, not of you playing a guessing game, but of preventing a human being from dying.'
I was startled.
'Of course,' I said slowly. 'I – well, I did know that you practically said so once, but I haven't quite realized it.'
'Then realize it now – immediately.'
'Yes, yes, I will – I mean, I do.'
'Bien! Then tell me, Hastings, who is it who is going to die?'
I stared at him blankly.
'I have really no idea!'
'Then you should have an idea! What else are you here for?'
'Surely,' I said, going back over my meditations on the subject, 'there must be a connection between the victim and X so that if you told me who X was -'
Poirot shook his head with so much vigour that it was quite painful to watch.
'Have I not told you that that is the essence of X's technique? There will be nothing connecting X with the death. That is certain.'
'The connection will be hidden, you mean?'
'It will be so well hidden that neither you nor I will find it.'
'But surely by studying X's past -'
'I tell you, no. Certainly not in the time. Murder may happen any moment, you comprehend?'
'To someone in this house?'
'To someone in this house.'
'And you really do not know who, or how?'
'Ah, if I did, I should not be urging you to find out for me!'
'You simply base your assumption on the presence of X?'
I sounded a little doubtful. Poirot, whose self-control had lessened as his limbs were perforce immobile, fairly howled at me.
'Ah, ma foi, how many times am I to go over all this? If a lot of war correspondents arrive suddenly in a certain spot of Europe, it means what? It means war! If doctors come from all over the world to a certain city – it shows what? That there is to be a medical conference. Where you see a vulture hovering, there will be a carcass. If you see beaters walking up a moor, there will be a shoot. If you see a man stop suddenly, tear off his coat and plunge into the sea, it means that there, there will be a rescue from drowning.
'If you see ladies of middle age and respectable appearance peering through a hedge, you may deduce that there is an impropriety of some kind! And finally, if you smell a succulent smell and observe several people all walking along a corridor in the same direction, you may safely assume that a meal is about to be served!'
I considered these analogies for a minute or two, then I said, taking the first one:
'All the same, one war correspondent does not make a war!'
'Certainly not. And one swallow does not make a summer. But one murderer, Hastings, does make a murder.'
That, of course, was undeniable. But it still occurred to me, as it did not seem to have occurred to Poirot, that even a murderer has his off times. X might be at Styles simply for a holiday with no lethal intent. Poirot was so worked up, however, that I dared not propound this suggestion. I merely said that the whole thing seemed to me hopeless. We must wait -
'And see,' finished Poirot. 'Like your Mr Asquith in the last war. That, mon cher, is just what we must not do. I do not say, mark you, that we shall succeed, for as I have told you before, when a killer has determined to kill, it is not easy to circumvent him. But we can at least try. Figure to yourself, Hastings, that you have here the bridge problem in the paper. You can see all the cards. What you are asked to do is 'Forecast the result of the deal.''
I shook my head.
'It's no good, Poirot. I haven't the least idea. If I knew who X was -'
Poirot howled at me again. He howled so loud that Curtiss came running in from the next room looking quite frightened. Poirot waved him away and when he had gone out again, my friend spoke in a more controlled manner.
'Come, Hastings, you are not so stupid as you like to pretend. You have studied those cases I gave you to read. You may not know who X is, but you know X's technique for committing a crime.'
'Oh,' I said. 'I see.'
'Of course you see. The trouble with you is that you are mentally lazy. You like to play games and guess. You do not like to work with your head. What is the essential element of X's technique? Is it not that the crime, when committed, is complete? That is to say, there is a motive for the crime, there is an opportunity, there is means and there is, last and most important, the guilty person all ready for the dock.'
At once I grasped the essential point and realized what a fool I had been not to see it sooner.
'I see,' I said. 'I've got to look round for somebody who – who answers to those requirements – the potential victim.'
