When it was apparent that there was going to be no answer, we went and found Colonel Luttrell. He listened to us with a vague alarm showing in his faded blue eyes. He pulled uncertainly at his moustache.
Mrs Luttrell, always the one for prompt decisions, made no bones about it.
'You'll have to get that door open somehow. There's nothing else for it.'
For the second time in my life, I saw a door broken open at Styles. Behind that door was what bad been behind a locked door on the first occasion. Death by violence.
Norton was lying on his bed in his dressing gown. The key of the door was in the pocket. In his hand was a small pistol, a mere toy, but capable of doing its work. There was a small hole in the exact centre of his forehead.
For a moment or two I could not think of what I was reminded. Something, surely very old…
I was too tired to remember.
IV
As I came into Poirot's room, be saw my face.
He said quickly:
'What has happened? Norton?'
'Dead!'
'How? When?'
Briefly I told him.
I ended wearily:
'They say it's suicide. What else can they say? The door was locked. The windows were shuttered. The key was in his pocket Why! I actually saw him go in and heard him lock the door.'
'You saw him, Hastings?'
'Yes, last night.'
I explained:
'You're sure it was Norton?'
'Of course. I'd know that awful old dressing gown anywhere.'
For a moment Poirot became his old self.
'Ah! But it is a man you are identifying, not a dressing gown. Ma foi! Anyone can wear a dressing gown.'
'It's true,' I said slowly, 'that I didn't see his face. But it was his hair, all right, and that slight limp -'
'Anyone could limp, mon Dieu!'
I looked at him, startled.
'Do you mean to suggest, Poirot, that it wasn't Norton that I saw?'
'I am not suggesting anything of the kind. I am merely annoyed by the unscientific reasons you give for saying it was Norton. No, no, I do not for one minute suggest that it was not Norton. It would be difficult for it to be anyone else, for every man here is tall – very much taller than he was – and enfin, you cannot disguise height – that, no. Norton was only five foot five, I should say. Tout de meme, it is like a conjuring trick, is it not? He goes into his room, locks the door, puts the key in his pocket, and is found shot with the pistol in his hand and the key still in his pocket.'
'Then you don't believe,' I said, 'that he shot himself?'
Slowly Poirot shook his head.
'No,' he said. 'Norton did not shoot himself. He was deliberately killed.'
V
I went downstairs in a maze. The thing was so inexplicable I may be forgiven, I hope, for not seeing the next inevitable step. I was dazed. My mind was not working properly.
And yet it was so logical. Norton had been killed – why? To prevent, or so I believed, his telling what he had seen.
But he had confided that knowledge to one other person.
So that person, too, was in danger…
And was not only in danger, but was helpless.
I should have known.
I should have foreseen…
' Cher ami!' Poirot had said to me as I left the room.
They were the last words I was ever to hear him say. For when Curtiss came to attend to his master, he found that master dead…
Chapter 18
I
I don't want to write about it at all.
I want, you see, to think about it as little as possible. Hercule Poirot was dead – and with him died a good part of Arthur Hastings.
I will give you the bare facts without embroidery. It is all I can bear to do.
He died, they said, of natural causes. That is to say, he died of a heart attack. It was the way, so Franklin said, that he had expected him to go. Doubtless the shock of Norton's death brought one on. By some oversight, it seems, the amyl nitrite ampoules were not by his bed.
Was it an oversight? Did someone deliberately remove them? No, it must have been something more than that. X could not count on Poirot's having a heart attack.
For you see, I refuse to believe that Poirot's death was natural. He was killed, as Norton was killed, as Barbara Franklin was killed. And I don't know why they were killed – and I don't know who killed them!
There was an inquest on Norton and a verdict of suicide. The only point of doubt was raised by the surgeon, who said it was unusual for a man to shoot himself in the exact centre of his forehead. But that was the only shadow of a doubt. The whole thing was so plain. The door locked on the inside, the key in the dead man's pocket, the windows closely shuttered – the pistol in his hand. Norton had complained of headaches, it seemed, and some of his investments had been doing badly lately. Hardly reasons for suicide, but they had to put forward something.
The pistol was apparently his own. It had been seen lying on his dressing table twice by the housemaid during his stay at Styles. So that was that. Another crime beautifully stage-managed and as usual with no alternative solution.
In the duel between Poirot and X, X had won.
It was now up to me.
I went to Poirot's room and took away the dispatch box.
I knew that he had made me his executor, so I had a perfect right to do so. The key was round his neck.
In my own room I opened the box.
