needs aid. But do not turn him against you.’
‘You hardly understand.’
She rose to her feet. Her lips were trembling.
‘But yes, Madame la Duchesse, I understand very well. I comprehend the mother’s heart. No one comprehends it better than I, Hercule Poirot. And I say to you with authority-be patient. Be patient and calm, and disguise your feelings. There is yet a chance that the matter may break itself. Opposition will merely increase your son’s obstinacy.’
‘Goodbye, M. Poirot,’ she said coldly. ‘I am disappointed.’
‘I regret infinitely, Madame, that I cannot be of service to you. I am in a difficult position. Lady Edgware, you see, has already done me the honour to consult me herself.’
‘Oh! I see.’ Her voice cut like a knife. ‘You are in the opposite camp. That explains, no doubt, why Lady Edgware has not yet been arrested for her husband’s murder.’
‘Comment, Madame la Duchesse?’
‘I think you heard what I said. Why is she not arrested? She was there that evening. She was seen to enter the house-to enter his study. No one else went near him and he was found dead? And yet she is not arrested! Our police force must be corrupt through and through.’
With shaking hands she arranged the scarf round her neck, then with the slightest of bows, she swept out of the room.
‘Whew!’ I said. ‘What a tartar! I admire her, though, don’t you?’
‘Because she wishes to arrange the universe to her manner of thinking?’
‘Well, she’s only got her son’s welfare at heart.’
Poirot nodded his head.
‘That is true enough, and yet, Hastings, will it really be such a bad thing for M.le Duc to marry Jane Wilkinson?’
‘Why, you don’t think she is really in love with him?’
‘Probably not. Almost certainly not. But she is very much in love with his position. She will play her part carefully. She is an extremely beautiful woman and very ambitious. It is not such a catastrophe. The Duke might very easily have married a young girl of his own class who would have accepted him for the same reasons-but no one would have made the song and the dance about that.’
‘That is quite true, but-’
‘And suppose he marries a girl who loves him passionately, is there such a great advantage in that? Often I have observed that it is a great misfortune for a man to have a wife who loves him. She creates the scenes of jealousy, she makes him look ridiculous, she insists on having all his time and attention. Ah!non, it is not the bed of roses.’
‘Poirot,’ I said. ‘You’re an incurable old cynic.’
‘Mais non, mais non, I only make the reflections. See you, really, I am on the side of the good mamma.’
I could not refrain from laughing at hearing the haughty Duchess described in this way.
Poirot remained quite serious.
‘You should not laugh. It is of great importance-all this. I must reflect. I must reflect a great deal.’
‘I don’t see what you can do in the matter,’ I said.
Poirot paid no attention.
‘You observed, Hastings, how well-informed the Duchess was? And how vindictive. She knew all the evidence there was against Jane Wilkinson.’
‘The case for the prosecution, but not the case for the defence,’ I said, smiling.
‘How did she come to know of it?’
‘Jane told the Duke. The Duke told her,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, that is possible. Yet I have-’
The telephone rang sharply. I answered it.
My part consisted of saying ‘Yes’ at varying intervals. Finally I put down the receiver and turned excitedly to Poirot.
‘That was Japp. Firstly, you’re “the goods” as usual. Secondly, he’s had a cable from America. Thirdly, he’s got the taxi-driver. Fourthly, would you like to come round and hear what the taxi-driver says. Fifthly, you’re “the goods” again, and all along he’s been convinced that you’d hit the nail on the head when you suggested that there was some man behind all this! I omitted to tell him that we’d just had a visitor here who says the police force is corrupt.’
‘So Japp is convinced at last,’ murmured Poirot. ‘Curious that the Man-in-the-Background theory should be proved just at the moment when I was inclining to another possible theory.’
‘What theory?’
‘The theory that the motive for the murder might have nothing to do with Lord Edgware himself. Imagine someone who hated Jane Wilkinson, hated her so much that they would have even had her hanged for murder.C’est une idee, ca!’
He sighed-then rousing himself:
‘Come, Hastings, let us hear what Japp has to say.’
Chapter 20. The Taxi-Driver
We found Japp interrogating an old man with a ragged moustache and spectacles. He had a hoarse self- pitying voice.
‘Ah! there you are,’ said Japp. ‘Well, things are all plain sailing, I think. This man-his name’s Jobson-picked up two people in Long Acre on the night of June 29th.’
‘That’s right,’ assented Jobson hoarsely. ‘Lovely night it were. Moon and all. The young lady and gentleman were by the tube station and hailed me.’
‘They were in evening dress?’
‘Yes, gent in white waistcoat and the young lady all in white with birds embroidered on it. Come out of the Royal Opera, I guess.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Some time afore eleven.’
‘Well, what next?’
‘Told me to go to Regent Gate-they’d tell me which house when they got there. And told me to be quick, too. People always says that. As though you wanted to loiter. Sooner you get there and get another fare the better for you. You never think of that. And, mind you, if there’s an accident you’ll get the blame for dangerous driving!’
‘Cut it out,’ said Japp impatiently. ‘There wasn’t an accident this time, was there?’
‘N-no,’ agreed the man as though unwilling to abandon his claim to such an occurrence. ‘No, as a matter of fact there weren’t. Well, I got to Regent Gate-not above seven minutes it didn’t take me, and there the gentleman rapped on the glass, and I stopped. About at No. 8 that were. Well, the gentleman and lady got out. The gentleman stopped where he was and told me to do the same. The lady crossed the road, and began walking back along the houses the other side. The gentleman stayed by the cab-standing on the sidewalk with his back to me, looking after her. Had his hands in his pockets. It was about five minutes when I heard him say something-kind of exclamation under his breath and then off he goes too. I looks after him because I wasn’t going to be bilked. It’s been done afore to me, so I kept my eye on him. He went up the steps of one of the houses on the other side and went in.’
‘Did he push the door open?’
‘No, he had a latchkey.’
‘What number was the house?’
‘It would be 17 or 19, I fancy. Well, it seemed odd to me my being told to stay where I was. So I kept
