'Yes, blackmail of a peculiar and specialized kind. It was Madame Giselle's custom to lend money on what I think you call in this country 'note of hand alone.' She used her discretion as to the sums she lent and the methods of repayment, but I may tell you that she had her own methods of getting paid.'
Poirot leaned forward interestedly.
'As Maitre Thibault said today, Madame Giselle's clientele lay amongst the upper and professional classes. Those classes are particularly vulnerable to the force of public opinion. Madame Giselle had her own intelligence service. It was her custom, before lending money – that is, in the case of a large sum – to collect as many facts as possible about the client in question, and her intelligence system, I may say, was an extraordinarily good one. I will echo what our friend has said – according to her lights, Madame Giselle was scrupulously honest. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. I honestly believe that she has never made use of her secret knowledge to obtain money from anyone, unless that money was already owed to her.'
'You mean,' said Poirot, 'that this secret knowledge was her form of security?'
'Exactly. And in using it she was perfectly ruthless and deaf to any finer shades of feeling. And I will tell you this, gentlemen: Her system paid! Very, very rarely did she have to write off a bad debt. A man or woman in a prominent position would go to desperate lengths to obtain the money which would obviate a public scandal. As I say, we knew of her activities, but as for prosecution -' he shrugged his shoulders – 'that is a more difficult matter. Human nature is human nature.'
'And supposing,' said Poirot, 'that she did, as you say happened occasionally, have to write off a bad debt? What then?'
'In that case,' said Fournier slowly, 'the information she held was published, or was given to the person concerned in the matter.'
There was a moment's silence. Then Poirot said:
'Financially, that did not benefit her?'
'No,' said Fournier. 'Not directly, that is.'
'But indirectly?'
'Indirectly,' said Japp, 'it made the others pay up, eh?'
'Exactly,' said Fournier. 'It was valuable for what you call the moral effect.'
'Immoral effect, I should call it,' said Japp. 'Well -' he rubbed his nose thoughtfully – 'it opens up a very pretty line in motives for murder – a very pretty line. Then there's the question of who is going to come into her money.' He appealed to Thibault. 'Can you help us there at all?'
'There was a daughter,' said the lawyer. 'She did not live with her mother; indeed, I fancy that her mother has never seen her since she was a tiny child. But she made a will many years ago now, leaving everything, with the exception of a small legacy to her maid, to her daughter, Anne Morisot. As far as I know, she has never made another.'
'And her fortune is large?' asked Poirot.
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
'At a guess, eight or nine million francs.'
Poirot pursed his lips to a whistle. Japp said, 'Lord, she didn't look it! Let me see. What's the exchange? – that's – why, that must be well over a hundred thousand pounds! Whew!'
'Mademoiselle Anne Morisot will be a very wealthy young woman,' said Poirot.
'Just as well she wasn't on that plane,' said Japp dryly. 'She might have been suspected of bumping off her mother to get the dibs. How old would she be?'
'I really cannot say. I should imagine about twenty-four or five.'
'Well, there doesn't seem anything to connect her with the crime. We'll have to get down to this blackmailing business. Everyone on that plane denies knowing Madame Giselle. One of them is lying. We've got to find out which. An examination of her private papers might help, eh, Fournier?'
'My friend,' said the Frenchman, 'immediately the news came through, after I had conversed with Scotland Yard on the telephone, I went straight to her house. There was a safe there containing papers. All those papers had been burned.'
'Burned? Who by? Why?'
'Madame Giselle had a confidential maid, Elise. Elise had instructions, in the event of anything happening to her mistress, to open the safe, the combination of which she knew, and burn the contents.'
'What? But that's amazing!' Japp stared.
'You see,' said Fournier, 'Madame Giselle had her own code. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. She gave her promise to her clients that she would deal honestly with them. She was ruthless, but she was also a woman of her word.'
Japp shook his head dumbly. The four men were silent, ruminating on the strange character of the dead woman. Maitre Thibault rose.
'I must leave you, messieurs. I have to keep an appointment. If there is any further information I can give you at any time, you know my address.'
He shook hands with them ceremoniously and left the apartment.
Chapter 7
With the departure of Maitre Thibault, the three men drew their chairs a little closer to the table.
'Now then,' said Japp, 'let's get down to it.' He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen. 'There were eleven passengers in that Plane – in rear car, I mean – the other doesn't come into it – eleven passengers and two stewards – that's thirteen people we've got. One of those thirteen did the old woman in. Some of the passengers were English, some were French. The latter I shall hand over to M. Fournier. The English ones I'll take on. Then there are inquiries to be made in Paris – that's your job, too, Fournier.'
'And not only in Paris,' said Fournier. 'In the summer Giselle did a lot of business at the French watering places – Deasuville, Le Pinet, Wimereux. She went down south, too, to Antibes and Nice and all those places.'
'A good point – one or two of the people in the 'Prometheus' mentioned Le Pinet, I remember. Well, that's one line. Then we've got to get down to the actual murder itself – prove who could possibly be in a position to use that blowpipe.' He unrolled a sketch plan of the aeroplane and placed it in the center of the table. 'Now then, we're ready for the preliminary work. And to begin with, let's go through the people one by one, and decide on the probabilities and – even more important – the possibilities.'
'To begin with, we can eliminate M. Poirot here. That brings the number down to eleven.'
Poirot shook his head sadly.
'You are of too trustful a nature, my friend. You should trust nobody – nobody at all.'
'Well, we'll leave you in, if you like,' said Japp good-temperedly. 'Then there are the stewards. Seems to me very unlikely it should be either of them from the probability point of view. They're not likely to have borrowed money on a grand scale, and they've both got a good record – decent sober men, both of them. It would surprise me very much if either of them had anything to do with this. On the other hand, from the possibility point of view we've got to include them. They were up and down the car. They could actually have taken up a position from which they could have used the blowpipe – from the right angle, I mean – though I don't believe that a steward could shoot a poisoned dart out of a blowpipe in a car full of people without someone noticing him do it. I know by experience that most people are blind as bats, but there are limits. Of course, in a way, the same thing applies to every blessed person. It was madness – absolute madness – to commit a crime that way. Only about a chance in a hundred that it would come off without being spotted. The fellow that did it must have had the luck of the devil. Of all the damn fool ways to commit a murder -'
Poirot, who had been sitting with his eyes down, smoking quietly, interposed a question:
'You think it was a foolish way of committing a murder, yes?'
'Of course it was. It was absolute madness.'
'And yet it succeeded. We sit here, we three, we talk about it, but we have no knowledge of who committed the crime! That is success!'
'That's pure luck,' argued Japp. 'The murderer ought to have been spotted five or six times over.'
