Chapter 20
Hercule Poirot paused a moment at the big wrought-iron gates. He looked ahead of him along the curving drive. The last of the golden brown leaves fluttered down from the trees. The cyclamen were over.
Poirot sighed. He turned aside and rapped gently on the door of the little white pilastered lodge.
After a few moments' delay he heard footsteps inside, those slow hesitant footsteps. The door was opened by Mrs Folliat. He was not startled this time to see how old and frail she looked.
She said, 'M. Poirot? You again?'
'May I come in?'
'Of course.'
He followed her in.
She offered him tea which he refused. Then she asked in a quiet voice:
'Why have you come?'
'I think you can guess, Madame.'
Her answer was oblique.
'I am very tired,' she said.
'I know.' He went on, 'There have now been three deaths, Hattie Stubbs, Marlene Tucker, old Merdell.'
She said sharply:
'Merdell? That was an accident. He fell from the quay. He was very old, half-blind, and he'd been drinking in the pub.'
'It was not an accident. Merdell knew too much.'
'What did he know?'
'He recognised a face, or a way of walking, or a voice – something like that. I talked to him the day I first came down here. He told me then all about the Folliat family – about your father-in-law and your husband, and your sons who were killed in the war. Only – they were not both killed, were they? Your son Henry went down with his ship, but your second son, James, was not killed. He deserted. He was reported at first, perhaps, Missing believed killed, and later you told everyone that he was killed. It was nobody's business to disbelieve that statement. Why should they?'
Poirot paused and then went on:
'Do not imagine I have no sympathy for you, Madame. Life has been hard for you, I know. You can have had no real illusions about your younger son, but he was your son, and you loved him. You did all you could to give him a new life. You had the charge of a young girl, a subnormal but very rich girl. Oh yes, she was rich. You gave out that her parents had lost all their money, that she was poor, and that you had advised her to marry a rich man many years older than herself. Why should anybody disbelieve your story? Again, it was nobody's business. Her parents and near relatives had been killed. A firm of French lawyers in Paris acted as instructed by lawyers in San Miguel. On her marriage, she assumed control of her own fortune. She was, as you have told me, docile, affectionate, suggestible. Everything her husband asked her to sign, she signed. Securities were probably changed and resold many times, but in the end the desired financial result was reached. Sir George Stubbs, the new personality assumed by your son, became a rich man and his wife became a pauper. It is no legal offence to call yourself 'sir' unless it is done to obtain money under false pretences. A title creates confidence – it suggests, if not birth, then certainly riches. So the rich Sir George Stubbs, older and changed in appearance and having grown a beard, bought Nasse House and came to live where he belonged, though he had not been there since he was a boy. There was nobody left after the devastations of war who was likely to have recognised him. But old Merdell did. He kept the knowledge to himself, but when he said to me slyly that there would always be Folliats at Nasse House, that was his own private joke.
'So all had turned out well, or so you thought. Your plan, I fully believe, stopped there. Your son had wealth, his ancestral home, and though his wife was subnormal she was a beautiful and docile girl, and you hoped he would be kind to her and that she would be happy.'
Mrs Folliat said in a low voice:
'That's how I thought it would be – I would look after Hattie and care for her. I never dreamed -'
'You never dreamed – and your son carefully did not tell you, that at the time of the marriage he was already married. Oh, yes – we have searched the records for what we knew must exist. Your son had married a girl in Trieste, a girl of the underground criminal world with whom he concealed himself after his desertion. She had no mind to be parted from him, nor for that matter had he any intention of being parted from her. He accepted the marriage with Hattie as a means to wealth, but in his own mind he knew from the beginning what he intended to do.'
'No, no, I do not believe that! I cannot believe it… It was that woman – that wicked creature.'
Poirot went on inexorably:
'He meant murder. Hattie had no relations, few friends. Immediately on their return to England, he brought her here. The servants hardly saw her that first evening, and the woman they saw the next morning was not Hattie, but his Italian wife made up as Hattie and behaving roughly much as Hattie behaved. And there again it might have ended. The false Hattie would have lived out her life as the real Hattie though doubtless her mental powers would have unexpectedly improved owing to what would vaguely be called 'new treatment.' The secretary, Miss Brewis, already realised that there was very little wrong with Lady Stubbs's mental processes.
'But then a totally unforeseen thing happened. A cousin of Hattie's wrote that he was coming to England on a yachting trip, and although that cousin had not seen her for many years, he would not be likely to be deceived by an imposter.
'It is odd,' said Poirot, breaking off his narrative, 'that though the thought did cross my mind that De Sousa might not be De Sousa, it never occurred to me that the truth lay the other way round – that is to say, that Hattie was not Hattie.'
He went on:
'There might have been several different ways of meeting that situation. Lady Stubbs could have avoided a meeting with a plea of illness, but if De Sousa remained long in England she could hardly have continued to avoid meeting him. And there was already another complication. Old Merdell, garrulous in his old age, used to chatter to his granddaughter. She was probably the only person who bothered to listen to him, and even she dismissed most of what he said because she thought him 'batty.' Nevertheless, some of the things he said about having seen 'a woman's body in the woods,' and 'Sir George Stubbs being really Mr James' made sufficient impression on her to make her hint about them tentatively to Sir George. In doing so, of course, she signed her own death warrant. Sir George and his wife could take no chances of stories like that getting around. I imagine that he handed her out small sums of hush money, and proceeded to make his plans.
'They worked out their scheme very carefully. They already knew the date when De Sousa was due at Helmmouth. It coincided with the date fixed for the fete. They arranged their plan so that Marlene should be killed and Lady Stubbs 'disappear' in conditions which should throw vague suspicion on De Sousa. Hence the reference to his being a 'wicked man' and the accusation: 'he kills people.' Lady Stubbs was to disappear permanently (possibly a conveniently unrecognisable body might be identified at some time by Sir George), and a new personality was to take her place. Actually, 'Hattie' would merely resume her own Italian personality. All that was needed was for her to double the parts over a period of a little more than twenty-four hours. With the connivance of Sir George, this was easy. On the day I arrived, 'Lady Stubbs' was supposed to have remained in her room until just before teatime. Nobody saw her there except Sir George. Actually, she slipped out, took a bus or a train to Exeter, and travelled from Exeter in the company of another girl student (several travel every day this time of year) to whom she confided her story of the friend who had eaten bad veal and ham pie. She arrives at the hostel, books her cubicle, and goes out to 'explore.' By tea time, Lady Stubbs is in the drawing-room. After dinner, Lady Stubbs goes early to bed – but Miss Brewis caught a glimpse of her slipping out of the house a short while afterwards. She spends the night in the hostel, but is out early, and is back at Nasse as Lady Stubbs for breakfast. Again she spends a morning in her room with a 'headache,' and this time manages to stage an appearance as a 'trespasser' rebuffed by Sir George from the window of his wife's room where he pretends to turn and speak to his wife inside that room. The changes of costume were not difficult – shorts and an open shirt under one of the elaborate dresses that Lady Stubbs was fond of wearing. Heavy white make-up for Lady Stubbs with a big coolie hat to shade her face; a gay
