“I was afraid that he might be making things rather awkward for Vivienne. But... she did not complain of any such thing to you? Good, good. He must be your age, or even younger. And Vivienne is completely devoted to Arnold. Who knows if she would even consider marrying again.” With that, Robert Osgood turned and walked away.
I was still puzzling over his remarks when, ten minutes later, my third visitor appeared—Jonathan Laurier, unsmiling and exuding an air of dissatisfaction. “Inspector Catchpool. I was hoping to find you. Have you spoken to your friend Poirot yet?”
A mischievous impulse came over me. “Many times in my life,” I said.
“Do not play the fool, please. I am referring to—”
“I have not had the chance,” I cut him off.
He sighed heavily. “I would greatly appreciate it if you could attend to the matter as soon as possible. Poirot must promise to deliver my father’s desired result.”
I cast my mind back to the previous night. This was something about Frellingsloe House, as I recalled. Jonathan Laurier had given me no further details.
“Just the promise will be sufficient,” he said now, “followed by the pretense that something is thenunderway—something likely to do the trick. I would not normally ask anybody to enter into a deception, but in this case I have no doubt that it is the right thing to do.”
“Poirot does not take orders from me,” I told him. I was tempted to add,And I do not take orders from you.
“He will surely listen to you,” said Jonathan impatiently. “He is a foreigner. You are an Englishman, and a Scotland Yard inspector. Come to think of it... perhaps you could exert your influence with our infuriatingly stupid Inspector Mackle while you’re here.”
“In what direction?”
“There is a lunatic man at the hospital who has been shouting about hurting people’s heads.”
“Ah. Mr. Hurt-His-Head,” I said.
“He was standing in the corridor outside my father’s room, mere footsteps from Stanley Niven’s room, immediately after Niven was killed. Is it not obvious that he must be the murderer? He was the only raving mad person present, and he repeated his confession several times: ‘To hurt his head, to hurt his head.’ There could hardly be a more blatant admission of guilt. What I want to know is: why wasn’t he arrested days ago?”
“Have you said this to Inspector Mackle?” I asked.
“Mackle heard a very different interpretation of events from my mother first and, unfortunately, believed it,” said Laurier. “Mother is wrong. She claims this lunatic was scared, and was trying to warn her that my father would be killed next. What rot! He was trying to admit what he had done, but, hampered by his limited powers of speech,was unable to do so effectively. I can tell you precisely what the wretched creature was doing: holding out his hands so that handcuffs could be put on them, not appealing to my mother to rescue him.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“I heard it from the lunatic’s own mouth: ‘To hurt his head. To hurt his head.’ That was what he had wanted to do to Stanley Niven, and it was his way of announcing to all of us there that he had, in fact, done it.”
Chapter 17
The Doors and Mr. Hurt-His-Head
“Very well, then, I shall tell you about the doors,” Nurse Bee Haskins said to Poirot. “It’s a mystery Zillah and I cannot solve between us.”
“Do not worry, mademoiselle. Poirot, he will solve the puzzle.”
Zillah Hunt looked up in surprise at this bold statement.
“Well... good,” said Nurse Bee. She settled herself in her chair and started to tell her story. “Once Dr. Wall and I had checked on Stanley Niven at two o’clock, we looked in on the remaining Ward 6 patients, the ones we had not yet been in to see. Then we set off for Ward 7, which was next on Dr. Wall’s list. That is the one across the courtyard from Ward 6. One of the patients there is Professor Burnett.”
Monsieur Mal-de-la-Tête, Poirot thought to himself, but did not say.
“It is a terrible shame that such a brain as his should turn to mush,” Inspector Mackle said with a sigh. “Age andinfirmity come to us all, more’s the pity—but Professor Burnett was an eminent scientist in his heyday. One of the cleverest men in England, I was told.”
“Of all the brains that could be described as mush...” Bee Haskins began emphatically. Whatever she had been about to say, though, she thought better of it. “Professor Burnett’s mind still works perfectly well, Monsieur Poirot, though admittedly it is impossible to know what thoughts it produces. His emotional state is easier to read. Feelings always make themselves known, even when verbal expression fails. Language is the problem, you see. Professor Burnett has lost most of his, and it frustrates him terribly. He has retained only a handful of words, which he repeats over and over.”
“His predicament sounds most unfortunate,” Poirot agreed.
“When Dr. Wall and I visited Professor Burnett’s room on 8 September, he was not in bed where he usually is. He was standing by his window. I tried to get him back into bed, but he was intent on staying where he was and staring out at the courtyard, or so I thought at the time.
“As I stood beside him, I spotted Zillah across the courtyard, in the room on Ward 6 that is soon to be Arnold Laurier’s. She was also standing by the window, with a young couple beside her: a small, golden-haired woman who looked like an angel ornament that you’d hang from a Christmas tree, and a taller man. Now, of course, I know from Zillah that they were Jonathan and Janet Laurier, though I didn’t know it at the time. Behind them, I could see vague shapes of other people—”
