Poirot turned to Mackle. “When was Monsieur Laurier murdered? At what time was he found, and by whom?”
“His wife found him this morning, an hour before you and Inspector Catchpool arrived,” said Mackle. “He did not come down for breakfast, so she went up to look for him after she had eaten hers. He was not in his bedroom, so she came here and discovered this horrible spectacle.”
“She had not seen him earlier in the morning?” asked Poirot.
“No,” said Mackle. “They did not always sleep in the same room. Their habit was to meet at the breakfast table. According to Dr. Osgood, death very likely occurred between midnight and two in the morning, though it might have been as late as three. I am sure I don’t need to tell you that the crime was committed here, in this room. Mr. Laurier was killed as he sat at his desk looking at old family photographs. There’s a broken window in the dining room, which is where the intruder must have got in.”
“The intruder?” Poirot, who had been walking in the direction of Arnold Laurier’s desk, stopped and turned round.
“Well... yes, Mr. Prarrow.” The expression on Mackle’s face suggested he would dearly have loved to mention Clarence Niven. Nobly, he resisted the urge.
“How do you know there was an intruder?” Poirot asked him.
“Why, because somebody smashed one of the dining-room windows,” said the policeman, looking more confused by the second. “How else could they have got into a house that had been locked and bolted for the night?”
“Unless someone who lived here wanted to make the authorities believe that the murderer must have been an outsider,” said Poirot. “Did anybody hear this window being smashed?”
“No one heard anything at all,” said Mackle. “Everyone in the house slept soundly—even those who do not normallysleep well. I have spoken to them all, and they were all asleep well before midnight. No noise roused them.”
“Silent night,” Poirot murmured, moving closer to Arnold Laurier’s desk. “Murderous night. All is lies, all is...”
“Blight?” I suggested.
“Catchpool, come and look at these photographs. You will see many faces that you recognize.”
Something about the way he said it made me think I was supposed to search for the face of somebody who ought not to be there, which I duly did. I saw no one who did not belong.
“Mon Dieu!” Poirot’s voice was quiet, but full of new energy. He had seen something that mattered, but I could not for the life of me work out what it was. There were several pictures of Arnold and Vivienne Laurier in their younger, happier days, some of which contained one or both of their two sons. Douglas and Jonathan Laurier, at a variety of ages, were clearly recognizable. There was one much more recent photograph of the Lauriers and the Surteeses together, in front of a bandstand. None of the four adults referred to at Frellingsloe House as “the children” were smiling. No one was, in fact, except Arnold Laurier.
“Is there anything that strikes you about these pictures,mon ami?”
“Only that Arnold Laurier was always painfully thin,” I said. “And Dr. Osgood is right about Vivienne Laurier being half the size she used to be. She is much plumper in these photographs than she is now.”
“But there is something much more significant that you have not...” Poirot stopped suddenly and laughed. “Of course.Of course.Thank you, Catchpool!”
“I have done nothing,” I told him.
“You are incapable of seeing the thing that matters. Do not be offended—I mean it in the best possible way. Inspector Mackle, I wish to speak to several people in the library, all of them together, as soon as it can be arranged: Felix Rawcliffe, Enid Surtees and Terence Surtees. Bring them to me at once.”
Chapter 28
Joy and Guilt
As Poirot and I made our way to the library, I asked him about his choice of this particular room. “Given what happened to you last time you were in there...”
“That is why it is so appropriate,” he said as we walked in. “In this room, I believed I would take my last breath. I clearly recall thinking, ‘This is the room in which I will die.’ It would be easy for me to avoid it henceforth. Instead, I shall reinvent this library as the place in which I uncover the truth and put a stop to the wickedness of a murderer!”
“I admire your courage and your ambition,” I told him.
He walked over to the window. “Observe the Frellingsloe sea,” he said. “Even on a mild and still day like today, it foams and froths as if possessed by a vengeful spirit.”
“I think the wind is picking up,” I said.
There was a knock at the door and Felix Rawcliffe appeared, looking worse than he had when Poirot had dismissed him half an hour earlier. “Why have you askedfor Terence, Enid and me, but no one else? Do you suspect us of something? I can assure you that—”
“Please sit down, Monsieur Rawcliffe,” said Poirot. “At the table, please, not in an armchair.”
“I have killed nobody, do you understand? Nobody.” Rawcliffe positioned himself awkwardly on the edge of a chair, almost whimpering. “I was extremely fond of Arnold Laurier, and I did not know Stanley Niven. I never met him, not once.”
