“It looks rather like a Christmas decoration,” I said. “Tiny bits of glass sparkling in sunlight, like beads of frost.”
“Yes, yes, very poetic,” Poirot said impatiently. “Look again. What is there that should not be?”
“Oh, you mean the little stones? I see what you’re driving at. The window was smashed to make it look as if an intruder broke in and killed Arnold Laurier. It was smashed from theinside, causing some chips of glass to land in the garden where there are stones. Laurier’s murderer must have judged that too much glass landed outside and so shoveled some back in, bringing in a few stones in too.”
“Précisément. And there are more than a few stones here—far too many to be brought in accidentally on the soles of an intruder’s shoes, for instance. It is the presence and number of these little stones that prove the window was broken from the inside and that, therefore, there was no intruder. Monsieur Laurier was killed by someone under this roof. Was it you, Monsieur Rawcliffe? Did you kill Arnold Laurier and then attempt to build a lie from broken glass in the middle of the night?”
“No. I swear to you, it was not me. I am ready to tell you everything I know, but... I am afraid I will be the killer’s next victim if I do.”
That, then, explained his reluctance to go anywhere alone.
Poirot settled himself in a chair. “As I have said to many frightened people over the years, monsieur: you will besafer if you speak up than if you do not. Tell us, please, whatever it is that you can no longer keep to yourself.”
“Dr. Robert Osgood is in love with Vivienne Laurier,” said Rawcliffe. “I believe it is he who killed Arnold. He has been... well, almost murderously impatient, waiting for Arnold to die naturally. Time after time I have begged Vivienne to make Dr. Osgood leave Frelly. I have even wondered if she might have romantic feelings for him, though she assured me she does not. She said she wanted him close at hand so that he could tend to Arnold more easily.”
At this point, I interrupted and told the curate about the conversation I had overheard.
“Yes, Vivienne and I were discussing the problem then,” he said.
“Who was the stranger you were encouraging her to consider?” I asked.
“Why, poor Olga Woodruff, of course. I suppose she is not quite a stranger, but Vivienne cannot have met her more than once or twice, on the rare occasions that Dr. Osgood has brought her here. If Vivienne had told Dr. Osgood months ago, clearly and plainly, that she did not love him and would never marry him, he would have left Frellingsloe House immediately, one has to hope, and focused his amorous attention on his fiancée.”
“The Romeo and Rosaline conversation,” said Poirot. “It was about this same subject?”
Rawcliffe nodded. “Dr. Osgood was at pains to convince me that the destruction of his bond with poor Olga would be no great loss. They were, he argued, more a case ofRomeo and Rosaline than Romeo and Juliet. I don’t know why he was so sure that Vivienne would marry him once Arnold was gone. According to her, she had never encouraged him in that expectation. And he is about to find out how wrong he has been.”
“Dr. Osgood seems to think you too are in love with Vivienne Laurier,” I said.
“Me?” Rawcliffe looked astonished. “Goodness, what a preposterous notion. I am deeply fond of her, but not in that way. She is old enough to be my mother. That is how I have always thought of her, in fact: as a maternal figure in my life. I lost my own dear mother some years ago, God rest her soul.”
I remembered that he had mentioned his late mother before, when Poirot and I first met him, at the railway station.
“I might as well tell you the rest of the truth,” said Rawcliffe.
We waited, watching a pinkness creep in from the edges of his face and slowly spread to the center. Finally, he said, “If for any reason the marriage plans of Dr. Osgood and Olga do not come to fruition, I intend to propose to her myself. No one knows this. You are the first two people I have told.”
“You know Olga Woodruff better than Vivienne Laurier does, then?” I said.
Rawcliffe shook his head. “I, too, have only met her once or twice. William Shakespeare understood that it only takes a glimpse, sometimes...” He broke off, then said, “WhatI cannot understand is why it has not occurred to her that her name would be Olga Osgood, which sounds clumsy and is difficult to say. Olga Rawcliffe sounds perfect.”
“Apart from his romantic attachment to Vivienne Laurier, do you have any other reason to believe Dr. Osgood would murder Arnold Laurier, or evidence that he did so?” said Poirot.
“Well, no, but—”
“Do you believe that the doctor also killed Stanley Niven?”
Rawcliffe shook his head. “No. Why should he?”
“Good question, monsieur, good question. Why should anyone at Frelly wish to kill Stanley Niven? He was a complete stranger to them all. This, we have been told from the start. I thought it could not be true, but I was mistaken. Today we have learned from a trusted associate of Catchpool’s that there is no connection of any kind between any member of this household and the Niven family. And with that piece removed from the picture, and given what else Sergeant Wight said in his telegram, I now suspect a new connection. One that does not involve Stanley Niven or any of his relatives. Apart from the fact that he got murdered by the same person who killed Arnold Laurier, Monsieur Niven has nothing to do with anything.”
“But... that makes precious little sense,” said Rawcliffe. I was thinking the very same thing.
“Monsieur Rawcliffe, you will please do Poirot a favor. Find Vivienne Laurier and bring her to the library. It is much too cold to stay in this room. Go,immédiatement.”
“I have a task for you too, Catchpool,” Poirot said once we were alone. “Do not fear—it is not the decoration of yet another tree. There is something far more important that I need you to do for me. It involves going somewhere—to a very specific destination—and lying in wait for somebody.”
“Lying in wait?”
