Peril At End House Part 15

The last was undated.

'Dearest,-Well-I'm off tomorrow. Feeling tremendously keen and excited and absolutely certain of success. The old Albatrossis all tuned up. She won't let me down.

'Cheer up, sweetheart, and don't worry. There's a risk, of course, but all life's a risk really. By the way, somebody said I ought to make a will (tactful fellow-but he meant well), so I have-on a half sheet of notepaper-and sent it to old Whitfield. I'd no time to go round there. Somebody once told me that a man made a will of three words, "All to Mother", and it was legal all right. My will was rather like that-I remembered your name was really Magdala, which was clever of me! A couple of the fellows witnessed it.'

'Don't take all this solemn talk about wills to heart, will you? (I didn't mean that pun. An accident.) I shall be as right as rain. I'll send you telegrams from India and Australia and so on. And keep up heart. It's going to be all right. See?'

'Good night and G.o.d bless you, 'Michael.'

Poirot folded the letters together again.

'You see, Hastings? I had to read them-to make sure. It is as I told you.'

'Surely you could have found out some other way?'

'No, mon cher, that is just what I could not do. It had to be this way. We have now some very valuable evidence.'

'In what way?'

'We now know that the fact of Michael's having made a will in favour of Mademoiselle Nick is actually recorded in writing. Anyone who had read those letters would know the fact. And with letters carelessly hidden like that, anyone could read them.'

'Ellen?'

'Ellen, almost certainly, I should say. We will try a little experiment on her before pa.s.sing out.'

'There is no sign of the will.'

'No, that is curious. But in all probability it is thrown on top of a bookcase, or inside a china jar. We must try to awaken Mademoiselle's memory on that point. At any rate, there is nothing more to be found here.'

Ellen was dusting the hall as we descended.

Poirot wished her good morning very pleasantly as we pa.s.sed. He turned back from the front door to say: 'You knew, I suppose, that Miss Buckley was engaged to the airman, Michael Seton?'

She stared.

'What? The one there's all the fuss in the papers about?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I never. To think of that. Engaged to Miss Nick.'

'Complete and absolute surprise registered very convincingly,' I remarked, as we got outside.

'Yes. It really seemed genuine.'

'Perhaps it was,' I suggested.

'And that packet of letters reclining for months under the lingerie ? No, mon ami.'

'All very well,' I thought to myself. 'But we are not all Hercule Poirots. We do not all go nosing into what does not concern us.'

But I said nothing.

'This Ellen-she is an enigma,' said Poirot. 'I do not like it. There is something here that I do not understand.'

Chapter 14 The Mystery of the Missing Will.

We went straight back to the nursing home. Nick looked rather surprised to see us.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot, answering her look. 'I am like the Jack in the Case. I pop up again. To begin with I will tell you that I have put the order in your affairs. Everything is now neatly arranged.'

'Well, I expect it was about time,' said Nick, unable to help smiling. 'Are you very tidy, M. Poirot?'

'Ask my friend Hastings here.'

The girl turned an inquiring gaze on me.

I detailed some of Poirot's minor peculiarities-toast that had to be made from a square loaf-eggs matching in size-his objection to golf as a game 'shapeless and haphazard', whose only redeeming feature was the tee boxes! I ended by telling her the famous case which Poirot had solved by his habit of straightening ornaments on the mantelpiece.

Poirot sat by smiling.

'He makes the good tale of it, yes,' he said, when I had finished. 'But on the whole it is true. Figure to yourself, Mademoiselle, that I never cease trying to persuade Hastings to part his hair in the middle instead of on the side. See what an air, lop-sided and unsymmetrical, it gives him.'

'Then you must disapprove of me, M. Poirot,' said Nick. 'I wear a side parting. And you must approve of Freddie who parts her hair in the middle.'

'He was certainly admiring her the other evening,' I put in maliciously. 'Now I know the reason.'

'C'est a.s.sez,' said Poirot. 'I am here on serious business. Mademoiselle, this will of yours, I find it not.'

'Oh!' She wrinkled her brows. 'But does it matter so much? After all, I'm not dead. And wills aren't really important till you are dead, are they?'

'That is correct. All the same, I interest myself in this will of yours. I have various little ideas concerning it. Think Mademoiselle. Try to remember where you placed it-where you saw it last?'

'I don't suppose I put it anywhere particular,' said Nick. 'I never do put things in places. I probably shoved it into a drawer.'

'You did not put it in the secret panel by any chance?' 'The secret what?'

'Your maid, Ellen, says that there is a secret panel in the drawing-room or the library.'

'Nonsense,' said Nick. 'I've never heard of such a thing. Ellen said so?'

'Mais oui. It seems she was in service at End House as a young girl. The cook showed it to her.'

'It's the first I've ever heard of it. I suppose Grandfather must have known about it, but, if so, he didn't tell me. And I'm sure he would have told me. M. Poirot, are you sure Ellen isn't making it all up?'

'No, Mademoiselle, I am not at all sure! Il me semble that there is something-odd about this Ellen of yours.'

'Oh! I wouldn't call her odd. William's a half-wit, and the child is a nasty little brute, but Ellen's all right. The essence of respectability.'

'Did you give her leave to go out and see the fireworks last night, Mademoiselle?'

'Of course. They always do. They clear up afterwards.'

'Yet she did not go out.'

'Oh, yes, she did.'

'How do you know, Mademoiselle?'

'Well-well-I suppose I don't know. I told her to go and she thanked me-and so, of course, I a.s.sumed that she did go.'

'On the contrary-she remained in the house.'

'But-how very odd!'

'You think it odd?'

'Yes, I do. I'm sure she's never done such a thing before. Did she say why?'

'She did not tell me the real reason-of that I am sure.'

Nick looked at him questioningly.

'Is it-important?'

Poirot flung out his hands.

'That is just what I cannot say, Mademoiselle. C'est curieux. I leave it like that.'

'This panel business too,' said Nick, reflectively. 'I can't help thinking that's frightfully queer-and unconvincing. Did she show you where it was?'

'She said she couldn't remember.' 'I don't believe there is such a thing.' 'It certainly looks like it.' 'She must be going batty, poor thing.'

'She certainly recounts the histories! She said also that End House was not a good house to live in.'

Nick gave a little s.h.i.+ver.

'Perhaps she's right there,' she said slowly. 'Sometimes I've felt that way myself. There's a queer feeling in that house...'

Her eyes grew large and dark. They had a fated look. Poirot hastened to recall her to other topics.

'We have wandered from our subject, Mademoiselle. The will. The last will and testament of Magdala Buckley.'

'I put that,' said Nick, with some pride. 'I remember putting that, and I said pay all debts and testamentary expenses. I remembered that out of a book I'd read.'

'You did not use a will form, then?'

'No, there wasn't time for that. I was just going off to the nursing home, and besides Mr Croft said will forms were very dangerous. It was better to make a simple will and not try to be too legal.'

'M. Croft? He was there?'

'Yes. It was he who asked me if I'd made one. I'd never have thought of it myself. He said if you died in-in-'

'Intestate,' I said.

'Yes, that's it. He said if you died intestate, the Crown pinched a lot and that would be a pity.'

'Very helpful, the excellent M. Croft!'

'Oh, he was,' said Nick warmly. 'He got Ellen in and her husband to witness it. Oh! of course! What an idiot I've been!'

We looked at her inquiringly.

'I've been a perfect idiot. Letting you hunt round End House. Charles has got it, of course! My cousin, Charles Vyse.'

'Ah! so that is the explanation.'

'Mr Croft said a lawyer was the proper person to have charge of it.'

Tres correct, ce bon M. Croft.'

'Men are useful sometimes,' said Nick. 'A lawyer or the Bank-that's what he said. And I said Charles would be best. So we stuck it in an envelope and sent it off to him straight away.'

She lay back on her pillows with a sigh.

'I'm sorry I've been so frightfully stupid. But it is all right now. Charles has got it, and if you really want to see it, of course he'll show it to you.'

'Not without an authorization from you,' said Poirot, smiling.

'How silly.'

'No, Mademoiselle. Merely prudent.'

'Well, I think it's silly.' She took a piece of paper from a little stack that lay beside her bed. 'What shall I say? Let the dog see the rabbit?'

'Comment?'

I laughed at his startled face.

He dictated a form of words, and Nick wrote obediently.

'Thank you, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot, as he took it.