The Mystery of Three Quarters. Sophie Hannah

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СКАЧАТЬ thing, to be accused of something one has not done. One ought to be able to brush the untruths aside, but somehow they take hold of the mind and cause a spectral form of guilt—like a ghost in the head, or in the conscience! Someone is certain that you have done this terrible thing, and so you start to feel as if you have, even though you know you have not. I begin to understand, Georges, why people confess to crimes of which they are innocent.’

      George looked doubtful, as he frequently did. English discretion, Poirot had observed, had an outward appearance that suggested doubt. Many of the politest English men and women he had met over the years looked as if they had been ordered to disbelieve everything that was said to them.

      ‘Would you like a drink, sir? A sirop de menthe, if I might be permitted to make a suggestion?’

      ‘Oui. That is an excellent idea.’

      ‘I should also mention, sir, that you have a visitor waiting to see you. Am I to bring your drink immediately, and ask him to wait a little longer?’

      ‘A visitor?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘What is his name? Is it Eustace?’

      ‘No, sir. It’s a Mr John McCrodden.’

      ‘Ah! That is a relief. No Eustace. I can cherish the hope that the nightmare of Madame Rule and her Eustace has departed and will not return to Hercule Poirot! Did Monsieur McCrodden state the nature of his business?’

      ‘No, sir. Though I should warn you, he seemed … displeased.’

      Poirot allowed a small sigh to escape his lips. After his more than satisfactory luncheon, the afternoon was taking a disappointing turn. Still, John McCrodden was unlikely to be as vexatious as Sylvia Rule.

      ‘I shall postpone the pleasure of sirop de menthe and see Monsieur McCrodden first,’ Poirot told George. ‘His name is familiar.’

      ‘You might be thinking of the solicitor Rowland McCrodden, sir?’

      ‘Mais oui, bien sûr. Rowland Rope, that dear friend of the hangman—though you are too polite, Georges, to call him by the soubriquet that suits him so well. The gallows, they are not allowed by Rowland Rope to have a moment’s rest.’

      ‘He has been instrumental in bringing several criminals to justice, sir,’ agreed George, with his customary tact.

      ‘Perhaps John McCrodden is a relation,’ said Poirot. ‘Allow me to settle myself and then you may bring him in.’

      As it transpired, George was prevented from bringing in John McCrodden by McCrodden’s determination to stride into the room without help or introduction. He overtook the valet and positioned himself in the middle of the carpet where he stopped as if frozen in the manner of one sent to play the part of a statue.

      ‘Please, monsieur, you may sit down,’ Poirot said with a smile.

      ‘No, thank you,’ said McCrodden. His tone was one of contemptuous detachment.

      He was forty years old or thereabouts, Poirot guessed. He had the kind of handsome face that one rarely encountered apart from in works of art. His features might have been chiselled by a master craftsman. Poirot found it difficult to reconcile the face with the clothes, which were shabby and showed patches of dirt. Was he in the habit of sleeping on park benches? Did he have recourse to the usual domestic amenities? Poirot wondered if McCrodden had sought to cancel out the advantages that nature had bestowed upon him—the large green eyes and the golden hair—by making himself look as repellent as possible.

      McCrodden glared down at Poirot. ‘I received your letter,’ he said. ‘It arrived this morning.’

      ‘I’m afraid I must contradict you, monsieur. I have sent you no letter.’

      There was a long, uneasy silence. Poirot did not wish to leap to any hasty conclusions, but he feared he knew the direction the conversation was about to take. But it could not be! How could it be? Only in his dreams had he encountered this sensation before: the doom-laden knowledge that one is trapped in a predicament that makes no sense and will never make sense, no matter what one does.

      ‘What did it say, this letter that you received?’ he asked.

      ‘You ought to know, since you wrote it,’ said John McCrodden. ‘You accused me of murdering a man named Barnabas Pandy.’

       CHAPTER 2

       Intolerable Provocation

      ‘I must say, I was rather disappointed,’ McCrodden went on. ‘The famous Hercule Poirot, allowing himself to be used for such frivolities.’

      Poirot waited a few moments before answering. Was it his particular choice of words that had proved so ineffective in persuading Sylvia Rule to listen to him? Then, for John McCrodden, he would make an effort to be clearer and more persuasive. ‘Monsieur, s’il vous plait. I believe that somebody sent you a letter and that, in it, you were accused of murder. The murder of Barnabas Pandy. This part of your story I do not dispute. But—’

      ‘You are in no position to dispute it,’ said McCrodden.

      ‘Monsieur, please believe me when I tell you that I was not the writer of the letter you received. To Hercule Poirot, there is nothing frivolous about murder. I would—’

      ‘Oh, there won’t have been any murder,’ McCrodden interrupted again with a bitter laugh. ‘Or, if there has, the police will already have caught the person responsible. This is one of my father’s childish games.’ He frowned, as if something disturbing had occurred to him. ‘Unless the old gargoyle is more sadistic than I thought and would actually risk my neck in a real and unsolved case of murder. I suppose it’s possible. With his ruthless determination …’ McCrodden broke off, then muttered, ‘Yes. It is possible. I should have thought of that.’

      ‘Your father is the solicitor Rowland McCrodden?’ asked Poirot.

      ‘You know he is.’ John McCrodden had already declared himself disappointed, and that was how he sounded—as if Poirot was sinking lower in his estimation with each word he spoke.

      ‘I know your father by reputation only. I have not personally made his acquaintance, nor have I ever spoken to him.’

      ‘You have to maintain the pretence, of course,’ said John McCrodden. ‘I’m sure he’s paid you a handsome sum to keep his name out of it.’ He looked around the room he was standing in, seeming to notice it for the first time. Then he nodded as if confirming something to himself, and said, ‘The rich who need money least—like you, like my father—will stop at nothing to get their hands on more of it. That’s why I’ve never trusted it. I was right not to. Money is corrosive to character once you’re accustomed to it, and you, M. Poirot, are the living proof.’

      Poirot could not recall when someone had last said something so unpleasant to him, so unfair or so personally wounding. He said quietly, ‘I have spent my life working for the greater good and the СКАЧАТЬ