Chesterton Radio presents an original Hercule Poirot mystery: The Affair of the Man in the Photograph.
Twenty-two years ago, Thomas Bell died beside a wrecked motorcar on a lonely English road.
Now three men who were with him that night have received impossible reminders of the friend they left behind.
His cigarette case.
His handwriting.
His voice.
And finally, a photograph taken only weeks ago—in which Thomas Bell is standing behind them, still twenty years old.
Sir Edward Vale knows the photograph cannot be real.
He knows because he watched Thomas Bell die.
But when Edward decides at last to reveal what happened on that road, the past claims another victim.
Some things grow smaller with distance.
Others only seem to.
The Affair of the Man in the Photograph.
Part One: The Dead Man in the Photograph.
The Affair of the Man in the Photograph
Part One: The Dead Man in the Photograph
As recalled by Captain Arthur Hastings
There are certain cases of Poirot’s which remain in the memory because of the ingenuity of the crime, others because of the extraordinary character of the criminal, and still others because of some small and apparently insignificant circumstance which, to Poirot’s peculiar mind, assumed an importance altogether disproportionate to its size.
The affair of the man in the photograph belongs, I think, to none of these classes.
I remember it because, from the first moment to the last, there was about it the uncomfortable sensation that something which had been left far behind was steadily drawing nearer.
It began on a wet October afternoon in 1927.
I had been lunching with Poirot, and the rain, which had commenced shortly before noon, showed every intention of continuing indefinitely. It ran in crooked little streams down the windows of Poirot’s sitting-room and reduced the London street beyond to a grey confusion of umbrellas, motorcars and reflected lamps.
Poirot himself was in excellent spirits.
He had spent the better part of ten minutes rearranging three chrysanthemums in a small vase.
“You see, Hastings,” he said at last, stepping back to admire his handiwork, “there is now balance.”
“There were flowers in the vase before.”
“There were objects in a receptacle. That is not the same thing.”
I was considering a suitable reply when the bell rang.
A few moments later our visitor was shown in.
He was a tall man of perhaps forty-five, though at first glance I should have put him nearer fifty. There was nothing unhealthy in his appearance. Indeed, his shoulders were broad, his complexion good, and his movements those of a man accustomed to outdoor life. Yet I was immediately conscious of something strained about him.
His eyes went first to Poirot and then to me.
“M. Hercule Poirot?”
Poirot bowed.
“I am Sir Edward Vale.”
The name was familiar. The Vales were an old family, and Sir Edward had made a considerable fortune from interests in engineering and electrical equipment in addition to the family property.
Poirot indicated a chair.
“You wished to consult me, Sir Edward?”
Vale remained standing.
“I don’t know.”
Poirot raised his eyebrows.
“That is unusual.”
“I mean—I don’t know whether there is anything for you to investigate.”
He gave a short laugh.
“If I told you precisely what brought me here, you would probably think me a fool.”
“That,” said Poirot, “would depend entirely upon what you told me.”
Sir Edward looked at me again.
“Hastings is my friend,” said Poirot. “He knows how to be discreet.”
I was gratified by this testimonial, though Poirot added:
“At least, when sufficiently instructed.”
Sir Edward did not smile.
Instead he reached inside his coat and removed a stiff envelope.
“I received this three days ago.”
He laid it upon the table.
Poirot did not touch it.
“What is it?”
“A photograph.”
“And you have brought it to me because—?”
“Look at it.”
Poirot drew the envelope toward him and removed the print.
For perhaps half a minute he examined it without speaking. Then he handed it to me.
There seemed, at first, nothing remarkable about it.
Three middle-aged gentlemen were leaving a railway station. I recognized Sir Edward at once. Beside him was a heavily built man with a neat dark moustache and the unmistakably self-assured appearance of a successful professional man. The third was thinner and stooped slightly, carrying a rolled newspaper beneath one arm.
A station clock was visible above them.
Several other people occupied the background.
One of them caught my attention.
He was a young man of perhaps twenty. His clothes seemed oddly old-fashioned, though I could not immediately have said why. He stood several yards behind the three principal figures and was looking almost directly toward the camera.
There was something extraordinarily vivid about his face.
He was handsome without being conventionally so. His expression suggested humour. One had the impression that he might at any moment grin at some private joke.
I looked up.
“Who are the other two gentlemen?”
“Dr. Stephen Marlowe and Mr. Julian Cross.”
“And the young fellow behind you?”
Sir Edward’s fingers tightened around the head of his walking stick.
Poirot spoke quietly.
“You recognize this man?”
There was a pause.
Outside, a motor horn sounded in the wet street.
Sir Edward Vale said:
“I watched him die.”
For several seconds nobody spoke.
I looked again at the photograph.
The smiling young man remained where he had been, forever twenty years old.
Poirot leaned back.
“His name?”
“Thomas Bell.”
“And when did Thomas Bell die?”
“August the seventeenth, 1905.”
I confess that I felt a peculiar sensation between my shoulder blades.
“But this photograph—”
“Was taken three weeks ago.”
“Where?”
“Little Wickham station. Cross, Marlowe and I had attended the funeral of an old schoolmaster. We happened to meet on the train coming back. A local photographer took the picture for the county paper.”
“And you are certain that the photograph itself is recent?”
“I saw the photograph being taken.”
Poirot held out his hand, and I returned the print.
“Tell me about Thomas Bell.”
Sir Edward walked to the window.
“We were friends. The four of us. Thomas, Stephen Marlowe, Julian Cross and myself. We were young.”
He gave a bitter little laugh.
“That sounds a poor excuse when one is forty-two.”
“An excuse for what?”
Sir Edward turned.
“For being young.”
Poirot said nothing.
“We spent that summer at Blackthorn—my family home. My father was abroad for much of August. There were parties, shooting, too much drinking. We thought ourselves tremendously grown-up.”
“And Thomas Bell?”
“He was different.”
“How?”
Vale considered.
“He had less money than the rest of us and more independence. Thomas could laugh at you and somehow make you like him for it. He had a damned inconvenient conscience.”
The last words came out with unexpected force.
Poirot’s eyes sharpened.
“Inconvenient?”
“I only mean that he was forever telling us when we were behaving like fools.”
“And on August the seventeenth?”
Sir Edward stared at the rain.
“We took my father’s motorcar.”
“You were driving?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“I had been drinking.”
“Ah.”
“It was after midnight. We were on the old North Road. There was an argument—I don’t remember how it began. I took a bend too fast. The car left the road.”
He stopped.
“Thomas was killed.”
“Instantly?”
Sir Edward turned so abruptly that I noticed it.
“No. That is—”
The word seemed to escape him.
Then his face closed.
“The doctors said his injuries were fatal.”
Poirot’s expression did not change.
“And the three of you?”
“Cuts. Bruises. Cross broke two fingers. Marlowe injured his shoulder.”
“Dr. Marlowe was already a doctor?”
“A medical student.”
“I see.”
Sir Edward returned to the chair.
“For twenty-two years Thomas Bell has been dead. I attended his funeral. I stood beside his grave.”
He pointed to the photograph.
“Now tell me how he came to be standing behind us at Little Wickham station.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “a remarkable resemblance?”
Vale shook his head.
“No.”
“After twenty-two years—”
“You don’t understand. He hasn’t aged.”
That silenced me.
He was right.
If the man in the photograph were Thomas Bell, he was not Thomas Bell at forty-two.
He was Thomas Bell at twenty.
Poirot had taken a small magnifying glass from his desk.
He examined the print again.
“The photographer?”
“Arthur Denby. Little Wickham. He’s taken photographs for the county papers for years.”
“Has he been questioned?”
“By me. He says he knows nothing. He developed the plate himself.”
“And this print?”
“Posted anonymously to my house.”
Poirot moved the photograph nearer the lamp.
He tilted it one way, then another.
I knew that expression. Something had interested him.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing, Hastings.”
Which, in Poirot’s vocabulary, frequently meant something.
He placed the photograph flat upon the table.
“This alone brought you to me?”
“No.”
Sir Edward drew a hand across his face.
“Two weeks before that photograph was taken, Marlowe received something in the post.”
“What?”
“A cigarette case.”
He looked at us.
“Thomas Bell’s cigarette case.”
This time even Poirot sat a little straighter.
“Describe it.”
“Silver. Initials T.B. engraved on the front. Inside was an inscription from his mother.”
“You saw this object in 1905?”
“Hundreds of times.”
“And on the night of the accident?”
Sir Edward opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose?”
“He always carried it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No.”
The answer came reluctantly.
“I cannot swear that I saw it that night.”
Poirot nodded as though Sir Edward had confirmed some trivial point.
“And this cigarette case disappeared after the accident?”
“We believed so.”
“Was Thomas’s body searched?”
“Naturally.”
“Was an inventory made?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what you know is not that the cigarette case disappeared in the accident. You know only that afterward you did not see it again.”
Sir Edward frowned.
“I suppose that is technically true.”
“Technical truths,” said Poirot, “have an unfortunate habit of becoming important.”
He folded his hands.
“What else?”
Sir Edward looked surprised.
“What makes you think there is anything else?”
“Because otherwise you would have told me about the cigarette case before the photograph.”
Vale stared at him.
Then he reached once more into his pocket.
This time he produced a folded sheet of paper.
“Cross received this.”
On the paper were four words.
YOU LEFT ME THERE.
The handwriting was large and sloping.
“Thomas’s?” I asked.
“Cross says so.”
“And you?”
Sir Edward’s face had gone pale.
“Yes.”
Poirot studied the message.
Only four words.
He turned the paper over and examined the reverse.
“No envelope?”
“Cross has it.”
“Anything more?”
Sir Edward hesitated.
Then he nodded.
“The telephone.”
“What of it?”
“For the last fortnight someone has telephoned Blackthorn after midnight.”
“And speaks?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“I say hello. There is breathing sometimes. Nothing else.”
“How many times?”
“Five.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“My wife. Marlowe. Cross.”
“And the police?”
“What should I tell them? That a dead man keeps telephoning me?”
Poirot ignored the irritation.
“There is still something.”
Sir Edward stared at him.
“Good God.”
Poirot waited.
At last Vale said:
“The recording.”
It was, in its way, the most disturbing part of his account.
A small parcel had arrived at Blackthorn Hall containing a phonograph recording and no message.
Sir Edward possessed the necessary apparatus.
He played it.
At first there was only scratching.
Then a man’s voice.
Not a sentence exactly. Merely several words, separated by long intervals of noise.
Sir Edward would not tell us what the voice had said.
But he told us whose voice it was.
Thomas Bell’s.
“After twenty-two years?” I protested. “Surely a man’s memory of a voice—”
“There are voices one does not forget.”
Poirot looked at him.
“Especially, perhaps, when one wishes to.”
Sir Edward flushed.
For the first time something approaching anger appeared in his face.
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“I suggest nothing.”
“You think I’m hiding something.”
“Everyone hides something, Sir Edward. Usually several things. It saves time if one accepts this at the beginning.”
Sir Edward gave a weary laugh.
“You would get on well with Thomas.”
The instant he said it, something changed in his expression.
For one second he looked not frightened but unbearably sad.
Poirot saw it too.
“Perhaps,” he said gently, “that is why you came to me.”
Vale looked at him.
“I want you to come to Blackthorn.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Who will be there?”
“Catherine—my wife. Cross. Marlowe. My nephew Philip. A few others.”
“You have summoned Cross and Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sir Edward rose.
“Because this has gone far enough.”
He picked up his hat.
“And because there is something I should have done twenty-two years ago.”
Poirot watched him carefully.
“What?”
But Sir Edward shook his head.
“Not here.”
He looked toward the photograph.
“At Blackthorn.”
Then he left us.
For a moment neither Poirot nor I spoke.
I crossed to the table and picked up the photograph once more.
The young Thomas Bell seemed almost insolently alive.
“Well?” I demanded.
Poirot was looking at the rain.
“A curious photograph.”
“Curious! A man dead twenty-two years appears in a photograph taken three weeks ago and you call it curious?”
“What would you call it?”
“Impossible.”
Poirot sighed.
“My poor Hastings. You have such affection for that word.”
“You don’t believe it is Thomas Bell?”
“I believe, Hastings, that Sir Edward Vale believes it is Thomas Bell.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Precisely.”
He took the photograph from me.
His finger hovered for an instant near the young man’s feet.
Then he put it away.
“You noticed something.”
“I noticed many things.”
“In the photograph?”
“In Sir Edward.”
That was all I could get from him.
We travelled to Blackthorn Hall the following afternoon.
The rain had followed us out of London.
Our train ran through a countryside from which autumn seemed to have drained all colour except brown, grey and a dark wet green. Leaves clung to hedges or lay plastered against the lanes. Farmhouses appeared briefly through curtains of rain and vanished again.
Poirot spent much of the journey with his eyes closed.
I knew better than to suppose him asleep.
“You’re thinking about Bell,” I said eventually.
“No.”
“Sir Edward, then?”
“No.”
“The photograph?”
“No.”
I put down my newspaper.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Three men.”
“Edward, Marlowe and Cross?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Fear.”
That was all.
At Blackthorn station a motorcar awaited us.
Its driver was an elderly man with a narrow, weathered face and enormous hands. He introduced himself as Pike.
“George Pike, sir. Used to drive for Sir Edward’s father. Help out now when needed.”
His eyes rested upon Poirot with open curiosity.
“You were at Blackthorn in 1905?” Poirot asked as we set off.
Pike’s hands tightened almost imperceptibly on the wheel.
“I was.”
“You remember Mr. Thomas Bell?”
Pike looked straight ahead.
“Everybody remembers Mr. Thomas.”
He said no more.
The road climbed.
Then, between two lines of black yews, Blackthorn Hall appeared.
I have rarely seen a house which made so immediate an impression upon me.
It was not beautiful. Parts of it were Jacobean, others Victorian, and one wing appeared to have been added by an architect with a positive hatred of the original building. Yet the whole possessed a sombre dignity.
Smoke rose from several chimneys.
The windows reflected the colourless sky.
Above the entrance was a stone date, half obscured by ivy.
The motorcar swept around the drive.
I glanced backward.
For an instant the wet trees closed behind us like a gate.
I remember thinking then that we had not merely arrived at a house.
We had arrived at a year.
And the year was 1905.
Lady Catherine Vale met us in the hall.
She was a handsome woman with silver beginning to show in her dark hair and a manner both warm and composed.
“My husband has been waiting for you, M. Poirot.”
Then, lowering her voice:
“I am very glad you have come.”
“You are worried about Sir Edward?”
“I have been worried about Edward for twenty years.”
The words surprised me.
She seemed to regret them immediately.
Before Poirot could respond, Sir Edward appeared.
He looked worse than he had in London.
Behind him came a thickset man whom I recognized from the photograph.
“Stephen Marlowe,” said Sir Edward.
Dr. Marlowe shook hands with us.
He had a powerful head and the steady eyes of a man accustomed to being believed.
“So you’re the famous Poirot.”
Poirot smiled.
“Sometimes.”
Marlowe glanced toward Edward.
“I hope you can persuade our friend that ghosts are outside your professional province.”
“You believe there is nothing to investigate?”
“I believe Edward has been under considerable strain.”
Sir Edward’s face hardened.
“And the photograph?”
“Some photographic trick.”
“The cigarette case?”
“A practical joke.”
“Cross’s note?”
“The same.”
“The voice?”
“Suggestion.”
Marlowe spoke calmly.
“Once a man accepts a premise, M. Poirot, the mind becomes extraordinarily obliging. It begins arranging every subsequent event to fit.”
“Ah,” said Poirot. “The mind is obliging?”
“Frequently.”
“And conscience?”
Marlowe’s eyes met his.
“Less so, perhaps.”
At that moment another man entered.
Julian Cross was taller than I had expected, thin and slightly stooped, with sensitive hands and an intelligent, worried face.
He greeted us politely.
Then Sir Edward said:
“I was just telling Poirot about Thomas.”
Cross stopped.
Only for a second.
But I saw his hand crush the newspaper he was carrying.
Marlowe’s reaction to the name had been quite different. He had become still.
Sir Edward looked ashamed.
Cross looked frightened.
Marlowe looked alert.
I noticed the distinction.
I did not understand it.
Poirot, I think, did both.
We met the others before dinner.
Philip Vale was perhaps twenty-seven, attractive, easy-mannered and possessed of that careless charm which I have always found difficult to dislike even when common sense advises otherwise.
He apologized for the gloomy atmosphere.
“Uncle Edward has managed to turn the place into Hamlet.”
“Philip,” said Lady Catherine sharply.
“My dear Aunt Catherine, if we cannot joke about ghosts, what are they for?”
He turned to me.
“I suppose you’ve seen the famous photograph?”
“Yes.”
“Extraordinary thing. I should like to meet the chap who made it. He might improve some of mine.”
I thought the remark in poor taste.
Later I learned that Philip was heavily in debt.
Eleanor Ellis made a very different impression.
I found her in the library sorting correspondence into archival boxes.
She was young, perhaps twenty-one, with grave grey eyes and a manner which suggested she had learned early not to waste words.
“Miss Ellis is rescuing the family history from generations of Vales,” Philip explained.
“A formidable undertaking,” said Poirot.
Eleanor smiled.
“The dead are generally easier to organize than the living.”
“Indeed?”
“They stay where you put them.”
Poirot looked at her with sudden interest.
On the table lay several old photographs.
One showed four young men before Blackthorn Hall.
I recognized Edward with difficulty.
Cross was beside him.
Marlowe stood at the rear.
And there, sitting casually on the stone balustrade, was Thomas Bell.
He was laughing.
Not smiling for the photographer.
Laughing at something outside the frame.
Eleanor saw me looking.
“Thomas Bell,” she said.
“You know who he is?”
Her eyes came to mine.
“I catalogue the photographs, Captain Hastings.”
There was nothing remarkable in the answer.
Yet something about it remained with me.
An elderly woman entered carrying fresh flowers.
Mrs. Gresham, the housekeeper.
She stopped when she saw the photograph.
“That one.”
Her voice had changed.
“Do you remember it?” Poirot asked.
“I remember when it was taken.”
“Summer 1905?”
“Yes, sir.”
Her eyes rested upon Thomas.
“Poor boy.”
Eleanor lowered her head over the papers.
Sir Edward entered almost immediately afterward and ordered the photograph put away.
Mrs. Gresham left without another word.
Before dinner Poirot asked to hear the recording.
We gathered in Sir Edward’s study.
It was a comfortable masculine room lined with books, with a large desk near the fire and French windows opening upon a stone terrace.
Sir Edward set the apparatus going.
There was a hiss.
A crackle.
Then, faintly, a young man’s voice.
One word.
Noise.
Another word.
A pause so long I thought the recording finished.
Then the voice again.
I could not make out the whole message.
But Sir Edward gripped the edge of the table.
“Thomas,” he whispered.
Cross turned away.
Marlowe watched Edward.
Not the machine.
Edward.
Poirot listened with his head slightly inclined.
When it finished he asked to hear it again.
Then a third time.
“Well?” demanded Sir Edward.
“Interesting.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“There are pauses.”
“The recording is old.”
“Perhaps.”
Marlowe gave a faint smile.
“You see, Edward? There is almost certainly a rational explanation.”
“Then explain it.”
“I am a physician, not a gramophone engineer.”
“No,” said Poirot softly. “You are a physician.”
Marlowe looked at him.
Poirot smiled pleasantly.
Dinner that evening remains extraordinarily vivid in my memory.
The rain had ceased, but the wind moved around the house with a low, persistent sound.
Candles stood upon the table. Beyond their circle of light the portraits of generations of Vales watched us from the walls.
At first the conversation was determinedly ordinary.
Politics.
London.
The theatre.
Philip told an amusing story about a bookmaker.
Nobody laughed very much.
Eventually Poirot said:
“Tell me, Sir Edward, was Mr. Bell carrying his silver cigarette case on the night of the accident?”
The question fell into the conversation like a pebble into still water.
Edward stared at him.
“I told you. I don’t remember.”
Cross said quickly:
“He always had it.”
“Always?”
“Practically.”
“But you did not see it that night?”
Cross hesitated.
“No.”
Marlowe put down his wine.
“What possible relevance can that have?”
“Perhaps none.”
Poirot turned to him.
“You examined Mr. Bell after the accident?”
Marlowe’s face became expressionless.
“I was a medical student.”
“Nevertheless?”
“I examined him.”
Edward’s glass clicked against his plate.
Cross stared down at the tablecloth.
Lady Catherine looked from one to another.
Poirot asked:
“He died immediately?”
“His injuries were catastrophic.”
It was not quite an answer.
Sir Edward spoke suddenly.
“He was still—”
Marlowe turned.
“Edward.”
Only his name.
Nothing more.
Sir Edward stopped.
The silence which followed was so complete that I could hear the clock in the hall.
Poirot broke it.
“You were saying, Sir Edward?”
Edward looked at Marlowe.
Then at Cross.
Finally at his wife.
“No.”
His voice sounded tired.
“Nothing.”
Lady Catherine reached toward him.
“Edward, what is all this?”
He covered her hand with his.
“I’m sorry, Catherine.”
“For what?”
He did not answer.
Across the table Eleanor Ellis was watching him.
There was an intensity in her expression which struck me as almost improper.
Then Mrs. Gresham entered with the coffee.
Cross, apparently desperate to say something ordinary, remarked:
“Hard to believe we were all here that summer.”
Mrs. Gresham stopped.
A cup rattled against its saucer.
Sir Edward looked at her.
“Are you all right, Gresham?”
“Yes, sir.”
But her face had lost colour.
“Just reminded me, that’s all.”
“Of what?”
The housekeeper’s eyes moved briefly toward Eleanor.
Then away.
“Nothing, sir.”
She continued serving.
I saw Poirot watching her.
After coffee Sir Edward rose.
He stood at the head of the table for several seconds.
“I’ve had enough.”
Marlowe sighed.
“Edward—”
“No, Stephen.”
Something in his voice silenced the doctor.
“For twenty-two years we’ve told ourselves that what happened is finished.”
Cross went white.
Philip looked puzzled.
Lady Catherine whispered:
“Edward?”
Sir Edward continued.
“It isn’t finished.”
Marlowe spoke very quietly.
“You are tired. I suggest we discuss this tomorrow.”
“No.”
“You’re overwrought.”
“No.”
“As your doctor—”
“As my doctor you may advise me. As my friend you may listen.”
For the first time Marlowe’s composure slipped.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
Sir Edward turned to Poirot.
“I told you in London that there was something I should have done twenty-two years ago.”
“Yes.”
“I am going to do it tonight.”
Cross half rose from his chair.
“Edward, think.”
“I have done nothing else for twenty-two years.”
His eyes went around the table.
“I shall tell M. Poirot the entire truth about Thomas Bell.”
Nobody moved.
It was extraordinary.
One might have imagined that the dead young man himself had entered the room.
Lady Catherine looked bewildered.
Philip’s habitual smile had vanished.
Eleanor was very pale.
Cross seemed physically ill.
And Marlowe—
Marlowe merely looked at Edward.
I cannot describe that look better than to say that it was the look of a man confronted by a calculation whose answer had suddenly changed.
Then he smiled.
“You’ll feel differently after you’ve rested.”
“I won’t.”
Sir Edward pushed back his chair.
“I’ll be in the study.”
He turned to Poirot.
“Give me half an hour.”
Then he left.
The next half-hour has been gone over in my mind a hundred times.
At the time, nothing could have seemed more ordinary.
Lady Catherine went upstairs.
Cross remained in the drawing room with Poirot and myself.
Philip disappeared briefly to telephone London and returned complaining that the line was poor.
Eleanor went back toward the library to finish putting away the papers.
Marlowe said he wanted a cigar and wandered toward the smoking room.
Mrs. Gresham and the servants were clearing the dining room.
The study lay at the far end of the main corridor.
To reach it from the principal rooms one had to pass the open drawing-room door.
I remember this particularly because Cross sat in a chair from which he had an excellent view of the corridor.
At ten minutes past ten Marlowe passed us.
At a quarter past, Philip crossed in the opposite direction.
At twenty past, Lady Catherine came downstairs and paused to ask whether Edward had called for Poirot.
He had not.
“No one has gone into the study,” Cross said.
I looked at the clock.
“Nearly half an hour.”
Poirot remained seated.
“Sir Edward asked for half an hour.”
Cross rubbed his hands together.
“I wish he’d get it over with.”
“Get what over with?” I asked.
He looked at me.
For a moment I thought he would answer.
Then he shook his head.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
From somewhere deeper in the house came the sound of a door closing.
The wind pressed against the windows.
And then—
A gunshot.
It cracked through Blackthorn Hall with astonishing violence.
Cross sprang to his feet.
Lady Catherine screamed from the hall.
Poirot was already moving.
We ran.
The study door was closed.
Poirot tried the handle.
It turned.
We entered.
Sir Edward Vale sat behind his desk.
For one absurd instant I thought he was asleep.
Then I saw the position of his head.
Lady Catherine appeared behind us.
Marlowe pushed past me.
“Stay back.”
He went directly to Edward.
On the carpet near the desk lay an old revolver.
Cross made a sound.
“No.”
Marlowe bent over the body.
His fingers moved to Edward’s neck.
Then to the wrist.
He looked up.
“He’s dead.”
Lady Catherine swayed.
Philip caught her.
I went instinctively toward the French windows.
Both were fastened from within.
Outside lay the wet terrace, shining beneath the lamps.
No open window.
No second door.
Cross stared around the room.
“But that’s impossible.”
I confess that the same word came immediately to my own mind.
We had been in the drawing room.
The corridor had been visible.
No one could have entered the study without passing us.
The French windows were locked.
Yet Edward Vale was dead.
Poirot had not approached the body.
He stood beside the desk.
Looking downward.
“Poirot?”
He did not answer.
I followed his gaze.
A photograph lay on the blotter.
I recognized it instantly.
Little Wickham station.
Sir Edward.
Dr. Marlowe.
Julian Cross.
But something was wrong.
I picked it up.
Then I understood.
There was a neat, deliberate hole in the print.
The young man in the background had disappeared.
Someone had taken a pair of small scissors and carefully cut around his body.
Thomas Bell was gone.
I heard a movement behind me.
Eleanor Ellis stood in the doorway.
She saw the photograph in my hand.
The expression that crossed her face was extraordinary.
I took it for horror then.
Later I understood it differently.
“Poirot,” I said, “someone has cut him out.”
My friend held out his hand.
He examined the mutilated photograph.
Then he looked toward Sir Edward’s body, toward the revolver, and finally toward the locked French windows.
Marlowe said impatiently:
“Well?”
Poirot’s eyes returned to the empty shape in the photograph.
His voice, when he spoke, was very quiet.
“Someone has been most careful.”
He paused.
“That is unfortunate.”
“For whom?” I asked.
Poirot looked up.
“For the person who was careful, Hastings.”
And that was all he would say.
End of Part One
The Affair of the Man in the Photograph
Part Two: You Left Me There
As recalled by Captain Arthur Hastings
There are moments after a violent death when the mind behaves in a most unreasonable fashion.
One would suppose that the sight of a murdered man must immediately occupy the whole attention. Yet, as I stood in Sir Edward Vale’s study that October night, it was not Edward’s body which held me.
It was the hole in the photograph.
Three weeks earlier a camera at Little Wickham station had caught Sir Edward, Dr. Stephen Marlowe and Julian Cross walking together beneath the station clock. Behind them had stood the smiling figure of Thomas Bell—a man who had been dead for twenty-two years.
Now Thomas Bell had been cut away.
The scissors had followed the outline of his body with extraordinary care. Head, shoulders, arms, legs—everything was gone. Only an irregular patch of white remained.
Behind me Dr. Marlowe rose slowly from beside Sir Edward.
“There is nothing to be done.”
Lady Catherine made a little sound.
Philip Vale put an arm about her and led her from the room.
Julian Cross did not move.
He stared at Edward.
Then at the photograph.
Then at the revolver lying upon the carpet.
“My God,” he whispered.
Poirot turned.
“You recognize the revolver, Monsieur Cross?”
Cross seemed not to hear him.
Marlowe answered instead.
“It belonged to Thomas.”
I swung round.
“Thomas Bell?”
“Yes.”
Cross shut his eyes.
“Edward kept it.”
“Why?” I demanded.
Cross opened his eyes again.
“I don’t know.”
Poirot had gone to the desk.
He did not touch the revolver. He did not touch the body. Instead he bent until his face was almost level with the blotting paper.
Then he looked toward the fireplace.
Then toward the clock upon the mantel.
Then toward the French windows.
I confess that I felt impatient.
“Poirot, surely the first thing is to discover how the murderer got out.”
Poirot straightened.
“Is it?”
“The corridor was watched. The windows are fastened. There is no other door.”
“Yes.”
“And Edward has been shot.”
Poirot’s eyes came to mine.
“Has he?”
I stared at him.
“Haven’t you heard Marlowe?”
Poirot turned pleasantly to the doctor.
“Sir Edward has been shot, doctor?”
For the first time Marlowe looked uncertain.
“I said he was dead.”
“Ah.”
Marlowe frowned.
“Really, Poirot—”
“You examined him?”
“Naturally.”
“And the cause of death?”
“I cannot certify that without a proper examination.”
“But you have an opinion.”
“I have.”
“And?”
Marlowe glanced toward the others.
“Perhaps we should wait for the police.”
Poirot bowed.
“An admirable suggestion.”
He walked to the bell and rang.
The local constable arrived first, followed some forty minutes later by Inspector Hardwick of the county police, a square, deliberate man who regarded Poirot initially with the resignation of one who has discovered that an eccentric relative has been included in a family holiday.
That attitude did not survive their first ten minutes together.
Hardwick established the obvious facts.
Sir Edward had entered his study shortly before ten o’clock.
He had asked Poirot to join him after half an hour.
The corridor outside the study had been visible from the drawing room during practically the whole of that period.
At ten minutes past ten Marlowe had crossed the corridor.
At a quarter past, Philip had passed in the opposite direction.
At twenty past, Lady Catherine had come downstairs.
No one had entered the study.
At approximately twenty-seven minutes past ten we had heard the shot.
We had run immediately to the study.
Sir Edward was dead.
The French windows were fastened from within.
There was no concealed entrance.
The old revolver lay near the desk.
It appeared, therefore, that a man had been shot in a room which no murderer could have entered or left.
Inspector Hardwick regarded the French windows.
“Suicide.”
Cross gave a violent start.
“No.”
Hardwick looked at him.
“You have some reason for saying that?”
“Edward wouldn’t.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“He was about to confess something.”
“That does not necessarily argue against suicide.”
Poirot, who had been examining the carpet near the desk, looked up.
“What time did Sir Edward die, doctor?”
Marlowe glanced at the mantel clock.
“At approximately the time we heard the shot.”
“You are certain?”
“The body was still warm. Death was recent.”
“Recent,” repeated Poirot.
“Obviously.”
“And you can say no more precisely?”
Marlowe’s tone became slightly impatient.
“Not from a cursory examination.”
“But the gunshot assists you?”
“Naturally.”
“Because we heard it at twenty-seven minutes past ten.”
“Yes.”
“And therefore Sir Edward died at twenty-seven minutes past ten.”
“Within a minute or two.”
Poirot nodded.
“Very convenient.”
Marlowe’s eyes hardened.
“For whom?”
Poirot smiled.
“For the clock, doctor.”
He turned away.
I had the distinct impression that Marlowe disliked him.
The bullet was found shortly afterward.
And with its discovery the matter became, to my mind, more perplexing rather than less.
It had entered the heavy wooden panelling beside the fireplace.
Hardwick examined the mark.
“Missed him?”
“Apparently,” said Marlowe.
“But if the first shot missed, there must have been another.”
Everyone was silent.
Hardwick looked at the revolver.
Only one chamber had been discharged.
I confess that I experienced that peculiar chill which had accompanied the first sight of Thomas Bell in the photograph.
“Then the bullet in the wall—”
“Is the only bullet fired from this weapon tonight,” said Hardwick.
“But Edward—”
Marlowe interrupted.
“There are other ways for a man to die, Captain Hastings.”
Poirot looked at him.
“Exactly.”
Marlowe turned sharply.
Their eyes met.
Nothing more was said.
Poirot bent beside the chair.
He examined Edward’s right hand, then the left. He looked at a small glass upon the desk.
He smelled it.
“Brandy,” said Marlowe.
“So it appears.”
“Edward often took a brandy in the evening.”
Poirot placed the glass precisely where he had found it.
Then he bent over the dead man.
For several seconds he studied Edward’s face.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“The truth.”
“About how he died?”
“No, Hastings. About when.”
I thought this mere verbal cleverness.
I was wrong.
By midnight the house had become one of those strange temporary prisons created by murder.
Nobody wished to sleep.
Nobody wished to speak.
And nobody was permitted to leave.
The wind had risen again. It moved around Blackthorn Hall and occasionally sent rain against the windows in sudden handfuls.
Cross sat near the dying drawing-room fire.
I joined him.
He looked twenty years older than he had at dinner.
“That note,” I said.
He looked up.
“What?”
“The one you received.”
His expression changed.
YOU LEFT ME THERE.
I could see the words as clearly as though the paper were before me.
“Do you still have it?”
Cross hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Poirot will want to see it.”
“I suppose he will.”
He gave a curious laugh.
“Poirot wants to see everything.”
“That’s generally the idea.”
“No.”
Cross looked toward the door.
“He doesn’t want to see everything. He wants to know which things we don’t want him to see.”
That struck me as perceptive.
Cross rose.
“I’ll fetch it.”
He had scarcely reached the door when Poirot entered.
“Excellent,” he said. “Monsieur Cross, I was coming to find you.”
Cross stopped.
Poirot held out his hand.
“The message, if you please.”
Cross stared at him.
“How did you know?”
“You have the face of a man who has just decided to surrender something.”
Cross took a folded envelope from his pocket.
Poirot removed the sheet.
Four words.
YOU LEFT ME THERE.
“Thomas wrote that,” said Cross.
“You are certain?”
“I knew his handwriting.”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
“I know it.”
Poirot examined the message.
“Curious.”
“What?”
“So economical.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Four very little words. No difficult name. No uncommon letter. No flourish which demands courage from the pen.”
Cross stared at him.
“You think it forged?”
“I think nothing yet.”
“You always say that.”
“It has the advantage of sometimes being true.”
Poirot folded the paper.
“Are there letters written by Thomas Bell in this house?”
Cross glanced toward the library.
“Possibly.”
“Miss Ellis will know,” I said.
Cross’s face altered.
It was only for a second.
But Poirot saw it.
“So,” he said softly. “We shall ask Miss Ellis.”
Eleanor was still awake.
We found her in the library.
The old photographs had been put away, but several boxes of correspondence remained upon the long table.
She stood when we entered.
“Has Lady Catherine gone to bed?”
“Her maid is with her.”
Poirot placed Cross’s note on the table.
“Do you recognize the writing, mademoiselle?”
She looked at it.
“No.”
Cross made an impatient movement.
“That’s Thomas’s hand.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“Then why ask me?”
Poirot smiled.
“An excellent question.”
He gestured toward the boxes.
“You told us that you catalogue the family papers.”
“Yes.”
“Have you encountered letters from Thomas Bell?”
A fractional pause.
“Several.”
“May I see them?”
She turned to one of the boxes.
I watched her.
There was nothing furtive in her manner. Nevertheless, I remembered the expression upon her face when she had seen the mutilated photograph.
Horror, certainly.
But had there been something else?
She found a bundle tied with faded blue ribbon.
“These are mostly from the summer of 1905.”
Poirot selected three letters.
Thomas’s handwriting was unmistakably similar to that upon the mysterious message.
Cross leaned over his shoulder.
“There. You see?”
Poirot compared them.
“Yes.”
“Then it is his writing.”
“That is not what I said.”
Poirot laid the note beside the letters.
“Thomas Bell uses a rather distinctive capital R.”
Cross frowned.
“There isn’t an R in the message.”
“No.”
“And a peculiar capital B.”
“There isn’t a B either.”
“Precisely.”
Cross stared.
Poirot’s finger moved over the four words.
“Nothing adventurous. Nothing difficult. Only the little soldiers which march everywhere.”
I understood suddenly.
“Someone could have copied the letters from these!”
Poirot gave me a mildly reproachful look.
“Hastings, there are moments when your enthusiasm arrives before the train.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Many things are possible. That is why they are such a nuisance.”
I looked at Eleanor.
She was watching Poirot.
Not Cross.
Not the note.
Poirot.
And I became suddenly certain that she was afraid of him.
“One other matter, Miss Ellis.”
Poirot picked up the mutilated photograph, now enclosed in an evidence envelope.
“When you saw this after Sir Edward’s death, you were distressed.”
“A man had been murdered.”
“Naturally.”
“And this?”
He indicated the missing figure.
“It’s grotesque.”
“Yes.”
“Someone cuts a dead man out of a photograph and leaves it beside another dead man. What reaction would you expect?”
Poirot considered this.
“Fear, perhaps.”
“I was frightened.”
“Grief?”
“I hardly knew Sir Edward.”
“Horror?”
“Certainly.”
Poirot’s eyes remained upon her.
“Anger?”
For the first time Eleanor lost her composure.
“Why should I be angry?”
“I ask.”
“Then no.”
Too quickly.
I heard it.
Poirot must certainly have heard it.
Yet he merely bowed.
“Thank you, mademoiselle.”
As we left the library I seized his arm.
“She’s involved.”
“Indeed?”
“You saw her.”
“I saw her.”
“She was angry about the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“And she has access to Thomas Bell’s letters.”
“Yes.”
“And the old photographs.”
“Yes.”
“And she knew Thomas immediately.”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord, Poirot, how much more do you want?”
“The truth would be agreeable.”
The following morning brought two discoveries.
The first concerned Thomas Bell’s cigarette case.
Marlowe had brought it with him to Blackthorn.
It was a handsome silver case, scratched with age. The initials T.B. were engraved upon the front.
Inside was an inscription:
To Thomas, with love from Mother. Christmas 1903.
Cross stared at it.
“That’s his.”
Poirot turned it over.
“You saw him with it frequently?”
“Every day.”
“And on August seventeenth, 1905?”
Cross hesitated.
“He must have had it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I don’t remember.”
Poirot turned to Marlowe.
“And you?”
“No.”
“Sir Edward?”
“He told you himself he couldn’t remember.”
Poirot snapped the case shut.
“So.”
“So what?” I asked.
“We have established something.”
“That it belonged to Thomas.”
“No. We knew that.”
He looked at us.
“We have established that none of you knows whether Thomas Bell possessed this cigarette case on the night he died.”
Cross became irritated.
“What difference does that make?”
“A considerable one.”
“I don’t see it.”
Poirot held up the case.
“You say, ‘This disappeared on the night Thomas died.’ But that is not a fact.”
“What is it, then?”
“A story you have told yourselves.”
Cross stared.
“The fact is much smaller. After Thomas died, you never saw this object again.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No.”
Poirot placed the cigarette case upon the table.
“It is almost the same thing. And, Monsieur Cross, murder frequently lives in the word almost.”
The second discovery came from Mrs. Gresham.
Poirot questioned her in the morning room.
She sat very upright, her hands folded upon her black dress.
“You remember Thomas Bell affectionately,” Poirot began.
“I do.”
“He was popular with the servants?”
“He treated people as though they were people.”
It was said without emphasis.
Nevertheless, I suspected it was not true of every young gentleman who had stayed at Blackthorn.
“And there was a young woman,” Poirot said. “Margaret Ellis.”
Mrs. Gresham’s hands tightened.
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody.”
“Then how—”
“The dead leave many papers, madame. The living leave expressions.”
She looked toward me.
Then back at Poirot.
“Margaret worked in the village.”
“She knew Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Mrs. Gresham hesitated.
“Better than his friends knew.”
I leaned forward.
“What does that mean?”
She ignored me.
Poirot did not press her immediately.
“Did she come to Blackthorn?”
“Sometimes.”
“To see Thomas?”
“Sometimes.”
“And after his death?”
Mrs. Gresham looked toward the window.
“She left the village.”
“When?”
“Not long afterward.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
It was clearly a lie.
Poirot accepted it.
“Thank you.”
As she rose, the door opened.
Eleanor stood there.
Mrs. Gresham stopped.
For a moment the two women looked at one another.
Poirot said quietly:
“Miss Ellis, do you know the name Margaret Ellis?”
Eleanor’s face became perfectly still.
“Yes.”
“Who was she?”
“My mother.”
I confess I almost exclaimed aloud.
Poirot merely inclined his head.
“She lived near Blackthorn in 1905?”
“Yes.”
“You did not think this worth mentioning?”
“You did not ask.”
“Your mother knew Thomas Bell.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By whom?”
“My mother.”
“And how well did she know him?”
Eleanor looked directly at Poirot.
“She is dead, M. Poirot. There are some things which belong to the dead.”
Poirot’s voice was gentle.
“Unfortunately, mademoiselle, Sir Edward Vale is also dead.”
She said nothing.
Then she turned and walked away.
I waited until the door had closed.
“Poirot!”
“Yes, Hastings?”
“Her mother knew Thomas!”
“Apparently.”
“She works among his papers. She has access to his handwriting. She has access to his photographs. She reacts strangely whenever he is mentioned. What more do you need?”
Poirot looked toward the door through which Eleanor had disappeared.
“Perhaps only one thing.”
“What?”
“A reason why she should be angry when someone destroys the ghost.”
George Pike supplied another fragment.
The old man received us in a room beside the garages, where the smell of oil and leather seemed to have survived from an earlier age.
“You maintained the Vale motorcars in 1905?” Poirot asked.
“Helped with them.”
“And the motorcar Sir Edward took that night?”
Pike’s mouth tightened.
“His father’s Panhard.”
“You saw the wreck?”
“Next morning.”
“Bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“Where was it?”
“Old North Road. Past Miller’s Wood.”
“How far from the house?”
“Four miles. Maybe five by road.”
“And when did you first hear of the accident?”
Pike considered.
“Late.”
“How late?”
“I couldn’t tell you now.”
“You were awakened?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“Mr. Cross.”
This interested Poirot.
“Not Sir Edward?”
“No.”
“Not Mr. Marlowe?”
“No.”
“Mr. Cross.”
“That’s right.”
“And what did he say?”
Pike looked uncomfortable.
“Said there’d been an accident.”
“And Thomas?”
“Said Mr. Thomas was dead.”
Poirot leaned forward.
“Before anyone returned to the wreck?”
Pike’s eyes shifted.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did not need to.”
The old man rose abruptly.
“I’ve told the police all this years ago.”
“Did you?”
“Everything that mattered.”
Poirot’s voice became very soft.
“Who decided what mattered?”
Pike sat down again.
For several seconds only the ticking of a small clock could be heard.
Then he said:
“They’d been back at the house a while.”
“Who?”
“The three of them.”
“Edward, Cross and Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“Without Thomas.”
Pike looked at Poirot.
“Yes.”
My skin prickled.
“Then Thomas was still at the wreck?”
Pike said nothing.
Poirot intervened.
“How long before help was summoned?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Ten minutes?”
“No.”
“Half an hour?”
Pike stared at his hands.
“Maybe.”
“An hour?”
“I said I don’t remember.”
Behind us came a voice.
“It would have made no difference.”
Marlowe stood in the doorway.
He entered calmly.
“Thomas’s injuries were catastrophic.”
Poirot looked at him.
“You are very certain.”
“I examined him.”
“Yes.”
“I knew what I saw.”
“You were a medical student.”
“I was sufficiently trained to recognize mortal injuries.”
Cross had followed him.
His face was grey.
“Stephen—”
Marlowe turned.
“What?”
Cross swallowed.
“We should never have left—”
The silence that followed was terrible.
Marlowe’s voice remained perfectly level.
“Julian.”
Cross looked at him.
“If we’d gone back sooner—”
“It would have made no difference.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I examined him.”
Again those words.
Because I examined him.
Cross lowered his head.
Poirot watched Marlowe.
The doctor appeared entirely composed.
Yet I remembered what Poirot had said the previous night.
Marlowe was not merely a witness.
He was the man who told the others what the facts meant.
That afternoon Poirot asked to hear Thomas Bell’s voice again.
The phonograph was brought into the drawing room.
The cylinder revolved.
Scratch.
Hiss.
Then the faint young voice emerged.
A word.
Silence.
Another word.
More scratching.
Then another fragment.
It was impossible not to find it affecting.
A voice preserved from youth possesses something photographs do not. A photograph is still. A voice seems alive.
When the recording ended, I found myself strangely moved.
“It sounds,” I said, “as though he’s trying to speak across all those years.”
Poirot looked at me.
“Does it?”
“You don’t hear it?”
“Oh yes. I hear the years.”
There was something in his tone.
He played the cylinder again.
This time he tapped one finger upon the table.
Not with the words.
With the silences.
Tap.
Voice.
Tap.
Tap.
Voice.
Tap.
Voice.
Then he stopped the machine.
“Was Thomas Bell ever recorded?”
Nobody answered.
Poirot repeated the question.
Mrs. Gresham, who had entered with tea, suddenly spoke.
“There was something.”
Everyone looked at her.
“A village entertainment. Before the accident. They had one of those recording machines.”
“A phonograph?” I asked.
“Yes. Everyone thought it marvellous. People spoke into it. Sang songs. Mr. Thomas recited something.”
“When?”
“That summer.”
Poirot’s eyes brightened.
“And the cylinder?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Pike, standing near the door, said:
“Schoolmaster had some.”
“What schoolmaster?”
“The one whose funeral they went to.”
I felt the hairs rise upon my arms.
“The funeral at Little Wickham?”
“Yes.”
Poirot sat very still.
The three surviving friends had gone to Little Wickham because an old schoolmaster had died.
And afterward Thomas Bell had appeared in their photograph.
“Interesting,” said Poirot.
That was all.
But I knew him well enough to understand that something had changed.
By evening I had constructed what seemed to me an excellent theory.
I found Poirot alone in the library.
Old photographs covered the table.
“You know who’s behind it,” I said.
“Do I?”
“Eleanor Ellis.”
Poirot continued arranging photographs.
“Proceed, Hastings.”
“Her mother knew Thomas Bell.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps she loved him.”
“Perhaps.”
“Eleanor grows up hearing about Thomas. Eventually she learns what happened—or believes she does.”
“Excellent.”
“She comes to Blackthorn under the excuse of cataloguing the family papers.”
“A position for which she is qualified.”
“Which makes it perfect.”
“Naturally.”
“She obtains Thomas’s handwriting. She sends the note to Cross.”
“Possible.”
“She finds the cigarette case among her mother’s possessions.”
Poirot looked up.
“Ah.”
“Thomas may have given it to Margaret. That would explain why nobody saw it after the accident.”
“Continue.”
“She discovers the old phonograph cylinder through the schoolmaster. Somehow she uses it to create the recording.”
“Somehow?”
“Well, I’m not a gramophone engineer.”
“No. Dr. Marlowe has already claimed that distinction by refusing it.”
I ignored this.
“And the photograph—she has access to dozens of photographs of Thomas.”
“True.”
“She creates the railway photograph.”
“How?”
“Photographic trickery.”
“Ah. The universal solvent of the amateur detective.”
“It can be done.”
“Certainly.”
“Then she frightens Edward until he decides to confess.”
“Yes.”
“And when he does—she kills him.”
Poirot stopped arranging photographs.
“Why?”
“Revenge.”
“For Thomas?”
“Obviously.”
“And then?”
“Then what?”
“She cuts Thomas from the photograph.”
I hesitated.
“To leave a sign.”
“What sign?”
“That Thomas had taken his revenge.”
Poirot considered me with an expression I disliked.
“It is possible.”
I brightened.
“Then you agree!”
“No.”
“But you said—”
“I said it is possible. You confuse possibility with explanation.”
“What is wrong with it?”
Poirot picked up the mutilated photograph.
“Hastings, suppose you spend weeks constructing a ghost.”
“Yes.”
“You send objects. Messages. telephone calls. A voice. At last you create this.”
He held up the photograph.
“The masterpiece. The impossible thing. Thomas Bell alive in 1927.”
“Yes.”
“It succeeds beyond expectation. Edward breaks. He summons his friends. He summons Hercule Poirot. He decides to confess.”
I nodded.
“Then you murder Edward.”
“Exactly.”
“And immediately destroy the most convincing evidence you have created.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Poirot smiled.
“You see the difficulty.”
“Perhaps she panicked.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or wanted the photograph to look sinister.”
“Perhaps.”
I was becoming irritated with the word.
Poirot put the photograph down.
“Or perhaps, Hastings, the person who put Thomas into the photograph and the person who cut Thomas out of it were not the same person.”
I stared at him.
That possibility had never occurred to me.
Before I could answer, the telephone rang.
Poirot picked it up.
“Yes?”
He listened.
“Excellent.”
Another pause.
“Tomorrow morning will do.”
He replaced the receiver.
“Who was it?”
“Monsieur Denby. The photographer at Little Wickham.”
“And?”
“He has found another print.”
Arthur Denby arrived shortly after nine the next morning.
He was a small, energetic man whose indignation at having his professional integrity questioned was greater than his alarm at being connected with a murder.
“I took the photograph myself, M. Poirot.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“Developed the plate myself.”
“I do not doubt that either.”
“Then I don’t see—”
Poirot held out his hand.
“The print?”
Denby gave it to him.
There they were again.
Edward.
Marlowe.
Cross.
And behind them—
Thomas Bell.
Young.
Smiling.
Twenty years old forever.
Poirot placed the print beside one of the old photographs from the library.
For several minutes he said nothing.
He used his magnifying glass.
First the railway photograph.
Then the old photograph.
Then the railway photograph again.
I grew impatient.
“What is it?”
“The light.”
“What about it?”
“Look at the shadows.”
I did.
“They look perfectly ordinary.”
“Exactly what I expected you to say.”
He indicated Cross’s shadow.
Then Edward’s.
Then Thomas’s.
I looked again.
There was something.
Not enough that I could have named it.
But something.
Poirot turned to Denby.
“You are certain this man stood there?”
Denby leaned closer.
“I don’t remember him.”
Cross gave an exclamation.
“But you took the photograph!”
“I photographed half a dozen people. Do you expect me to remember everyone who walked behind them?”
Poirot took up the old Blackthorn photograph.
Thomas Bell sat upon the balustrade, laughing.
Then another.
Thomas standing near the west terrace.
Then a third.
Poirot suddenly became motionless.
“Ah.”
I knew that “Ah.”
It was one of the most exasperating sounds in the English language.
“What?”
He beckoned.
“Here.”
He pointed to the railway photograph beside Thomas’s left arm.
I saw only a patch of pale stone.
“Now this.”
He pointed to an old photograph of Blackthorn Hall.
Behind Thomas was part of a stone balustrade.
One of its uprights possessed a tiny chip near the top.
I looked back at the railway photograph.
The same chip.
For several seconds I could not understand what I was seeing.
Then I did.
“But that’s impossible.”
Poirot sighed.
“Again.”
“That stone isn’t at the station.”
“No.”
“Then—”
“The young man was not photographed at Little Wickham.”
Denby snatched up the print.
“Someone’s tampered with it!”
“Not necessarily with your negative.”
“Then how?”
Poirot explained only enough.
An old image.
Masking.
Combination printing.
A re-photographed composite.
Nothing supernatural.
Nothing requiring Thomas Bell to have remained twenty years old.
Only patience, skill and access to the necessary photographs.
I thought immediately of Eleanor.
Poirot saw it in my face.
“Do not run so quickly, Hastings. You will arrive tired.”
“But we know now.”
“We know one thing.”
“Thomas wasn’t there.”
“Precisely.”
“And therefore someone deliberately put him there.”
“Yes.”
I looked again at the photograph.
Curiously, proving it false did not make it less disturbing.
It made it more so.
A ghost requires no motive.
A human being does.
That evening the rain finally stopped.
Blackthorn Hall seemed quieter without it.
Cross had withdrawn to his room.
Lady Catherine remained upstairs.
Marlowe sat before the drawing-room fire reading a medical journal with an appearance of concentration so complete that I suspected he had not turned a page for twenty minutes.
Eleanor was nowhere to be seen.
Poirot stood at the long window.
I joined him.
“Then Thomas Bell’s ghost is finished.”
“Was there ever a ghost?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the photograph in his hand.
“The cigarette case could have been kept by someone else.”
“Yes.”
“The handwriting could have been copied.”
“Yes.”
“The telephone calls could have been made by anyone.”
“Almost anyone.”
“The voice could have come from that old recording.”
“Yes.”
“And the photograph is a fraud.”
“Yes.”
I felt an odd disappointment.
There had been something almost grand about the impossible explanation.
Now there remained only a human plot.
“Then whoever did all this wanted Edward, Cross and Marlowe to believe Thomas had come back.”
“Precisely.”
“To frighten them.”
“Yes.”
“Into confessing what happened in 1905.”
Poirot turned.
“That, Hastings, is considerably better.”
I thought of Cross.
We should never have left—
I thought of Pike saying that the three young men had returned to Blackthorn without Thomas.
I thought of Marlowe.
It would have made no difference.
And suddenly I understood at least part of it.
“They left him there.”
Poirot said nothing.
“Thomas wasn’t dead when they first returned to the house.”
Still Poirot did not answer.
“That’s what Cross meant.”
“Perhaps.”
“And Edward was going to confess it.”
“Perhaps.”
“Which means whoever has been doing this knew there was something to confess.”
“Yes.”
“Eleanor.”
Poirot gave me a look.
I persisted.
“Her mother knew Thomas. Eleanor has access to everything. She has the motive to uncover what happened. And now Edward is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Poirot walked to the table and laid down the two photographs.
The original.
And the mutilated copy.
“Two questions, Hastings.”
“What questions?”
“Who wished Thomas Bell to return?”
I looked at the photograph.
“And?”
“Who wished him to disappear?”
For a moment I said nothing.
Then I saw what he meant.
Someone had spent extraordinary effort bringing Thomas Bell back into the world.
Someone else had taken scissors and cut him out of it.
I looked toward the corridor.
Somewhere beyond those dark rooms was Eleanor Ellis.
Cross.
Marlowe.
Mrs. Gresham.
Pike.
And somewhere among all their memories lay the truth of a wet road in 1905.
“But if Thomas Bell didn’t return,” I said, “who has been creating all these things? The cigarette case, the note, the calls, the voice, the photograph?”
Poirot picked up the photograph.
“And why?”
He looked for a long moment at the empty space where the smiling young man had stood.
Then he said quietly:
“Thomas Bell did not return from the dead, Hastings. Someone has brought him.”
The Affair of the Man in the Photograph
Part Three: The Things Behind Us
As recalled by Captain Arthur Hastings
“Thomas Bell did not return from the dead, Hastings. Someone has brought him.”
Poirot said the words so quietly that for a moment they seemed less an explanation than a confidence.
We were standing in the drawing room at Blackthorn Hall. The fire had sunk low, and the long windows had become black mirrors in which the room was reflected with a curious unreality—the lamps, the chairs, the two of us, and upon the table between us the photograph from which a dead man had first appeared and then disappeared.
I looked at the empty space where Thomas Bell had stood.
Twenty years old.
Smiling.
Dead for twenty-two years.
“You mean Eleanor.”
Poirot did not answer.
“Oh, come, Poirot. We have been dancing around it long enough. She has access to the photographs. She knew Thomas. Or knew about him. Mrs. Gresham remembers her mother. She was in the library while all this was happening. If Thomas was put into that photograph from one of the old pictures here—”
“Then someone with access to the old pictures here becomes interesting.”
“Exactly.”
“That is not quite the same thing as what you said.”
I sighed.
Poirot crossed to the bell and rang.
“What are you doing?”
“Requesting coffee.”
“At this hour?”
“My little grey cells, Hastings, do not consent to observe English domestic timetables.”
But when Mrs. Gresham appeared, Poirot did not ask for coffee.
He asked for Eleanor Ellis.
The housekeeper’s face changed.
Only slightly, but I saw it.
“Miss Ellis, sir?”
“If you please.”
Mrs. Gresham hesitated.
“She may have gone to bed.”
“Then perhaps you would be so kind as to discover whether she has.”
Mrs. Gresham remained where she was.
Poirot looked at her.
“You have known Miss Ellis for some time?”
“Since she came here.”
“That is not what I asked.”
The old woman’s lips tightened.
“No, sir.”
Poirot waited.
It was one of his most irritating gifts. He could make silence feel like a question.
At last Mrs. Gresham said:
“I knew her mother.”
“Margaret Ellis.”
“Yes.”
“And Thomas Bell?”
Mrs. Gresham looked toward the photograph.
“I knew Mr. Thomas.”
“Did Margaret Ellis know him?”
The housekeeper’s eyes came sharply to Poirot’s.
Then she said:
“You had better ask Miss Eleanor.”
“I intend to.”
Mrs. Gresham left.
I stared after her.
“Poirot—”
“Yes.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“Since when?”
“Since Mrs. Gresham looked at Miss Ellis during dinner.”
“That could mean anything.”
“Precisely. And therefore one discovers what it means.”
Five minutes later Eleanor entered.
She had changed nothing about herself since the previous evening. The same dark dress. The same composed expression. The same grave grey eyes.
Yet I thought there was something different in her now.
Perhaps it was only that I was looking at her differently.
Poirot indicated a chair.
“Please, Mademoiselle Ellis.”
“I would rather stand.”
“As you wish.”
She looked at the photograph.
The mutilated photograph.
Then at the second print Arthur Denby had brought from Little Wickham.
Her face did not change.
Poirot said:
“The young man was never at Little Wickham station.”
“No.”
The answer was so immediate that I nearly rose from my chair.
Poirot merely nodded.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“Because you put him there?”
There was a long silence.
Eleanor looked at me.
Then at Poirot.
“Yes.”
I confess that, although I had suspected precisely this, hearing her admit it produced a shock.
Perhaps suspicion is one thing and truth another.
Poirot pulled the second photograph toward him.
“You used an old image of Thomas Bell taken here at Blackthorn.”
“Yes.”
“The photograph by the west terrace.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“You found it?”
“The little defect in the stone balustrade was obliging enough to accompany Mr. Bell to Little Wickham.”
For the first time something almost like amusement touched Eleanor’s face.
“I wondered whether anyone would notice.”
“You hoped someone would?”
“No.”
“Yet you left the flaw.”
“I am not a professional photographer.”
“Quite.”
She looked again at the mutilated photograph.
“I did not do that.”
Poirot’s voice was gentle.
“I know.”
That surprised her.
It surprised me still more.
“You know?”
“When Sir Edward’s body was discovered, you looked at the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“You were horrified.”
“A man had been murdered.”
“No, mademoiselle. That was not the expression I saw.”
Eleanor’s composure faltered.
Poirot touched the cut edge of the print.
“You were angry.”
She said nothing.
“Someone had spoiled your work.”
“That sounds very petty.”
“Not petty. Significant.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I had spent three nights making it.”
“Then someone else cut Thomas Bell out.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Poirot leaned back.
“Then perhaps we begin with what you do know.”
Eleanor looked toward the door.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Inspector Hardwick may have another opinion.”
“He frequently does. It is one of the pleasures of friendship with the police.”
She almost smiled again.
Then it vanished.
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Everything.”
“I doubt that.”
“Then tell me everything you think I should not know.”
For a moment she remained perfectly still.
Then she sat down.
“My mother was Margaret Ellis.”
“I know.”
“She lived in the village.”
“Yes.”
“She knew Thomas Bell.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor looked directly at Poirot.
“No, M. Poirot. She loved Thomas Bell.”
I heard the clock on the mantel strike the half-hour.
Neither Poirot nor I spoke.
Eleanor continued.
“And Thomas Bell loved her.”
There was no drama in the words. That made them more affecting.
“They meant to marry.”
Poirot’s face was very still.
“But they did not.”
“No.”
“Because Thomas died.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor clasped her hands.
“My mother was eighteen. Thomas was twenty. The Vales would have thought her unsuitable. Perhaps Thomas’s family would have thought the same. I don’t know. He didn’t care.”
“How do you know?”
“I have his letters.”
“The letters you have been cataloguing?”
“No. Those belong to the Vale papers.”
A faint hardness entered her voice.
“I mean his real letters. The ones he wrote to my mother.”
Poirot said nothing.
Eleanor drew a breath.
“When Thomas Bell died, my mother was carrying his child.”
I stared at her.
Suddenly a dozen small things rearranged themselves in my mind.
Mrs. Gresham’s glance.
Eleanor’s interest in the old photographs.
The way she had spoken Thomas’s name.
Her face beside the dead man’s laughing image.
Poirot asked the question quietly.
“You?”
“Yes.”
Thomas Bell’s daughter sat before us.
For twenty-two years he had remained twenty years old in photographs.
His daughter was now older than he had ever lived to be.
I found the thought extraordinarily sad.
“My mother never told anyone publicly,” Eleanor continued. “Not even the Bells. There would have been scandal. She went away for a time. I was raised as Margaret Ellis’s daughter, and people who wished to be kind did not ask too many questions.”
“And Thomas never knew?”
Eleanor looked down.
“I don’t know.”
That was the first moment her voice broke.
Only slightly.
“I think she meant to tell him. Perhaps she had. There is one letter which makes me think he suspected something. He wrote that after the summer at Blackthorn there would be no more hiding. He said they would marry whether anyone approved or not.”
She looked toward the fire.
“He died four days later.”
Poirot waited.
“My mother kept everything. His letters. A few photographs. A book he had given her. A pressed flower, absurdly enough.”
She paused.
“And a silver cigarette case.”
I sat forward.
“The cigarette case!”
“Yes.”
“You sent it to Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“But everyone believed Thomas had it when he died.”
“That was precisely why I sent it.”
Poirot nodded.
“Thomas gave it to your mother before the accident.”
“Two days before. He said he was trying to stop smoking and she was to keep it until he had proved he could do without it.”
“And after his death?”
“She kept it.”
I remembered Poirot questioning Edward and Cross.
Neither could swear he had seen the case on Thomas that night.
They had remembered a habit and transformed it into a fact.
Poirot had warned us.
Technical truths had an unfortunate habit of becoming important.
“And the message to Monsieur Cross?” Poirot asked.
Eleanor looked at him.
“Mine.”
“YOU LEFT ME THERE.”
“Yes.”
“You copied your father’s handwriting.”
“From his letters.”
“Four words only.”
“I wasn’t foolish enough to attempt more.”
Poirot’s eyes brightened.
“Exactly. Common letters. Familiar forms. No difficult capitals. No unusual combinations. You chose the sentence partly because you could reproduce every letter convincingly.”
Eleanor nodded.
I thought of the scrap of paper which had seemed like a message from the grave.
Four words.
Not supernatural.
Merely careful.
“The telephone calls?” I asked.
“Mine.”
“You telephoned Sir Edward and said nothing?”
“What was there to say?”
“But why?”
She turned to me.
“Because he supplied the words himself.”
I did not understand.
Eleanor continued.
“A voice can be questioned. Silence cannot. If I spoke, he might recognize that the caller was a woman. If I said nothing, he heard whatever frightened him most.”
Poirot murmured:
“Very good.”
I shot him a look.
It seemed an odd compliment under the circumstances.
“And the recording?” he asked.
For the first time Eleanor hesitated.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“My mother knew that Thomas had once taken part in an entertainment in the village. There had been a phonograph recording. Songs, recitations, foolish speeches. Thomas read something and later spoke with several of the others.”
“You found the cylinder?”
“Eventually. It had been kept in a box with others by the man who organized the entertainment. His son had them.”
“And you constructed the message.”
“Constructed is too grand a word. I copied fragments onto another recording. It was crude.”
“The pauses.”
“Yes.”
I remembered the scratching voice emerging from the machine.
One word.
Noise.
Another word.
A pause.
I had thought the breaks gave the voice its terrible emotional quality.
Poirot had heard scissors where I had heard a ghost.
“So that is all of it,” I said. “The cigarette case, the note, the telephone, the voice and the photograph.”
“All of it,” said Eleanor.
Poirot glanced at the mutilated print.
“Almost.”
Eleanor followed his gaze.
“I told you. I did not cut him out.”
“Why did you do any of it?” I demanded.
She looked at me.
“To make them remember.”
“They remembered already.”
“No.”
The certainty in her voice stopped me.
“They remembered an accident. They remembered a funeral. They remembered being young and foolish. They remembered Thomas Bell as something unfortunate that had happened to them.”
Her face had gone pale, but her voice remained steady.
“I wanted them to remember him.”
She pointed toward the old photograph.
“I had never heard him laugh. Never seen him walk into a room. Never heard him tell a joke. I knew him from paper. From my mother’s stories. From photographs in which he never moved and letters in which he had been dead before I was born.”
She looked at Cross’s note lying upon the table.
“Those three men knew him alive.”
There was bitterness now.
“They had something I would have given almost anything to possess. They knew his voice without a machine. They knew how he laughed. They knew what made him angry. They knew what he was like when he was tired or drunk or foolish or happy.”
Her eyes filled, though no tears fell.
“And they buried all of that beneath the word accident.”
No one spoke.
“I wanted them to look at him again,” she said.
Poirot’s voice, when it came, was very soft.
“And confess?”
“Yes.”
“To what?”
“I didn’t know.”
That startled me.
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew they were lying.”
“How?”
“Because my mother knew.”
Eleanor reached into the pocket of her dress and withdrew a small folded paper.
It was old and had been opened so many times that the folds had nearly worn through.
“My mother wrote this shortly before she died.”
She handed it to Poirot.
He read it and passed it to me.
There were only a few lines.
Margaret had written of the night Thomas died.
She remembered being awakened by church bells in the distance and later learning of the accident. But another detail had remained with her: someone from Blackthorn had come to the village for assistance much later than the hour at which the accident was said to have killed Thomas.
The times did not agree.
“They said he died in the crash,” Eleanor said. “Or so nearly at once that nothing could have been done. But the accounts never fitted. My mother had always believed there was a missing interval.”
“And so,” said Poirot, “you created Thomas Bell.”
“Yes.”
“To make one of them tell you what happened during that interval.”
“Yes.”
“And Sir Edward did.”
“Almost.”
Her eyes moved toward the corridor leading to the study.
“He was going to.”
Inspector Hardwick was considerably less moved by Eleanor’s explanation than I had been.
We found him half an hour later in the library, examining a pair of small scissors which had been taken from Eleanor’s work table.
“They’ll cut a photograph,” he said.
“So will many scissors,” said Poirot.
“These belong to Miss Ellis.”
“Yes.”
“She admits manufacturing a campaign of threats against the dead man.”
“Not threats.”
Hardwick looked at Eleanor.
“I’ll decide what to call them.”
Eleanor said nothing.
The inspector continued.
“She had access to the study.”
“So did several persons.”
“She knew Sir Edward intended to confess.”
“Everyone at dinner knew.”
“She had handled the photograph.”
“She created it.”
Hardwick gave Poirot an exasperated look.
“Exactly.”
I confess that I found myself largely in sympathy with the inspector.
The case seemed almost offensively plain.
Eleanor had constructed every supernatural manifestation. She had concealed her relationship to Thomas. She had deliberately terrorized three men. She had been in the library during the period surrounding Edward’s death. She possessed the means of cutting the photograph. She had the strongest conceivable emotional interest in whatever Edward intended to confess.
And now Edward was dead.
“You cannot deny,” I said to Poirot later, “that everything points to her.”
“I deny nothing.”
“Then why are you defending her?”
“I have not defended her.”
“You keep objecting to every fact Hardwick produces.”
“Because Inspector Hardwick produces conclusions and calls them facts.”
“Well, she admits everything except the murder.”
“Yes.”
“That is hardly remarkable.”
“No?”
“A murderer would naturally admit what could be proved and deny the murder.”
“Perfectly reasonable.”
I stopped.
There was that word again.
“Then you agree with me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Poirot took the mutilated photograph from his pocket.
“Because of this.”
“The photograph again!”
“Always the photograph.”
“She made it.”
“Yes.”
“And therefore—”
“She put Thomas Bell into it.”
“Yes.”
Poirot tapped the cut edge.
“But she did not take him out.”
“You believe her?”
“I believe her reaction.”
“She could have acted it.”
“Of course.”
“Then—”
“But she did not know I was watching her.”
He laid the photograph on the table.
“Consider, Hastings. Mademoiselle Ellis spends weeks constructing her little resurrection. The cigarette case. The handwriting. The calls. The voice. Finally, her masterpiece—the impossible photograph.”
“Yes.”
“It succeeds beyond expectation. Sir Edward breaks. He summons me. He summons Cross and Marlowe. He announces that he will confess.”
“And then she kills him.”
“Perhaps. But why then destroy the most powerful symbol she has created?”
“To make the murder appear connected with Thomas.”
Poirot looked pleased.
“Excellent.”
I felt encouraged.
“Exactly!”
“And why must she make the murder appear connected with Thomas?”
“Because—”
I stopped.
Poirot smiled.
“She has already made everything connected with Thomas. She has no need to persuade us of what we already believe.”
I looked at the photograph.
“Then someone else cut it.”
“That is what I think.”
“Why?”
Poirot slipped the photograph back into his pocket.
“That, mon ami, is a much more interesting question.”
The answer to another question came sooner.
Julian Cross sent for Poirot shortly before luncheon.
We found him in his bedroom sitting beside an untouched tray.
He looked dreadful.
I had seen men after bombardments who possessed something of the same expression: not terror exactly, but exhaustion from having been afraid too long.
“Close the door,” he said.
I did so.
Cross looked at Poirot.
“Does Eleanor know?”
“Know what?”
“What happened.”
“She knows that the official account is incomplete.”
Cross closed his eyes.
“Edward was going to tell you.”
“Yes.”
“He should have done it years ago.”
“Perhaps.”
“We all should.”
Poirot pulled up a chair.
“You may do it now.”
Cross gave a small laugh.
“Very neat.”
“Truth is sometimes simpler than the arrangements made to avoid it.”
Cross looked toward the window.
The rain had begun again, lightly this time.
For a moment I thought he would refuse.
Then he said:
“Thomas did not die in the crash.”
The room seemed to contract around us.
Poirot did not move.
I said:
“He was alive?”
“Yes.”
Cross covered his face with both hands.
When he lowered them, he looked twenty years older.
“He was alive when we left him.”
There are sentences which change everything that has preceded them.
Four words had haunted the case from the beginning.
YOU LEFT ME THERE.
Until that moment they had seemed an accusation.
Now they became a statement of fact.
Cross began to speak.
“It was after midnight. Edward had taken his father’s motor. His father would have killed him if he’d known.”
A bitter smile.
“We thought that terribly important then.”
“Edward had been drinking?” Poirot asked.
“We all had. Thomas less than the rest.”
“And who sat where?”
“Edward drove. Thomas beside him. Stephen and I were behind.”
“Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
Cross looked toward the door as though the doctor might somehow hear his name through the walls.
“There had been bad feeling between Thomas and Stephen for several days.”
“Over what?”
“I never knew.”
“You heard nothing?”
“Fragments.”
Cross frowned, searching a memory more than two decades old.
“Thomas said something about giving Stephen one chance. Stephen told him to mind his own affairs. Thomas said that it became his affair when other people could be hurt.”
Poirot’s eyes sharpened.
“What people?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did Dr. Marlowe say?”
“That Thomas was being self-righteous. There was more, but Edward told them to shut up.”
Cross swallowed.
“They began again in the car.”
“And then?”
“Edward turned around. Just for a second. He shouted at them. Thomas shouted at Edward to watch the road.”
Cross stared at his hands.
“There was a bend.”
His voice had changed.
For an instant Blackthorn Hall disappeared.
I saw a primitive motorcar racing along a dark country road. Four young men laughing and arguing. Headlamps throwing pale tunnels into the night. Wet earth. A sudden bend.
Then violence.
“The car went through a hedge,” Cross said. “I don’t remember the first few seconds afterward. I was on the ground. My hand hurt terribly. Stephen’s shoulder was injured. Edward had blood on his face.”
“And Thomas?”
Cross stopped.
“Thomas had been thrown clear.”
I heard the rain at the window.
“He was lying perhaps twenty yards away. We ran to him.”
“Was he conscious?”
“Yes.”
The word came as a whisper.
“He spoke?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Cross looked at me.
“I don’t remember exactly. Edward’s name, I think. He tried to move. Stephen told him not to.”
“Marlowe examined him?”
“Yes.”
“He was only a medical student.”
“But to us he was a doctor.”
That phrase struck me.
To us he was a doctor.
Cross continued.
“He felt Thomas’s pulse. He examined his chest and abdomen. Thomas was in terrible pain. There was blood.”
“Did he remain conscious?”
“For a while.”
“What did Marlowe say?”
Cross’s face twisted.
“He said Thomas was dying.”
Poirot leaned forward slightly.
“Those words?”
“He said the injuries were hopeless. That moving him might kill him at once.”
“What did Edward propose?”
“To get help.”
The answer came immediately.
“He said we had to go for help.”
“And you?”
“I agreed.”
Cross looked down.
“At first.”
There it was.
The qualification upon which a life had turned.
“At first?”
“Stephen said we must think.”
“Think of what?”
“The motorcar. Edward had taken it without permission. We had been drinking. There had been an argument. Thomas was dying.”
Cross’s voice hardened with disgust at his younger self.
“We were frightened boys pretending to be men.”
“What did Marlowe suggest?”
“That we return to Blackthorn.”
I stared at him.
“Without Thomas?”
Cross nodded.
“He said Thomas could not be moved. He said nothing we did could save him. We could go back, clean ourselves up, decide what had happened—”
“Decide?” I said.
Cross looked at me.
“Yes, Hastings. Decide.”
The word was ugly.
“We were to say Edward had permission for the car. That there had been no drinking. That the accident occurred later than it had. Stephen said we needed only half an hour.”
Poirot asked:
“And Thomas?”
Cross’s mouth trembled.
“Stephen said Thomas would be dead whether we remained beside him or not.”
I felt a cold anger.
“You left him?”
Cross looked directly at me.
“Yes.”
No excuse.
No evasion.
Just the word.
“Yes.”
He continued after a moment.
“Edward walked perhaps fifty yards toward the road. Then he stopped.”
Cross closed his eyes.
“He said, ‘This is wrong. We have to go back.’”
“And did you?”
“Stephen stopped him.”
“How?”
“He said there was no point. Thomas’s injuries were fatal. If we returned immediately, we would achieve nothing except destroy Edward’s family and perhaps ourselves.”
Cross laughed once.
“There were careers to think of. Families. Scandal. All the things which seem so large when one is twenty.”
Poirot said:
“And you agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Edward?”
“Eventually.”
Cross looked toward the floor.
“I have spent twenty-two years remembering the moment he agreed.”
No one spoke.
“We reached Blackthorn. Pike saw us. We made up the story. Later we went back with help.”
His voice became almost inaudible.
“Thomas was dead.”
“And afterward?” Poirot asked.
“Stephen gave evidence. He said Thomas’s injuries were such that death must have occurred at or very shortly after the crash. No one questioned it.”
“Why should they?” I said.
Cross looked at me.
“Exactly.”
The rain continued softly against the glass.
At last I asked:
“Did you believe him?”
Cross’s answer took some time.
“Yes.”
“Then why the guilt?”
He stared at me as though the question astonished him.
“Because we left him.”
That silenced me.
“Even if Stephen was right,” Cross continued, “even if Thomas had only five minutes, we left him to spend them alone in a ditch because we were afraid of being embarrassed.”
His face crumpled.
“I don’t know whether that killed him. I only know what it made us.”
Poirot spoke gently.
“And Sir Edward?”
“He never recovered from it.”
“Yet he kept silent.”
“Yes.”
“Until Eleanor.”
Cross nodded.
“The cigarette case frightened Stephen. The note frightened me. But the photograph—”
He stopped.
“Edward broke.”
“And last night he meant to confess.”
“Yes.”
Cross looked at Poirot.
“He told me before dinner. I tried to stop him.”
“Why?”
“Cowardice.”
Again, no excuse.
“I told myself it would hurt Catherine. Destroy reputations. Bring nothing back. All the sensible arguments one makes when one is afraid.”
His eyes closed.
“But Edward said something.”
“What?”
Cross looked at us.
“He said, ‘We left Thomas once. I won’t leave him there again.’”
For several seconds Poirot said nothing.
Then he rose.
“Thank you, Monsieur Cross.”
Cross gave a tired laugh.
“For what?”
“The truth.”
“Twenty-two years late.”
Poirot looked at him.
“The truth has no clock, monsieur. Only consequences.”
Dr. Marlowe heard Cross’s confession with remarkable calm.
Inspector Hardwick had gathered us in the drawing room: Cross, Eleanor, Marlowe, Poirot and myself. Lady Catherine had not been told the full story. Hardwick, with a humanity I had not expected from him, had decided she had suffered enough for one morning.
Cross repeated the essential facts.
When he finished, Marlowe said:
“Julian’s recollection is substantially correct.”
Cross stared at him.
“Substantially?”
“We were all injured and shocked. Memory after twenty-two years is hardly infallible.”
“You told us Thomas was dying.”
“He was.”
“You told us there was no point in getting help.”
“Because there wasn’t.”
Cross rose.
“Stephen—”
“Sit down.”
The authority in Marlowe’s voice was astonishing.
For one instant Cross obeyed it as naturally as he must have done in 1905.
Then he seemed to realize what had happened and remained standing.
“You said he couldn’t be saved.”
Marlowe looked at him.
“Thomas’s injuries were fatal.”
Poirot spoke.
“You were certain of that?”
Marlowe turned.
“I examined him.”
“Ah.”
Nothing more.
Only that small sound.
But I knew Poirot.
Something had happened.
The doctor did not.
Not yet.
Hardwick cleared his throat.
“This may explain Miss Ellis’s campaign, but it doesn’t alter the fact that Sir Edward Vale was murdered.”
“Quite,” said Poirot.
“And Miss Ellis had rather more reason than most to kill him.”
Eleanor’s face hardened.
“I did not.”
Hardwick ignored her.
“She discovers her father was abandoned. She terrifies the men responsible. One decides to confess. Perhaps she learns his confession will not be what she wants. Perhaps she decides confession is insufficient.”
“No,” Eleanor said.
“You were in the library during the relevant period.”
“Yes.”
“You had access to the study earlier.”
“Yes.”
“These scissors belong to you.”
“Yes.”
“They could have cut the photograph.”
“They could have.”
“You made the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“You sent the messages.”
“Yes.”
“You made the calls.”
“Yes.”
“You sent the recording.”
“Yes.”
Hardwick spread his hands.
It was, I admit, impressive.
Eleanor had confessed calmly to every extraordinary event which had brought us to Blackthorn Hall and denied only the one act that mattered most.
I turned to Poirot.
Surely even he must see it.
He was examining his fingernails.
“Poirot,” I said when Hardwick had finished, “it is difficult to imagine a stronger case.”
“Indeed.”
“Then—”
He looked at me.
“You have solved the mystery that frightened Sir Edward, Hastings.”
I waited.
“That is not necessarily the mystery that killed him.”
Hardwick made an impatient sound.
“Two mysteries?”
Poirot turned to him.
“Why not?”
“Because they are obviously connected.”
“Connected things are not necessarily identical things.”
Hardwick folded his arms.
“Go on.”
Poirot walked toward the fireplace.
“Yesterday we had a dead man who returned. Today we know that he did not return. Mademoiselle Ellis brought him.”
He counted upon his fingers.
“The cigarette case. The handwriting. The telephone calls. The voice. The photograph.”
Eleanor watched him.
“All hers.”
“Yes,” said Hardwick. “Which is my point.”
“But Sir Edward’s murder?”
“The culmination.”
“Or an interruption.”
Hardwick frowned.
Poirot continued.
“Mademoiselle Ellis wished Sir Edward to speak. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“And he announced that he would speak.”
“Yes.”
“Her object was achieved.”
“Perhaps she wanted punishment.”
“Perhaps.”
“Revenge.”
“Perhaps.”
Hardwick’s patience snapped.
“Then what exactly troubles you?”
Poirot took the mutilated photograph from his pocket.
“This.”
Hardwick stared at it.
“We have been over that.”
“No. We have looked at it. That is not always the same thing.”
He held it toward Eleanor.
“You put Thomas Bell into the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“Someone removed him.”
“Yes.”
“Therefore there were two intentions.”
Hardwick said nothing.
“One person wished Thomas Bell to appear. Another wished his disappearance to become part of a murder.”
I felt again the uneasiness which had accompanied the case from the beginning.
Someone had borrowed Eleanor’s ghost.
But why?
Poirot suddenly turned to Marlowe.
“Doctor, when did you last see Sir Edward alive?”
The question seemed unrelated.
Marlowe answered easily.
“After dinner.”
“More precisely.”
“In the corridor.”
“At what time?”
“Perhaps ten past ten.”
“You went toward the smoking room.”
“Yes.”
“Did you enter Sir Edward’s study?”
Marlowe paused.
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“No.”
“Did you speak with him privately that evening?”
“I spoke with him several times.”
“As his friend?”
“And physician.”
“Ah, yes. His physician.”
Marlowe’s eyes narrowed.
Poirot continued conversationally.
“Sir Edward was agitated.”
“Obviously.”
“Did you give him anything?”
Hardwick looked up.
Marlowe did not.
“No.”
“Nothing for the nerves? For the heart? For sleep?”
“No.”
“You carry medicines?”
“I am a doctor.”
“Naturally.”
Marlowe’s voice became colder.
“I fail to see the direction of this.”
“Excellent.”
“Excellent?”
“If you do not see the direction, perhaps I am asking the questions correctly.”
I knew that tone.
Hardwick knew it too.
Marlowe, I think, began to know it.
Poirot turned to the inspector.
“Tell me again. What established the time of Sir Edward’s death?”
“The shot.”
“No.”
Hardwick frowned.
“We heard the shot at approximately half past ten.”
“Yes.”
“And immediately afterward Sir Edward was found dead.”
“Yes.”
“Was he killed by the bullet?”
“No. The bullet entered the panelling.”
“Then the gunshot tells us only when the revolver discharged.”
Hardwick stared at him.
Poirot turned to Marlowe.
“And the medical estimate?”
Marlowe’s expression was unreadable.
“I told you. He had died very recently.”
“How recently?”
“Minutes.”
“Before the gunshot?”
“I had no reason to think so.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Marlowe’s jaw tightened.
“With a death so recent, exactitude is impossible.”
“Ah.”
Again that little sound.
I felt suddenly uncomfortable.
“Poirot,” I said, “surely you aren’t suggesting—”
He turned his eyes upon me.
And I stopped.
For the first time since Eleanor’s confession, I understood that Poirot was no longer looking at her.
He was looking at the doctor.
The afternoon darkened early.
Blackthorn Hall seemed to withdraw from the day, its corridors filling with shadow long before sunset.
Poirot asked that we meet once more in the drawing room.
No one objected.
By then objection had become rather pointless.
Cross sat beside the fire.
Eleanor stood near the window.
Inspector Hardwick occupied a chair near the door.
Marlowe remained standing.
Poirot did not begin immediately.
He walked to the mantel and adjusted a small clock which, to my eye, required no adjustment whatsoever.
Then he turned.
“There is one thing we must understand clearly.”
Marlowe sighed.
“Must we continue this theatrical business?”
Poirot regarded him mildly.
“I dislike theatre, doctor. Too many people pretend to be what they are not.”
Marlowe’s face hardened.
Poirot turned to Cross.
“Monsieur Cross, after the accident in 1905, you had no medical training?”
“No.”
“Sir Edward?”
“No.”
“Thomas Bell was injured.”
“Yes.”
“You wished to obtain help.”
“Yes.”
“Sir Edward wished to obtain help.”
Cross hesitated.
“At first, yes.”
“And one person told you that help would be useless.”
Cross looked at Marlowe.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Marlowe.”
“Yes.”
Marlowe spoke sharply.
“I have already explained this.”
Poirot ignored him.
“You relied upon his judgment?”
Cross’s answer was barely audible.
“Yes.”
“Because among the three of you he alone possessed medical knowledge.”
“Yes.”
Poirot turned to Marlowe.
“You examined Thomas Bell?”
“I did.”
“You felt his pulse?”
“Yes.”
“You assessed his injuries?”
“As well as I could under the circumstances.”
“And you concluded that he would die.”
“I concluded that his injuries were fatal.”
“You told the others that obtaining immediate medical assistance would make no difference.”
“It would have made no difference.”
Cross looked into the fire.
Eleanor had not moved.
Poirot said:
“And so they went away.”
Marlowe’s composure returned.
“You are attempting to make a moral accusation out of a medical judgment made twenty-two years ago by a frightened student beside a wrecked motorcar.”
“No.”
Poirot’s voice was almost gentle.
“I am attempting to understand the judgment.”
“There is nothing to understand.”
“Then it will be easy to explain.”
Marlowe looked at him.
Poirot took one step nearer.
“In 1927 Sir Edward Vale dies. Again, you are the physician. Again, those around you accept your interpretation of what has occurred. You tell us when death happened. You tell us what physical facts mean.”
Marlowe said nothing.
Poirot’s eyes never left his face.
“And in 1905 there was Thomas Bell.”
The room had become utterly still.
“Cross did not know whether Thomas would live.”
“No.”
“Edward did not know.”
“No.”
“They believed you.”
Marlowe’s mouth tightened.
“They had every reason to.”
“Perhaps.”
Poirot paused.
Then he asked:
“Tell me, doctor—how could you have known that Thomas Bell could not be saved?”
Marlowe opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
Silence.
The Affair of the Man in the Photograph
Part Four: Closer Than They Appear
As recalled by Captain Arthur Hastings
Silence.
It is strange how silence can alter the dimensions of a room.
A moment before, the drawing room at Blackthorn Hall had seemed large: the high ceiling disappearing into shadow, the long windows dark with the October afternoon, the fire throwing its uncertain light upon portraits and furniture and the faces of the living.
Now it seemed very small indeed.
Poirot stood before Dr. Stephen Marlowe.
Cross sat beside the fire.
Eleanor Ellis had not moved from the window.
Inspector Hardwick watched Marlowe with the expression of a man who had ceased to be merely interested.
And I heard again Poirot’s question.
“Tell me, doctor—how could you have known that Thomas Bell could not be saved?”
Marlowe opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
At last he gave a short laugh.
“You are being absurd.”
Poirot said nothing.
Marlowe recovered himself remarkably quickly.
I had seen that quality in him from the beginning. He was a man accustomed to emergencies, to sickrooms, to frightened relatives waiting for decisions. Whatever might happen within him, very little was permitted to reach the surface.
He turned slightly toward Hardwick.
“This is becoming grotesque. Bell had been thrown from a motorcar. He had severe injuries. We were in darkness, miles from proper assistance, and I was a medical student of twenty. I made the best judgment I could.”
“Precisely,” said Poirot.
“Precisely what?”
“You made a judgment.”
“Of course.”
“That Thomas Bell would die.”
“Yes.”
“That assistance was useless.”
“Yes.”
“That there was no purpose in obtaining it immediately.”
Marlowe’s eyes hardened.
“I have said so.”
Cross rose suddenly.
“No.”
We all looked at him.
He was very pale.
“That isn’t what happened.”
Marlowe turned.
“Julian, you have already demonstrated that your memory of that night is unreliable.”
Cross gave a peculiar laugh.
“My memory has been unreliable whenever you told me it ought to be.”
“Really—”
“I wanted to go for help.”
“Yes.”
“Edward wanted to go back.”
“Edward was drunk and hysterical.”
“And you stopped us.”
“I told you what I believed.”
Cross stared at him.
“No. You made us believe it too.”
Marlowe’s face changed.
Only a little.
But I saw it.
So did Poirot.
He said quietly:
“There is the distinction.”
Hardwick leaned forward.
“What distinction?”
Poirot turned.
“Between being wrong, Inspector, and needing others to be wrong with you.”
He looked again at Marlowe.
“If the young medical student merely believed Thomas Bell could not survive, why was it necessary to persuade the others that they must not even try?”
Marlowe said coldly:
“You are judging a night twenty-two years ago from the comfort of an armchair.”
“No.”
Poirot’s voice was very quiet.
“I am judging it from what happened yesterday.”
For the first time Marlowe had no immediate reply.
Poirot crossed to the table where Eleanor’s packet of letters still lay.
He touched them but did not open them.
“Mademoiselle Ellis, among your father’s letters to your mother there is one dated August the fifteenth?”
“Yes.”
“Two days before the accident.”
Eleanor looked at Marlowe.
Then she nodded.
Poirot held out his hand.
She found the letter and gave it to him.
He unfolded it.
“I shall not read what does not concern us. There is much here that belongs only to Thomas Bell and Margaret Ellis.”
His eyes moved down the page.
“Ah. Here.”
He read only a few words.
“‘I must settle the matter with Stephen. He has promised nothing, and I shall give him one last chance to put it right himself.’”
Marlowe smiled.
“That could mean anything.”
“Certainly.”
Poirot folded the letter.
“Which is why, by itself, it means very little.”
He turned to Cross.
“But Monsieur Cross remembers an argument.”
Cross looked troubled.
“I remember fragments.”
“Tell us one.”
Cross hesitated.
Then he said:
“Thomas told Stephen he had until the following Monday.”
Marlowe shrugged.
“To do what?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You see?”
Cross ignored him.
“He said something else.”
Poirot waited.
Cross’s eyes had gone far away.
“He said, ‘If you haven’t told them by Monday, I shall.’”
Marlowe’s expression did not change.
“What was he going to tell them?” asked Hardwick.
Poirot answered.
“That Stephen Marlowe had been stealing narcotics from his teaching hospital.”
This time the silence was different.
It was not surprise which struck Marlowe.
It was recognition.
Hardwick’s head came up sharply.
“Can you prove that?”
“Not as one proves a theft committed yesterday. But there are records. Old debts. Correspondence concerning irregularities at the hospital. And there is another letter from Thomas Bell in which he writes of quantities disappearing and of his fear that ‘Stephen has begun selling what he takes.’”
Eleanor stared at Marlowe.
Poirot continued.
“Dr. Marlowe was young. He had gambling debts. He had access to certain drugs. He believed, as young men sometimes believe, that a temporary dishonesty can be repaired before anyone discovers it.”
Marlowe’s voice was almost bored.
“Twenty-two-year-old accusations from a dead man.”
“Yes.”
“And even if they were true?”
“They provide something we have lacked.”
“A motive?”
“A difference.”
Poirot looked around the room.
“From the beginning I was interested in the fear of three men. Sir Edward was ashamed. Monsieur Cross was terrified. Dr. Marlowe was watchful.”
I remembered the first afternoon at Blackthorn.
Edward had looked ashamed.
Cross frightened.
Marlowe alert.
At the time I had noticed the distinction and understood nothing.
Now I began to understand.
Poirot said:
“Sir Edward and Monsieur Cross believed they shared a terrible secret with Dr. Marlowe. They did not.”
Cross whispered:
“What do you mean?”
“You believed you were all guilty of the same thing.”
Cross stared at him.
“You were not.”
Marlowe took one step forward.
“This is nonsense.”
Poirot turned upon him.
“No, doctor. It is the entire case.”
His voice remained perfectly controlled.
“Sir Edward had been drinking. He drove recklessly. When the motorcar crashed, he panicked. There would be scandal. His father’s motor taken without permission. Drink. A dead friend. He was weak.”
He looked at Cross.
“You knew that Thomas should not be left. You protested. But you allowed yourself to be persuaded. You were afraid.”
Cross bowed his head.
“Yes.”
“Those things are not excused because you were young.”
“No.”
“But Dr. Marlowe knew something neither of you knew.”
Cross looked up.
Poirot said:
“He knew Thomas might live.”
“No,” said Marlowe.
The word came instantly.
Too instantly.
Poirot turned.
“No?”
“He was dying.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I examined him.”
“And there again, doctor, is your old mistake. You say what you know when what you mean is what you wish others to believe.”
Marlowe’s face flushed.
“You have no medical evidence whatever that Bell could have survived.”
“I do not require it.”
That checked him.
Poirot went on.
“I do not say Thomas Bell certainly would have lived. Perhaps he would not. Perhaps the finest surgeon in England could not have saved him. That is not the accusation.”
“Then what is?”
“That you knew there was a chance.”
Marlowe said nothing.
“A chance,” Poirot repeated. “And Thomas Bell alive was dangerous to you.”
Cross had gone completely white.
He looked from Poirot to Marlowe.
Then, in a voice I hardly recognized, he said:
“You knew.”
Marlowe did not look at him.
“You knew he might live.”
“Julian—”
“You knew.”
“He was terribly injured.”
“But you knew.”
Marlowe’s control broke for the first time.
“What difference does it make now?”
The words rang through the room.
Nobody moved.
Marlowe seemed to hear them only after he had spoken.
Cross stared at him.
“What difference?”
Marlowe drew a hand across his face.
“I mean that none of us can reconstruct a medical prognosis made beside a wreck twenty-two years ago.”
But it was too late.
Cross stepped toward him.
“You told us there was nothing to be done.”
“There probably was nothing to be done.”
“You said moving him would kill him.”
“It might have.”
“You said going for a doctor was useless.”
“Yes.”
“Edward wanted to go back.”
“He was drunk.”
“I wanted help.”
“And I made a judgment!”
Cross’s voice rose.
“No. You made a decision.”
Poirot said softly:
“Yes.”
Cross turned upon him.
For a moment I thought he might strike Marlowe.
Instead all the strength seemed to go out of him.
He sat down.
“My God.”
Eleanor had not spoken.
She stood with one hand upon the back of a chair.
“My father was alive.”
Poirot looked at her.
“Yes.”
“And he might have lived.”
“Might,” said Poirot gently. “We must not change one certainty for another, mademoiselle.”
She nodded.
But her eyes remained upon Marlowe.
“He was going to marry my mother.”
Marlowe looked away.
“He was going to be my father.”
No one answered that.
There was nothing to say.
After a moment Eleanor asked:
“And when you came back?”
Cross covered his face.
“He was dead.”
Poirot completed it.
“And then the frightened young medical student became useful again. There was an inquiry. Questions. When had Thomas died? Could he have survived? Dr. Marlowe gave his opinion.”
Marlowe said:
“The official conclusion was that his injuries were fatal.”
“Exactly.”
“Other doctors agreed.”
“After Thomas was dead. That is quite different from saying no doctor could have helped him while he lived.”
Poirot paused.
“You established the convenient moment of death.”
I felt suddenly cold.
For I knew what was coming before he said it.
Poirot turned toward me.
“Hastings?”
“Yes?”
“What happened at twenty-seven minutes past ten last night?”
“The shot.”
“And therefore?”
“Edward died.”
Poirot waited.
Then it struck me.
“No.”
His eyes brightened.
“No, mon ami.”
Hardwick rose.
“Now, look here—”
Poirot turned to him.
“We have made precisely the same mistake twice.”
He crossed to the mantel and placed one finger upon the little clock he had adjusted earlier.
“In 1905 three young men stood beside Thomas Bell. Two did not know whether he would live. One possessed medical knowledge. He told them what Thomas’s death meant and when it would come.”
He turned.
“In 1927 we stood beside Sir Edward Vale. Again, one man possessed medical knowledge. Again, he told us what death meant and when it had occurred.”
Marlowe laughed.
“You are building fantasies out of coincidence.”
“No. Out of repetition.”
Poirot looked at Hardwick.
“You asked what established the time of Sir Edward’s death.”
“The gunshot.”
“And I told you no.”
Hardwick frowned.
“We heard it.”
“Certainly.”
“At twenty-seven minutes past ten.”
“Certainly.”
“And Vale was found dead immediately afterward.”
“Yes.”
Hardwick stopped.
Poirot smiled faintly.
“You see the trap?”
I saw it then with extraordinary clarity.
The shot.
The running feet.
Edward at the desk.
The revolver upon the carpet.
All of us had joined them together because they had occurred one after another.
Poirot said:
“The revolver did not kill Sir Edward.”
“No,” Hardwick admitted. “The bullet entered the panelling.”
“Only one chamber had been fired.”
“Yes.”
“Therefore the shot tells us one thing only.”
“When the revolver was fired.”
“Exactly.”
Poirot looked at Marlowe.
“Not when Sir Edward died.”
Marlowe’s face had become very still.
Hardwick said:
“Then Vale was already dead.”
“Yes.”
“But the body was warm.”
“Of course. He had not been dead long.”
“Marlowe said minutes.”
“Marlowe said what he needed us to hear.”
Marlowe spoke sharply.
“I said exactitude was impossible.”
“After first allowing everyone to assume the shot and the death were simultaneous.”
“You are twisting my words.”
“No, doctor. I am untwisting them.”
Hardwick began pacing.
“If Vale died earlier, that changes the whole business.”
“It destroys the impossible room,” I said.
Poirot turned to me with approval.
“Precisely, Hastings.”
I warmed under this rare encouragement.
“The corridor needn’t have been crossed at twenty-seven minutes past ten because the murderer had already done his work.”
“Exactly.”
Hardwick stopped.
“But Vale entered the study alive shortly before ten.”
“Yes.”
“And Cross says no one entered afterward.”
“Not quite.”
Cross looked up.
“What?”
Poirot turned to him.
“You told us no one entered after you began watching the corridor carefully.”
Cross frowned.
“We were there the whole time.”
“Were you watching the study door at every instant?”
“No, but—”
“You remembered Dr. Marlowe passing at ten minutes past ten.”
“Yes.”
“Because you saw him.”
“Yes.”
“But before that?”
Cross’s face changed.
Poirot said:
“Sir Edward left the dining room. The household dispersed. You and Hastings had not yet settled into your later positions. There were servants moving between dining room and hall. Dr. Marlowe had both opportunity and the most natural reason in the world to see Sir Edward privately.”
Marlowe said:
“I did not enter the study.”
Poirot looked at him.
“That is unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“Because I did not ask whether you entered it before ten minutes past ten until today. Yet you have been very anxious from the beginning that we should believe you did not.”
Marlowe’s jaw tightened.
Hardwick said:
“You think he poisoned Vale?”
Poirot nodded.
“Not in some fantastic manner. Sir Edward was agitated. Dr. Marlowe had already repeatedly treated his distress as a medical matter. A calming draught from an old friend who was also his physician would excite no suspicion.”
“The brandy,” I said.
“Yes.”
I remembered the small glass upon Edward’s desk.
And Marlowe’s immediate explanation.
Edward often took a brandy in the evening.
Poirot looked at Hardwick.
“You had the glass preserved?”
“I did.”
“And the doctor’s bag?”
Hardwick’s expression altered.
“Yes.”
“Your laboratory will be interested in both.”
Marlowe gave a contemptuous laugh.
“Now we are to convict men upon glasses of brandy?”
“No. But it is curious that when I asked whether you had given Sir Edward anything that evening, you answered no.”
“I hadn’t.”
“Then if the residue in that glass corresponds to a preparation carried in your medical case, we shall have another curiosity.”
Marlowe stared at him.
It was the first time I saw fear in his face.
Not guilt.
Not yet.
Fear.
Poirot continued.
“Sir Edward drank. He went to his desk. The dose was sufficient to produce collapse quickly. By the time we heard the shot, he was already dead.”
Hardwick said:
“But the revolver?”
“Ah.”
Poirot’s expression changed.
I knew that expression.
The practical part of the puzzle pleased him.
“The revolver was never intended to kill Sir Edward.”
He paused.
“The gun was a clock.”
Hardwick stared.
“A clock?”
“A very noisy one.”
Poirot crossed to a side table. Upon it lay a small paper packet which I had seen Hardwick bring from the study earlier.
Poirot opened it.
Inside was a short length of dark thread and a tiny bent hook.
“You found these where I suggested?”
Hardwick nodded.
“Behind the lower edge of the desk and beneath the mantel shelf.”
Marlowe said nothing.
Poirot continued.
“There is also a fresh abrasion upon the revolver’s trigger guard and another upon the brass edge of the little clockwork bell mechanism which Sir Edward used to summon the servants.”
I confess that I frowned.
Poirot saw it.
“No, Hastings. Do not imagine a machine worthy of Jules Verne. It was very simple. A length of strong thread held the revolver in position. A small clockwork movement released the tension after the necessary interval. The pull upon the trigger fired the weapon into the wooden panelling. The recoil threw the revolver to the carpet and freed most of the thread.”
“And the sound we heard—”
“Was not murder.”
Poirot looked at the revolver lying now in Hardwick’s evidence case.
“It was an announcement.”
“Of what?”
“Of when Dr. Marlowe wished us to believe murder had occurred.”
Hardwick’s brows rose.
“The gun was a clock,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
Something about the phrase seemed to alter the whole case.
I remembered how Poirot had looked at the mantel clock before he looked at the windows.
How, when Marlowe had used the gunshot to establish the time of death, Poirot had murmured:
Very convenient.
For whom?
For the clock, doctor.
I had thought it merely one of his eccentric remarks.
It had been almost the whole solution.
Hardwick said:
“But why use Thomas Bell’s revolver?”
Poirot’s eyes went to the photograph.
“Because Dr. Marlowe had another problem.”
Eleanor spoke for the first time in several minutes.
“Me.”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
Poirot took the mutilated photograph from his pocket.
“This case has contained two crimes of photography.”
He held it by the edges.
“Eleanor Ellis took Thomas Bell and put him into a photograph in which he had never stood.”
His finger moved toward the empty cut-out shape.
“Someone else took Thomas Bell out.”
Hardwick said:
“Marlowe.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he was given a ready-made murderer.”
Eleanor’s face hardened.
Poirot continued.
“Mademoiselle Ellis had spent weeks persuading three men that Thomas Bell was returning. The cigarette case. The handwriting. The telephone calls. The voice. Finally the photograph.”
He looked toward her.
“She wanted confession.”
“Yes.”
“She got it.”
Eleanor lowered her eyes.
“Sir Edward summoned me,” Poirot said. “He brought Cross and Marlowe to Blackthorn. Last night he announced that he would tell me everything. At that instant Mademoiselle Ellis’s plan had succeeded.”
Hardwick said:
“And Marlowe’s problem began.”
“Exactly.”
Poirot turned toward him.
“If Sir Edward confessed, the old inquiry would be examined. Monsieur Cross might eventually remember more. Thomas’s letters might emerge. Dr. Marlowe’s old difficulties might emerge. Questions would be asked which had not been asked in 1905.”
Marlowe said:
“After twenty-two years?”
Poirot looked at him.
“Yes, doctor. That was your mistake.”
Something in the words silenced him.
Poirot continued.
“Sir Edward had to be prevented from speaking. But if he simply died, suspicion might fall upon those who feared his confession.”
“Cross and Marlowe,” I said.
“Yes. Instead, the doctor had something much better.”
He held up the photograph.
“A ghost.”
I remembered my own thought.
Someone had borrowed Eleanor’s ghost.
Poirot said:
“Thomas Bell’s old revolver beside the body. Thomas Bell cut from the photograph. What conclusion would everyone reach?”
“That the murder was the final act of the campaign,” said Hardwick.
“And when Mademoiselle Ellis was discovered to have created the campaign?”
Hardwick looked at Eleanor.
“She would be our murderer.”
“Precisely.”
Eleanor’s voice was low.
“You used my father.”
Marlowe looked at her.
For the first time, I think, he really saw her.
Not Miss Ellis.
Not a suspect.
Thomas Bell’s daughter.
Poirot said:
“That is why your reaction to the mutilated photograph mattered so much.”
I remembered Eleanor in the doorway on the night of Edward’s death.
Her face.
I had called it horror.
Poirot had seen more accurately.
“You were angry,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Someone had spoiled your work.”
Eleanor gave a bitter little smile.
“I spent three nights making it.”
“Exactly. The reaction was instinctive. You had brought Thomas into the photograph. Someone else had removed him. Two alterations. Two intentions. Two people.”
Poirot turned the print.
“And there was the little mistake.”
He indicated the edge of the cut.
“Mademoiselle Ellis made her composite from the photograph of Thomas upon the west terrace here at Blackthorn. The damaged portion of the stone balustrade accompanied him to Little Wickham.”
I remembered Arthur Denby’s untouched print and Poirot’s discovery.
“The defect that shouldn’t have been at the station,” I said.
“Yes. When Thomas was cut away, the scissors followed his outline carefully—but not perfectly. A minute fragment of the impossible background remained upon the edge. The person cutting him out did not understand what mattered in the photograph.”
He looked at Eleanor.
“The person who created it would have understood.”
Hardwick nodded slowly.
“So the cutting actually helps clear her.”
“It does more. It tells us that the murderer knew of the ghost campaign and wished to appropriate it.”
Poirot looked at Marlowe.
“And among those who knew the campaign, one man had a very particular need for Edward Vale never to speak.”
Marlowe stood rigidly by the fireplace.
Then he laughed.
It was not a pleasant sound.
“This is very ingenious.”
Poirot inclined his head.
“Thank you.”
“Photographs. Old letters. Threads. Memories from drunken boys twenty-two years ago.”
“And a dead man yesterday.”
“You cannot prove I killed Edward.”
Hardwick said:
“We’ll see about that.”
Marlowe ignored him.
“You cannot even prove Thomas would have lived.”
Poirot’s face changed.
The satisfaction of the detective disappeared.
What remained was something sterner.
“I have not said that I can.”
“Then what exactly is this accusation of yours?”
Poirot walked slowly toward him.
“That Thomas Bell had a chance.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither did you.”
Marlowe said nothing.
“That is the point, doctor. You did not know he would live. You did not know he would die. But you knew that if help came quickly he might live.”
Marlowe’s mouth tightened.
“And Edward and Julian left him too.”
“Yes.”
“They agreed.”
“Yes.”
“They were cowards.”
“Yes.”
Cross flinched, but Poirot did not soften the word.
Marlowe spread his hands.
“Then why am I suddenly made into a monster while they become victims?”
“They do not.”
Poirot’s answer came at once.
“Monsieur Cross has his guilt. Sir Edward died with his. Nothing I say removes it.”
Cross whispered:
“No.”
Poirot continued.
“But they believed the same thing you told them—that Thomas was beyond saving.”
He stepped closer.
“You knew better.”
“I made a medical judgment.”
“No.”
Poirot’s voice was almost gentle.
“You made a moral calculation and disguised it as a medical judgment.”
Marlowe’s face went grey.
Poirot went on.
“Thomas alive would speak. Thomas dead would not. So you told two frightened young men that the distinction between those possibilities no longer existed.”
The fire cracked sharply.
“Twenty-two years later,” Poirot continued, “Edward Vale decided to speak. Again you faced a man whose living voice threatened you.”
Marlowe looked toward the door.
Hardwick moved almost imperceptibly to block it.
“And again,” said Poirot, “you controlled the story by controlling death.”
Nobody spoke.
“In 1905 you told them when Thomas Bell was as good as dead.”
Poirot glanced toward the mantel clock.
“In 1927 you told us when Edward Vale had died.”
He spread his hands.
“The same trick.”
Marlowe stared at him.
“The first time there was no gun. No clockwork. No photograph. But the mechanism was identical.”
Poirot touched his forehead.
“Here.”
Then his chest.
“And here.”
His voice lowered.
“Authority and fear.”
I do not think I had ever seen Marlowe look older.
Hardwick broke the silence.
“Doctor, I’m going to ask you to give me your medical case.”
Marlowe did not move.
“You already have it.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m going to have the contents analysed against the residue from Vale’s glass.”
Marlowe smiled faintly.
“You will find medicines in a doctor’s bag. Astonishing.”
“We’ll also examine the marks on the revolver and the clockwork release.”
No answer.
“And your movements between dinner and ten minutes past ten.”
Still no answer.
Hardwick came nearer.
“You denied giving Vale anything.”
“I did.”
“That may become important.”
Marlowe looked at Poirot.
For one extraordinary instant the room seemed to fall away from them.
The successful physician of 1927 faced the small foreign detective.
And somewhere between them stood a laughing young man of twenty.
Marlowe said:
“You think you understand everything.”
Poirot shook his head.
“No. That is a luxury reserved for fools.”
A muscle moved in Marlowe’s cheek.
“Thomas would have ruined me.”
Cross made a sound.
Marlowe turned upon him.
“You think you were different? Edward thought of his father. You thought of your career. We all knew what scandal meant.”
“I didn’t know about the drugs.”
“No.”
“You never told us.”
“Would you have behaved differently?”
Cross stared at him.
“I don’t know.”
It was, I thought, the most honest answer he could have given.
Marlowe laughed again.
“No. None of us knows. That’s the point.”
Eleanor spoke.
“My father knew.”
Marlowe turned.
She stood very straight.
“He knew what he intended to do.”
For a moment Marlowe seemed about to answer.
He did not.
Hardwick touched his arm.
“Come with me, doctor.”
Marlowe looked down at the hand.
Then at Poirot.
“You cannot bring Bell back.”
“No,” said Poirot.
“None of this changes that.”
“No.”
“Then what has been achieved?”
Poirot regarded him for a long moment.
“The truth has arrived.”
Hardwick led Marlowe from the room.
Cross did not watch him go.
Eleanor did.
It was nearly an hour later when I found Poirot and Eleanor in the library.
The rain had stopped.
A watery evening light showed between the clouds, and for the first time since our arrival at Blackthorn I could see a pale strip of sky beyond the windows.
The old photograph lay upon the table.
Four young men on the terrace.
Edward.
Cross.
Marlowe.
Thomas.
Thomas sat upon the balustrade laughing at something outside the frame.
Eleanor touched the corner of the photograph.
“All my life,” she said, “I’ve wondered what he would have been like.”
Poirot said nothing.
“I thought knowing how he died would tell me something.”
“And has it?”
She considered.
“No.”
Poirot nodded.
“That is perhaps fortunate.”
She looked at him.
“How can it be fortunate?”
“Because the manner in which a man dies is not necessarily the most important thing about the manner in which he lived.”
Eleanor looked again at the photograph.
“He was brave.”
“Yes.”
“He meant to expose Marlowe.”
“Yes.”
“He loved my mother.”
“Yes.”
A voice behind us said:
“He was terrible at cricket.”
We turned.
Julian Cross stood in the doorway.
He looked exhausted.
Eleanor stared at him.
Cross came slowly into the room.
“Thomas,” he said. “Absolutely dreadful.”
For a moment I thought the strain had affected him.
Then he continued.
“He fancied himself a batsman. He wasn’t. Edward once bowled him first ball three innings running.”
Eleanor said nothing.
Cross’s expression altered.
“I remember one afternoon here. Thomas had been boasting all morning that he had discovered the secret of batting. Some nonsense about keeping one’s eye upon the ball. Edward bowled. Thomas swung so hard he turned completely around and fell into a rhododendron.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Cross did too.
“He emerged covered in leaves and announced that the wicket had been badly placed.”
Eleanor gave a small sound.
It took me a moment to realize that she had laughed.
Only once.
But she had laughed.
Cross looked at the photograph.
“He could make you furious. Then five minutes later you had forgotten why.”
Eleanor’s eyes filled, though no tears fell.
“Thank you.”
Cross nodded.
Then he left us.
For several seconds nobody spoke.
Eleanor touched Thomas’s laughing face.
“My mother never told me that.”
“No,” said Poirot.
“She told me about his books. His letters. The places they walked. Things he said.”
“Those were her memories.”
“And now I have one of Cross’s.”
Poirot smiled.
“Yes.”
She looked at him.
“Do you think I’ve wasted all these years?”
Poirot considered the question seriously.
“You are twenty-one, mademoiselle.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is a very good one.”
She almost smiled.
Poirot picked up the photograph.
“Your father has been dead twenty-two years. Yet you have spent your life coming toward him.”
“And they spent theirs running away.”
“Yes.”
“Did any of us find him?”
Poirot looked at Thomas Bell.
“No.”
He handed the photograph back to her.
“But perhaps now you may stop searching only at the place where he died.”
Eleanor held the photograph against her breast.
Poirot bowed to her.
We left her alone.
Lady Catherine received us before we departed the following morning.
She had aged during those two days at Blackthorn Hall.
There was no other way to describe it.
Yet she was composed.
“Inspector Hardwick has told me enough,” she said.
Poirot inclined his head.
“I am sorry, madame.”
She looked toward the closed study door.
“Edward was going to tell you.”
“Yes.”
“After twenty-two years.”
“Yes.”
“Too late.”
Poirot did not answer immediately.
“At times,” he said, “there is no such thing as early enough. But there may still be such a thing as too late to remain silent.”
Lady Catherine looked at him.
“He was not a brave man.”
“No.”
The answer startled me.
But she nodded.
“No. He wasn’t.”
Poirot said:
“Yet on his last evening he attempted to become one.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
“Thank you.”
That was all.
We did not see Philip.
Cross remained at Blackthorn.
Eleanor, I learned, intended to finish cataloguing the Vale papers before deciding what she would do next.
Mrs. Gresham stood in the entrance hall as our luggage was carried out.
George Pike had brought the motorcar around.
As we stepped outside, the air had changed.
The rain was gone.
Water still clung to the yews and shone upon the gravel, but above the trees there were patches of blue.
I took a deep breath.
It seemed extraordinary that we had been at Blackthorn for so short a time.
Pike opened the motorcar door.
Poirot paused before entering.
He looked back at the house.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I laughed.
“I know what that means.”
“Then, Hastings, after all these years there is hope for you.”
We got in.
Pike drove away.
For the first mile neither Poirot nor I spoke.
I was tired.
There is a peculiar exhaustion which follows the solution of a case. While the mystery remains, one’s mind struggles against it. Every person, every object, every word may conceal an answer.
Then the answer comes.
And one discovers that certainty has its own weight.
I thought of Edward.
Cross.
Marlowe.
Eleanor.
And Thomas Bell.
Especially Thomas.
A young man who had been dead since 1905 and who had nevertheless dominated every hour we had spent at Blackthorn Hall.
At last I said:
“There is one thing I still don’t understand.”
Poirot sighed.
“There is always one thing.”
“Why didn’t Marlowe simply leave it alone?”
“What?”
“The past. Twenty-two years had passed. The inquiry was finished. Thomas was buried. Even if Eleanor began all this business, why kill Edward? Why not deny everything?”
Poirot looked out of the window.
“Because, Hastings, you are confusing memory with conscience.”
I waited.
“Memory is very obliging. It loses details. A face becomes less clear. Words become uncertain. One forgets whether a cigarette case was seen on Tuesday or Wednesday—or whether one saw it at all.”
I remembered the first afternoon in London.
Edward insisting that Thomas always carried the silver case.
Then admitting that he could not remember seeing it on the night of the accident.
Poirot continued.
“Paper yellows. Photographs fade. Voices disappear. Twenty-two years pass, and a man tells himself that because the thing is far away in time, it has become small.”
“And conscience?”
Poirot adjusted one glove.
“Conscience is less interested in calendars.”
I looked at him.
“Marlowe thought Thomas had become irrelevant.”
“Yes.”
“But Thomas was dead.”
Poirot nodded.
“And yet Sir Edward shaped his life around what happened to Thomas. Monsieur Cross shaped his life around it. Marlowe’s decisions yesterday were governed by something Thomas intended to do twenty-two years ago.”
“And Eleanor?”
“She never knew her father, yet she came to Blackthorn because of him.”
I sat back.
“So Thomas never really left any of them.”
Poirot looked at me.
“No.”
He said nothing more.
Nor, I think, was anything more necessary.
The road curved between the wet hedges.
I turned.
Through the rear window Blackthorn Hall was already disappearing between the trees.
Its chimneys rose above the yews for a moment.
Then the road bent again.
“Well, Poirot, at least it is all behind us now.”
Poirot looked toward the little mirror mounted before us.
“Behind us, yes, mon ami.”
He adjusted his gloves.
“But you English have a curious idea that what is behind you must therefore be far away.”
I looked back once more.
The house was distant now, half hidden by the trees.
Then I looked into the little mirror.
Blackthorn Hall seemed much nearer there.
Poirot noticed my expression.
A faint smile touched his face.
“You see?”
You’ve been listening to The Affair of the Man in the Photograph, an original four-part Hercule Poirot mystery from Chesterton Radio.
Beneath this story is another story—one that began not with Poirot, but with a song.
Jim Steinman’s “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are,” made famous by Meat Loaf, is a song about memory: about the people and events we believe time has carried safely into the distance, only to discover that they remain much nearer than we imagined.
That became the seed of this mystery.
What if a man died in his youth—and twenty-two years later began appearing again?
Not as a ghost, exactly, but in the things he left behind:
a possession,
a few words in his handwriting,
the sound of his voice,
and finally his face in a photograph where it could not possibly belong.
From that came Thomas Bell, Blackthorn Hall, Eleanor Ellis—and three men who had spent twenty-two years believing that what happened on a dark country road was safely behind them.
Poirot discovers otherwise.
Memory fades. Photographs yellow. Voices disappear. But conscience has a rather different relationship with time.
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And perhaps, on the drive home tonight, don’t be too certain that everything in the mirror is as far behind you as it seems.
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