“Nothing to do with the case,” he said decisively.
“One can never be sure,” said Poirot.
“It had nothing to do with Charles Leverson.”
“Lady Astwell thinks that Charles had nothing to do with the murder.”
“Oh, Nancy!”
“Parsons assumes that it was M. Charles Leverson who came in that night, but he didn’t see him. Remember nobody saw him.”
“You are wrong there,” said Astwell. “I saw him.”
“You saw him?”
“It’s very simple. Reuben had been pitching into young Charles — not without good reason, I must say. Later on he tried to bully me. I told him a few home truths and, just to annoy him, I made up my mind to back the boy. I meant to see him that night, so as to tell him how the land lay. When I went up to my room I didn’t go to bed. Instead, I left the door ajar and sat on a chair smoking. My room is on the second floor, M. Poirot, and Charles’s room is next to it.”
“Pardon my interrupting you — Mr. Trefusis, he, too, sleeps on that floor?”
Astwell nodded.
“Yes, his room is just beyond mine.”
“Nearer the stairs?”
“No, the other way.”
A curious light came into Poirot’s face, but the other didn’t notice it and went on:
“As I say, I waited up for Charles. I heard the front door slam, as I thought, about five minutes to twelve, but there was no sign of Charles for about ten minutes. When he did come up the stairs I saw that it was no good tackling him that night.”
He lifted his elbows significantly.
“I see,” murmured Poirot.
“Poor devil couldn’t walk straight,” said Astwell. “He was looking pretty ghastly, too. I put it down to his condition at the time. Of course, now I realize that he had come straight from committing the crime.”
Poirot interposed a quick question.
“You heard nothing from the Tower room?”
“No, but you must remember that I was right at the other end of the building. The walls are thick, and I don’t believe you would even hear a pistol shot fired from there.”
Poirot nodded.
“I asked if he would like some help getting to bed,” continued Astwell. “But he said he was all right and went into his room and banged the door. I undressed and went to bed.”
Poirot was staring thoughtfully at the carpet.
“You realize, M. Astwell,” he said at last, “that your evidence is very important?”
“I suppose so, at least — what do you mean?”
“Your evidence that ten minutes elapsed between the slamming of the front door and Leverson’s appearance upstairs. He himself says, so I understand, that he came into the house and went straight up to bed. But there is more than that. Lady Astwell’s accusation of the secretary is fantastic, I admit, yet up to now it has not been proved impossible. But your evidence creates an alibi.”
“How is that?”
“Lady Astwell says that she left her husband at a quarter to twelve, while the secretary had gone to bed at eleven o’clock. The only time he could have committed the crime was between a quarter to twelve and Charles Leverson’s return. Now, if, as you say, you sat with your door open, he could not have come down from his room without your seeing him.”
“That is so,” agreed the other. “There is no other staircase?”
“No, to get down to the Tower room he would have had to pass my door, and he didn’t, I am quite sure of that. And, anyway, M. Poirot, as I said just now, the man is as meek as a parson, I assure you.”
“But yes, but yes,” said Poirot soothingly, “I understand all that.” He paused. “And you will not tell me the subject of your quarrel with Sir Reuben?”
The other’s face turned a dark red.
“You’ll get nothing out of me.”
Poirot looked at the ceiling.
“I can always be discreet,” he murmured, “where a lady is concerned.”
Victor Astwell sprang to his feet.
“Damn you, how did you — what do you mean?”
“I was thinking,” said Poirot, “of Miss Lily Margrave.”
Victor Astwell stood undecided for a minute or two, then his color subsided, and he sat down again.
“You are too clever for me, M. Poirot. Yes, it was Lily we quarreled about. Reuben had his knife into her; he had ferreted out something or other about the girl — false references, something of that kind. I don’t believe a word of it myself.
“And then he went further than he had any right to go, talked about her stealing down at night and getting out of the house to meet some fellow or other. My God! I gave it to him; I told him that better men than he had been killed for saying less. That shut him up. Reuben was inclined to be a bit afraid of me when I got going.”
“I hardly wonder at it,” murmured Poirot politely.
“I think a lot of Lily Margrave,” said Victor in another tone. “A nice girl through and through.”
Poirot did not answer. He was staring in front of him, seemingly lost in abstraction. He came out of his brown study with a jerk.
“I must, I think, promenade myself a little. There is a hotel here, yes?”
“Two,” said Victor Astwell, “the Golf Hotel up by the links and the Mitre down by the station.”
“I thank you,” said Poirot. “Yes, certainly I must promenade myself a little.”
The Golf Hotel, as befits its name, stands on the golf links almost adjoining the club house. It was to this hostelry that Poirot repaired first in the course of that “promenade” which he had advertised himself as being about to take. The little man had his own way of doing things. Three minutes after he had entered the Golf Hotel he was in private consultation with Miss Langdon, the manageress.
“I regret to incommode you in any way, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, “but you see I am a detective.”
Simplicity always appealed to him. In this case the method proved efficacious at once.
“A detective!” exclaimed Miss Langdon, looking at him doubtfully.
“Not from Scotland Yard,” Poirot assured her. “In fact — you may have noticed it? I am not an Englishman. No, I make the private inquiries into the death of Sir Reuben Astwell.”
“You don’t say, now!” Miss Langdon goggled at him expectantly.
“Precisely,” said Poirot, beaming. “Only to someone of discretion like yourself, would I reveal the fact. I think, Mademoiselle, you may be able to aid me. Can you tell me of any gentleman staying here on the night of the murder who was absent from the hotel that evening and returned to it about twelve or half-past?”
Miss Langdon’s eyes opened wider than ever.
“You don’t think—?” she breathed.
“That you had the murderer here? No, but I have reason to believe that a guest staying here promenaded himself in the direction of Mon Repos that night, and if so he may have seen something which, though conveying no meaning to him, might be very useful to me.”
The manageress nodded her head sapiently, with an air of one thoroughly well up in the annals of detective law.
“I understand perfectly. Now, let me see; who did we have staying here?”
She frowned, evidently running over the names in her mind, and helping her memory by occasionally checking them off on her fingertips.
“Captain Swann, Mr. Elkins, Major Blunt, old Mr. Benson. No, really, sir, I don’t believe anyone went out that evening.”
“You would have noticed if they had done so, eh?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it is not very usual, you see. I mean gentlemen go out to dinner and all that, but they don’t go out after dinner, because — well, there is nowhere to go to, is there?”
The attractions of Abbots Cross were golf and nothing but golf.
“That is so,” agreed Poirot. “Then, as far as you remember, Mademoiselle, nobody from here was out that night?”