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Five friends get together to share a delicious dinner, listen to music and dance a little. They have fun and enjoy without excesses or drunkenness. The next morning, the butler is surprised to see a large red stain on the carpet on which an old Spanish chest is resting. When he lifts the lid of the furniture, he discovers to his horror that inside is the corpse of one of the guests, Mr. Clayton, with a dagger stuck in his neck. Hercule Poirot is summoned to help the attractive Mrs. Clayton unravel this strange mystery.
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Chapter 1
Punctual to the moment, as always, Hercule Poirot entered the small room where Miss Lemon, his efficient secretary, awaited her instructions for the day.
At first sight Miss Lemon seemed to be composed entirely of angles—thus satisfying Poirot’s demand for symmetry. Not that where women were concerned Hercule Poirot carried his passion for geometrical precision so far. He was, on the contrary, old fashioned. He had a continental prejudice for curves—it might be said for voluptuous curves. He liked women to be women. He liked them lush, highly coloured, exotic. There had been a certain Russian countess—but that was long ago now. A folly of earlier days.
But Miss Lemon he had never considered as a woman. She was a human machine—an instrument of precision. Her efficiency was terrific. She was forty-eight years of age, and was fortunate enough to have no imagination whatever.
‘Good morning, Miss Lemon.’
‘Good morning, M. Poirot.’
Poirot sat down and Miss Lemon placed before him the morning’s mail, neatly arranged in categories. She resumed her seat and sat with pad and pencil at the ready.
But there was to be this morning a slight change in routine.
Poirot had brought in with him the morning newspaper, and his eyes were scanning it with interest. The headlines were big and bold.
SPANISH CHEST MYSTERY. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS.
‘You have read the morning papers, I presume, Miss Lemon?’
‘Yes, M. Poirot. The news from Geneva is not very good.’
Poirot waved away the news from Geneva in a comprehensive sweep of the arm.
‘A Spanish chest,’ he mused. ‘Can you tell me, Miss Lemon, what exactly is a Spanish chest?’
‘I suppose, M. Poirot, that it is a chest that came originally from Spain.’
‘One might reasonably suppose so. You have then, no expert knowledge?’
‘They are usually of the Elizabethan period, I believe. Large, and with a good deal of brass decoration on them. They look very nice when well kept and polished. My sister bought one at a sale. She keeps household linen in it. It looks very nice.’
‘I am sure that in the house of any sister of yours, all the furniture would be well kept,’ said Poirot, bowing gracefully.
Miss Lemon replied sadly that servants did not seem to know what elbow grease was nowadays. Poirot looked a little puzzled, but decided not to inquire into the inward meaning of the mysterious phrase ‘elbow grease’.
He looked down again at the newspaper, conning over the names: Major Rich, Mr and Mrs Clayton, Commander McLaren, Mr and Mrs Spence. Names, nothing but names to him; yet all possessed of human personalities, hating, loving, fearing. A drama, this, in which he, Hercule Poirot, had no part. And he would have liked to have a part in it! Six people at an evening party, in a room with a big Spanish chest against the wall, six people, five of them talking, eating a buffet supper, putting records on the gramophone, dancing, and the sixth dead, in theSpanish chest…
Ah, thought Poirot. How my dear friend, Hastings, would have enjoyed this! What romantic flights of imagination he would have had. What ineptitudes he would have uttered! Ah, cecher Hastings, at this moment, today, I miss him…Instead—
He sighed and looked at Miss Lemon. Miss Lemon, intelligently perceiving that Poirot was in no mood to dictate letters, had uncovered her typewriter and was awaiting her moment to get on with certain arrears of work. Nothing could have interested her less than sinister Spanish chests containing dead bodies.
Poirot sighed and looked down at a photographed face. Reproductions in newsprint were never very good, and this was decidedly smudgy—but what a face!
Mrs Clayton, the wife of the murdered man…
On an impulse, he thrust the paper at Miss Lemon.
‘Look,’ he demanded. ‘Look at that face.’
Miss Lemon looked at it obediently, without emotion.
‘What do you think of her, Miss Lemon? That is Mrs Clayton.’
Miss Lemon took the paper, glanced casually at the picture and remarked:
‘She’s a little like the wife of our bank manager when we lived at Croydon Heath.’
‘Interesting,’ said Poirot. ‘Recount to me, if you will be so kind, the history of your bank manager’s wife.’
‘Well, it’s not really a very pleasant story, M. Poirot.’
‘It was in my mind that it might not be. Continue.’
‘There was a good deal of talk—about Mrs Adams and a young artist. Then Mr Adams shot himself. But Mrs Adams wouldn’t marry the other man and he took some kind of poison—but they pulled him through all right; and finally Mrs Adams married a young solicitor. I believe there was more trouble after that, only of course we’d left Croydon Heath by then so I didn’t hear very much more about it.’
Hercule Poirot nodded gravely.
‘She was beautiful?’
‘Well—not really what you’d call beautiful—But there seemed to be something about her—’
‘Exactly. What is that something that they possess—the sirens of this world! The Helens of Troy, the Cleopatras—?’
Miss Lemon inserted a piece of paper vigorously into her typewriter.
‘Really, M. Poirot, I’ve never thought about it. It seems all very silly to me. If people would just go on with their jobs and didn’t think about such things it would be much better.’
Having thus disposed of human frailty and passion, Miss Lemon let her fingers hover over the keys of the typewriter, waiting impatiently to be allowed to begin her work.
‘That is your view,’ said Poirot. ‘And at this moment it is your desire that you should be allowed to get on with your job. But your job, Miss Lemon, is not only to take down my letters, to file my papers, to deal with my telephone calls, to typewrite my letters—All these things you do admirably. But me, I deal not only with documents but with human beings. And there, too, I need assistance.’
‘Certainly, M. Poirot,’ said Miss Lemon patiently. ‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘This case interests me. I should be glad if you would make a study of this morning’s report of it in all the papers and also of any additional reports in the evening papers—Make me a précis of the facts.’
‘Very good, M. Poirot.’
Poirot withdrew to his sitting-room, a rueful smile on his face.
‘It is indeed the irony,’ he said to himself, ‘that after my dear friend Hastings I should have Miss Lemon. What greater contrast can one imagine? Ce cher Hastings—how he would have enjoyed himself. How he would have walked up and down talking about it, putting the most romantic construction on every incident, believing as gospel truth every word the papers have printed about it. And my poor Miss Lemon, what I have asked her to do, she will not enjoy at all!’
Miss Lemon came to him in due course with a typewritten sheet.
‘I’ve got the information you wanted, M. Poirot. I’m afraid though, it can’t be regarded as reliable. The papers vary a good deal in their accounts. I shouldn’t like to guarantee that the facts as stated are more than sixty per cent accurate.’
‘That is probably a conservative estimate,’ murmured Poirot.
‘Thank you, Miss Lemon, for the trouble you have taken.’
The facts were sensational, but clear enough. Major Charles Rich, a well-to-do bachelor, had given an evening party to a few of his friends, at his apartment. These friends consisted of Mr and Mrs Clayton, Mr and Mrs Spence, and a Commander McLaren. Commander McLaren was a very old friend of both Rich and the Claytons, Mr and Mrs Spence, a younger couple, were fairly recent acquaintances. Arnold Clayton was in the Treasury. Jeremy Spence was a junior Civil Servant. Major Rich was forty-eight, Arnold Clayton was fifty-five, Commander McLaren was forty-six, Jeremy Spence was thirty-seven. Mrs Clayton was said to be ‘some years younger than her husband’.
One person was unable to attend the party. At the last moment, Mr Clayton was called away to Scotland on urgent business, and was supposed to have left King’s Cross by the 8.15 train.
