Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction; Poirot, Hercule (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Short stories
“I began to reconstruct. The maid would provide herself with duplicate
clothes. She and her accomplice chloroform and stab Mrs. Carrington
between London and Bristol, probably taking advantage of a tunnel. Her
body is rolled under the seat; the maid takes her place. At Weston she
must make herself noticed. How? In all probability, a newspaper-boy
will be selected. She will insure his remembering her by giving him a
large tip. She also drew his attention to the color of her dress by a
remark about one of the magazines. After leaving Weston, she throws
the knife out of the window to mark the place where the crime
presumably occurred, and changes her clothes, or buttons a long
mackintosh over them. At Taunton she leaves the train and returns to
Bristol as soon as possible, where her accomplice has duly left the
luggage in the cloak-room. He hands over the ticket and himself
returns to London. She waits on the platform, carrying out her rôle,
goes to a hotel for the night and returns to town in the morning
exactly as she said.
“When Japp returned from his expedition, he confirmed all my
deductions. He also told me that a well-known crook was passing the
jewels. I knew that whoever it was would be the exact opposite of the
man Jane Mason described. When I heard that it was Red Narky, who
always worked with Gracie Kidd—well, I knew just where to find her.”
“And the Count?”
“The more I thought of it, the more I was convinced that he had
nothing to do with it. That gentleman is much too careful of his own
skin to risk murder. It would be out of keeping with his character.”
“Well, Monsieur Poirot,” said Halliday. “I owe you a big debt. And the
check I write after lunch wont go near to settling it.”
Poirot smiled modestly, and murmured to me: “The good Japp, he shall
get the official credit, all right, but though he has got his Gracie
Kidd, I think that I, as the Americans say, have got his goat!”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 1924
issue of The Blue Book Magazine.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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