Colonel Carbury smiled across the table at his guest and raised his glass. ‘Well, here’s to crime!’
Hercule Poirot’s eyes twinkled in acknowledgement of the aptness of the toast.
He had come to Amman with a letter of introduction to Colonel Carbury from Colonel Race.
Carbury had been interested to see this world-famous person to whose gifts his old friend and ally in the Intelligence had paid such unstinting tribute.
‘As neat a bit of psychological deduction as you’ll ever find!’ Race had written of the solution of the Shaitana murder.
‘We must show you all we can of the neighbourhood,’ said Carbury, twisting a somewhat ragged brindled moustache. He was an untidy stocky man of medium height with a semibald head and vague, mild, blue eyes. He did not look in the least like a soldier. He did not look even particularly alert. He was not in the least one’s idea of a disciplinarian. Yet in Transjordania he was a power.
‘There’s Jerash,’ he said. ‘Care about that sort of thing?’
‘I am interested in everything!’
‘Yes,’ said Carbury. ‘That’s the only way to react to life.’ He paused.
‘Tell me, d’you ever find your own special job has a way of following you round?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Well—to put it plainly—do you come to places expecting a holiday from crime—and find instead bodies cropping up?’
‘It has happened, yes; more than once.’
‘H’m,’ said Colonel Carbury and looked particularly abstracted.
Then he roused himself with a jerk. ‘Got a body now I’m not very happy about,’ he said.
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. Here in Amman. Old American woman. Went to Petra with her family. Trying journey, unusual heat for time of year, old woman suffered from heart trouble, difficulties of the journey a bit harder for her than she imagined, extra strain on heart—she popped off!’
‘Here—in Amman?’
‘No, down at Petra. They brought the body here today.’
‘Ah!’
‘All quite natural. Perfectly possible. Likeliest thing in the world to happen. Only—’
‘Yes? Only—?’
Colonel Carbury scratched his bald head.
‘I’ve got the idea,’ he said, ‘that her family did her in!’
‘Aha! And what makes you think that?’
Colonel Carbury did not reply to that question directly.
‘Unpleasant old woman, it seems. No loss. General feeling all round that her popping off was a good thing. Anyway, very difficult to prove anything so long as the family stick together and if necessary lie like hell. One doesn’t want complications—or international unpleasantness. Easiest thing to do—let it go! Nothing really to go upon. Knew a doctor chap once. He told me—often had suspicions in cases of his patients—hurried into the next world a little ahead of time! He said—best thing to do to keep quiet unless you really had something damned good to go upon! Otherwise beastly stink, case not proved, black mark against an earnest hard-working G.P. Something in that. All the same—’ He scratched his head again. ‘I’m a tidy man,’ he said unexpectedly.
Colonel Carbury’s tie was under his left ear, his socks were wrinkled, his coat stained and torn. Yet Hercule Poirot did not smile. He saw, clearly enough, the inner neatness of Colonel Carbury’s mind, his neatly docketed facts, his carefully sorted impressions.
‘Yes. I’m a tidy man,’ said Carbury. He waved a vague hand. ‘Don’t like a mess. When I come across a mess I want to clear it up. See?’
Hercule Poirot nodded gravely. He saw.
‘There was no doctor down there?’ he asked.
‘Yes, two. One of ’em was down with malaria, though. The other’s a girl—just out of the medical student stage. Still, she knows her job, I suppose. There wasn’t anything odd about the death. Old woman had got a dicky heart. She’d been taking heart medicine for some time. Nothing really surprising about her conking out suddenly like she did.’
‘Then what, my friend, is worrying you?’ asked Poirot gently.
Colonel Carbury turned a harassed blue eye on him.
‘Heard of a Frenchman called Gerard? Theodore Gerard?’
‘Certainly. A very distinguished man in his own line.’
‘Loony bins,’ confirmed Colonel Carbury. ‘Passion for a charwoman at the age of four makes you insist you’re the Archbishop of Canterbury when you’re thirty-eight. Can’t see why and never have, but these chaps explain it very convincingly.’
‘Dr Gerard is certainly an authority on certain forms of deep-seated neurosis,’ agreed Poirot, with a smile. ‘Is—er—are—er—his views on the happening at Petra based on that line of argument?’
Colonel Carbury shook his head vigorously.
‘No, no. Shouldn’t have worried about them if they had been! Not, mind you, that I don’t believe it’s all true. It’s just one of those things I don’t understand—like one of my Bedouin fellows who can get out of a car in the middle of a flat desert, feel the ground with his hand and tell you to within a mile or two where you are. It isn’t magic, but it looks like it. No, Dr Gerard’s story is quite straightforward. Just plain facts. I think, if you’re interested—you are interested?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Good man. Then I think I’ll just phone over and get Gerard along here, and you can hear his story for yourself.’
When the Colonel had dispatched an orderly on this quest, Poirot said:
‘Of what does this family consist?’
‘Name’s Boynton. There are two sons, one of ’em married. His wife’s a nice-looking girl—the quiet, sensible kind. And there are two daughters. Both of ’em quite good-looking in totally different styles. Younger one a bit nervy—but that may be just shock.’
‘Boynton,’ said Poirot. His eyebrows rose. ‘That is curious—very curious.’
Carbury cocked an inquiring eye at him. But as Poirot said nothing more, he himself went on:
‘Seems pretty obvious Mother was a pest! Had to be waited on hand and foot and kept the whole lot of them dancing attendance. And she held the purse strings. None of them had a penny of their own.’
‘Aha! All very interesting. Is it known how she left her money?’
‘I did just slip that question in—casual like, you know. It gets divided equally between the lot of them.’
Poirot nodded his head. Then he asked:
‘You are of the opinion that they are all in it?’
‘Don’t know. That’s where the difficulty’s going to lie. Whether it was a concerted effort, or whether it was one bright member’s idea—I don’t know. Maybe the whole thing’s a mare’s nest! What it comes to is this: I’d like to have your professional opinion. Ah, here comes Gerard.’
[Appointment with Death -Agatha Christie] Part 2. Chapter 1