The Scotland Yard Inspector was, indeed, waiting on the platform, and
greeted us warmly.
"Well, Moosior Poirot, this is good. Thought you'd like to be let in on
this. Tip-top mystery, isn't it?"
I read this aright as showing Japp to be completely puzzled and hoping
to pick up a pointer from Poirot.
Japp had a car waiting, and we drove up in it to Croftlands. It was a
square, white house, quite unpretentious, and covered with creepers,
including the starry yellow jasmine. Japp looked up at it as we did.
"Must have been balmy to go writing that, poor old cove," he remarked.
"Hallucinations, perhaps, and thought he was outside."
Poirot was smiling at him.
"Which was it, my good Japp?" he asked; "accident or murder?"
The Inspector seemed a little embarrassed by the question.
"Well, if it weren't for that curry business, I'd be for accident every
time. There's no sense in holding a live man's head in the fire--why,
he'd scream the house down."
"Ah!" said Poirot in a low voice. "Fool that I have been. Triple
imbecile! You are a cleverer man than I am, Japp."
Japp was rather taken aback by the compliment--Poirot being usually
given to exclusive self praise. He reddened and muttered something
about there being a lot of doubt about that.
He led the way through the house to the room where the tragedy had
occurred--Mr. Paynter's study. It was a wide, low room, with book-lined
walls and big leather arm-chairs.
Poirot looked across at once to the window which gave upon a gravelled
terrace.
"The window, it was unlatched?" he asked.
"That's the whole point, of course. When the doctor left this room,
he merely closed the door behind him. The next morning it was found
locked. Who locked it? Mr. Paynter? Ah Ling declares that the window
was closed and bolted. Dr. Quentin, on the other hand, has an
impression that it was closed, but not fastened, but he won't swear
either way. If he could, it would make a great difference. If the man
_was_ murdered, some one entered the room either through the door
or the window--if through the door, it was an inside job; if through
the window, it might have been any one. First thing when they had
broken the door down, they flung the window open, and the housemaid
who did it thinks that it wasn't fastened, but she's a precious bad
witness--will remember anything you ask her to!"
"What about the key?"
"There you are again. It was on the floor among the wreckage of the
door. Might have fallen from the keyhole, might have been dropped there
by one of the people who entered, might have been slipped underneath
the door from the outside."
"In fact everything is 'might have been'?"
"You've hit it, Moosior Poirot. That's just what it is."
Poirot was looking round him, frowning unhappily.
"I cannot see light," he murmured. "Just now---yes, I got a gleam, but
now all is darkness once more. I have not the clue--the motive."
"Young Gerald Paynter had a pretty good motive," remarked Japp grimly.
"He's been wild enough in his time, I can tell you. _And_
extravagant. You know what artists are, too--no morals at all."
Poirot did not pay much attention to Japp's sweeping strictures on the
artistic temperament. Instead he smiled knowingly.
"My good Japp, is it possible that you throw the mud in my eyes? I know
well enough that it is the Chinaman you suspect. But you are so artful.
You want me to help you--and yet you drag the red kipper across the
trail."
Japp burst out laughing.
"That's you all over, Mr. Poirot. Yes, I'd bet on the Chink, I'll admit
it now. It stands to reason that it was he who doctored the curry, and
if he'd try once in an evening to get his master out of the way, he'd
try twice."
"I wonder if he would," said Poirot softly.
"But it's the motive that beats me. Some heathen revenge or other, I
suppose."
"I wonder," said Poirot again. "There has been no robbery? Nothing has
disappeared? No jewellery, or money, or papers?"
"No--that is, not exactly."