‘Well, of course I know that.’
‘It is a lawyer you require.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong. I’m just about sick and tired of lawyers. I’ve had straight lawyers and crooked lawyers, and not one of them’s done me any good. Lawyers just know the law, they don’t seem to have any kind of natural sense.’
‘And you think I have?’
She laughed.
‘I’ve heard that you’re the cat’s whiskers, M. Poirot.’
‘Comment? The cat’s whiskers? I do not understand.’
‘Well – that you’re it.’
‘Madame, I may or may not have brains – as a matter of fact I have – why pretend? But your little affair, it is not my genre.’
‘I don’t see why not. It’s a problem.’
‘Oh! a problem!’
‘And it’s difficult,’ went on Jane Wilkinson. ‘I should say you weren’t the man to shy at difficulties.’
‘Let me compliment you on your insight, Madame. But all the same, me, I do not make the investigations for divorce. It is not pretty – ce métier la.’
‘My dear man. I’m not asking you to do spying work. It wouldn’t be any good. But I’ve just got to get rid of the man, and I’m sure you could tell me how to do it.’
Poirot paused awhile before replying. When he did, there was a new note in his voice.
‘First tell me, Madame, why are you so anxious to “get rid” of Lord Edgware?’
There was no delay or hesitation about her answer. It came swift and pat.
‘Why, of course. I want to get married again. What other reason could there be?’
Her great blue eyes opened ingenuously.
‘But surely a divorce should be easy to obtain?’
‘You don’t know my husband, M. Poirot. He’s – he’s–’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. He’s a queer man – he’s not like other people.’
She paused and then went on.
‘He should never have married – anyone. I know what I’m talking about. I just can’t describe him, but he’s – queer. His first wife, you know, ran away from him. Left a baby of three months behind. He never divorced her and she died miserably abroad somewhere. Then he married me. Well – I couldn’t stick it. I was frightened. I left him and went to the States. I’ve no grounds for a divorce, and if I’ve given him grounds for one, he won’t take notice of them. He’s – he’s a kind of fanatic.’
‘In certain American states you could obtain a divorce, Madame.’
‘That’s no good to me – not if I’m going to live in England.’
‘You want to live in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is the man you want to marry?’
‘That’s just it. The Duke of Merton.’
I drew in my breath sharply. The Duke of Merton had so far been the despair of matchmaking mammas. A young man of monkish tendencies, a violent Anglo-Catholic, he was reported to be completely under the thumb of his mother, the redoubtable dowager duchess. His life was austere in the extreme. He collected Chinese porcelain and was reputed to be of aesthetic tastes. He was supposed to care nothing for women.
‘I’m just crazy about him,’ said Jane sentimentally. ‘He’s unlike anyone I ever met, and Merton Castle is too wonderful. The whole thing is the most romantic business that ever happened. He’s so good-looking too – like a dreamy kind of monk.’
She paused.
‘I’m going to give up the stage when I marry. I just don’t seem to care about it any more.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Poirot dryly, ‘Lord Edgware stands in the way of these romantic dreams.’
‘Yes – and it’s driving me to distraction.’ She leaned back thoughtfully. ‘Of course if we were only in Chicago I could get him bumped off quite easily, but you don’t seem to run to gunmen over here.’
‘Over here,’ said Poirot, smiling, ‘we consider that every human has the right to live.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. I guess you’d be better off without some of your politicians, and knowing what I do of Edgware I think he’d be no loss – rather the contrary.’
There was a knock at the door, and a waiter entered with supper dishes. Jane Wilkinson continued to discuss her problem with no appreciation of his presence.
‘But I don’t want you to kill him for me, M. Poirot.’
‘Merci, Madame.’
‘I thought perhaps you might argue with him in some clever way. Get him to give in to the idea of divorce. I’m sure you could.’
‘I think you overrate my persuasive powers, Madame.’
‘Oh! but you can surely think of something, M. Poirot.’ She leaned forward. Her blue eyes opened wide again. ‘You’d like me to be happy, wouldn’t you?’
Her voice was soft, low and deliciously seductive.
‘I should like everybody to be happy,’ said Poirot cautiously.
‘Yes, but I wasn’t thinking of everybody. I was thinking of just me.’
‘I should say you always do that, Madame.’
He smiled.
‘You think I’m selfish?’
‘Oh! I did not say so, Madame.’
‘I dare say I am. But, you see, I do so hate being unhappy. It affects my acting, even. And I’m going to be ever so unhappy unless he agrees to a divorce – or dies.
‘On the whole,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘it would be much better if he died, I mean, I’d feel more finally quit of him.’
She looked at Poirot for sympathy.
‘You Will help me, won’t you, M. Poirot?’ She rose, picking up the white wrap, and stood looking appealingly into his face. I heard the noise of voices outside in the corridor. The door was ajar. ‘If you don’t–’ she went on.
‘If I don’t, Madame?’
She laughed.
‘I’ll have to call a taxi to go round and bump him off myself.’
Laughing, she disappeared through a door to an adjoining room just as Bryan Martin came in with the American girl, Carlotta Adams, and her escort, and the two people who had been supping with him and Jane Wilkinson. They were introduced to me as Mr and Mrs Widburn.
‘Hello!’ said Bryan. ‘Where’s Jane? I want to tell her I’ve succeeded in the commission she gave me.’
Jane appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She held a lipstick in one hand.
‘Have you got her? How marvellous. Miss Adams, I do admire your performance so. I felt I just had to know you. Come in here and talk to me while I fix my face. It’s looking too perfectly frightful.’
Carlotta Adams accepted the invitation. Bryan Martin flung himself down in a chair.
‘Well, M. Poirot,’ he said. ‘You were duly captured. Has our Jane persuaded you to fight her battles? You might as well give in sooner as later. She doesn’t understand the word “No.”’
‘She has not come across it, perhaps.’
‘A very interesting character, Jane,’ said Bryan Martin. He lay back in his hair and puffed cigarette smoke idly towards the ceiling. ‘Taboos have no meaning for her. No morals whatever. I don’t mean she’s exactly immoral – she isn’t. Amoral is the word, I believe. Just sees one thing only in life – what Jane wants.’
He laughed.
‘I believe she’d kill somebody quite cheerfully – and feel injured if they caught her and wanted to hang her for it. The trouble is that she would be caught. She hasn’t any brains. Her idea of a murder would be to drive up in a taxi, sail in under her own name and shoot.’
‘Now, I wonder what makes you say that?’ murmured Poirot.
‘Eh?’
‘You know her well, Monsieur?’
‘I should say I did.’
He laughed again, and it struck me that his laugh was unusually bitter.
‘You agree, don’t you?’ he flung out to the others.
‘Oh! Jane’s an egoist,’ agreed Mrs Widburn. ‘An actress has got to be, though. That is, if she wants to express her personality.’
Poirot did not speak. His eyes were resting on Bryan Martin’s face, dwelling there with a curious speculative expression that I could not quite understand.
At that moment Jane sailed in from the next room, Carlotta Adams behind her. I presume that Jane had now ‘fixed her face’, whatever that term denoted, to her own satisfaction. It looked to me exactly the same as before and quite incapable of improvement.