The Clocks (Hercule Poirot, #39)

by Agatha Christie

Its painstaking eroticism left her uninterested—as indeed it did most of Mr. Levine’s readers, in spite of his efforts. He was a notable example of the fact that nothing can be duller than dull pornography.

Wilbraham Crescent was a fantasy executed by a Victorian builder in the 1880’s. It was a half-moon of double houses and gardens set back to back. This conceit was a source of considerable difficulty to persons unacquainted with the locality. Those who arrived on the outer side were unable to find the lower numbers and those who hit the inner side first were baffled as to the whereabouts of the higher numbers.

I had been following a hunch with a persistence becoming more dogged day by day as the hunch seemed less and less likely to pay off. I’m like that.

The door of 19 opened and a girl came out of it and down the path with what seemed to be the speed of a bomb. The likeness to a bomb was intensified by the screaming that accompanied her progress. It was high and thin and singularly inhuman.

“But—can you manage—” A faint grim smile showed for a moment on her face. “My dear young man. I have made meals for myself in my own kitchen ever since I came to live in this house—fourteen years ago. To be blind is not necessarily to be helpless.” “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.

“Who found him. You?” “No, I was an innocent passerby. Suddenly a girl came flying out of the house like a bat out of hell. Nearly knocked me down. She said there was a dead man on the floor and a blind woman was trampling on him.” “You’re not having me on, are you?” Dick’s voice asked suspiciously. “It does sound fantastic, I admit. But the facts seem to be as stated. The blind woman is Miss Millicent Pebmarsh who owns the house.” “And was she trampling on the dead man?” “Not in the sense you mean it. It seems that being blind she just didn’t know he was there.” “I’ll set the machinery in motion. Wait for me there. What have you done with the girl?” “Miss Pebmarsh is making her a cup of tea.” Dick’s comment was that it all sounded very cosy.

“You left the front door unlocked,” he pointed out. “I frequently do so in the daytime.” “Anybody might walk in.” “Anybody seems to have done so in this case,” said Miss Pebmarsh drily.

understand what you mean by the ‘other clocks.’ There are

The orange cat was still sitting on the gatepost of Diana Lodge next door. He was no longer washing his face but was sitting up very straight, lashing his tail slightly, and gazing over the heads of the crowd with that complete disdain for the human race that is the special prerogative of cats and camels.

To the right of it a similar house displayed the legend Edwin Glen, Artist Photographer. Specialist, Children’s Photographs, Wedding Groups, etc. In support of this statement the window was filled with enlargements of all sizes and ages of children, from babies to six-year-olds. These presumably were to lure in fond mammas.

There was a sameness about these trophies. The men mostly held pipes and wore tweeds, the women looked earnest and tended to fade into furs.

“Each of these four clocks represented a time about an hour later than the cuckoo clock and the grandfather clock.” “Must have been foreign,” said Mrs. Curtin. “Me and my old man went on a coach trip to Switzerland and Italy once and it was a whole hour further on there. Must be something to do with this Common Market. I don’t hold with the Common Market and nor does Mr. Curtin. England’s good enough for me.”

we had put ourselves outside two good underdone steaks,

“Don’t you sneer at marine biology, Dick. It’s a very useful subject. The mere mention of it so bores people and they’re so afraid you’re going to talk about it, that you never have to explain yourself further.”

You’d think somebody would have suspected.” “They didn’t, you know. When you’ve got it into your head that a fellow is a thoroughly good chap, it doesn’t occur to you that he mightn’t be.”

“The damned fools—I’m one of them really, I suppose—” (Dick was a very honest man)

“Don’t be idiotic,” I defended myself vigorously. “I saw her for the first time yesterday afternoon, and it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a romantic introduction.” “I’m not so sure of that,” said Hardcastle. “It isn’t every day that young men have girls falling into their arms screaming for help in the approved Victorian fashion. Makes a man feel a hero and a gallant protector.

If he himself had been choosing a victim he would not have chosen his sister. If anyone were to attempt such a thing it was far more likely that the attacker would be knocked out by a poker or a lead doorstop and delivered over to the police in a bleeding and humiliated condition.

“I’m sure Miss Pebmarsh is a person of excellent character. If I do not see eye to eye with her on various subjects, that is not because I impute anything of a criminal nature to her. I merely think that her views are bigoted and extravagant. After all, there are other things besides education.

Miss Waterhouse marched downstairs and entered the dining room with a certain amount of pleasurable curiosity masked by her usual air of belligerence.

“The murdered man was not an occupant of the house,” said the inspector. “Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Hemming, still vaguely, “he came here to be murdered. How odd.” “Now that,” said Colin thoughtfully to himself, “is a damned good description.”

“So there goes a beautiful theory.”

“Well, well,” said Colin. “Some front garden!” It was indeed a model of suburban perfection in a small way. There were beds of geraniums with lobelia edging. There were large fleshy-looking begonias, and there was a fine display of garden ornaments—frogs, toadstools, comic gnomes and pixies. “I’m sure Mr. Bland must be a nice worthy man,” said Colin, with a shudder. “He couldn’t have these terrible ideas if he wasn’t.”

Well, of course, I’m a self-made man and I haven’t had much time for that sort of thing but I’d be interested. That chap who went and dug up Troy, he was a grocer, I believe. Very romantic.

“Men are such children,” she said indulgently.

This fantastic business of yours will be just down his street. He’ll love it—it will cheer him up. I’ve an idea he needs cheering up.” “What’s his name?” “Hercule Poirot.” “I’ve heard of him. I thought he was dead.” “He’s not dead. But I have a feeling he’s bored. That’s worse.”

“He looks a nice man I think. A gentleman, I’d say, wouldn’t you?” It was a slightly outmoded term in the inspector’s experience, yet it fell very naturally from Mrs. Lawton’s lips. “Brought up in the country,” he thought. “They still think of things that way.”

Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

“He busies himself then, with the horticulture?” “Everyone seems to come to that in the end,” I said. “Not me,” said Hercule Poirot. “Once the vegetable marrows, yes—but never again. If you want the best flowers, why not go to the florist’s shop?

He was so straightforward. He used the obvious as no man has used it before. He would set the trap, the very obvious trap and the people he wished to catch would say ‘it is too obvious, that. It cannot be true’ and so they fell into it!”

“But problems, mon cher, are not so easy to come by.

“I believe my father mentioned that he read it as a boy. I believe I once read it myself. It must seem rather old-fashioned now.” “It is admirable,” said Poirot. “One savours its period atmosphere, its studied and deliberate melodrama. Those rich and lavish descriptions of the golden beauty of Eleanor, the moonlight beauty of Mary!”

Adventures of Arsene Lupin and picked up another book. “And there is The Mystery of the Yellow Room. That—ah, that is really a classic! I approve of it from start to finish. Such a logical approach!

And, being young at the time, she was foolish enough to make her detective a Finn, and it is clear that she knows nothing about Finns or Finland except possibly the works of Sibelius.

What was even more needed, she has possibly acquired a solicitor or a barrister friend who has put her right on certain points of the law.”

All lurid, all very unlike life. He is not quite, as you would say, my cup of tea. He is, in fact, not a cup of tea at all. He is more like one of these American cocktails of the more obscure kind, whose ingredients are highly suspect.”

Tout de même, I give American crime fiction on the whole a pretty high place. I think it is more ingenious, more imaginative than English writing. It is less atmospheric and overladen with atmosphere than most French writers.

Those brownstone mansions in New York. Enfin what is a brownstone mansion—I have never known? Those exclusive apartments, and soulful snobberies, and underneath, deep unsuspected seams of crime run their uncharted course. It could happen so, and it does happen so.

“Why must it be simple?” “Because it appears so complex. If it has necessarily to appear complex, it must be simple.

Have you not clasped her in your arms when she flew from the house in terror?” “You’ve been affected by reading Garry Gregson,” I said. “You’ve caught the melodramatic style.” “Perhaps you are right,” Poirot admitted. “One gets infected, it is true, by the style of a work that one has been reading.”

“Have mercy!” I said. “Not at all,” said Poirot, “you will enjoy it.” “You don’t seem to realize that I’ve got my own work to do.” “You will work all the better for having a certain amount of relaxation,” Poirot assured me.

She was still frowning perplexedly and trying to think. Thinking had never been Edna’s strong point. The more she tried to get things clear in her mind, the more muddled her mind became.

Since the day that the Press had announced that a murder had been committed at 19, Wilbraham Crescent, large numbers of people had gathered in front of the house every day to have a good look at it. The fascination mere bricks and mortar can have for the general public under certain circumstances is a truly mysterious thing.

Drawn as though by a magnet, the most unlikely people arrived in Wilbraham Crescent, paused, stared, and then passed on, some inner need satisfied.

“I believe I remember him vaguely. A lot of moustache.” “Oceans of it,” I agreed. “He’s very proud of that moustache.”

“And of course there are all the women who recognize husbands. Women don’t really seem to know what their husbands look like!

It was an hour and a half later and Detective Inspector Hardcastle sat down behind his desk and accepted with relief an official cup of tea.

Not really important, the girl had said. The same girl who had been found not long afterwards strangled in a telephone box….

Miss Waterhouse had found the body. Inspector Hardcastle was professionally prejudiced against people who found bodies. Finding the body avoided so many difficulties for a murderer—it saved the hazards of arranging an alibi, it accounted for any overlooked fingerprints. In many ways it was a cast-iron position—with one proviso only. There must be no obvious motive.

“Well—” the inspector smiled a little, then hastily tried to put the smile in his voice as he realized that Miss Pebmarsh could not appreciate its disarming quality. “One never knows with these girls. She might just have wanted an autograph. Something like that.”