The sun was about to set when I arrived at five o’clock in the afternoon, but it was still light enough for me to observe my rather spectacular surroundings. As I stood in front of Lady Playford’s grand Palladian mansion on the banks of the Argideen river in Clonakilty—with formal gardens behind me, fields to the left and what looked like the edge of a forest on my right—I was aware of endless space—the uninterrupted blues and greens of the natural world. I had known before setting off from London that the Lillieoak estate was eight hundred acres, but it was only now that I understood what that meant: no shared margins of your own world and that of anyone else if you did not desire it; nothing and nobody pressing in on you or hovering nearby the way they did in the city. It was no wonder, really, that Lady Playford knew nothing of the way policemen conducted themselves.
As I breathed in the freshest air I had ever inhaled, I found myself hoping I was right about the reason I had been invited here. Given the opportunity, I thought, I would happily suggest that a little realism would significantly improve Lady Playford’s books. Perhaps Shrimp Seddon and her gang, in the next one, could work in cooperation with a more competent police force …
Lillieoak’s front door opened. A butler peered out at me. He was of medium height and build, with thinning grey hair and lots of creases and lines around his eyes, but nowhere else. The effect was of an old man’s eyes inserted into a much younger man’s face.
The butler’s expression was odder still. It suggested that he needed to impart vital information in order to protect me from something unfortunate, but could not do so, for it was a matter of the utmost delicacy.
I waited for him to introduce himself or invite me into the house. He did neither. Eventually I said, ‘My name is Edward Catchpool. I have just arrived from England. I believe Lady Playford is expecting me.’
My suitcases were by my feet. He looked at them, then looked over his shoulder; he repeated this sequence twice. There was no verbal accompaniment to any of it.
Eventually, he said, ‘I will have your belongings taken to your room, sir.’
‘Thank you.’ I frowned. This really was most peculiar—more so than I can describe, I fear. Though the butler’s statement was perfectly ordinary, he conveyed a sense of so much more left unsaid—an air of ‘In the circumstances, this is, I am afraid, the most I can divulge.’
‘Was there something else?’ I asked.
The face tightened. ‘Another of Lady Playford’s … guests awaits you in the drawing room, sir.’
‘Another?’ I had assumed I was to be the only one.
My question appeared to repel him. I failed to see the point of contention, and was considering allowing my impatience to show when I heard a door opening inside the house, and a voice I recognized. ‘Catchpool! Mon cher ami!’
‘Poirot?’ I called out. To the butler I said, ‘Is that Hercule Poirot?’ I pushed open the door and walked into the house, tired of waiting to be invited in out of the cold. I saw an elaborately tiled floor of the sort you might see in a palace, a grand wooden staircase, too many doors and corridors for a newcomer to take in, a grandfather clock, the mounted head of a deer on one wall. The poor creature looked as if it was smiling, and I smiled back at it. Despite being dead and detached from its body, the deer’s head was more welcoming than the butler.
‘Catchpool!’ Again came the voice.
‘Look here, is Hercule Poirot in this house?’ I asked more insistently.
This time the butler replied with a reluctant nod, and moments later the Belgian moved into view at a pace that, for him, was fast. I could not help chuckling at the egg-shaped head and the shiny shoes, both so familiar, and of course the unmistakable moustaches.
‘Catchpool! What a pleasure to find you here too!’
‘I was about to say the same to you. Was it you, by any chance, wanting to see me in the drawing room?’
‘Yes, yes. It was I.’
‘I thought so. Good, then you can lead me there. What on earth is going on? Has something happened?’
‘Happened? No. What should have happened?’
‘Well …’ I turned round. Poirot and I were alone, and my suitcases had vanished. ‘From the butler’s guarded manner, I wondered if—’
‘Ah, yes, Hatton. Pay no attention to him, Catchpool. His manner, as you call it, is without cause. It is simply his character.’
‘Are you sure? It’s an odd sort of character to have.’
‘Oui. Lady Playford explained him to me shortly after I arrived this afternoon. I asked her the same questions you ask me, thinking something must have occurred that the butler thought it was not his place to discuss. She said Hatton becomes this way after being in service for so long. He has seen many things that it would not have been prudent for him to mention, and so now, Lady Playford tells me, it is his preference to say as little as possible. She too finds it frustrating. “He cannot part with the most basic information—what time will dinner be served? When will the coal be delivered?—without behaving as if I’m trying to wrestle from him a closely guarded and explosive family secret,” she complained to me. “He has lost what judgement he once had, and is now unable to distinguish between outrageous indiscretion and saying anything at all,” she said.’
‘Then why does she not engage a new butler?’
‘That, also, is a question I asked. We think alike, you and I.’
‘Well, did she give you an answer?’
‘She is fascinated to monitor the development of Hatton’s personality, and to see how he will further refine his habits in the future.’
I made an exasperated face, wondering when someone would appear with the offer of a cup of tea. At that moment, the house shook, then stilled, then shook again. I was about to say ‘What on earth …?’ when I noticed, at the top of the staircase, the largest man I had ever seen. He was on his way down. He had straw-coloured hair and a jowly face, and his head looked as tiny as a pebble balanced atop his planet-sized body.
Loud creaking noises came from beneath his feet as he moved, and I feared he might put one of them clean through the wood. ‘Do you hear that appalling noise?’ he demanded of us without introducing himself. ‘Steps shouldn’t groan when you stand on them. Isn’t that what they’re for—to be stood on?’
‘It is,’ Poirot agreed.
‘Well?’ said the man unnecessarily. He had been given his answer. ‘I tell you, they don’t make staircases like they used to. The craftsmanship’s all gone.’
Poirot smiled politely, then took my arm and steered me to the left, whispering, ‘It is the fault of his appetite that the stairs groan. Still, he is a lawyer—if I were that staircase, I would obtain legal advice.’ It was not until he smiled that I realized it was supposed to be a joke.
I followed him into what I assumed was the drawing room, which was large and had a big stone fireplace that was too near the door. No fire burned in the grate, and it was colder in here than it had been in the hall. The room was much longer than it was wide, and the many armchairs were positioned in a sort of messy row at one end and an equally untidy cluster at the other. This arrangement of furniture accentuated the room’s rectangular shape and made for a rather divided effect. There were French windows at the far end. The curtains had not been drawn for the night, though it was dark outside—and darker for the time of day in Clonakilty than in London, I noticed.
Poirot closed the drawing room door. At last, I took a proper look at my old friend. He looked plumper than when I had last seen him, and his moustache seemed larger and more prominent, at least from across the room. As he moved towards me, I decided that in fact he looked exactly the same, and rather it was I whose imagination had shrunk him to a manageable size.