The Dead Man’s Mirror: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. Agatha Christie

took command. He did it so naturally that no one thought it odd that this stranger, who had just arrived, should suddenly assume charge of the situation.

      ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let us go to the study.’

      He continued, speaking to Snell:

      ‘Lead the way, if you please.’

      Snell obeyed. Poirot followed close behind him, and, like a flock of sheep, everyone else followed.

      Snell led the way through the big hall, past the great branching curve of the staircase, past an enormous grandfather clock and a recess in which stood a gong, along a narrow passage which ended in a door.

      Here Poirot passed Snell and gently tried the handle. It turned, but the door did not open. Poirot rapped gently with his knuckles on the panel of the door. He rapped louder and louder. Then, suddenly desisting, he dropped to his knees and applied his eye to the keyhole.

      Slowly he rose to his feet and looked round. His face was stern.

      ‘Gentlemen!’ he said. ‘This door must be broken open immediately!’

      Under his direction the two young men, who were both tall and powerfully built, attacked the door. It was no easy matter. The doors of Hamborough Close were solidly built.

      At last, however, the lock gave, and the door swung inwards with a noise of splintering, rending wood.

      And then, for a moment, everyone stood still, huddled in the doorway looking at the scene inside. The lights were on. Along the left-hand wall was a big writing-table, a massive affair of solid mahogany. Sitting, not at the table, but sideways to it, so that his back was directly towards them, was a big man slouched down in a chair. His head and the upper part of his body hung down over the right side of the chair, and his right hand and arm hung limply down. Just below it on the carpet was a small, gleaming pistol …

      There was no need of speculation. The picture was clear. Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore had shot himself.

      For a moment or two the group in the doorway stood motionless, staring at the scene. Then Poirot strode forward.

      At the same moment Hugo Trent said crisply:

      ‘My God, the Old Man’s shot himself !’

      And there was a long, shuddering moan from Lady Chevenix-Gore.

      ‘Oh, Gervase – Gervase!’

      Over his shoulder Poirot said sharply:

      ‘Take Lady Chevenix-Gore away. She can do nothing here.’

      The elderly soldierly man obeyed. He said:

      ‘Come, Vanda. Come, my dear. You can do nothing. It’s all over. Ruth, come and look after your mother.’

      But Ruth Chevenix-Gore had pressed into the room and stood close by Poirot’s side as he bent over the dreadful sprawled figure in the chair – the figure of a man of Herculean build with a Viking beard.

      She said in a low, tense voice, curiously restrained and muffled:

      ‘You’re quite sure he’s – dead?’

      Poirot looked up.

      The girl’s face was alive with some emotion – an emotion sternly checked and repressed – that he did not quite understand. It was not grief – it seemed more like a kind of half-fearful excitement.

      The little woman in the pince-nez murmured:

      ‘Your mother, my dear – don’t you think –?’

      In a high, hysterical voice the girl with the red hair cried out:

      ‘Then it wasn’t a car or a champagne cork! It was a shot we heard …’

      Poirot turned and faced them all.

      ‘Somebody must communicate with the police –’

      Ruth Chevenix-Gore cried out violently:

      ‘No!’

      The elderly man with the legal face said:

      ‘Unavoidable, I am afraid. Will you see to that, Burrows? Hugo –’

      Poirot said:

      ‘You are Mr Hugo Trent?’ to the tall young man with the moustache. ‘It would be well, I think, if everyone except you and I were to leave this room.’

      Again his authority was not questioned. The lawyer shepherded the others away. Poirot and Hugo Trent were left alone.

      The latter said, staring:

      ‘Look here – who are you? I mean, I haven’t the foggiest idea. What are you doing here?’

      Poirot took a card-case from his pocket and selected a card.

      Hugo Trent said, staring at it:

      ‘Private detective – eh? Of course, I’ve heard of you … But I still don’t see what you are doing here.’

      ‘You did not know that your uncle – he was your uncle, was he not –?’

      Hugo’s eyes dropped for a fleeting moment to the dead man.

      ‘The Old Man? Yes, he was my uncle all right.’

      ‘You did not know that he had sent for me?’

      Hugo shook his head. He said slowly:

      ‘I’d no idea of it.’

      There was an emotion in his voice that was rather hard to classify. His face looked wooden and stupid – the kind of expression, Poirot thought, that made a useful mask in times of stress.

      Poirot said quietly:

      ‘We are in Westshire, are we not? I know your Chief Constable, Major Riddle, very well.’

      Hugo said:

      ‘Riddle lives about half a mile away. He’ll probably come over himself.’

      ‘That,’ said Poirot, ‘will be very convenient.’

      He began prowling gently round the room. He twitched aside the window curtain and examined the french windows, trying them gently. They were closed.

      On the wall behind the desk there hung a round mirror. The mirror was shivered. Poirot bent down and picked up a small object.

      ‘What’s that?’ asked Hugo Trent.

      ‘The bullet.’

      ‘It passed straight through his head and struck the mirror?’

      ‘It seems so.’

      Poirot replaced the bullet meticulously where he had found it. He came up to the desk. Some papers were arranged neatly stacked in heaps. On the blotting-pad itself there was a loose sheet of paper with the word SORRY printed across it in large, shaky handwriting.

      Hugo said: ‘He must have written that just before he – did it.’

      Poirot nodded thoughtfully.

      He looked again at the smashed mirror, then at the dead man. His brow creased itself a little as though in perplexity. He went over to the door, where it hung crookedly with its splintered lock. There was no key in the door, as he knew – otherwise he would not have been able to see through the keyhole. There was no sign of it on the floor. Poirot leaned over the dead man and ran his fingers over him.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The key is in his pocket.’

      Hugo drew out a cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette. He spoke rather hoarsely.

      ‘It seems all quite clear,’ he said. ‘My uncle shut himself up in here, scrawled that message on a piece of paper, and then shot himself.’

      Poirot