The Clocks

Poirot paused, sighed and resumed his lecture. ‘Then we turn to America.’ He plucked a book from the left-hand pile. ‘Florence Elks, now. There is order and method there, colourful happenings, yes, but plenty of point in them. Gay and alive. She has wit, this lady, though perhaps, like so many American writers, a little too obsessed with drink. I am, as you know,mon ami, a connoisseur of wine. A claret or a burgundy introduced into a story, with its vintage and date properly authenticated, I always find pleasing. But the exact amount of rye and bourbon that are consumed on every other page by the detective in an American thriller do not seem to me interesting at all. Whether he drinks a pint or a half-pint which he takes from his collar drawer does not seem to me really to affect the action of the story in any way. This drink motive in American books is very much what King Charles’s head was to poor Mr Dick when he tried to write his memoirs. Impossible to keep it out.’

‘What about the tough school?’ I asked.

Poirot waved aside the tough school much as he would have waved an intruding fly or mosquito.

‘Violence for violence’ sake? Since when has that been interesting? I have seen plenty of violence in my early career as a police officer. Bah, you might as well read a medical text book.Tout de meme, 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 over-laden with atmosphere than most French writers. Now take Louisa O’Malley for instance.’

He dived once more for a book.

‘What a model of fine scholarly writing is hers, yet what excitement, what mounting apprehension she arouses in her reader. 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. Itcould happen so, and itdoes happen so. She is very good, this Louisa O’Malley, she is very good indeed.’

He sighed, leaned back, shook his head and drank off the remainder of his tisane.

‘And then-there are always the old favourites.’

Again he dived for a book.

‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,’ he murmured lovingly, and even uttered reverently the one word, ‘Maitre!’

‘Sherlock Holmes?’ I asked.

‘Ah,non,non, not Sherlock Holmes! It is the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that I salute. These tales of Sherlock Holmes are in reality far-fetched, full of fallacies and most artificially contrived. But the art of the writing-ah, that is entirely different. The pleasure of the language, the creation above all of that magnificent character, Dr Watson. Ah, that was indeed a triumph.’

He sighed and shook his head and murmured, obviously by a natural association of ideas:

‘Ce cherHastings. My friend Hastings of whom you have often heard me speak. It is a long time since I have had news of him. What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions.’

‘That’s not confined to South America,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re having revolutions all over the world nowadays.’

‘Let us not discuss the Bomb,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘If it has to be, it has to be, but let us not discuss it.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I came to discuss something quite different with you.’

‘Ah! You are about to be married, is that it? I am delighted,mon cher, delighted.’

‘What on earth put that in your head, Poirot?’ I asked. ‘Nothing of the kind.’

‘It happens,’ said Poirot, ‘it happens every day.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said firmly, ‘but not to me. Actually I came to tell you that I’d run across rather a pretty little problem in murder.’

‘Indeed? A pretty problem in murder, you say? And you have brought it tome. Why?’ 

‘Well-’ I was slightly embarrassed. ‘I-I thought you might enjoy it,’ I said.

Poirot looked at me thoughtfully. He caressed his moustache with a loving hand, then he spoke.

‘A master,’ he said, ‘is often kind to his dog. He goes out and throws a ball for the dog. A dog, however, is also capable of being kind to its master. A dog kills a rabbit or a rat and he brings it and lays it at his master’s feet. And what does he do then? He wags his tail.’

I laughed in spite of myself. ‘Am I wagging my tail?’

‘I think you are, my friend. Yes, I think you are.’

‘All right then,’ I said. ‘And what does master say? Does he want to see doggy’s rat? Does he want to know all about it?’

‘Of course. Naturally. It is a crime that you think will interest me. Is that right?’

‘The whole point of it is,’ I said, ‘that it just doesn’t make sense.’

‘That is impossible,’ said Poirot. ‘Everything makes sense. Everything.’

‘Well, you try and make sense of this.I can’t. Not that it’s really anything to do with me. I just happened to come in on it. Mind you, it may turn out to be quite straightforward, once the dead man is identified.’