Colin Lamb’s Narrative

It had been quite a long time since I had visited Whitehaven Mansions. Some years ago it had been an outstanding building of modern flats. Now there were many other more imposing and even more modern blocks of buildings flanking it on either side. Inside, I noted, it had recently had a face lift. It had been repainted in pale shades of yellow and green.

I went up in the lift and pressed the bell of Number 203. It was opened to me by that impeccable man-servant, George. A smile of welcome came to his face.

‘Mr Colin! It’s a long time since we’ve seen you here.’

‘Yes, I know. How are you, George?’

‘I am in good health, I am thankful to say, sir.’

I lowered my voice. ‘And how’s he?’

George lowered his own voice, though that was hardly necessary since it had been pitched in a most discreet key from the beginning of our conversation.

‘I think, sir, that sometimes he gets a little depressed.’

I nodded sympathetically.

‘If you will come this way, sir-’ He relieved me of my hat.

‘Announce me, please, as Mr Colin Lamb.’

‘Very good, sir.’ He opened a door and spoke in a clear voice. ‘Mr Colin Lamb to see you, sir.’

He drew back to allow me to pass him and I went into the room.

My friend, Hercule Poirot, was sitting in his usual large, square armchair in front of the fireplace. I noted that one bar of the rectangular electric fire glowed red. It was early September, the weather was warm, but Poirot was one of the first men to recognize the autumn chill, and to take precautions against it. On either side of him on the floor was a neat pile of books. More books stood on the table at his left side. At his right hand was a cup from which steam rose. A tisane, I suspected. He was fond of tisanes and often urged them on me. They were nauseating to taste and pungent to smell.

‘Don’t get up,’ I said, but Poirot was already on his feet. He came towards me on twinkling, patent-leather shod feet with outstretched hands.

‘Aha, so it isyou, it isyou, my friend! My young friend Colin. But why do you call yourself by the name of Lamb? Let me think now. There is a proverb or a saying. Something about mutton dressed as lamb. No. That is what is said of elderly ladies who are trying to appear younger than they are. That does not apply to you. Aha, I have it. You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Is that it?’

‘Not even that,’ I said. ‘It’s just that in my line of business I thought my own name might be rather a mistake, that it might be connected too much with my old man. Hence Lamb. Short, simple, easily remembered. Suiting, I flatter myself, my personality.’

‘Of that I cannot be sure,’ said Poirot. ‘And how is my good friend, your father?’

‘The old man’s fine,’ I said. ‘Very busy with his hollyhocks-or is it chrysanthemums? The seasons go by so fast I can never remember what it is at the moment.’

‘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? I thought the good Superintendent was going to write his memoirs?’

‘He started,’ I said, ‘but he found that so much would have to be left out that he finally came to the conclusion that what was left in would be so unbearably tame as not to be worth writing.’ 

‘One has to have the discretion, yes. It is unfortunate,’ said Poirot, ‘because your father could tell some very interesting things. I have much admiration for him. I always had. You know, his methods were to me very interesting. 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!’

I laughed. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s not the fashion nowadays for sons to admire their fathers. Most of them seem to sit down, venom in their pens, and remember all the dirty things they can and put them down with obvious satisfaction. But personally, I’ve got enormous respect for my old man. I hope I’ll even be as good as he was. Not that I’m exactly in his line of business, of course.’

‘But related to it,’ said Poirot. ‘Closely related to it, though you have to work behind the scenes in a way that he did not.’ He coughed delicately. ‘I think I am to congratulate you on having had a rather spectacular success lately. Is it not so? Theaffaire Larkin.’

‘It’s all right so far as it goes,’ I said. ‘But there’s a good deal more that I’d like to have, just to round it off properly. Still, that isn’t really what I came here to talk to you about.’

‘Of course not, of course not,’ said Poirot. He waved me to a chair and offered me some tisane, which I instantly refused.

George entered at the apposite moment with a whisky decanter, a glass and a siphon which he placed at my elbow.

‘And what are you doing with yourself these days?’ I asked Poirot.

Casting a look at the various books around him I said: ‘It looks as though you are doing a little research?’

Poirot sighed. ‘You may call it that. Yes, perhaps in a way it is true. Lately I have felt very badly the need for a problem. It does not matter, I said to myself, what the problem is. It can be like the good Sherlock Holmes, the depth at which the parsley has sunk in the butter. All that matters is that there shouldbe a problem. It is not the muscles I need to exercise, you see, it is the cells of the brain.’

‘Just a question of keeping fit. I understand.’

‘As you say.’ He sighed. ‘But problems,mon cher, are not so easy to come by. It is true that last Thursday one presented itself to me. The unwarranted appearance of three pieces of dried orange peel in my umbrella stand. How did they come there? Howcould they have come there? I do not eat oranges myself. George would never put old pieces of orange peel in the umbrella stand. Nor is a visitor likely to bring with him three pieces of orange peel. Yes, it was quite a problem.’ 

‘And you solved it?’

‘I solved it,’ said Poirot.

He spoke with more melancholy than pride.

‘It was not in the end very interesting. A question of aremplacement of the usual cleaning woman and the new one brought with her, strictly against orders, one of her children. Although it does not sound interesting, nevertheless it needed a steady penetration of lies, camouflage and all the rest of it. It was satisfactory, shall we say, but not important.’

‘Disappointing,’ I suggested.

‘Enfin,’ said Poirot, ‘I am modest. But one should not need to use a rapier to cut the string of a parcel.’

I shook my head in a solemn manner. Poirot continued, ‘I have occupied myself of late in reading various real life unsolved mysteries. I apply to them my own solutions.’

‘You mean cases like the Bravo case, Adelaide Bartlett and all the rest of them?’

‘Exactly. But it was in a way too easy. There is no doubt whatever in my own mind as to who murdered Charles Bravo. The companion may have been involved, but she was certainly not the moving spirit in the matter. Then there was that unfortunate adolescent, Constance Kent. The true motive that lay behind her strangling of the small brother whom she undoubtedly loved has always been a puzzle. But not to me. It was clear as soon as I read about the case. As for Lizzie Borden, one wishes only that one could put a few necessary questions to various people concerned. I am fairly sure in my own mind of what the answers would be. Alas, they are all by now dead, I fear.’

I thought to myself, as so often before, that modesty was certainly not Hercule Poirot’s strong point.

‘And what did I do next?’ continued Poirot.