The Third Knock | A Hercule Poirot Mystery

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[00:00:00]The first knock came at 11 minutes past 2.

[00:00:03]Miss Adelaide Finch, who had lived at 14 Mulberry Crescent for the better part of 40 years and prided herself on a thin, reliable sleep, sat up in bed and listened.

[00:00:15]One knock, firm, measured, neither hurried nor timid.

[00:00:22]She waited, as one does.

[00:00:25]The house answered only with its usual small noises.

[00:00:28]The tick of the clock on the landing, the grumble of pipes, the suggestion of wind pressing against the sash.

[00:00:35]She thought, perhaps, that she had dreamed it.

[00:00:39]The second knock came at 17 minutes past 2.

[00:00:42]This time, she was certain.

[00:00:45]The knock traveled through the walls of the terrace, and Miss Finch, who lived alone and knew every sound in her house as intimately as a pianist knows the keys, could place it precisely.

[00:00:57]It had come from the house next door, number 16, from the front door of Mr. Rupert Halliwell.

[00:01:05]She rose.

[00:01:06]She put on her dressing gown and her spectacles, in that order, which tells you something about Miss Finch.

[00:01:13]She went to the window and drew back the curtain half an inch.

[00:01:17]The street was empty. The gas lamp at the corner cast its pale yellow circle on the wet pavement. No carriage, no pedestrian, no loiterer in the shadow of the plane tree opposite. She stood there for some minutes.

[00:01:32]Nothing moved.

[00:01:34]Then the third knock, 23 minutes past 2, the same three raps upon Mr. Halliwell's door, neither louder nor softer than the two before.

[00:01:45]There was, Miss Finch would later tell Hercule Poirot, something almost patient about the knocking.

[00:01:51]It was not the knocking of a person who wished to be admitted. It was the knocking of a person who was fulfilling an obligation.

[00:01:59]She did not sleep again that night.

[00:02:02]At half past 7:00 the following morning, the charwoman who came in 3 days a week to Mr. Halliwell's house found the front door unlocked.

[00:02:10]She found the hall lamp still burning, though the wick had guttered to a black thread, and she found Mr. Rupert Halliwell, 61 years of age, bachelor, retired partner of the firm of Halliwell and Crew, solicitors, seated in the green leather armchair of his study, with his head tilted slightly to the left, and a small neat hole behind his right ear.

[00:02:33]The cartridge, when the police arrived, was discovered on the turkey carpet 3 ft from the body. A single round, a Webley service revolver, such as had been issued to officers in the Great War.

[00:02:47]The revolver was not at the scene. The front door had not been forced, and three houses down the Crescent, Miss Adelaide Finch sat in her breakfast room with her hands folded around a cup of tea gone cold, waiting for someone, anyone, to come and ask her what she had heard.

[00:03:05]It had been a quiet fortnight.

[00:03:08]This, Poirot insisted, was not a fact to be celebrated, but a symptom to be treated.

[00:03:15]He had taken to polishing the objects on his mantelpiece with a zeal that bordered on surgical, and on the morning in question, a Tuesday in November, with a fog that reduced the view from our sitting room to a suggestion of gray, he was engaged in rearranging a small collection of Sevres porcelain figurines by some criterion I could not identify.

[00:03:36]Not by size, surely, I said, watching him.

[00:03:40]By expression, Hastings.

[00:03:42]The shepherdess, she goes next to the harlequin because they are both amused.

[00:03:46]The lion, he is disdainful, and so he goes at the end, where his disdain does not infect the others.

[00:03:53]I see.

[00:03:55]You do not see.

[00:03:56]You humor me.

[00:03:58]There is a difference.

[00:04:00]He was not wrong.

[00:04:02]I had taken up my newspaper and was about to surrender to the weather when the bell rang below, and Mrs. Pearson's voice drifted up the stairs in the tone she reserved for visitors of consequence.

[00:04:15]Chief Inspector Japp was shown in a moment later, shaking rain from his bowler and rubbing his hands at the fire.

[00:04:22]Poirot. Hastings.

[00:04:24]Filthy morning.

[00:04:26]It is improved, Poirot said, by your arrival. You bring, I perceive, the case.

[00:04:32]I bring a case. Whether I bring the case remains to be seen. We've got a business out at Kensington that's got us in a twist, and I thought well, I thought you might have a view.

[00:04:43]Poirot's eyes brightened by a degree so subtle that only a man who had known him for years would have perceived it. He gestured Japp to the armchair and took his own.

[00:04:53]Tell me everything. Omit nothing, especially what seems trivial.

[00:04:58]Japp produced a notebook, thumbed it open, and began.

[00:05:03]Mr. Rupert Halliwell, 61, bachelor, retired solicitor, had been found shot dead in his study on the morning of the 18th.

[00:05:13]The charwoman had raised the alarm. The police surgeon placed the time of death between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.

[00:05:21]The cause of death was a single gunshot wound behind the right ear, fired from close range, no more than 18 in, judging by the powder burns.

[00:05:31]The bullet was a.455, consistent with a Webley service revolver of the type issued to British officers during the war. The weapon had not been recovered. There was no sign of forced entry.

[00:05:43]The front door had been unlocked, the back door bolted from within. The windows were all fastened.

[00:05:49]A half-finished brandy stood on the desk beside the deceased, together with a cigar that had burned itself out in the ashtray.

[00:05:57]Suicide? I asked.

[00:06:00]Considered it, Japp said.

[00:06:02]But the angle's wrong. The weapon's gone, and no man shoots himself behind the ear unless he's a contortionist.

[00:06:09]Also, he turned a page, the neighbor, Miss Adelaide Finch at number 14, heard three knocks at the deceased's door between 2:11 and 2:23.

[00:06:20]Saw nobody on the street either time she looked.

[00:06:23]Poirot's head tilted. Three knocks.

[00:06:27]She's certain.

[00:06:28]To the minute.

[00:06:30]She's one of those old ladies who notice things, if you know the type.

[00:06:33]And the interval between the knocks?

[00:06:36]Japp consulted his notes.

[00:06:38]Six minutes between the first and second.

[00:06:41]Six between the second and third.

[00:06:43]Precisely six.

[00:06:45]So she says.

[00:06:47]Poirot steepled his fingers.

[00:06:50]I knew that look. Something had caught the corner of his attention and was refusing to let go.

[00:06:56]This is interesting, he said. A person who knocks once at a door and receives no answer does not usually wait 6 minutes to knock again.

[00:07:05]He knocks again directly, or he goes away, and he does not, as a rule, return for a third knock at a further interval of 6 minutes.

[00:07:14]This is not the behavior of a caller.

[00:07:17]Then what is it? I asked.

[00:07:19]A signal, perhaps, or a ritual, or something altogether stranger.

[00:07:25]He looked at Japp.

[00:07:28]I should very much like to visit the house.

[00:07:31]I was hoping you'd say that.

[00:07:33]Mulberry Crescent was one of those respectable pockets of Kensington that had been built for the merchant class in the 1860s and had since become the quiet preserve of retired professionals, widows of substance, and the occasional orientalist with an inheritance.

[00:07:49]The houses were cream stuccoed, four stories tall, fronted by iron railings and neat little gardens no wider than a man's outstretched arms.

[00:08:00]Number 16 was distinguished from its neighbors only by the constable stationed at the door.

[00:08:06]We were admitted by Sergeant Biddle, a man of vast competence and limited imagination, who conducted us through a hall smelling faintly of pipe tobacco and beeswax, to the study on the ground floor.

[00:08:18]The body had been removed, but the room had been preserved otherwise, and Poirot paused on the threshold to take it in with that still, absorbed attention which he gave to the first inspection of any scene.

[00:08:32]For a long moment, he said nothing.

[00:08:34]His eyes moved, not sweeping, but settling, from the desk to the fireplace, from the bookshelves to the carpet, from the single chair drawn up before the hearth to the heavy velvet curtains at the window.

[00:08:48]Do not touch anything yet, Hastings, he murmured, though I had made no move to.

[00:08:54]The study was a masculine room, handsomely kept. The desk faced the window. Behind it, the green leather armchair in which Halliwell had been found.

[00:09:04]On the desk, a blotter, a silver inkwell, a small brass lamp, a half-finished glass of brandy, an ashtray with a cold stub of a cigar, and, this caught Poirot's attention at once, an open letter, folded back on itself, as though Halliwell had been reading it at the moment of his death.

[00:09:24]Poirot bent over the letter without touching it. I joined him. The paper was of good quality, cream, unheaded. The handwriting was spidery and thin, as though written with a nib held almost vertical. The message was brief.

[00:09:41]Dear Halliwell, I have thought about the matter at length, and I find I cannot agree to your terms. The arrangement you propose would be a betrayal of the trust placed in me, and I will not be a party to it.

[00:09:55]I must ask you to consider the question closed.

[00:09:58]If you persist, I shall be forced to take steps I would very much prefer not to take.

[00:10:04]Yours, G.

[00:10:06]"G," Poirot murmured.

[00:10:09]"A single initial.

[00:10:10]That is either a familiar correspondent or a careful one."

[00:10:15]"A threat," I said.

[00:10:17]"A warning, Hastings. There is a distinction. A threat says, 'I will harm you.' A warning says, 'You will bring harm upon yourself.' This letter says the latter."

[00:10:28]He turned his attention to the rest of the desk. The blotter yielded nothing of interest. Halliwell had blotted only his own name and a column of figures long since illegible in reverse.

[00:10:39]The inkwell was full. The cigar had burned down evenly, suggesting it had been lit and then abandoned rather than smoked through.

[00:10:48]The brandy glass was half empty.

[00:10:50]"He was interrupted," Poirot said.

[00:10:54]"He lit his cigar, poured his brandy, settled to read his letter, and then something required him to rise. The cigar was set down, the brandy was set aside, and he did not return."

[00:11:07]"He answered the door."

[00:11:08]"Perhaps."

[00:11:10]He turned to the door.

[00:11:12]The study opened directly into the hall.

[00:11:15]From where we stood, one could see the front door through the study doorway, a distance of some 12 ft. Poirot measured it with his eye. "If he sat at the desk and heard a knock, he would rise, walk to the hall, open the front door. The caller would be admitted. They would proceed where?"

[00:11:33]"Back into the study, presumably."

[00:11:36]"Presumably."

[00:11:37]"And what follows?" "The caller is invited to sit, offered a drink? No."

[00:11:43]"Observe, Hastings.

[00:11:45]There is only one glass on the desk. No second glass has been poured.

[00:11:50]No second chair has been drawn up.

[00:11:53]So, the caller wasn't invited to sit.

[00:11:56]Or the caller did not stay long enough to be offered hospitality.

[00:12:00]Or the caller was a person to whom hospitality was not extended. There are several possibilities. But what we can establish is that whoever entered this house entered briefly, transacted their business, and departed, leaving Mr. Halliwell dead in his chair and the front door unlocked behind them."

[00:12:18]He crossed to the chair and bent to examine it. The leather was worn smooth from decades of use. There were no signs of struggle, no disturbance of the cushion, no torn fabric, no blood stains beyond the small dark mark on the headrest where the bullet had exited and embedded itself in the wooden panel behind.

[00:12:39]"Hastings, observe the position of the chair.

[00:12:42]It stood at an angle to the desk, turned perhaps 30° to the left." Facing, I realized, the door.

[00:12:50]"He saw his killer," I said. "He saw his killer and he did not rise. He did not shout. He did not raise his hands to defend himself. He sat in his chair and permitted the approach of the person who would kill him."

[00:13:04]Poirot straightened.

[00:13:06]"There are two explanations. Either he did not know he was in danger or he knew and did not care."

[00:13:13]"Surely the first."

[00:13:15]"Perhaps."

[00:13:17]He looked at me with that particular expression that meant he had already considered both and found the second more interesting. "But a man who receives a letter warning him of steps I would very much prefer not to take and who then admits a midnight caller without concern, such a man is either exceptionally trusting or exceptionally foolish.

[00:13:38]And Mr. Halliwell, if his reputation as a solicitor is to be believed, was neither."

[00:13:45]We spent another hour in the house.

[00:13:47]Poirot examined the upstairs rooms, the kitchen, the back garden, the small walled yard where the coal was kept. He found nothing he considered significant.

[00:13:58]The house had the slightly over-tidy quality of a bachelor's home attended by a careful charwoman. Every object in its place, no clutter, no warmth.

[00:14:10]In the bedroom, I noticed a photograph on the dressing table, a young woman in a white dress, dark-haired, smiling, holding a parasol.

[00:14:20]The photograph was some 20 years old at least. Halliwell had been 61 and had never married.

[00:14:27]"His fiancee," I ventured.

[00:14:30]Poirot looked at the photograph for a long time.

[00:14:33]"Perhaps."

[00:14:34]"Or perhaps merely a face he wished to look upon each morning."

[00:14:38]"We shall see."

[00:14:40]He took out his notebook and wrote something down.

[00:14:43]"Come.

[00:14:45]It is time we spoke to Miss Adelaide Finch."

[00:14:49]Miss Finch received us in a parlor that had not, I suspect, been substantially rearranged since the late Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

[00:14:57]The upholstery was of a dense floral pattern in which roses, foxgloves, and something resembling a pineapple vied for dominance.

[00:15:07]A canary sang in a brass cage by the window.

[00:15:10]The room smelled of furniture polish and camphor and, very faintly, of a lavender sachet.

[00:15:17]Miss Finch herself was 70 if she was a day, thin as a rail, with a face like a watchful sparrow.

[00:15:25]She wore a gray dress of considerable age, a cameo brooch at her throat, and the expression of a woman whose powers of observation have been undervalued by society for too long.

[00:15:35]"Monsieur Poirot," she said, extending a small dry hand. "I have read about you, the case of the Italian countess."

[00:15:44]"You are kind to remember."

[00:15:46]"I remember everything, Monsieur Poirot.

[00:15:48]That is why I'm here and that is why you are here."

[00:15:52]"Sit. Tea." We were given tea. It was very strong and very hot, and Miss Finch presided over its distribution with the ceremony of a duchess at a state occasion.

[00:16:05]"Now," she said when the cups were filled, "ask me what you wish to know."

[00:16:10]"The knocks, Mademoiselle.

[00:16:12]Tell me about the knocks."

[00:16:14]She closed her eyes briefly, the gesture of a woman consulting a perfect interior record.

[00:16:20]"The first was at 11 minutes past two. I heard it distinctly. Three raps. No, I should be precise.

[00:16:28]Three strikes.

[00:16:30]Not a casual rapping with the knuckles.

[00:16:32]A firm striking with the knocker itself.

[00:16:35]It has a particular sound, the knocker at number 16, brass, rather heavy, with a slight rattle when it is lifted.

[00:16:43]Three strikes in succession?"

[00:16:45]"Three strikes. A pause of perhaps a second between each. Then silence."

[00:16:51]"And the silence lasted 6 minutes.

[00:16:55]I was watching the clock."

[00:16:57]"Why were you watching the clock, Mademoiselle?"

[00:17:00]A thin smile.

[00:17:02]"Because I wished to see whether the knock would be repeated. I've lived next to Mr. Halliwell for 12 years, Monsieur Poirot.

[00:17:11]He has never received a caller after 10:00 in the evening, not once."

[00:17:15]"Continue."

[00:17:17]"The second knock came at 17 minutes past two. Three strikes again, same firmness, same interval between strikes.

[00:17:25]I rose and went to the window and saw nothing. The street was empty. There was no caller at Mr. Halliwell's door. The door had not opened. Nobody had entered or departed."

[00:17:38]Poirot leaned forward slightly.

[00:17:41]"Mademoiselle, this is important. You are certain the door had not opened?"

[00:17:47]"Quite certain. I should have heard it.

[00:17:49]I can hear Mr. Halliwell's door from this room on a still night, and last night was still.

[00:17:55]Also, I was at my window for some minutes.

[00:17:58]I would have observed any person departing."

[00:18:01]"And the third knock?"

[00:18:03]"23 minutes past two.

[00:18:05]Three strikes.

[00:18:07]Then silence."

[00:18:10]"And you did not go again to the window?"

[00:18:12]She colored faintly.

[00:18:14]"I confess I did not. I was I was disturbed, Monsieur Poirot.

[00:18:20]I felt a sense of something of something wrong.

[00:18:24]I drew my curtain and returned to my bed and I did not sleep."

[00:18:28]"You heard nothing more?"

[00:18:30]"Nothing. No footsteps, no opening door, no voices, only the three knocks."

[00:18:37]Poirot was silent for a long moment.

[00:18:40]I watched him. His eyes were fixed on the canary, which had stopped singing and was regarding us with the beady attention canaries reserve for strangers.

[00:18:49]"Mademoiselle," he said at length, "I wish to be certain I understand.

[00:18:54]Between each knock, 6 minutes of silence.

[00:18:58]During those 6 minutes, nobody entered the house.

[00:19:01]Nobody departed.

[00:19:04]The street, to your observation, was empty.

[00:19:08]The door did not open.

[00:19:10]Is this correct?"

[00:19:11]"Entirely correct."

[00:19:13]"And yet at some point in the night, Mr. Halliwell was shot and his murderer departed, leaving the front door unlocked behind them.

[00:19:22]So, the police tell me.

[00:19:24]This presents an interesting difficulty."

[00:19:27]"It does indeed, Monsieur Poirot."

[00:19:29]He set down his cup.

[00:19:31]"One further question, if I may.

[00:19:34]In the 12 years you have lived beside Mr. Halliwell, have you observed him to have enemies?"

[00:19:40]Miss Finch considered the question with the gravity of a judge considering a sentence.

[00:19:45]"Not enemies.

[00:19:46]Mr. Halliwell was not a man who inspired strong feeling in the ordinary sense. He was polite. He was distant.

[00:19:54]He went to his club on Wednesdays and to the country on certain weekends. He received business callers during the day and nobody in the evening.

[00:20:02]She paused.

[00:20:04]But there was one exception. About 3 months ago, a gentleman called in the afternoon, perhaps 4:00, and the two of them quarreled.

[00:20:14]I do not listen at walls, Monsieur Poirot, but voices in anger travel, and I was in my back garden, which adjoins Mr. Halliwell's.

[00:20:23]I heard the visitor shout, "You will regret this, Rupert. I promise you you will regret this."

[00:20:30]The visitor's name?

[00:20:32]I do not know.

[00:20:33]But I saw him leave.

[00:20:35]A tall man, 50, perhaps.

[00:20:38]Gray hair, gray mustache, military carriage.

[00:20:42]He wore a dark coat and carried a walking stick with a silver head.

[00:20:47]He came only once?

[00:20:48]I observed him only once.

[00:20:51]But on two occasions since I have seen Mr. Halliwell meet the same man in the street at the corner of Mulberry Crescent and Argyle Road, where they spoke briefly and separately, as though arranging not to be seen together.

[00:21:04]Poirot rose.

[00:21:05]He bowed over her hand.

[00:21:08]Mademoiselle, you have been more useful than you can know.

[00:21:12]I shall hope to call upon you again.

[00:21:14]"I shall expect you," said Miss Finch, and saw us to the door with the air of a woman who had enjoyed herself thoroughly and was preparing to telephone her sister with a full account.

[00:21:25]Halliwell and Crew occupied the second floor of a handsome building in Bedford Row at the respectable end of legal London.

[00:21:32]The brass plate beside the door read simply, "Halliwell and Crew, solicitors, established 1891," and gave no clue as to the nature of the firm's business.

[00:21:46]We were received by Mr. Jasper Crew, surviving partner, in a paneled office that smelled of old paper and furniture wax.

[00:21:54]Crew was a man of about 50, balding, with a soft voice and the watchful, slightly weary expression of a professional who has spent his career managing the affairs of the difficult and the dead.

[00:22:07]He rose from behind his desk as we entered.

[00:22:10]"Monsieur Poirot, I've been expecting you.

[00:22:13]Inspector Japp telephoned this morning.

[00:22:16]Please sit.

[00:22:17]This is a dreadful business."

[00:22:19]"It is.

[00:22:20]Mr. Crew, I must ask questions which may seem intrusive.

[00:22:25]I hope you will forgive the intrusion in the service of discovering your partner's killer."

[00:22:30]"Of course.

[00:22:31]You were partners for how long?"

[00:22:33]"26 years.

[00:22:35]Rupert took me on as an articled clerk in 1900.

[00:22:39]I became junior partner in 1908, equal partner in 1915, when the senior Mr. Halliwell, Rupert's father, retired.

[00:22:48]We have worked together, side by side, for a quarter of a century."

[00:22:53]"You knew him well?"

[00:22:55]"As well as anyone living."

[00:22:57]Crew's voice caught slightly.

[00:22:59]He recovered.

[00:23:01]"Which is perhaps less well than one might imagine.

[00:23:04]Rupert was a private man. He kept his personal affairs and his professional affairs in strict separation.

[00:23:10]I knew his mind on matters of law.

[00:23:13]I did not know his heart."

[00:23:16]"Did he have enemies, Mr. Crew?"

[00:23:18]"Enemies in the sense of persons who might wish him harm?

[00:23:22]I would not have said so a week ago."

[00:23:24]Crew hesitated.

[00:23:26]"But I must now confess that in recent months Rupert had been preoccupied, troubled, by a matter he would not discuss with me.

[00:23:35]I asked him on two occasions whether something was wrong.

[00:23:39]He said only that he was handling a difficult personal affair which did not concern the firm."

[00:23:45]"A personal affair?"

[00:23:48]"Those were his words."

[00:23:50]Poirot took from his breast pocket the letter we had found on Halliwell's desk.

[00:23:55]Japp had permitted him to take it on the understanding that Poirot would share whatever he deduced from it.

[00:24:01]He passed it to Crew.

[00:24:03]"This was on Mr. Halliwell's desk at the time of his death.

[00:24:06]You recognize the hand?"

[00:24:09]Crew took the letter.

[00:24:10]He read it slowly. His face, as he read, underwent a subtle transformation, from polite attention to something closer to dread.

[00:24:20]"The hand," he said quietly, "is that of Sir Geoffrey Langmuir."

[00:24:25]"Sir Geoffrey Langmuir?"

[00:24:27]"A client of Rupert's, one of his oldest.

[00:24:30]Rupert handled his personal and estate matters for over 30 years."

[00:24:35]"Describe him to me."

[00:24:37]"A gentleman of considerable property, widowed some 15 years ago.

[00:24:41]He has a country estate in Hampshire, Langmuir House, and a town residence in Eaton Square.

[00:24:47]Military background. Served in South Africa and in the Great War. Retired colonel.

[00:24:54]Tall, gray-haired, gray mustache, carries a silver-headed walking stick."

[00:24:59]Crew looked startled.

[00:25:01]"You have met him?"

[00:25:03]"I've had him described to me.

[00:25:05]He called upon Mr. Halliwell at his home 3 months ago and they quarreled."

[00:25:10]"3 months ago?"

[00:25:11]Crew sat back slowly.

[00:25:14]"That would be approximately when Rupert's preoccupation began.

[00:25:18]Mr. Crew, I must ask you to think carefully.

[00:25:21]Do you have any knowledge of what was between your partner and Sir Geoffrey Langmuir?

[00:25:26]Any matter that might have caused dispute between them?"

[00:25:29]Crew was silent.

[00:25:31]He looked down at the letter in his hand.

[00:25:34]Then he rose, crossed to a filing cabinet, and unlocked it with a small key he drew from his waistcoat pocket.

[00:25:40]"I should not do this," he said.

[00:25:42]"Professional discretion requires that a solicitor's files remain confidential even beyond his death.

[00:25:49]But Rupert is dead and cannot be asked, and I believe he would wish the truth to be known."

[00:25:54]He withdrew a thick buff folder and brought it to the desk.

[00:25:58]"This is the file on Sir Geoffrey Langmuir's personal affairs.

[00:26:02]Rupert kept it himself.

[00:26:04]He allowed no clerk to handle it.

[00:26:07]In the ordinary course of business, I would have no occasion to consult it.

[00:26:11]But I have consulted it this morning in preparation for your visit, and I have found something which I believe is pertinent."

[00:26:18]He opened the folder and turned to a document near the back.

[00:26:22]"A codicil to Sir Geoffrey's will, drawn up, as you will see, 6 years ago.

[00:26:27]It establishes a small annuity, 500 pounds per annum, in favor of a certain Miss Lillian Marsh, resident at an address in Brighton."

[00:26:38]"Miss Lillian Marsh?

[00:26:40]A name not otherwise appearing in Sir Geoffrey's papers?

[00:26:43]No explanation of the bequest?

[00:26:45]Merely the provision."

[00:26:47]Poirot's eyes narrowed.

[00:26:49]"And the date of the codicil?"

[00:26:51]"The 4th of May, 1920."

[00:26:54]"6 years ago.

[00:26:56]And the photograph on Mr. Halliwell's dressing table. The young woman in white. Mr. Crew, did your partner ever mention to you a woman named Lillian?"

[00:27:08]Crew's face went pale.

[00:27:10]"He had a niece once," he said slowly.

[00:27:13]"The daughter of his late sister.

[00:27:15]Her name was, let me think, her name was Eleanor.

[00:27:20]She died in 1919.

[00:27:22]Spanish influenza.

[00:27:24]But she had a daughter herself, an infant at the time of her death.

[00:27:28]The child was placed with relatives.

[00:27:31]I remember Rupert being troubled about it.

[00:27:34]I remember the child's name."

[00:27:36]"Was it Lillian?"

[00:27:38]"It was."

[00:27:40]A long silence filled the office.

[00:27:43]Outside, the fog was thickening and the light through the window had gone the color of weak tea.

[00:27:48]"Mr. Crew," Poirot said quietly, "I wish you to be very honest with me now. When Mr. Halliwell's niece, Eleanor, was alive, was she acquainted with Sir Geoffrey Langmuir?"

[00:28:01]"I I do not know."

[00:28:04]"Consider, please.

[00:28:06]Think back."

[00:28:08]Crew closed his eyes.

[00:28:10]"There was a time, I cannot recall the year exactly, but before the war, when Eleanor was often a guest at Langmuir House.

[00:28:18]She was a young woman then, perhaps 20.

[00:28:22]Sir Geoffrey's wife was still living, though in poor health.

[00:28:25]Eleanor went down for the summers.

[00:28:28]And after the summer of which year?

[00:28:31]1914, I think, or 1915.

[00:28:35]After that, she did not return.

[00:28:37]I remember it because Rupert mentioned it to me once.

[00:28:41]He said she had fallen out with the family and he was glad of it."

[00:28:44]"He was glad?"

[00:28:46]"He was glad."

[00:28:47]Crew opened his eyes. "Monsieur Poirot, what are you suggesting?"

[00:28:52]"I'm suggesting nothing. I'm learning.

[00:28:55]There is a difference."

[00:28:57]Poirot rose.

[00:28:59]"I must go to Brighton.

[00:29:00]I must speak with Miss Lillian Marsh.

[00:29:03]Will you remain available to me if I have further questions?"

[00:29:06]"Of course."

[00:29:08]At the door, Poirot paused.

[00:29:11]"One last matter, Mr. Crew.

[00:29:13]In recent weeks, did Mr. Halliwell instruct you to make any changes to his own will?"

[00:29:18]Crew blinked. "He did, as a matter of fact.

[00:29:22]2 weeks ago.

[00:29:24]A new will to replace the existing one."

[00:29:27]"The terms?"

[00:29:28]"He left the bulk of his estate, some 24,000 pounds, to Miss Lillian Marsh of Brighton."

[00:29:37]We caught the 9:45 from Victoria the next morning.

[00:29:40]The fog had lifted in the night and the carriage rattled out of London into a cold, bright day, the sort of November day on which the sea looks like hammered tin and the sky like the inside of an oyster shell.

[00:29:52]Poirot sat opposite me with his hands folded on his stick and his eyes closed.

[00:29:57]He was not asleep. He was thinking.

[00:30:00]"You have an idea." I said. "I have several ideas.

[00:30:04]They are not yet agreed among themselves. I'm allowing them to settle."

[00:30:09]"Would you tell me one?"

[00:30:10]He opened his eyes.

[00:30:12]"I will tell you a question, Hastings, which is not the same thing. Why does a man knock three times at the door of another man who is already dead?"

[00:30:21]I stared at him.

[00:30:23]"What?"

[00:30:24]"Miss Finch heard three knocks at 6-minute intervals between 11 minutes past 2 and 23 minutes past 2.

[00:30:31]During those 12 minutes, she observed the street.

[00:30:35]Nobody came.

[00:30:36]Nobody went. The door did not open."

[00:30:40]"Yes."

[00:30:41]"Consider then.

[00:30:42]If the three knocks were delivered by a person standing at the door, a real caller, then that person must have stood at the door throughout for 12 minutes in silence between knocks.

[00:30:56]Miss Finch did not see them.

[00:30:58]This is possible.

[00:31:00]The angle of the porch, the position of her window, but it is unlikely.

[00:31:05]Then, they weren't real knocks.

[00:31:09]"Oh, they were real.

[00:31:11]Miss Finch is a careful witness.

[00:31:13]She heard what she heard.

[00:31:15]The question is what produced the sound.

[00:31:19]Some sort of mechanism?

[00:31:21]Perhaps. Or the knocks came from inside."

[00:31:25]He smiled at me very slightly.

[00:31:28]"Now you are thinking, Hastings.

[00:31:31]Now you are beginning to think."

[00:31:33]"But why would anyone knock on a door from the inside?"

[00:31:36]"Why, indeed."

[00:31:38]He closed his eyes again and would say no more until we reached the coast.

[00:31:43]Miss Lillian Marsh lived in a narrow gray house in a narrow gray street in the hinterland of Brighton, someway back from the sea.

[00:31:52]She received us in a sitting room on the first floor, a small tidy room with net curtains and a gas fire burning low.

[00:31:59]She was 25. She was dark-haired. She had her mother's eyes, the eyes of the woman in the photograph on Halliwell's dressing table.

[00:32:08]And she had something else as well, a carriage of the head, a set of the mouth that made me feel for an instant that I had seen her before in another face I could not quite place.

[00:32:19]"Monsieur Poirot." she said.

[00:32:22]"Captain Hastings.

[00:32:24]Thank you for coming.

[00:32:26]I received your telegram this morning and I must tell you that I have been expecting such a visit, though I hoped it would not come."

[00:32:33]"You know then that your uncle is dead."

[00:32:36]"I read the newspaper 2 days ago. It said he was found shot. It did not say he was murdered, but I assumed."

[00:32:44]"Why did you assume?"

[00:32:46]She was silent for a moment.

[00:32:48]"Because my uncle had written to me 10 days ago." she said, "to tell me that he feared for his life and that if anything should happen to him, I was to come to you."

[00:32:57]"To me?"

[00:32:59]"He named you, Monsieur Poirot.

[00:33:01]He said that if he died suddenly, I was to come to Whitehaven Mansions and tell you what I'm about to tell you now."

[00:33:08]Poirot said nothing.

[00:33:10]He waited.

[00:33:11]Miss Marsh drew a breath.

[00:33:13]Her hands, folded in her lap, were perfectly still.

[00:33:18]She had prepared herself for this conversation, I saw.

[00:33:22]She had rehearsed it perhaps in the long evenings by this gas fire.

[00:33:26]"My mother's name was Eleanor Halliwell.

[00:33:29]She died when I was 3 months old.

[00:33:31]I was brought up by a family called Marsh in Brighton, distant cousins of my father.

[00:33:37]I was told my father had died in the war."

[00:33:40]"Had he?"

[00:33:42]"No."

[00:33:43]She met Poirot's eyes.

[00:33:45]"5 years ago, when I was 20, my uncle Rupert came to see me for the first time in my adult life.

[00:33:52]He told me that my father was living.

[00:33:54]He told me my father's name, Sir Geoffrey Langmuir."

[00:33:58]"Yes."

[00:33:59]She did not flinch at the name.

[00:34:02]She had spoken it to herself, I thought, many times.

[00:34:05]"My mother was 19 when she met him. He was 40, married to a woman who had been an invalid for years.

[00:34:12]They they formed an attachment.

[00:34:16]When my mother became with child, he refused to acknowledge me.

[00:34:20]His wife was dying. A scandal at that time would have destroyed him socially and politically.

[00:34:26]He was standing for Parliament, among other things. He arranged through intermediaries that my mother should be sent away.

[00:34:34]She went to Italy for the birth.

[00:34:36]She came back to England when I was an infant and died within the year.

[00:34:40]It is not clear whether the influenza killed her or whether she had lost the will to resist it."

[00:34:46]She paused. Her voice had not wavered.

[00:34:49]"My uncle Rupert, who had been her only close relative, took the matter up.

[00:34:54]He confronted Sir Geoffrey.

[00:34:56]He was a solicitor, you understand.

[00:34:59]He knew the law and he knew the kind of pressure that might be brought.

[00:35:04]Sir Geoffrey agreed in the end to two things.

[00:35:08]He would establish a small annuity for me in his will and he would acknowledge me privately within the family as his daughter, though never publicly, never before the world."

[00:35:20]"An arrangement." Poirot said. "An arrangement. My uncle was not satisfied with it, but he accepted it. He thought, I believe, that it was the most he could extract without destroying the family's reputation along with his own, for he had acted as my mother's solicitor in her last months and there were there were irregularities, small ones, which could have been used against him if matters had come to court."

[00:35:45]"Sir Geoffrey held something over him."

[00:35:47]"A counterweight. Yes.

[00:35:50]They had each of them something the other wished to protect.

[00:35:53]For 20 years they maintained this balance.

[00:35:57]My uncle visited me once a year in secret.

[00:36:00]He paid for my education. He told me, when I was old enough to understand, who my father was and he taught me not to seek him, not to approach him.

[00:36:11]He said it would bring me only pain.

[00:36:13]And then something changed." Poirot said.

[00:36:17]"Something changed."

[00:36:19]She drew a folded letter from a small writing desk beside her.

[00:36:23]"This came from my uncle 3 months ago."

[00:36:25]Poirot took the letter. He read it aloud slowly for my benefit.

[00:36:31]"My dear Lillian, I have discovered a thing which I have suspected for some years, but have never been able to prove. Your mother's death was not natural or not wholly so.

[00:36:42]She had been provided in the weeks before she died with a tonic purchased on her behalf by an intermediary of your father's.

[00:36:51]I have lately come into possession of certain records which establish the source of that tonic and the hand that purchased it.

[00:36:59]Your father knew she was ill.

[00:37:01]He knew the influenza had weakened her and he wished her gone because she had begun in her last weeks to speak of exposing him.

[00:37:10]I have proof of this now.

[00:37:12]Imperfect proof, proof that would not stand in a court of law, but proof that would finish him socially and politically if it were known.

[00:37:21]I have written to him.

[00:37:22]I have told him what I have and I have told him my price.

[00:37:26]He will acknowledge you publicly as his daughter and provide for you openly or I will give the proof I have to the newspapers.

[00:37:34]He has until the end of the month.

[00:37:36]My dear child, I tell you this because if anything happens to me, you must know what to do.

[00:37:43]Go to Hercule Poirot at Whitehaven Mansions. Tell him everything. He will know how to proceed.

[00:37:50]Your affectionate uncle, Rupert."

[00:37:54]The room was very quiet.

[00:37:56]The gas fire hissed softly.

[00:37:58]In the street outside, a tradesman's boy was whistling.

[00:38:02]"He blackmailed your father." Poirot said.

[00:38:06]"He extorted from my father." Miss Marsh said, "What my father should have given freely.

[00:38:12]I did not ask him to do it. I did not want him to do it. When he wrote to tell me, I begged him to withdraw.

[00:38:19]I said I did not want the acknowledgement at this price.

[00:38:23]He replied that the price was not mine to decide, that it was a matter between himself and Sir Geoffrey, that it was 25 years overdue.

[00:38:31]He would not be turned.

[00:38:33]And the proof he possessed? Do you know what it was?

[00:38:37]No, he did not tell me. He said the less I knew, the safer I would be."

[00:38:43]Poirot folded the letter carefully and returned it.

[00:38:46]"Miss Marsh, I must ask you one question and I ask it without any imputation.

[00:38:52]Ask it."

[00:38:53]"Where were you on the night of the 17th?"

[00:38:56]"Here, in this house, alone as I am always alone. I cannot prove it. The woman who keeps house for me does not sleep in."

[00:39:04]"Thank you."

[00:39:06]He rose.

[00:39:07]I rose.

[00:39:09]At the door he turned back.

[00:39:11]"Miss Marsh, do you know a place called Langmuir House?"

[00:39:15]"I've never been there."

[00:39:17]"Would you wish to see it?"

[00:39:19]She considered the question.

[00:39:21]"I think I would wish." she said, "to see it only once and from the outside."

[00:39:27]We did not go to Langmuir House immediately.

[00:39:30]We returned to London and Poirot spent the following 2 days in a manner that seemed to me bafflingly unfocused.

[00:39:37]He visited a gunsmith in Bond Street. He consulted for an afternoon the registry of a small private hotel in Marylebone.

[00:39:46]He had a long conversation by telephone with an acquaintance at the Army Records Office.

[00:39:51]He went to a clockmaker in Clerkenwell and spent an hour examining a collection of clockwork mechanisms.

[00:39:58]When I asked him what he was doing, he said only, "I am buying a door, Hastings, and a door is an expensive purchase. One must know what one is buying."

[00:40:08]On the morning of the third day, he announced that we were going to Hampshire to confront Sir Geoffrey.

[00:40:14]"Not yet."

[00:40:16]"To look at his house."

[00:40:18]"And then to confront him?"

[00:40:20]"That will depend, Hastings, on what the house has to say."

[00:40:24]Langmuir House lay 3 miles from the nearest village at the end of a long drive lined with lime trees that had lost their leaves.

[00:40:32]It was a Jacobean building of red brick, extensive rather than grand, with tall twisted chimneys and mullioned windows that reflected back the pale winter sun.

[00:40:43]A groundsman was raking leaves in the forecourt as we approached.

[00:40:47]He eyed us without hostility as Poirot paid the fly driver and asked to see Sir Geoffrey.

[00:40:53]We were shown into a hall of considerable splendor and required to wait some minutes.

[00:40:59]Then a butler, as gray and dignified as the house itself, conducted us to a library on the ground floor where Sir Geoffrey Langmuir rose to meet us.

[00:41:09]He was precisely as Miss Finch had described him, tall, lean, erect, with a military carriage and the gray mustache of an older fashion.

[00:41:18]His eyes were pale blue and steady.

[00:41:20]He did not offer his hand.

[00:41:22]"Monsieur Poirot, Captain Hastings, I've been expecting you, more or less.

[00:41:28]I had assumed you would come sooner."

[00:41:30]"I prefer to be prepared," Poirot said.

[00:41:34]"Please sit."

[00:41:35]We sat.

[00:41:37]Sir Geoffrey remained standing by the fireplace.

[00:41:40]His hand rested on the mantelpiece.

[00:41:43]Casually, I thought at first, and then I saw that his fingers were pressed against the stone with an effort that made the knuckles white.

[00:41:51]"I understand Halliwell is dead," he said. "Shot, Sir Geoffrey, in his own study, between 2 and 3 in the morning of the 18th."

[00:42:01]"I was at my club in London on the night of the 17th.

[00:42:04]I dined there, I slept there.

[00:42:07]The porter will confirm it.

[00:42:08]I've given this information to Inspector Japp and I assume he has verified it."

[00:42:13]"He has.

[00:42:14]Your alibi is complete."

[00:42:16]"Then you have not come to arrest me?"

[00:42:19]"No, Sir Geoffrey. I've come to speak with you."

[00:42:23]Sir Geoffrey was silent for a moment.

[00:42:25]His eyes moved from Poirot to me and back.

[00:42:28]"Speak, then."

[00:42:30]"I know of your relationship with Eleanor Halliwell.

[00:42:33]I know of the child. I know of Mr. Halliwell's demand 3 months ago that you acknowledge Miss Lillian Marsh as your daughter."

[00:42:42]Sir Geoffrey's face did not change, but something in him, some small muscle in the jaw, tightened.

[00:42:50]"I have spoken with Miss Marsh," Poirot continued. "I have read the letter her uncle sent her.

[00:42:56]I know of his claim that you were responsible, directly or indirectly, for Eleanor Halliwell's death."

[00:43:02]"That claim," Sir Geoffrey said very quietly, "is a slander."

[00:43:07]"Perhaps, but whether it is a slander or a truth is not at the moment the question before me.

[00:43:13]The question is who killed Rupert Halliwell and why."

[00:43:17]"It was not I."

[00:43:19]"Your alibi, as I have said, is complete."

[00:43:23]"Then what more do you want from me?"

[00:43:25]Poirot took from his pocket a small brass object.

[00:43:28]He placed it on the library table between us.

[00:43:31]It was a cylinder about 4 inches long with a key wound into one end, a clockwork mechanism of the kind used in musical boxes.

[00:43:40]Sir Geoffrey stared at it.

[00:43:43]"Do you know what this is, Sir Geoffrey?"

[00:43:45]"It appears to be a clockwork."

[00:43:47]"It is a device constructed by a clockmaker in Clerkenwell according to a design that was patented some years ago for use in automated door knockers, novelty items, ornaments.

[00:43:59]It is wound.

[00:44:01]It is set to a delay.

[00:44:03]And at the appointed moment it strikes three times upon a surface to which it has been attached.

[00:44:08]It can be set to repeat at fixed intervals, 6 minutes, for example, three times."

[00:44:15]Sir Geoffrey said nothing.

[00:44:18]"Such a device, affixed to the inside of a door, would produce the sound of knocking, three knocks at 6 minute intervals, three times over, though no caller stood upon the step."

[00:44:30]"Ingenious."

[00:44:32]"The murder, Sir Geoffrey, was committed before the first knock was heard.

[00:44:37]The killer entered Halliwell's house by invitation some considerable time earlier, perhaps an hour, perhaps more.

[00:44:44]He shot Halliwell in the study. He attached a mechanism of this kind to the inside of the front door. He set it to commence its operation at 11 minutes past 2, and he departed, not by the front door, for the front door he left unlocked to suggest a caller had entered through it, but by the back door, which he bolted from inside the house first, then slipped out by way of the kitchen window, which could be pulled closed behind him without being latched."

[00:45:12]I stared at Poirot.

[00:45:14]I had known him for years and still he had moments like this, moments when the scene he was describing rose before my eyes with the clarity of something I was seeing for the first time.

[00:45:25]"The knocks were not a caller," I said.

[00:45:28]"They were an alibi."

[00:45:30]"They were an alibi for the timing of the murder.

[00:45:34]So long as Miss Finch, and Miss Finch was known to the killer, by the way, as a light sleeper and a careful witness, could testify that knocking had occurred between 2:11 and 2:23, the murder would be assumed to have taken place in that window, and any person who could establish their whereabouts during that window would be cleared.

[00:45:55]A person dining at his club, for example, whose presence was vouched for by staff and fellow members through the small hours of the night."

[00:46:04]Sir Geoffrey's knuckles on the mantelpiece were now quite white.

[00:46:07]"You are accusing me."

[00:46:09]"No, Sir Geoffrey. I have not yet accused anybody.

[00:46:13]I'm telling you what I have deduced."

[00:46:15]"Then why are you telling it to me?"

[00:46:18]"Because the person who constructed this device, or caused it to be constructed, had a particular interest in the alibi of one specific man.

[00:46:27]If that man was dining at his club as he claims, then another person acted to protect him.

[00:46:33]If that man himself commissioned the device and gave it to another to use, then he is guilty of conspiracy to murder, whether he pulled the trigger or not."

[00:46:42]"I did not commission any such device."

[00:46:45]"I believe you."

[00:46:46]Sir Geoffrey blinked.

[00:46:48]"You believe me?"

[00:46:49]"I do.

[00:46:51]Because you are a man who would not use clockwork, Sir Geoffrey.

[00:46:54]You are a military man.

[00:46:56]If you wished Halliwell dead, you would have shot him yourself in a moment of decisive action, and you would have accepted the consequences.

[00:47:04]This This is the work of a subtler mind, a more, forgive me, a more fearful mind."

[00:47:12]"Then who?"

[00:47:14]"Someone who loves you, Sir Geoffrey.

[00:47:16]Someone who knew of Halliwell's demand.

[00:47:19]Someone who stood to lose everything if you were publicly disgraced.

[00:47:23]Not merely your reputation, but the reputation, the position, the inheritance of another."

[00:47:30]Sir Geoffrey sank into a chair.

[00:47:32]He did not speak for a long time.

[00:47:35]"My son," he said at last. "You have a son, Sir Geoffrey?"

[00:47:40]"By my first marriage.

[00:47:42]Edward. He is 28. He has He has a promising political future.

[00:47:48]He is to be adopted as a parliamentary candidate at the next election."

[00:47:52]"And he knew of Halliwell's demand?"

[00:47:55]"He knew."

[00:47:56]Sir Geoffrey's voice had gone flat.

[00:47:59]"I told him 3 months ago.

[00:48:02]I told him everything about Eleanor, about Lillian, about the demand that I acknowledge her. He was He was very angry. He said it would destroy the family. He said I had protected the name for 25 years and I must not surrender it now."

[00:48:19]"And you?"

[00:48:20]"I had decided to surrender it.

[00:48:22]I had decided to acknowledge her."

[00:48:25]Sir Geoffrey looked up and his pale eyes were suddenly terrible.

[00:48:29]"Do you understand me, Monsieur Poirot?

[00:48:32]I had decided.

[00:48:34]I had written to Halliwell 3 days before he died to tell him so.

[00:48:38]I was going to do it.

[00:48:40]I was going to do it and take the consequences.

[00:48:44]There was no need to kill him. There was no need."

[00:48:48]A clock on the library mantel struck three.

[00:48:51]The sound seemed to fill the room.

[00:48:53]"Your letter," Poirot said gently, "the one on Halliwell's desk, the one that said you could not agree to his terms.

[00:49:02]That letter was from 3 months ago, not 3 days ago.

[00:49:06]Yes?"

[00:49:07]"Yes."

[00:49:08]"It was my first reply.

[00:49:10]I changed my mind later."

[00:49:12]"Edward did not know you had changed your mind."

[00:49:15]"I had not yet told him."

[00:49:17]Poirot nodded slowly.

[00:49:19]"Then we must go to London, Sir Geoffrey, you and I, and we must speak with your son. And we must hope, I do not know for whose sake, perhaps for yours, that he is able to offer a better account of his movements on the night of the 17th than I fear he will."

[00:49:35]Edward Langmuir was in his rooms in the Albany when we arrived.

[00:49:39]He was, as his father had said, 28. He was handsome in a sharp-featured way, with his father's eyes and his own restless mouth, and he received us with a cold composure of a young man who has read the newspapers and understands why we have come.

[00:49:55]Sir Geoffrey had said very little on the journey up from Hampshire.

[00:49:59]He had sat by the window of our compartment and watched the fields go by, and once, only once, he had said, "He was a good boy. He was always a good boy."

[00:50:10]Whether he meant Edward or Rupert Halliwell, I did not ask.

[00:50:14]Edward showed us into a small sitting room. He did not offer refreshment. He stood, as his father had stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, and his eyes went from his father's face to Poirot's and back.

[00:50:28]"Father, Monsieur Poirot, I take it this is not a social call."

[00:50:33]"It is not," Sir Geoffrey said.

[00:50:36]Poirot stepped forward. He did not raise his voice. He did not embellish. He stated the case as he had constructed it.

[00:50:44]The clockwork, the alibi, the reason, the identity of the only person in England who had the motive and the knowledge and the necessary coldness to have devised it.

[00:50:55]Edward listened.

[00:50:57]He did not interrupt.

[00:50:59]When Poirot had finished, there was a silence.

[00:51:02]"You have no proof," Edward said. "I have the device which was purchased last month from a clockmaker in Clerkenwell by a person who gave a false name, but whom the clockmaker will identify on seeing him.

[00:51:15]I have a gunsmith in Bond Street who will confirm that a young gentleman of your description purchased a.455 service revolver 6 weeks ago out of the ordinary channel, through a private sale.

[00:51:28]I have the porter at the Marylebone Hotel where you engaged a room under an assumed name for the night of the 17th, which you used only for 2 hours between 11 and 1 before departing on foot to Kensington.

[00:51:41]I have the cabman who drove you back to the Albany at half past 3:00 in the morning.

[00:51:45]These things, Monsieur Langmere, your father's houseman, who adores your father and has served your family for 40 years, told me were inconsistent with your claim to have been at Langmere House on the night of the murder. He had been instructed by you to say otherwise.

[00:52:02]He was unable, when pressed, to maintain the falsehood."

[00:52:07]Edward was very still.

[00:52:09]"I do not require a confession, Monsieur Langmere.

[00:52:12]Inspector Japp has the evidence I have gathered. He is at this moment speaking to the cabman and the clockmaker and the gunsmith.

[00:52:20]He will shortly be at your door.

[00:52:22]I came first because your father wished it and because I wished it myself.

[00:52:27]Why?

[00:52:28]Because I wished to see, Monsieur Langmere, whether you would tell your father why you did it.

[00:52:34]He has come a long way this afternoon.

[00:52:36]He deserves to hear it from you."

[00:52:39]Edward looked at his father.

[00:52:41]Sir Geoffrey had not moved.

[00:52:43]He was watching his son with an expression I cannot describe except by saying it was the expression of a man watching a window break in slow motion, already too late, already irreversible, still unbelievable.

[00:52:58]"Father," Edward said.

[00:53:00]His voice was steady.

[00:53:01]"I did it for you."

[00:53:03]Sir Geoffrey closed his eyes.

[00:53:06]"I did it for the name.

[00:53:08]I did it because you were going to throw away everything, the house, the seat, the family, for a girl you had never met and a mother you had not loved enough to marry.

[00:53:17]I did it because you were being blackmailed by a self-righteous old solicitor who had decided, after 25 years, that he was the conscience of the Langmeres.

[00:53:27]I did it because someone had to."

[00:53:30]"No one had to," Sir Geoffrey said without opening his eyes.

[00:53:34]"I had to."

[00:53:36]"No one had to."

[00:53:37]"He would have ruined you. He would have ruined me. He would have ruined all of us."

[00:53:42]"He was your cousin," Sir Geoffrey said.

[00:53:45]"By blood, Edward, through the girl who is your half-sister and whom you have never deigned to meet.

[00:53:51]He was your cousin and you killed him in his chair."

[00:53:55]Edward said nothing. There was a knock at the outer door of the flat.

[00:53:59]"Not clockwork.

[00:54:01]A man's hand.

[00:54:03]That will be Japp," Poirot said quietly.

[00:54:07]Edward straightened.

[00:54:08]He adjusted his tie, a small unconscious gesture.

[00:54:12]He looked at his father one last time.

[00:54:15]"Father, I did it for the name."

[00:54:19]"Edward," Sir Geoffrey said.

[00:54:21]"There is no name worth this."

[00:54:24]Japp came in and two constables with him, and the business was done as these businesses are always done, with quiet formalities that bear no relation to the storm they contain.

[00:54:36]When Edward had gone, Sir Geoffrey Langmere stood in the middle of his son's sitting room and wept.

[00:54:43]He wept without sound in the way that older men weep when they have held themselves together all their lives and discover that the holding has been of no use at all.

[00:54:53]Poirot and I waited in the corridor because some griefs should not be witnessed.

[00:54:59]It was some weeks later, in the slow gray stretch between Christmas and the New Year, that I raised the case again.

[00:55:07]Poirot and I were in our sitting room.

[00:55:10]He had arranged the Sevres figurines by a new scheme that I did not attempt to understand.

[00:55:16]The fire was lit. Outside, the sleet was tapping at the window in a manner that might almost have been mistaken for a knock if one were inclined towards such mistakes.

[00:55:27]"Poirot, I've been thinking about the Halliwell affair."

[00:55:31]"Yes."

[00:55:32]"About Lillian Marsh.

[00:55:34]Ah, what became of her?

[00:55:37]Was she acknowledged at last?"

[00:55:39]Poirot set down his tisane.

[00:55:42]"Sir Geoffrey came to see her 3 days after his son was committed for trial.

[00:55:46]He told her the whole of it. He acknowledged her to his family, to his solicitors, and, in due course, to the newspapers, though not with the scandal that his son had feared.

[00:55:57]He is not standing for re-election. He has retired from public life.

[00:56:02]He has, I believe, installed Miss Marsh at Langmere House or will do when she's willing to go.

[00:56:08]She was not willing the last time she wrote to me."

[00:56:12]"And Halliwell?"

[00:56:13]"Halliwell lies in a small cemetery in Kensal Green.

[00:56:17]Miss Marsh placed a wreath on his grave at Christmas.

[00:56:21]I was there.

[00:56:22]I did not intrude. She did not see me."

[00:56:26]"It's a melancholy story."

[00:56:28]"All of them are, Hastings.

[00:56:30]You have known me long enough to have learned this. It is one of the truths of the work."

[00:56:35]I was quiet for a while.

[00:56:37]"One thing still puzzles me.

[00:56:40]The third knock.

[00:56:41]The third knock?

[00:56:43]If the first two were to establish a window of time for the alibi, to suggest that a caller had come and been admitted, why three?

[00:56:50]Two would have served. The first knock, the door opens, 6 minutes later a caller enters.

[00:56:57]Why the third?"

[00:56:59]Poirot smiled.

[00:57:01]It was a small private smile, not directed at me.

[00:57:05]"A very good question, Hastings.

[00:57:07]I asked it myself, and I asked the clockmaker, and I asked Edward Langmere's servant, who had helped to install the device.

[00:57:15]Yes, he assisted in that, though not in the murder itself, and he will serve his own sentence for it.

[00:57:21]The answer is this.

[00:57:23]Edward Langmere is a tidy man, a fastidious man, a man who likes his plans in threes.

[00:57:31]He considered two knocks insufficiently persuasive.

[00:57:34]He considered four excessive.

[00:57:36]Three was the correct number because three is the number at which a thing is said to be established.

[00:57:42]Three is the number.

[00:57:44]Three is the number. Two is coincidence, three is pattern.

[00:57:48]He wished Miss Finch to be certain she had heard knocking.

[00:57:52]He wished her to be so certain that she would remember the exact times. He wished the window of the alibi to be unbreakable.

[00:57:59]And so he set the device to knock three times at 6-minute intervals, exactly as a real caller might knock if a real caller were exceedingly patient and exceedingly strange.

[00:58:11]But a real caller wouldn't have knocked three times at 6-minute intervals. You said so yourself. You said nobody behaves that way."

[00:58:19]"Precisely, Hastings.

[00:58:21]And that is what betrayed him.

[00:58:23]A man who seeks to imitate the natural must study the natural.

[00:58:28]Edward did not.

[00:58:29]He sat in his room at the Marylebone Hotel and he imagined knocking, and he set his device to imitate knocking as he imagined it, firmly, regularly, patiently.

[00:58:40]And he did not consider that patience, in the small hours of the night, at the door of a dark house, is not a natural thing.

[00:58:48]A man who knocks at 2:00 in the morning and receives no answer does not wait 6 minutes and knock again.

[00:58:54]He becomes alarmed or he goes away or he pounds louder.

[00:58:59]The regularity of the knocking was the flaw that opened the whole case.

[00:59:03]So, in the end, he was undone by being too precise.

[00:59:07]He was undone, Hastings, by not understanding human nature.

[00:59:11]It is the commonest flaw among murderers. They are clever about machines and careless about men.

[00:59:17]They build ingenious devices and do not consider that an old woman in the next house with a clock by her bedside and nothing else to occupy her attention will notice that the knocking is wrong.

[00:59:29]Not wrong in its sound, wrong in its character. Wrong in its soul.

[00:59:35]He picked up his Tysol again.

[00:59:38]The sleet continued at the window.

[00:59:41]The little grey cells, Hastings. He said softly. They do not solve crimes by being clever about machines.

[00:59:48]They solve crimes by remembering always that a human being, no matter how carefully he plans, leaves a human shape in the pattern he tries to hide.

[00:59:57]The pattern always shows. It is only a matter of looking at the right angle.

[01:00:02]I thought about that for a long time.

[01:00:06]Poirot.

[01:00:08]Yes.

[01:00:09]If you had been Edward Langmere, if you had wished to kill a man and conceal the time of it, how would you have done it?

[01:00:17]Poirot considered the question with apparent seriousness.

[01:00:21]I would not have done it at all, Hastings.

[01:00:23]That is the difference.

[01:00:25]Not cleverness.

[01:00:27]Conscience.

[01:00:28]He set down his cup.

[01:00:30]Also, I do not own a clockwork, and I do not care for revolvers, and my mustache would not permit such indignity.

[01:00:38]I laughed in spite of myself.

[01:00:40]Come, Hastings. The sleet is miserable, but the fire is warm.

[01:00:45]Let us speak of something else.

[01:00:48]Tell me again about the horse you lost money on at Newbury.

[01:00:52]You told it poorly the first time, and I should like to hear it properly.

[01:00:56]And so we did, while outside the window the sleet tapped and tapped three, four, five times in no pattern at all.

[01:01:06]And the year drew toward its quiet end.