Death in the Clouds

CHAPTER 2 Discovery

Henry Mitchell, the senior of the two stewards, passed swiftly from table to table depositing bills. In half an hour’s time they would be at Croydon. He gathered up notes and silver, bowed, said, ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, Madam.’ At the table where the two Frenchmen sat he had to wait a minute or two, they were so busy discussing and gesticulating. And there wouldn’t be much of a tip anyway from them, he thought gloomily. Two of the passengers were asleep—the little man with the moustaches, and the old woman down at the end. She was a good tipper, though—he remembered her crossing several times. He refrained therefore from awaking her.

The little man with the moustaches woke up and paid for the bottle of soda water and the thin captain biscuits, which was all he had had.

Mitchell left the other passenger as long as possible. About five minutes before they reached Croydon he stood by her side and leant over her.

‘Pardon, Madam, your bill.’

He laid a deferential hand on her shoulder. She did not wake. He increased the pressure, shaking her gently, but the only result was an unexpected slumping of the body down in the seat. Mitchell bent over her, then straightened up with a white face.

Albert Davis, second steward, said:

‘Coo! You don’t mean it!’

‘I tell you it’s true.’

Mitchell was white and shaking.

‘You sure, Henry?’

‘Dead sure. At least—well, I suppose it might be a fit.’

‘We’ll be at Croydon in a few minutes.’

‘If she’s just taken bad—’

They remained a minute or two undecided—then arranged their course of action. Mitchell returned to the rear car. He went from table to table, bending his head and murmuring confidentially:

‘Excuse me, sir, you don’t happen to be a doctor—?’

Norman Gale said, ‘I’m a dentist. But if there’s anything I can do—?’ He half rose from his seat.

‘I’m a doctor,’ said Dr Bryant. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘There’s a lady at the end there—I don’t like the look of her.’

Bryant rose to his feet and accompanied the steward. Unnoticed, the little man with the moustaches followed them.

Dr Bryant bent over the huddled figure in seat No. 2, the figure of a stoutish middle-aged woman dressed in heavy black.

The doctor’s examination was brief.

He said: ‘She’s dead.’

Mitchell said, ‘What do you think it was—kind of fit?’

‘That I can’t possibly say without a detailed examination. When did you last see her—alive, I mean?’

Mitchell reflected.

‘She was all right when I brought her coffee along.’

‘When was that?’

‘Well, it might have been three-quarters of an hour ago—about that. Then, when I brought the bill along, I thought she was asleep…’

Bryant said, ‘She’s been dead at least half an hour.’

Their consultation was beginning to cause interest—heads were craned round looking at them. Necks were stretched to listen.

‘I suppose it might have been a kind of fit, like?’ suggested Mitchell hopefully.

He clung to the theory of a fit.

His wife’s sister had fits. He felt that fits were homely things that any man might understand.

Dr Bryant had no intention of committing himself. He merely shook his head with a puzzled expression.

A voice spoke at his elbow, the voice of the muffled-up man with the moustaches.

‘There is,’ he said, ‘a mark on her neck.’

He spoke apologetically, with a due sense of speaking to superior knowledge.

‘True,’ said Dr Bryant.

The woman’s head lolled over sideways. There was a minute puncture mark on the side of her throat.

‘Pardon—’ the two Duponts joined in. They had been listening for the last few minutes. ‘The lady is dead, you say, and there is a mark on the neck?’

It was Jean, the younger Dupont, who spoke.

‘May I make a suggestion? There was a wasp flying about. I killed it.’ He exhibited the corpse in his coffee saucer. ‘Is it not possible that the poor lady has died of a wasp sting? I have heard such things happen.’

‘It is possible,’ agreed Bryant. ‘I have known of such cases. Yes, that is certainly quite a possible explanation, especially if there were any cardiac weakness—’

‘Anything I’d better do, sir?’ asked the steward. ‘We’ll be at Croydon in a minute.’

‘Quite, quite,’ said Dr Bryant as he moved away a little. ‘There’s nothing to be done. The—er—body must not be moved, steward.’

‘Yes, sir, I quite understand.’

Dr Bryant prepared to resume his seat and looked in some surprise at the small muffled-up foreigner who was standing his ground.

‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘the best thing to do is to go back to your seat. We shall be at Croydon almost immediately.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said the steward. He raised his voice. ‘Please resume your seats, everybody.’

‘Pardon,’ said the little man. ‘There is something—’

‘Something?’

‘Mais oui, something that has been overlooked.’

With the tip of a pointed patent-leather shoe he made his meaning clear. The steward and Dr Bryant followed the action with their eyes. They caught the glint of yellow and black on the floor half concealed by the edge of the black skirt.

‘Another wasp?’ said the doctor, surprised.

Hercule Poirot went down on his knees. He took a small pair of tweezers from his pocket and used them delicately. He stood up with his prize.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is very like a wasp; but it is not a wasp!’

He turned the object about this way and that so that both the doctor and the steward could see it clearly, a little knot of teased fluffy silk, orange and black, attached to a long, peculiar-looking thorn with a discoloured tip.

‘Good gracious! Good gracious me!’ The exclamation came from little Mr Clancy, who had left his seat and was poking his head desperately over the steward’s shoulder. ‘Remarkable, really very remarkable, absolutely the most remarkable thing I have ever come across in my life. Well, upon my soul, I should never have believed it.’

‘Could you make yourself just a little clearer, sir?’ asked the steward. ‘Do you recognize this?’

‘Recognize it? Certainly I recognize it.’ Mr Clancy swelled with passionate pride and gratification. ‘This object, gentlemen, is the native thorn shot from a blowpipe by certain tribes—er—I cannot be exactly certain now if it is South American tribes or whether it is the inhabitants of Borneo which I have in mind; but that is undoubtedly a native dart that has been aimed by a blowpipe, and I strongly suspect that on the tip—’

‘Is the famous arrow poison of the South American Indians,’ finished Hercule Poirot. And he added, ‘Mais enfin! Est-ce que c’est possible?’

‘It is certainly very extraordinary,’ said Mr Clancy, still full of blissful excitement. ‘As I say, most extraordinary. I am myself a writer of detective fiction; but actually to meet, in real life—’

Words failed him.

The aeroplane heeled slowly over, and those people who were standing up staggered a little. The plane was circling round in its descent to Croydon aerodrome.