The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

‘There are certain things, you comprehend, that happened that evening which I was quite at a loss to explain. First, why make such a point of my bringing that letter with me?’

‘Identification,’ suggested Cornworthy.

‘No, no, my dear young man. Really that idea is too ridiculous. There must be some much more valid reason. For not only did Mr Farley require to see that letter produced, but he definitely demanded that I should leave it behind me. And moreover even then he did not destroy it! It was found among his papers this afternoon. Why did he keep it?’

Joanna Farley's voice broke in. ‘He wanted, in case anything happened to him, that the facts of his strange dream should be made known.’

Poirot nodded approvingly.

‘You are astute, Mademoiselle. That must be — that can only be — the point of the keeping of the letter. When Mr Farley was dead, the story of that strange dream was to be told! That dream was very important. That dream, Mademoiselle, was vital!

‘I will come now,’ he went on, ‘to the second point. After hearing his story I ask Mr Farley to show me the desk and the revolver. He seems about to get up to do so, then suddenly refuses. Why did he refuse?’

This time no one advanced an answer.

‘I will put that question differently. What was there in that next room that Mr Farley did not want me to see?’

There was still silence.

‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘it is difficult, that. And yet there was some reason — some urgent reason why Mr Farley received me in his secretary's room and refused point blank to take me into his own room. There was something in that room he could not afford to have me see.

‘And now I come to the third inexplicable thing that happened on that evening. Mr Farley, just as I was leaving, requested me to hand him the letter I had received. By inadvertence I handed him a communication from my laundress. He glanced at it and laid it down beside him. Just before I left the room I discovered my error — and rectified it! After that I left the house and — I admit it — I was completely at sea! The whole affair and especially that last incident seemed to me quite inexplicable.’

He looked round from one to the other.

‘You do not see?’

Stillingfleet said, ‘I don't really see how your laundress comes into it, Poirot.’

‘My laundress,’ said Poirot, ‘was very important. That miserable woman who ruins my collars, was, for the first time in her life, useful to somebody. Surely you see — it is so obvious. Mr Farley glanced at that communication — one glance would have told him that it was the wrong letter — and yet he knew nothing. Why? Because he could not see it properly!’

Inspector Barnett said sharply, ‘Didn't he have his glasses on?’

Hercule Poirot smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He had his glasses on. That is what makes it so very interesting.’

He leaned forward.

‘Mr Farley's dream was very important. He dreamed, you see, that he committed suicide. And a little later on, he did commit suicide. That is to say he was alone in a room and was found there with a revolver by him, and no one entered or left the room at the time that he was shot. What does that mean? It means, does it not, that it must be suicide!’

‘Yes,’ said Stillingfleet.

Hercule Poirot shook his head.

‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘It was murder. An unusual and a very cleverly planned murder.’

Again he leaned forward, tapping the table, his eyes green and shining.

‘Why did Mr Farley not allow me to go into his own room that evening? What was there in there that I must not be allowed to see? I think, my friends, that there was — Benedict Farley himself!’

He smiled at the blank faces.

‘Yes, yes, it is not nonsense what I say. Why could the Mr Farley to whom I had been talking not realize the difference between two totally dissimilar letters? Because, mes amis, he was a man of normal sight wearing a pair of very powerful glasses. Those glasses would render a man of normal eyesight practically blind. Isn't that so, doctor?’

Stillingfleet murmured, ‘That's so — of course.’