Mistaken Identity (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 26) Read online

  Poiret heard Felicity’s voice from the kitchen and he quickly went back to the salon and sat down.

  “Would you like some cake, Mr. Poiret?” she asked. “It will do you good.”

  She came back into the room and handed him a cup of coffee and cake.

  “The coffee, it makes the brain clear,” said Poiret, smiling.

  “Yes,” said Felicity very gravely, and nodded her head. “I swear by it.”

  “There is something dangerous about standing on these high places,” said Poiret. “Heights, they are made, how do you say, to be looked at, not to be looked from.”

  “Do you mean that one may fall over,” asked Felicity.

  “Non, but the soul, it may fall if not the body itself,” said the little man.

  “I scarcely understand you,” remarked Felicity, shrugging.

  “Madame, you can see great things from the valley, but only the small things from the peak,” went on Poiret calmly. “The butcher, he is the patient man.”

  “But he, he didn’t do it,” said Felicity, hastily. “Or do you think he did?” She gave him a glance, which was both coy and coquettish.

  “Non, Madame,” said the other in an odd voice, “because we know he did not murder your lover.” Her gaze became full of fear. After a moment he resumed, tranquilly drinking his coffee and enjoying his cake. “Madame, this cake, it is magnifique! Congratulations.”

  “Would you like more,” she asked, springing up.

  “Non,” said the little man, putting both his cake and cup of coffee on the table. “Poiret, he knew a woman,” he said, “who began by living with others in the village, but who grew fond of high and lonely places. And once in one of these high places, where the whole world, it seems to turn under her like the wheel with the hamsters, her mind, it turns also and she commits the great crime.”

  Felicity’s bony hands turned blue and white as they tightened on the coffee cup.

  “She thought it was given to her to judge the world and strike down the man, who did not wish to marry her and save her from the unhappy marriage to an old man, who can only offer her the life that is dour. More than that, she is forty years old. She is desperate, for perhaps a child, the little boy or girl. Perhaps she has never forgotten her youthful dreams of the husband to love and the home of her own with the children. She would never have had this thought if she had been walking with others on the ground. But she saw all men walking about like insects. She saw one strutting like the peacock below her, arrogant, making love to her, without committing to her.”

  Crows cawed round the corners of the high building, but there was no other sound till Poiret went on.

  “The height, it tempted her, as in her hand was one of the most powerful forces of nature, the gravitation. Everything, it must fall and return to earth.”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying,” said Felicity.

  Poiret stood up and grasped her arm. “Madame, please to come with Poiret outside.”

  Outside they saw the policeman strutting just below them in front of the butcher’s shop. He was talking to Mr. Sims and his wife. She looked up at Felicity and Poiret. She seemed to smile.

  “Madame,” said Poiret, “the huge axe, it is difficult to swing and strike the blow against a man, who is big and has the strength, but if you were to toss it from the height, perhaps from here, it would strike the man standing below like the cannon ball.”

  Felicity looked at Poiret. Her eyes pleaded with him, but the little man was unaffected.

  “The justice, Madame, it cannot make the exceptions, for it would not remain the justice.”

  Felicity sprang up and threw one leg over the railing, but Poiret held her tightly by the arm.

  “Not by that door,” he said quite gently, “for that door, it does not lead to the redemption.”

  Felicity staggered back against the door, and stared at him with frightful eyes.

  “How do you know all this?” she cried.

  “Poiret, he is the best detective in the world,” answered Poiret, and added gravely, “With the exception of Austria. Madame, the next step, it is yours.”

  They went down in the elevator in utter silence, and came out into the sunlight. They saw the butcher, his father-in-law and his wife talking to the policeman. They slowly walked to the butcher’s store. Felicity Sims went up to the policeman, and said, “My dreams have all shattered. I wish to give myself up. I murdered Justin Metcalfe. Once he was my fiancé, then he was my lover and my best hope to attain what I had always dreamed of and now he’s dead.”

  As the policeman grasped Felicity’s arm and led her away, her father looked at the scene befuddled and the butcher looked rather helpless. Rita Sims, however, flung her head in the air and laughed. Revenge was a dish best served cold.

  The End

  Jules Poiret Mystery Series

  Murder on the Liverpool Express

  The Murder of Lady Malvern

  Look into my Eyes

  Blackpool

  Torn between Lovers

  Murder at Land’s End

  The Five Casks