Cornelia repeated the words with awe.
“It’s planted very deeply in the subconscious; sometimes it’s just some little thing that happened when you were a child. And he’s cured people by getting them to think back and remember what that little thing was.”
Cornelia paused, drew a deep breath, and started off again.
“But it’s worrying me dreadfully in case it all gets out. It would be too, too terrible in New York. Why, all the tabloids would have it. Cousin Marie and Mother and everybody—they’d never hold up their heads again.”
Race sighed. “That’s all right,” he said.
“This is Hush Hush House.”
“I beg your pardon, Colonel Race?”
“What I was endeavouring to say was that anything short of murder is being hushed up.”
“Oh!” Cornelia clasped her hands. “I’m so relieved. I’ve just been worrying and worrying.”
“You have the heart too tender,” said Dr. Bessner, and patted her benevolently on the shoulder. He said to the others: “She has a very sensitive and beautiful nature.”
“Oh, I haven’t really. You’re too kind.”
Poirot murmured, “Have you seen anymore of Mr. Ferguson?”
Cornelia blushed.
“No—but Cousin Marie’s been talking about him.”
“It seems the young man is highly born,” said Dr. Bessner. “I must confess he does not look it. His clothes are terrible. Not for a moment does he appear a well-bred man.”
“And what do you think, Mademoiselle?”
“I think he must be just plain crazy,” said Cornelia.
Poirot turned to the doctor. “How is your patient?”
“Ach, he is going on splendidly. I have just reassured the Fräulein de Bellefort. Would you believe it, I found her in despair. Just because the fellow had a bit of a temperature this afternoon! But what could be more natural? It is amazing that he is not in a high fever now. But no, he is like some of our peasants; he has a magnificent constitution, the constitution of an ox. I have seen them with deep wounds that they hardly notice. It is the same with Mr. Doyle. His pulse is steady, his temperature only slightly above normal. I was able to pooh-pooh the little lady’s fears. All the same, it is ridiculous, nicht wahr? One minute you shoot a man; the next you are in hysterics in case he may not be doing well.”
Cornelia said: “She loves him terribly, you see.”
“Ach! but it is not sensible, that. If you loved a man, would you try and shoot him? No, you are sensible.”
“I don’t like things that go off with bangs anyway,” said Cornelia.
“Naturally you do not. You are very feminine.”
Race interrupted this scene of heavy approval. “Since Doyle is all right there’s no reason I shouldn’t come along and resume our talk of this afternoon. He was just telling me about a telegram.”
Dr. Bessner’s bulk moved up and down appreciatively.
“Ho, ho, ho, it was very funny that! Doyle, he tells me about it. It was a telegram all about vegetables—potatoes, artichokes, leeks—Ach! pardon?”
With a stifled exclamation, Race had sat up in his chair.
“My God,” he said. “So that’s it! Richetti!”
He looked round on three uncomprehending faces.
“A new code—it was used in the South African rebellion. Potatoes mean machine guns, artichokes are high explosives—and so on. Richetti is no more an archæologist than I am! He’s a very dangerous agitator, a man who’s killed more than once, and I’ll swear that he’s killed once again. Mrs. Doyle opened that telegram by mistake, you see. If she were ever to repeat what was in it before me, he knew his goose would be cooked!”
He turned to Poirot. “Am I right?” he asked. “Is Richetti the man?”
“He is your man,” said Poirot. “I always thought there was something wrong about him. He was almost too word-perfect in his rôle; he was all archæologist, not enough human being.”
He paused and then said: “But it was not Richetti who killed Linnet Doyle. For some time now I have known what I may express as the ‘first half ’ of the murderer. Now I know the ‘second half ’ also. The picture is complete. But you understand that, although I know what must have happened, I have no proof that it happened. Intellectually the case is satisfying. Actually it is profoundly unsatisfactory. There is only one hope—a confession from the murderer.”
Dr. Bessner raised his shoulders sceptically. “Ah! but that—it would be a miracle.”
“I think not. Not under the circumstances.”
Cornelia cried out: “But who is it? Aren’t you going to tell us?”
Poirot’s eyes ranged quietly over the three of them. Race, smiling sardonically, Bessner, still looking sceptical, Cornelia, her mouth hanging a little open, gazing at him with eager eyes.
“Mais oui,” he said. “I like an audience, I must confess. I am vain, you see. I am puffed up with conceit. I like to say: ‘See how clever is Hercule Poirot!’”
Race shifted a little in his chair.
“Well,” he asked gently, “just how clever is Hercule Poirot?”
Shaking his head sadly from side to side Poirot said: “To begin with I was stupid—incredibly stupid. To me the stumbling block was the pistol—Jacqueline de Bellefort’s pistol. Why had that pistol not been left on the scene of the crime? The idea of the murderer was quite plainly to incriminate her. Why then did the murderer take it away? I was so stupid that I thought of all sorts of fantastic reasons. The real one was very simple. The murderer took it away because he had to take it away—because he had no choice in the matter.”
Twenty-Nine
“You and I, my friend,” Poirot leaned towards Race, “started our investigation with a preconceived idea. That idea was that the crime was committed on the spur of the moment, without any preliminary planning. Somebody wished to remove Linnet Doyle and had seized their opportunity to do so at a moment when the crime would almost certainly be attributed to Jacqueline de Bellefort. It therefore followed that the person in question had overheard the scene between Jacqueline and Simon Doyle and had obtained possession of the pistol after the others had left the saloon.
“But, my friends, if that preconceived idea was wrong, the whole aspect of the case altered. And it was wrong! This was no spontaneous crime committed on the spur of the moment. It was, on the contrary, very carefully planned and accurately timed, with all the details meticulously worked out beforehand, even to the drugging of Hercule Poirot’s bottle of wine on the night in question!
“But yes, that is so! I was put to sleep so that there should be no possibility of my participating in the events of the night. It did just occur to me as a possibility. I drink wine; my two companions at table drink whisky and mineral water respectively. Nothing easier than to slip a dose of harmless narcotic into my bottle of wine—the bottles stand on the tables all day. But I dismissed the thought. It had been a hot day; I had been unusually tired; it was not really extraordinary that I should for once have slept heavily instead of lightly as I usually do.
“You see, I was still in the grip of the preconceived idea. If I had been drugged, that would have implied premeditation, it would mean that before seven-thirty, when dinner is served, the crime had already been decided upon; and that (always from the point of view of the preconceived idea) was absurd.
“The first blow to the preconceived idea was when the pistol was recovered from the Nile. To begin with, if we were right in our assumptions, the pistol ought never to have been thrown overboard at all…And there was more to follow.”
Poirot turned to Dr. Bessner.
“You, Dr. Bessner, examined Linnet Doyle’s body. You will remember that the wound showed signs of scorching—that is to say, that the pistol had been placed close against the head before being fired.”
Bessner nodded. “So. That is exact.”
“But when the pistol was found it was wrapped in a velvet stole, and that velvet showed defi
nite signs that a pistol had been fired through its folds, presumably under the impression that that would deaden the sound of the shot. But if the pistol had been fired through the velvet, there would have been no signs of burning on the victim’s skin. Therefore, the shot fired by Jacqueline de Bellefort at Simon Doyle? Again no, for there had been two witnesses of that shooting, and we knew all about it. It appeared, therefore, as though a third shot had been fired—one we knew nothing about. But only two shots had been fired from the pistol, and there was no hint or suggestion of another shot.
“Here we were face to face with a very curious unexplained circumstance. The next interesting point was the fact that in Linnet Doyle’s cabin I found two bottles of coloured nail polish. Now ladies very often vary the colour of their nails, but so far Linnet Doyle’s nails had always been the shade called Cardinal—a deep dark red. The other bottle was labelled Rose, which is a shade of pale pink, but the few drops remaining in the bottle were not pale pink but a bright red. I was sufficiently curious to take out the stopper and sniff. Instead of the usual strong odour of peardrops, the bottle smelt of vinegar! That is to say, it suggested that the drop or two of fluid in it was red ink. Now there is no reason why Madame Doyle should not have had a bottle of red ink, but it would have been more natural if she had had red ink in a red ink bottle and not in a nail polish bottle. It suggested a link with the faintly stained handkerchief which had been wrapped round the pistol. Red ink washes out quickly but always leaves a pale pink stain.
“I should perhaps have arrived at the truth with these slender indications, but an event occurred which rendered all doubt superfluous. Louise Bourget was killed in circumstances which pointed unmistakably to the fact that she had been blackmailing the murderer. Not only was a fragment of a mille franc note still clasped in her hand, but I remembered some very significant words she had used this morning.
“Listen carefully, for here is the crux of the whole matter. When I asked her if she had seen anything the previous night she gave this very curious answer: ‘Naturally, if I had been unable to sleep, if I had mounted the stairs, then perhaps I might have seen this assassin, this monster enter or leave Madame’s cabin…’ Now what exactly did that tell us?”
Bessner, his nose wrinkling with intellectual interest, replied promptly: “It told you that she had mounted the stairs.”
“No, no; you fail to see the point. Why should she have said that, to us?”
“To convey a hint.”
“But why hint to us? If she knows who the murderer is, there are two courses open to her—to tell us the truth, or to hold her tongue and demand money for her silence from the person concerned! But she does neither. She neither says promptly: ‘I saw nobody. I was asleep.’ Nor does she say: ‘Yes, I saw someone, and it was so and so.’ Why use that significant indeterminate rigmarole of words? Parbleu, there can be only one reason! She is hinting to the murderer; therefore the murderer must have been present at the time. But, besides myself and Colonel Race, only two people were present—Simon Doyle and Dr. Bessner.”
The doctor sprang up with a roar.
“Ach! what is that you say? You accuse me? Again? But it is ridiculous—beneath contempt.”
Poirot said sharply: “Be quiet. I am telling you what I thought at the time. Let us remain impersonal.”
“He doesn’t mean he thinks it’s you now,” said Cornelia soothingly.
Poirot went on quickly: “So it lay there—between Simon Doyle and Dr. Bessner. But what reason has Bessner to kill Linnet Doyle? None, so far as I know. Simon Doyle, then? But that was impossible! There were plenty of witnesses who could swear that Doyle never left the saloon that evening until the quarrel broke out. After that he was wounded and it would then have been physically impossible for him to have done so. Had I good evidence on both those points? Yes, I had the evidence of Mademoiselle Robson, of Jim Fanthorp, and of Jacqueline de Bellefort as to the first, and I had the skilled testimony of Dr. Bessner and of Mademoiselle Bowers as to the other. No doubt was possible.
“So Dr. Bessner must be the guilty one. In favour of this theory there was the fact that the maid had been stabbed with a surgical knife. On the other hand Bessner had deliberately called attention to this fact.
“And then, my friends, a second perfectly indisputable fact became apparent to me. Louise Bourget’s hint could not have been intended for Dr. Bessner, because she could perfectly well have spoken to him in private at any time she liked. There was one person, and one person only, who corresponded to her necessity—Simon Doyle! Simon Doyle was wounded, was constantly attended by a doctor, was in that doctor’s cabin. It was to him therefore that she risked saying those ambiguous words, in case she might not get another chance. And I remember how she had gone on, turning to him: ‘Monsieur, I implore you—you see how it is? What can I say?’ And this answer: ‘My good girl, don’t be a fool. Nobody thinks you saw or heard anything. You’ll be quite all right. I’ll look after you. Nobody’s accusing you of anything.’ That was the assurance she wanted, and she got it!”
Bessner uttered a colossal snort.
“Ach! it is foolish, that! Do you think a man with a fractured bone and a splint on his leg could go walking about the boat and stabbing people? I tell you, it was impossible for Simon Doyle to leave his cabin.”
Poirot said gently: “I know. That is quite true. The thing was impossible. It was impossible, but it was also true! There could be only one logical meaning behind Louise Bourget’s words.
“So I returned to the beginning and reviewed the crime in the light of this new knowledge. Was it possible that in the period preceding the quarrel Simon Doyle had left the saloon and the others had forgotten or not noticed it? I could not see that it was possible. Could the skilled testimony of Dr. Bessner and Mademoiselle Bowers be disregarded? Again I felt sure it could not. But, I remembered, there was a gap between the two. Simon Doyle had been alone in the saloon for a period of five minutes, and the skilled testimony of Dr. Bessner only applied to the time after that period. For that period we had only the evidence of visual appearance, and, though apparently that was perfectly sound, it was no longer certain. What had actually been seen—leaving assumption out of the question?
“Mademoiselle Robson had seen Mademoiselle de Bellefort fire her pistol, had seen Simon Doyle collapse on to a chair, had seen him clasp a handkerchief to his leg and seen that handkerchief gradually soak through red. What had Monsieur Fanthorp heard and seen? He heard a shot, he found Doyle with a red-stained handkerchief clasped to his leg. What had happened then? Doyle had been very insistent that Mademoiselle de Bellefort should be got away, that she should not be left alone. After that, he suggested that Fanthorp should get hold of the doctor.
“Accordingly Mademoiselle Robson and Monsieur Fanthorp got out with Mademoiselle de Bellefort and for the next five minutes they are busy, on the port side of the deck. Mademoiselle Bowers’, Dr. Bessner’s and Mademoiselle de Bellefort’s cabins are all on the port side. Two minutes are all that Simon Doyle needs. He picks up the pistol from under the sofa, slips out of his shoes, runs like a hare silently along the starboard deck, enters his wife’s cabin, creeps up to her as she lies asleep, shoots her through the head, puts the bottle that has contained the red ink on her washstand (it mustn’t be found on him), runs back, gets hold of Mademoiselle Van Schuyler’s velvet stole, which he has quietly stuffed down the side of a chair in readiness, muffles it round the pistol and fires a bullet into his leg. His chair into which he falls (in genuine agony this time) is by a window. He lifts the window and throws the pistol (wrapped up with the telltale handkerchief in the velvet stole) into the Nile.”
“Impossible!” said Race.
“No, my friend, not impossible. Remember the evidence of Tim Allerton. He heard a pop—followed by a splash. And he heard something else—the footsteps of a man running—a man running past his door. But nobody could have been running along the starboard side of the deck. What he heard was the stocki
nged feet of Simon Doyle running past his cabin.”
Race said: “I still say it’s impossible. No man could work out the whole caboodle like that in a flash—especially a chap like Doyle who is slow in his mental processes.”
“But very quick and deft in his physical actions!”
“That, yes. But he wouldn’t be capable of thinking the whole thing out.”
“But he did not think it out himself, my friend. That is where we were all wrong. It looked like a crime committed on the spur of the moment, but it was not a crime committed on the spur of the moment. As I say, it was a very cleverly planned and well thought out piece of work. It could not be chance that Simon Doyle had a bottle of red ink in his pocket. No, it must be design. It was not chance that Jacqueline de Bellefort’s foot kicked the pistol under the settee, where it would be out of sight and unremembered until later.”
“Jacqueline?”
“Certainly. The two halves of the murder. What gave Simon his alibi? The shot fired by Jacqueline. What gave Jacqueline her alibi? The insistence of Simon which resulted in a hospital nurse remaining with her all night. There, between the two of them, you get all the qualities you require—the cool, resourceful, planning brain, Jacqueline de Bellefort’s brain, and the man of action to carry it out with incredible swiftness and timing.”
“Look at it the right way, and it answers every question. Simon Doyle and Jacqueline had been lovers. Realize that they are still lovers, and it is all clear. Simon does away with his rich wife, inherits her money, and in due course will marry his old love. It was all very ingenious. The persecution of Madame Doyle by Jacqueline, all part of the plan. Simon’s pretended rage…And yet—there were lapses. He held forth to me once about possessive women—held forth with real bitterness. It ought to have been clear to me that it was his wife he was thinking about—not Jacqueline. Then his manner to his wife in public. An ordinary, inarticulate Englishman, such as Simon Doyle, is very embarrassed at showing any affection. Simon was not a really good actor. He overdid the devoted manner. That conversation I had with Mademoiselle Jacqueline, too, when she pretended that somebody had overheard, I saw no one. And there was no one! But it was to be a useful red herring later. Then one night on this boat I thought I heard Simon and Linnet outside my cabin. He was saying, ‘We’ve got to go through with it now.’ It was Doyle all right, but it was to Jacqueline he was speaking.