“Eh? That is so, is it not?”
“We all heard,” said the actor. “The Widburns, Marsh, Carlotta—all of us.”
“Oh! I agree. I agree perfectly. Eh bien, I did not have a chance to forget those words of Lady Edgware’s. Mr. Bryan Martin called on the following morning for the express purpose of driving those words home.”
“Not at all,” cried Bryan Martin angrily. “I came—”
Poirot held up a hand.
“You came, ostensibly, to tell me a cock-and-bull story about being shadowed. A tale that a child might have seen through. You probably took it from an out-of-date film. A girl whose consent you had to obtain—a man whom you recognized by a gold tooth. Mon ami, no young man would have a gold tooth—it is not done in these days—and especially in America. The gold tooth it is a hopelessly old-fashioned piece of dentistry. Oh! it was all of a piece—absurd! Having told your cock-and-bull story you get down to the real purpose of your visit—to poison my mind against Lady Edgware. To put it clearly, you prepare the ground for the moment when she murders her husband.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered Bryan Martin. His face was deathly pale.
“You ridicule the idea that he will agree to a divorce! You think I am going to see him the following day, but actually the appointment is changed. I go to see him that morning and he does agree to a divorce. Any motive for a crime on Lady Edgware’s part is gone. Moreover, he tells me that he has already written to Lady Edgware to that effect.
“But Lady Edgware declares that she never got that letter. Either she lies, her husband lies, or somebody has suppressed it—who?
“Now I ask myself why does M. Bryan Martin give himself the trouble to come and tell me all these lies? What inner power drives him on. And I form the idea, Monsieur, that you have been frantically in love with that lady. Lord Edgware says that his wife told him she wanted to marry an actor. Well, supposing that is so, but that the lady changes her mind. By the time Lord Edgware’s letter agreeing to the divorce arrives, it is someone else she wants to marry—not you! There would be a reason, then, for you suppressing that letter.”
“I never—
”
“Presently you shall say all you want to say. Now you will attend to me.
“What, then, would be your frame of mind—you, a spoilt idol who has never known a rebuff? As I see it, a kind of baffled fury, a desire to do Lady Edgware as much harm as possible. And what greater harm could you do her than to have her accused—perhaps hanged—for murder.”
“Good lord!” said Japp.
Poirot turned to him.
“But yes, that was the little idea that began to shape itself in my mind. Several things came to support it. Carlotta Adams had two principal men friends—Captain Marsh and Bryan Martin. It was possible, then, that Bryan Martin, a rich man, was the one who suggested the hoax and offered her ten thousand dollars to carry it through. It has seemed to me unlikely all along that Miss Adams could ever have believed Ronald Marsh would have ten thousand dollars to give her. She knew him to be extremely hard up. Bryan Martin was a far more likely solution.”
“I didn’t—I tell you—” came hoarsely from the film actor’s lips. “When the substance of Miss Adams” letter to her sister was wired from Washington—oh! la, la! I was very upset. It seemed that my reasoning was wholly wrong. But later I made a discovery. The actual letter itself was sent to me and instead of being continuous, a sheet of the letter was missing. So, ‘he’ might refer to someone who was not Captain Marsh.
“There was one more piece of evidence. Captain Marsh, when he was arrested, distinctly stated that he thought he saw Bryan Martin enter the house. Coming from an accused man that carried no weight. Also M. Martin had an alibi. That naturally! It was to be expected. If M. Martin did the murder, to have an alibi was absolutely necessary.
“That alibi was vouched for by one person only—Miss Driver.”
“What about it?” said the girl sharply.
“Nothing, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, smiling. “Except that that same day I noticed you lunching with M. Martin and that you presently took the trouble to come over and try to make me believe that your friend Miss Adams was specially interested in Ronald Marsh—not, as I was sure was the case—in Bryan Martin.”
“Not a bit of it,” said the film star stoutly.
“You may have been unaware of it, Monsieur,” said Poirot quietly, “but I think it was true. It explains, as nothing else could, her feeling of dislike towards Lady Edgware. That dislike was on your behalf. You had told her all about your rebuff, had you not?”
“Well—yes—I felt I must talk to someone and she—”
“Was sympathetic. Yes, she was sympathetic, I noticed it myself. Eh bien, what happens next? Ronald Marsh, he is arrested. Immediately your spirits improve. Any anxiety you may have had is over. Although your plan has miscarried owing to Lady Edgware’s change of mind about going to a party at the last minute, yet somebody else has become the scapegoat and relieved you of all anxiety on your own account. And then—at a luncheon party—you hear Donald Ross, that pleasant, but rather stupid young man, say something to Hastings that seems to show that you are not so safe after all.”
“It isn’t true,” the actor bawled. The perspiration was running down his face. His eyes looked wild with horror. “I tell you I heard nothing—nothing—I did nothing.”
Then, I think, came the greatest shock of the morning.
“That is quite true,” said Poirot quietly. “And I hope you have now been sufficiently punished for coming to me—me, Hercule Poirot, with a cock-and-bull story.”
We all gasped. Poirot continued dreamily.
“You see—I am showing you all my mistakes. There were five questions I had asked myself. Hastings knows them. The answer to three of them fitted in very well. Who had suppressed that letter? Clearly Bryan Martin answered that question very well. Another question was what had induced Lord Edgware suddenly to change his mind and agree to a divorce? Well, I had an idea as to that. Either he wanted to marry again—but I could find no evidence pointing to that—or else some kind of blackmail was involved. Lord Edgware was a man of peculiar tastes. It was possible that facts about him had come to light which, while not entitling his wife to an English divorce, might yet be used by her as a lever coupled with the threat of publicity. I think that is what happened. Lord Edgware did not want an open scandal attached to his name. He gave in, though his fury at having to do so was expressed in the murderous look on his face when he thought himself unobserved. It also explains the suspicious quickness with which he said, ‘Not because of anything in the letter,’ before I had even suggested that that might be the case.
“Two questions remained. The question of an odd pair of pince-nez in Miss Adams’ bag which did not belong to her. And the question of why Lady Edgware was rung up on the telephone whilst she was at dinner at Chiswick. In no way could I fit in M. Bryan Martin with either of those questions.
“So I was forced to the conclusion that either I was wrong about Mr. Martin, or wrong about the questions. In despair I once again read that letter of Miss Adams’ through very carefully. And I found something! Yes, I found something!
“See for yourselves. Here it is. You see the sheet is torn? Unevenly, as often happens. Supposing now that before the ‘h’ at the top there was an ‘s’….
“Ah! you have it! You see. Not he—but she! It was a woman who suggested this hoax to Carlotta Adams.
“Well, I made a list of all the women who had been even remotely connected with the case. Besides Jane Wilkinson, there were four—Geraldine Marsh, Miss Carroll, Miss Driver and the Duchess of Merton.
“Of those four, the one that interested me most was Miss Carroll. She wore glasses, she was in the house that night, she had already been inaccurate in her evidence owing to her desire to incriminate Lady Edgware, and she was also a woman of great efficiency and nerve who could have carried out such a crime. The motive was more obscure—but after all, she had worked with Lord Edgware some years and some motive might exist of which we were totally unaware.
“I also felt that I could not quite dismiss Geraldine Marsh from the case. She hated her father—she had told me so. She was a neurotic, highly-strung type. Suppose when she went into the house that night she had deliberately stabbed her father and then coolly proceeded upstairs to fetch the pearls. Imagine her agony when she found that her cousin whom she loved devotedly had not remained outside in the taxi but had entered the house.
“Her agitated manner could be well explained on these lines. It could equally well be explained by her own innocence, but by her fear that her cousin really had done the crime. There was another small point. The gold box found in Miss Adams’ bag had the initial D in it. I had heard Geraldine addressed by her cousin as ‘Dina.’ Also, she was in a pensionnat in Paris last November and might possibly have met Carlotta Adams in Paris.
“You may think it fantastic to add the Duchess of Merton to the list. But she had called upon me and I recognized in her a fanatical type. The love of her whole life was centred on her son, and she might have worked herself up to contrive a plot to destroy the woman who was about to ruin her son’s life.
“Then there was Miss Jenny Driver—”
He paused, looking at Jenny. She looked back at him, an impudent head on one side.
“And what have you got on me?” she asked.
“Nothing, Mademoiselle, except that you were a friend of Bryan Martin’s—and that your surname begins with D.”
“That’s not very much.”
“There’s one thing more. You have the brains and the nerve to commit such a crime. I doubt if anyone else had.”
The girl lit a cigarette.
“Continue,” she said cheerfully.
“Was M. Martin’s alibi genuine or was it not? That was what I had to decide. If it was, who was it Ronald Marsh had seen go into the house? And suddenly I remembered something. The good-looking butler at Regent Gate bore a very marked resemblance to M. Martin. It was he whom Captain Marsh had seen. And I formed a theory as to that. It is my idea that he discovered his master killed. Bes
ide his master was an envelope containing French banknotes to the value of a hundred pounds. He took these notes, slipped out of the house, left them in safe keeping with some rascally friend and returned, letting himself in with Lord Edgware’s key. He let the crime be discovered by the housemaid on the following morning. He felt in no danger himself, as he was quite convinced that Lady Edgware had done the murder, and the notes were out of the house and already changed before their loss was noticed. However, when Lady Edgware had an alibi and Scotland Yard began investigating his antecedents, he got the wind up and decamped.”
Japp nodded approvingly.
“I still have the question of the pince-nez to settle. If Miss Carroll was the owner then the case seemed settled. She could have suppressed the letter, and in arranging details with Carlotta Adams, or in meeting her on the evening of the murder, the pince-nez might have inadvertently found their way into Carlotta Adams’ bag.
“But the pince-nez were apparently nothing to do with Miss Carroll. I was walking home with Hastings here, somewhat depressed, trying to arrange things in my mind with order and method. And then the miracle happened!
“First Hastings spoke of things in a certain order. He mentioned Donald Ross having been one of thirteen at table at Sir Montagu Corner’s and having been the first to get up. I was following out a train of thought of my own and did not pay much attention. It just flashed through my mind that, strictly speaking, that was not true. He may have got up first at the end of the dinner, but actually Lady Edgware had been the first to get up since she was called to the telephone. Thinking of her, a certain riddle occurred to me—a riddle that I fancied accorded well with her somewhat childish mentality. I told it to Hastings. He was, like Queen Victoria, not amused. I next fell to wondering who I could ask for details about M. Martin’s feeling for Jane Wilkinson. She herself would not tell me, I knew. And then a passerby, as we were all crossing the road, uttered a simple sentence.
“He said to his girl companion that somebody or other ‘should have asked Ellis.’ And immediately the whole thing came to me in a flash!”