“There is, perhaps, still time to make good by speculating wildly. Your ward is not yet of age. And then—she marries! The control passes from your hands into hers at a moment’s notice! A disaster! But there is still a chance. She is on a honeymoon. She will perhaps be careless about business. A casual paper, slipped in among others, signed without reading…But Linnet Doyle was not like that. Honeymoon or no honeymoon, she is a business woman. And then her husband makes a remark, and a new idea comes to that desperate man who is seeking a way out from ruin. If Linnet Doyle were to die, her fortune would pass to her husband—and he would be easy to deal with; he would be a child in the hands of an astute man like Andrew Pennington. Mon cher Colonel, I tell you I saw the thought pass through Andrew Pennington’s head. ‘If only it were Doyle I had got to deal with…’ That is what he was thinking.”
“Quite possible, I dare say,” said Race dryly, “but you’ve no evidence.”
“Alas, no.”
“Then there’s young Ferguson,” said Race. “He talks bitterly enough. Not that I go by talk. Still, he might be the fellow whose father was ruined by old Ridgeway. It’s a little far-fetched but it’s possible. People do brood over bygone wrongs sometimes.” He paused a minute and then said: “And there’s my fellow.”
“Yes, there is ‘your fellow’ as you call him.”
“He’s a killer,” said Race. “We know that. On the other hand, I can’t see any way in which he could have come up against Linnet Doyle. Their orbits don’t touch.”
Poirot said slowly: “Unless, accidentally, she had become possessed of evidence showing his identity.”
“That’s possible, but it seems highly unlikely.”
There was a knock at the door. “Ah, here’s our would-be bigamist.”
Fleetwood was a big, truculent-looking man. He looked suspiciously from one to the other of them as he entered the room. Poirot recognized him as the man he had seen talking to Louise Bourget.
Fleetwood asked suspiciously: “You wanted to see me?”
“We did,” said Race. “You probably know that a murder was committed on this boat last night?”
Fleetwood nodded.
“And I believe it is true that you had reason to feel anger against the woman who was killed.”
A look of alarm sprang up in Fleetwood’s eyes.
“Who told you that?”
“You considered that Mrs. Doyle had interfered between you and a young woman.”
“I know who told you that—that lying French hussy. She’s a liar through and through, that girl.”
“But this particular story happens to be true.”
“It’s a dirty lie!”
“You say that, although you don’t know what it is yet.”
The shot told. The man flushed and gulped.
“It is true, is it not, that you were going to marry the girl Marie, and that she broke it off when she discovered that you were a married man already?”
“What business was it of hers?”
“You mean, what business was it of Mrs. Doyle’s? Well, you know, bigamy is bigamy.”
“It wasn’t like that. I married one of the locals out here. It didn’t answer. She went back to her people. I’ve not seen her for a half a dozen years.”
“Still you were married to her.”
The man was silent. Race went on: “Mrs. Doyle, or Miss Ridgeway as she then was, found out all this?”
“Yes, she did, curse her! Nosing about where no one ever asked her to. I’d have treated Marie right. I’d have done anything for her. And she’d never have known about the other, if it hadn’t been for that meddlesome young lady of hers. Yes, I’ll say it, I did have a grudge against the lady, and I felt bitter about it when I saw her on this boat, all dressed up in pearls and diamonds and lording it all over the place, with never a thought that she’d broken up a man’s life for him! I felt bitter all right, but if you think I’m a dirty murderer—if you think I went and shot her with a gun, well, that’s a damned lie! I never touched her. And that’s God’s truth.”
He stopped. The sweat was rolling down his face.