“About half an hour before the bell went for lunch, sir.”
“We’ll have a look at her cabin anyway,” said Race. “That may tell us something.”
He led the way to the deck below. Poirot followed him. They unlocked the door of the cabin and passed inside.
Louise Bourget, whose trade it was to keep other people’s belongings in order, had taken a holiday where her own were concerned. Odds and ends littered the top of the chest of drawers; a suitcase gaped open, with clothes hanging out of the side of it and preventing it shutting; underclothing hung limply over the sides of the chairs.
As Poirot, with swift neat fingers, opened the drawers of the dressing-chest, Race examined the suitcase.
Louise’s shoes were lined along by the bed. One of them, a black patent leather, seemed to be resting at an extraordinary angle, almost unsupported. The appearance of it was so odd that it attracted Race’s attention.
He closed the suitcase and bent over the line of shoes. Then he uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”
Race said grimly: “She hasn’t disappeared. She’s here—under the bed….”
Twenty-Three
The body of the dead woman, who in life had been Louise Bourget, lay on the floor of her cabin. The two men bent over it.
Race straightened himself first.
“Been dead close on an hour, I should say. We’ll get Bessner on to it. Stabbed to the heart. Death pretty well instantaneous, I should imagine. She doesn’t look pretty, does she?”
“No.”
Poirot shook his head with a slight shudder.
The dark feline face was convulsed, as though with surprise and fury, the lips drawn back from the teeth.
Poirot bent again gently and picked up the right hand. Something just showed within the fingers. He detached it and held it out to Race, a little sliver of flimsy paper coloured a pale mauvish pink.
“You see what it is?”
“Money,” said Race.
“The corner of a thousand-franc note, I fancy.”
“Well, it’s clear what happened,” said Race. “She knew something—and she was blackmailing the murderer with her knowledge. We thought she wasn’t being quite straight this morning.”
Poirot cried out: “We have been idiots—fools! We should have known—then. What did she say? ‘What could I have seen or heard? I was on the deck below. 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, but as it is—’ Of course, that is what did happen! She did come up. She did see someone gliding into Linnet Doyle’s cabin—or coming out of it. And, because of her greed, her insensate greed, she lies here—”
“And we are no nearer to knowing who killed her,” finished Race disgustedly.
Poirot shook his head. “No, no. We know much more now. We know—we know almost everything. Only what we know seems incredible…Yet it must be so. Only I do not see. Pah! What a fool I was this morning! We felt—both of us felt—that she was keeping something back, and yet we never realized that logical reason, blackmail.”
“She must have demanded hush money straight away,” said Race. “Demanded it with threats. The murderer was forced to accede to that request and paid her in French notes. Anything there?”
Poirot shook his head thoughtfully. “I hardly think so. Many people take a reserve of money with them when travelling—sometimes five-pound notes, sometimes dollars, but very often French notes as well. Possibly the murderer paid her all he had in a mixture of currencies. Let us continue our reconstruction.”
“The murderer comes to her cabin, gives her the money, and then—”
“And then,” said Poirot, “she counts it. Oh, yes, I know that class. She would count the money, and while she counted it she was completely off her guard. The murderer struck. Having done so successfully, he gathered up the money and fled—not noticing that the corner of one of the notes was torn.”
“We may get him that way,” suggested Race doubtfully.
“I doubt it,” said Poirot. “He will ex