“In no other way, Mademoiselle, could the thing have happened.”
“That’s proof enough for a logical mind, but I don’t believe it would have convinced a jury. Oh, well—it can’t be helped. You sprang it all on Simon, and he went down like a ninepin. He just lost his head utterly, poor lamb, and admitted everything.” She shook her head. “He’s a bad loser.”
“But you, Mademoiselle, are a good loser.”
She laughed suddenly—a queer, gay, defiant little laugh.
“Oh, yes, I’m a good loser all right.” She looked at him.
She said suddenly and impulsively: “Don’t mind so much, Monsieur Poirot! About me, I mean. You do mind, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“But it wouldn’t have occurred to you to let me off?”
Hercule Poirot said quietly, “No.”
She nodded her head in quiet agreement.
“No, it’s no use being sentimental. I might do it again…I’m not a safe person any longer. I can feel that myself…” She went on broodingly: “It’s so dreadfully easy—killing people. And you begin to feel that it doesn’t matter…that it’s only you that matters! It’s dangerous—that.”
She paused, then said with a little smile: “You did your best for me, you know. That night at Assuan—you told me not to open my heart to evil…Did you realize then what was in my mind?”
He shook his head.
“I only knew that what I said was true.”
“It was true. I could have stopped, then, you know. I nearly did…I could have told Simon that I wouldn’t go on with it…But then perhaps—”
She broke off. She said: “Would you like to hear about it? From the beginning?”
“If you care to tell me, Mademoiselle.”
“I think I want to tell you. It was all very simple really. You see, Simon and I loved each other….”
It was a matter-of-fact statement, yet, underneath the lightness of her tone, there were echoes….
Poirot said simply: “And for you love would have been enough, but not for him.”
“You might put it that way, perhaps. But you don’t quite understand Simon. You see, he’s always wanted money so dreadfully. He liked all the things you get with money—horses and yachts and sport—nice things all of them, things a man ought to be keen about. And he’d never been able to have any of them. He’s awfully simple, Simon is. He wants things just as a child wants them—you know—terribly.
“All the same he never tried to marry anybody rich and horrid. He wasn’t that sort. And then we met—and—and that sort of settled things. Only we didn’t see when we’d be able to marry. He’d had rather a decent job, but he’d lost it. In a way it was his own fault. He tried to do something smart over money, and got found out at once. I don’t believe he really meant to be dishonest. He just thought it was the sort of thing people did in the City.”
A flicker passed over her listener’s face, but he guarded his tongue.
“There we were, up against it; and then I thought of Linnet and her new country house, and I rushed off to her. You know, Monsieur Poirot, I loved Linnet, really I did. She was my best friend, and I never dreamed that anything would ever come between us. I just thought how lucky it was she was rich. It might make all the difference to me and Simon if she’d give him a job. And she was awfully sweet about it and told me to bring Simon down to see her. It was about then you saw us that night at Chez Ma Tante. We were making whoopee, although we couldn’t really afford it.”
She paused, sighed, then went on: “What I’m going to say now is quite true, Monsieur Poirot. Even though Linnet is dead, it doesn’t alter the truth. That’s why I’m not really sorry about her, even now. She went all out to get Simon away from me. That’s the absolute truth! I don’t think she even hesitated for more than about a minute. I was her friend, but s
he didn’t care. She just went bald-headed for Simon….
“And Simon didn’t care a damn about her! I talked a lot to you about glamour, but of course that wasn’t true. He didn’t want Linnet. He thought her good-looking but terribly bossy, and he hated bossy women! The whole thing embarrassed him frightfully. But he did like the thought of her money.
“Of course I saw that…and at last I suggested to him that it might be a good thing if he—got rid of me and married Linnet. But he scouted the idea. He said, money or no money, it would be hell to be married to her. He said his idea of having money was to have it himself—not to have a rich wife holding the purse strings. ‘I’d be a kind of damned Prince Consort,’ he said to me. He said, too, that he didn’t want anyone but me….
“I think I know when the idea came into his head. He said one day: ‘If I’d any luck, I’d marry her and she’d die in about a year and leave me all the boodle.’ And then a queer startled look came into his eyes. That was when he first thought of it….
“He talked about it a good deal, one way and another—about how convenient it would be if Linnet died. I said it was an awful idea, and then he shut up about it. Then, one day, I found him reading up all about arsenic. I taxed him with it then, and he laughed and said: ‘Nothing venture, nothing have! It’s about the only time in my life I shall be near to touching a far lot of money.’