Hilda Lee cried:
‘I tell you I heard them fighting in there, and I heard the old man scream when his throat was cut—and no one came out and no one was in the room!’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘And all this time you have said nothing.’
Hilda Lee’s face was white, but she said steadily:
‘No, because if I told you what had happened, there’s only one thing you could say or think—that it was I who killed him…’
Poirot shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You did not kill him. His son killed him.’
Stephen Farr said:
‘I swear before God I never touched him!’
‘Not you,’ said Poirot. ‘He had other sons!’
Harry said:
‘What the hell—’
George stared. David drew his hand across his eyes. Alfred blinked twice.
Poirot said:
‘The very first night I was here—the night of the murder—I saw a ghost. It was the ghost of the dead man. When I first saw Harry Lee I was puzzled. I felt I had seen him before. Then I noted his features carefully and I realized how like his father he was, and I told myself that that was what caused the feeling of familiarity.
‘But yesterday a man sitting opposite me threw back his head and laughed—and I knew who it was Harry Lee reminded me of. And I traced again, in another face, the features of the dead man.
‘No wonder poor old Tressilian felt confused when he had answered the door not to two, but to three men who resembled each other closely. No wonder he confessed to getting muddled about people when there were three men in the house who, at a little distance, could pass for each other! The same build, the same gestures (one in particular, a trick of stroking the jaw), the same habit of laughing with the head thrown back, the same distinctive high-bridged nose. Yet the similarity was not always easy to see—for the third man had a moustache.’
He leaned forward.
‘One forgets sometimes that police officers are men, that they have wives and children, mothers’—he paused—‘and fathers…Remember Simeon Lee’s local reputation: a man who broke his wife’s heart because of his affairs with women. A son born the wrong side of the blanket may inherit many things. He may inherit his father’s features and even his gestures. He may inherit his pride and his patience and his revengeful spirit!’
His voice rose.
‘All your life, Sugden, you’ve resented the wrong your father did you. I think you determined long ago to kill him. You come from the next county, not very far away. Doubtless your mother, with the money Simeon Lee so generously gave her, was able to find a husband who would stand father to her child. Easy for you to enter the Middleshire Police Force and wait your opportunity. A police superintendent has a grand opportunity of committing a murder and getting away with it.’
Sugden’s face had gone white as paper.
He said:
‘You’re mad! I was outside the house when he was killed.’
Poirot shook his head.
‘No, you killed him before you left the house the first time. No one saw him alive after you left. It was all so easy for you. Simeon Lee expected you, yes, but he never sent for you. It was you who rang him up and spoke vaguely about an attempt at robbery. You said you would call upon him just before eight that night and would pretend to be collecting for a police charity. Simeon Lee had no suspicions. He did not know you were his son. You came and told him a tale of substituted diamonds. He opened the safe to show you that the real diamonds were safe in his possession. You apologized, came back to the hearth with him and, catching him unawares, you cut his throat, holding your hand over his mouth so that he shouldn’t cry out. Child’s play to a man of your powerful physique.
‘Then you set the scene. You took the diamonds. You piled up tables and chairs, lamps and glasses, and twined a very thin rope or cord which you had brought in coiled round your body, in and out between them. You had with you a bottle of some freshly killed animal’s blood to which you had added a quantity of sodium citrate. You sprinkled this about freely and added more sodium citrate to the pool of blood which flowed from Simeon Lee’s wound. You made up up the fire so that the body should keep its warmth. Then you passed the two ends of the cord out through the narrow slit at the bottom of the window and let them hang down the wall. You left the room and turned the key from the outside. That was vital, since no one must, by any chance, enter that room.
‘Then you went out and hid the diamonds in the stone sink garden. If, sooner or later, they were discovered there, they would only focus suspicion more strongly where you wanted it: on the members of Simeon Lee’s legitimate family. A little before nine-fifteen you returned and, going up to the wall underneath the window, you pulled on the cord. That dislodged the carefully piled-up structure you had arranged. Furniture and china fell with a crash. You pulled on one end of the cord and re-wound it round your body under your coat and waistcoat.
‘You had one further device!’