“She was the only person who occasioned Sir Charles any uneasiness. That is why he was anxious to be the one to tackle her. He was fairly reassured by his interview and distinctly gratified that she had noticed the birthmark. But after that came catastrophe. I don't think that until that minute Miss Wills had connected Ellis, the butler, with Sir Charles Cartwright. I think she had only been vaguely struck by some resemblance to someone in Ellis. But she was an observer. When dishes were handed to her, she had automatically noted, not the face but the hands that held the dishes.
“It did not occur to her that Ellis was Sir Charles. But when Sir Charles was talking to her, it did suddenly occur to her that Sir Charles was Ellis! And so she asked him to pretend to hand her a dish of vegetables. But it was not whether the birthmark was on the right or left wrist that interested her. She wanted a pretext to study his hands - hands held in the same position as those of Ellis, the butler.
“And so she leaped to the truth. But she was a peculiar woman. She enjoyed knowledge for its own sake. Besides, she was by no means sure that Sir Charles had murdered his friend. He had masqueraded as a butler, yes; but that did not necessarily make him a murderer. Many an innocent man has kept silence because speech would place him in an awkward position.
“So Miss Wills kept her knowledge to herself, and enjoyed it. But Sir Charles was worried. He did not like that expression of satisfied malice on her face that he saw as he left the room. She knew something. What? Did it affect him? He could not be sure. But he felt that it was something connected with Ellis, the butler. First Mr. Satterthwaite, now Miss Wills. Attention must be drawn away from that vital point. It must be focused away from that vital point. It must be focused definitely elsewhere. And he thought of a plan - simple, audacious and, as he fancied, definitely mystifying.
“On the day of my sherry party, I imagine Sir Charles rose very early, went to Yorkshire, and, disguised in shabby clothes, gave the telegram to a small boy to send off. Then he returned to town in time to act the part I had indicated in my little drama. He did one more thing. He posted a box of chocolates to a woman he had never seen and of whom he knew nothing.
“You know what happened that evening. For Sir Charles’ uneasiness, I was fairly sure that Miss Wills had certain suspicions. When Sir Charles did his death scene, I watched Miss Wills’ face. I saw the look of astonishment that showed on it. I knew then that Miss Wills definitely suspected Sir Charles of being the murderer. When he appeared to die, poisoned, like the other two, she thought her deductions must be wrong.
“But if Miss Wills suspected Sir Charles, then Miss Wills was in serious danger. A man who has killed twice will kill again. I uttered a very solemn warning. Later that night I communicated with Miss Wills by telephone, and on my advice she left home suddenly the next day. Since then she has been living here in this hotel. That I was wise is proved by the fact that Sir Charles went out to Tooting on the following evening after he had returned from Gilling. He was too late. The bird had flown.
“In the meantime, from his point of view, the plan had worked well. Mrs. de Rushbridger had something of importance to tell us. Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed before she could speak. How dramatic! How like the detective stories, the plays, the films! Again the cardboard and the tinsel and the painted cloth.
“But I, Hercule Poirot, was not deceived. Mr. Satterthwaite said to me that she was killed in order that she should not speak. I agreed. He went on to say that she was killed before she could tell us what she knew. I said: ‘Or what she did not know.’ I think he was puzzled. But he should have seen, then, the truth. Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed because she could, in actual fact, have told us nothing at all. Because she had no connection with the crime. If she were to be Sir Charles’ successful red herring, she could only be so, dead. And so Mrs. de Rushbridger, a harmless stranger, was murdered.
“Yet even in that seeming triumph, Sir Charles made a colossal - a childish error! The telegram was addressed to me, Hercule Poirot, at the Ritz Hotel. But Mrs. de Rushbridger had never heard of my connection with the case! No one up in that part of the world knew of it. It was an unbelievably childish error.
“Eh bien, then, I had reached a certain stage. I knew the identity of the murderer. But I did not know the motive for the original crime.
“I reflected.
“And once again, more clearly than ever, I saw the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange as the original and purposeful murder. What reason could Sir Charles Cartwright have for the murder of his friend? Could I imagine a motive? I thought I could.”
There was a deep sigh. Sir Charles Cartwright rose slowly to his feet and strolled to the fireplace. He stood there, his hand on his hip, looking down at Poirot. His attitude, Mr. Satterthwaite could have told you, was that of Lord Englemount as he looks scornfully at the rascally solicitor who has succeeded in fastening an accusation of fraud upon him. He radiated nobility and disgust. He was the aristocrat looking down at the ignoble canaille.
“You have an extraordinary imagination, M. Poirot,” he said. “It's hardly worth while saying that there's not one single word of truth in your story. How you have the damned impertinence to dish up such an absurd fandangle of lies, I don't know. But go on; I am interested. What was my motive for murdering a man whom I had known ever since boyhood?”
Hercule Poirot, the little bourgeois, looked up at the aristocrat. He spoke quietly, but firmly:
“Sir Charles, there are not so very many motives for murder. There is fear, there is gain, there is - a woman. In your case. Sir Charles, we need not look beyond the first of these. Your motive for murdering Sir Bartholomew Strange was fear.”
Sir Charles shrugged a disdainful shoulder.
“And why had I any reason to fear my old friend?”
“Because,” said Hercule Poirot, “Sir Bartholomew was a mental specialist.”
He paused for a moment, then went on in a gentle, remote voice:
“Since this idea came to me, I have made inquiries. I have looked up the files of newspapers. Perhaps, Sir Charles, you remember mentioning before Mr. Satterthwaite that you had abandoned your career after a nervous breakdown occasioned by overwork. That statement fell somewhat short of the real truth. I note that in the last two years of your stage career you acted in three plays - one a dramatized version of the life of Napoleon, the second a religious pastoral play in which your part was that of the Deity dimly disguised, and the third a crook play in which you acted the role of a super-dictator who mastered the world. In your public speeches at that time there are undoubted traces of egomania. As to your actual breakdown, the details are very vague. It was announced in the press that you had gone on a cruise. But I failed to find your name in any of the passenger lists of likely shipping companies.
“Unwittingly, at this stage Miss Lytton Gore came to my help. She let fall the fact that your real name was Mugg, and immediately a sentence sprang into my mind - that sentence penciled in Sir Bartholomew's diary: ‘Am worried about M. Don't like the look of things.’ M stood not for Manders, nor for Margaret de Rushbridger, nor for some person unknown. M stood for Mugg - the name under which Sir Bartholomew knew you as a young man. And very speedily I found confirmation of my theory. On the date on which Sir Charles was supposed to have set off on a cruise, a patient named Charles Mugg was admitted to a private mental home in Lincolnshire. I can understand the reasons for such a procedure - Sir Charles Cartwright was well known to the staff of Sir Bartholomew's sanatorium at the abbey. This method avoided all publicity. Charles Mugg was discharged from the home in question after a stay of four months, but I can imagine that the doctor was not wholly satisfied about his friend's mental condition. And no doubt his watchful attitude precipitated the tragedy.
“Sir Charles’ malady was not cured; he merely concealed it very cunningly from the world. But he was less sure of concealing it from the anxious and experienced eyes of his friend. And so, while Sir Bartholomew was no more than vaguely dissatisfied with his friend's mental condition. Sir Charles was laying his plans with the cunning natural to his state of mind.
“In Sir Bartholomew he saw a menace to his freedom. He was convinced that Sir Bartholomew was planning to put him under restraint. And so he planned a careful and extremely cunning murder.
“One thing had puzzled me all along - the relations between Sir Charles and Miss Lytton Gore. To Mr. Satterthwaite, he pretended to be the dense lover who cannot recognize his mistress's answering passion. He pretended to think that Miss Lytton Gore was in love with Mr. Oliver Manders. But I say that a man like Sir Charles - a man with a great knowledge of the world, and an experienced man where women are concerned - could not possibly have been so deceived. He must have known that he had a clear field. How, then, explain his attitude?
“Very simply. Sir Charles wanted an excuse to leave Loomouth and go abroad. He wanted an excuse that would reasonably explain his avoiding his friends for a while. And with that genius for dramatic effect which is undoubtedly his, he saw that nothing would be so effective as a romantic reason. It made him stand out at once as a sympathetic figure. It gave him, too, an excuse for returning to England after the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange and for taking part in the investigation. It was vital to him to know just how things were going.”
Hercule Poirot paused.
Sir Charles laughed. It was a hearty, deeply amused laugh.
“My dear fellow,” he said. “Really, my dear fellow.”
And had there been an audience sitting in the stalls, they would have felt that really this absurd foreigner's ideas were too ridiculous.
Sir Charles fairly radiated sanity.
“So I'm mad, am I?” said Sir Charles, with great good humor. “My dear M. Poirot, are you sure the boot is not on the other leg? We won't say senile decay, but -” he touched his forehead - “just a shade ga-ga, in my opinion. I admit my nerves were all to pieces, and on Tollie's advice I went to a private nursing home for a bit. But to regard me as a homicidal maniac - well, that's a bit too much.”
He paused and then went on, still in the same tone of good-humored amusement:
“And Babbington - that dear old clergyman? Was he, too, an authority on insanity?”
“No,” said Hercule Poirot. “The reason for the removal of Mr. Babbington was quite a different one. There was, in fact, no reason.”
“Just a little homicidal fun, in fact?”
“No, there was more to it than that. All along I have been held up by the fact that though on that evening you had a full opportunity for putting the nicotine into the cocktail glass, you could not have insured its reaching one particular person. Yesterday, through a chance remark, I saw light. The poison was not intended specially for Stephen Babbington. It was intended for anyone present, with the exception of two people - yourself and Sir Bartholomew, who, you knew, did not drink cocktails.”
Mr. Satterthwaite cried out:
“But that's nonsense! What's the point of it? There isn't any.”
Poirot turned toward him. Triumph came into his voice:
“Oh, yes, there is. A queer point - a very queer point. The only time I have come across such a motive for murder. The murder of Stephen Babbington was neither more nor less than a dress rehearsal.”
“What?”
“Yes, Sir Charles was an actor. He obeyed his actor's instinct. He tried out his murder before committing it. No suspicion could possibly attach to him. Not one of those people's deaths could benefit him in any way and, moreover, as everyone has found, he could not have been proved to have poisoned any particular person. And, my friends, the dress rehearsal went well. Mr. Babbington dies, and foul play is not even suspected. It is left to Sir Charles to urge that suspicion, and he is highly gratified at our refusal to take it seriously. The substitution of the glass, too - that has gone without a hitch. In fact, he can be sure that, when the real performance comes, it will be ‘all right on the night.’
“As you know, events took on a slightly different turn. On the second occasion a doctor was present who immediately suspected poison. It was then to Sir Charles’ interests to stress the death of Babbington. Sir Bartholomew's death must be presumed to be the outcome of that earlier death. Attention must be focused on the motive for Babbington's murder, not on any motive that might exist for Sir Bartholomew's removal.
“But there was one thing that Sir Charles failed to realize. The efficient watchfulness of Miss Milray. Miss Milray knew that her employer dabbled in chemical experiments in the tower in the garden. Miss Milray paid bills for rose-spraying solution and realized that quite a lot of it had unaccountably disappeared. When she read that Mr. Babbington had died of nicotine poisoning, her clever brain leaped at once to the conclusion that Sir Charles had extracted the pure alkaloid from the rose solution.
“And Miss Milray did not know what to do, for she had known Mr. Babbington as a little girl, and she was in love, deeply and devotedly as an ugly woman can be, with her fascinating employer.
“In the end she decided to destroy Sir Charles’ apparatus. Sir Charles himself had been so cocksure of his success that he had never thought it necessary. She went down to Cornwall and I followed.”
Again Sir Charles laughed. More than ever he looked a fine gentleman disgusted by a rat.
“Is some old chemical apparatus all your evidence?” he demanded contemptuously.
“No,” said Poirot. “There is your passport showing the dates when you returned to and left England. They coincide with the period during which the butler, Ellis, was in Sir Bartholomew's service.”
Egg had so far sat silent - a frozen figure. But now she stirred. A little cry, almost a moan, came from her.
Sir Charles turned superbly.
“Egg, you don't believe a word of this absurd story, do you?”
He laughed. His hands were outstretched. Egg came slowly forward as though hypnotized. Her eyes gazed into his. And then, just before she reached him, she wavered, her glance fell, went this way and that, as though seeking for reassurance.
Then, with a cry, she fell on her knees by Poirot.
“Is this true? Is this true?”
He put both hands on her shoulders, a firm, kindly touch.
“It is true, mademoiselle.”
Egg said:
“The other day, when we were in the country - all the time I was afraid. I didn't know why. I was just afraid of something. Was that because - because -”
