"There was no means at that point, as I well realized, of knowing who the person was who had done the deed. The only course open to me was to try and understand just what kind of a person had done it.
"I had certain indications. The letter - the manner of the crime - the person murdered. What I had to discover was: the motive of the crime, the motive of the letter."
"Publicity," suggested Clarke.
"Surely an inferiority complex covers that," added Thora Gray.
"That was, of course, the obvious line to take. But why me? Why Hercule Poirot? Greater publicity could be ensured by sending the letters to Scotland Yard. More again by sending them to a newspaper. A newspaper might not print the first letter, but by the time the second crime took place, A.B.C. could have been assured of all the publicity the press could give. Why, then, Hercule Poirot? Was it for some personal reason? There was, discernible in the letter, a slight anti-foreign bias - but not enough to explain the matter to my satisfaction.
"Then the second letter arrived - and was followed by the murder of Betty Barnard at Bexhill. It became clear now (what I had already suspected) that the murders were to proceed in an alphabetical plan, but that fact, which seemed final to most people, left the main question unaltered to my mind. Why did A.B.C. need to commit these murders?"
Megan Barnard stirred in her chair.
"Isn't them such a thing as - as a blood lust?" she said.
Poirot turned to her.
"You are quite right, mademoiselle. There is such a thing. The lust to kill. But that did not quite fit the facts of the case. A homicidal maniac who desires to kill usually desires to kill as many victims as possible. It is a recurring craving. The great idea of such a killer is to hide his tracks - not to advertise them. When we consider the four victims selected - or at any rate three of them (for I know very little of Mr. Downes or Mr. Earlsfield), we realize that if he had chosen, the murderer could have done away with them without incurring any suspicion. Franz Ascher, Donald Fraser or Megan Barnard, possibly Mr. Clarke - those are the people the police would have suspected even if they had been unable to get direct proof. An unknown homicidal murderer would not have been thought of! Why, then, did the murderer feel it necessary to call attention to himself? Was it the necessity of leaving on each body a copy of an A.B.C. railway guide? Was that the compulsion? Was there some complex connected with the railway guide?
"I found it quite inconceivable at this point to enter into the mind of the murderer. Surely it could not be magnanimity? A horror of responsibility for the crime being fastened on an innocent person?
"Although I could not answer the main question, certain things I did feel I was learning about the murderer."
"Such as?" asked Fraser.
"To begin with - that he had a tabular mind. His crimes were listed by alphabetical progression - that was obviously important to him. On the other hand, he had no particular taste in victims - Mrs. Ascher, Betty Barnard, Sir Carmichael Clarke, they all differed widely from each other. There was no sex complex - no particular age complex, and that seemed to me to be a very curious fact. If a man kills indiscriminately it is usually because he removes any one who stands in his way or annoys him. But the alphabetical progression showed that such was not the case here. The other type of killer usually selects a particular type of victim - nearly always of the opposite sex. There was something haphazard about the procedure of A.B.C. that seemed to me to be at war with the alphabetical selection.
"The slight inferences I permitted myself to make. The choice of the A.B.C. suggested to me what I may call a railway-minded man. This is more common in men than women. Small boys love trains better than small girls do. It might be the sign, too, of an in some ways undeveloped mind. The 'boy' motif still predominated.
"The death of Betty Barnard and the manner of it gave me certain other indications. The manner of her death was particularly suggestive. (Forgive me, Mr. Fraser.) To begin with, she was strangled with her own belt - therefore she must almost certainly have been killed by some one with whom she was on friendly or affectionate terms. When I learnt something of her character a picture grew up in my mind.
"Betty Barnard was a flirt. She liked attention from a personal male. Therefore A.B.C., to persuade her to come out with him, must have had a certain amount of attraction - of le sex appeal! He must be able, as you English say, to 'get off.' He must be capable of the click! I visualize the scene on the beach thus: the man admires her belt. She takes it off, he passes it playfully round her neck - says, perhaps, 'I shall strangle you.' It is all very playful. She giggles - and he pulls -"
Donald Fraser sprang up. He was livid.
"M. Poirot - for God's sake."
Poirot made a gesture.
"It is finished. I say no more. It is over. We pass to the next murder, that of Sir Carmichael Clarke. Here the murderer goes back to his first method - the blow on the head. The same alphabetical complex - but one fact worries me a little. To be consistent the murderer should have chosen his towns in some definite sequence.
"If Andover is the 155th name under A, then the B crime should be the 155th also - or it should be the 156th and the C the 157th. Here again the towns seemed to be chosen in rather too haphazard a fashion."
"Isn't that because you're rather biased on that subject, Poirot?" I suggested. "You yourself are normally methodical and orderly. It's almost a disease with you."
"No, it is not a disease! Quelle idйe! But I admit that I may be over-stressing that point. Passons!
"The Churston crime gave me very little extra help. We were unlucky over it, since the letter announcing it went astray, hence no preparations could be made.
"But by the time the D crime was announced, a very formidable system of defence had been evolved. It must have been obvious that A.B.C. could not much longer hope to get away with his crimes.
"Moreover, it was at this point that the clue of the stockings came into my hands. It was perfectly clear that the presence of an individual selling stockings on and near the scene of each crime could not be a incidence. Hence the stocking-seller must be the murderer. I may say that his description, as given me by Miss Grey, did not quite correspond with my own picture of the man who strangled Betty Barnard
"I will pass over the next stages quickly. A fourth murder was committed - the murder of a man named George Earlsfield - it was supposed in mistake for a man named Downes, who was something of the same build and who was sitting near him in the cinema.
"And now at last comes the turn of the tide. Events play against A.B.C. instead of into his hands. He is marked down - hunted - and at last arrested.
"The case, as Hastings says, is ended!
"True enough as far as the public is concerned. The man is in prison and will eventually, no doubt, go to Broadmoor. There will be no more murders. Exit! Finis! R.I.P.
"But not for me. I know nothing - nothing at all! Neither the why nor the wherefore.
"And there is one small vexing fact. The man Cust has an alibi for the night of the Bexhill crime."
"That's been worrying me all along," said Franklin Clarke.
"Yes. It worried me. For the alibi, it has the air of being genuine. But it cannot be genuine unless - and now we come to two very interesting speculations.
"Supposing, my friends, that while Cust committed three of the crimes - the A, C and D crimes - he did not commit the B crime."
"M. Poirot. It isn't -"
Poirot silenced Megan Barnard with a look.
"Be quiet, mademoiselle. I am for the truth, I am! I have done with lies. Supposing, I say, that A.B.C. did not commit the second crime. It took place, remember, in the early hours of the 25th - the day he had arrived for the crime. Supposing some one had forestalled him? What in those circumstances would he do? Commit a second murder, or lie low and accept the first as a kind of macabre present?"
"M. Poirot!" said Megan. "That's a fantastic thought! All the crimes must have been committed by the same person!"
He took no notice of her and went steadily on:
"Such a hypothesis had the merit of explaining one fact - the discrepancy between the personality of Alexander Bonaparte Cust (who could never have made the click with any girl) and the personality of Betty Barnard's murderer. And it has been known, before now, that would-be murderers have taken advantage of the crimes committed by other people. Not all the crimes of Jack the Ripper were committed by Jack the Ripper, for instance. So far, so good.
"But then I came up against a definite difficulty.
"Up to the time of the Barnard murder, no facts about the A.B.C. murders had been made public. The Andover murder had created little interest. The incident of the open railway guide had not even been mentioned in the press. It therefore followed that whoever killed Betty Barnard must have had access to facts known only to certain persons - myself, the police, and certain relations and neighbours of Mrs. Ascher.
"That line of research seemed to lead me up against a blank wall."
The faces that looked at him were blank too. Blank and puzzled.
Donald Fraser said thoughtfully:
"The police, after all, are human beings. And they're good-looking men -"
He stopped, looking at Poirot inquiringly.
Poirot shook his head gently.
"No - it is simpler than that. I told you that there was a second speculation.
"Supposing that Cust was not responsible for the killing of Betty Barnard? Supposing that some one else killed her. Could that some one else have been responsible for the other murders too?"
"But that doesn't make sense!" cried Clarke.
"Doesn't it? I did then what I ought to have done at first. I examined the letters I had received from a totally different point of view. I had felt from the beginning that there was something wrong with them - just as a picture expert knows a picture is wrong...
"I had assumed, without pausing to consider, that what was wrong with them was the fact that they were written by a madman.
"Now I examined them again - and this time I came to a totally different conclusion. What was wrong with them was the fact that they were written by a sane man!"
"What?" I cried.
"But yes - just that precisely! They were wrong as a picture is wrong - because they were a fake. They pretended to be the letters of a madman - of a homicidal lunatic, but in reality they were nothing of the kind."
"It doesn't make sense," Franklin Clarke repeated.
"Mais si! One must reason - reflect. What would be the object of writing such letters? To focus attention on the writer, to call attention to the murders! En veritй, it did not seem to make sense at first sight. And then I saw light. It was to focus attention on several murders - on a group of murders... Is it not your great Shakespeare who has said, 'You cannot see the trees for the wood'?"
I did not correct Poirot's literary reminiscences. I was trying to see his point. A glimmer came to me. He went on:
"When do you notice a pin least? When it is in a pincushion! When do you notice an individual murder least? When it is one of a series of related murders.
"I had to deal with an intensely clever, resourceful murderer - reckless, daring and a thorough gambler. Not Mr. Cust! He could never have committed these murders! No, I had to deal with a very different stamp of man - a man with a boyish temperament (witness the schoolboy-type letters and the railway guide), an attractive man to women, and a man with a ruthless disregard for human life, a man who was necessarily a prominent person in one of the crimes! Consider when a man or woman is killed, what are the questions that the police ask? Opportunity. Where was everybody at the time of the crime? Motive. Who benefited by the deceased's death? If the motive and the opportunity are fairly obvious, what is a would-be murderer to do? Fake an alibi - that is, manipulate time in some way? But that is always a hazardous proceeding. Our murderer thought of a more fantastic defence. Create a homicidal murderer!
"I had now only to review the various crimes and find the possible guilty person. The Andover crime? The most likely suspect for that was Franz Ascher, but I could not imagine Ascher inventing and carrying out such an elaborate scheme, nor could I see him planning a premeditated murder. The Bexhill crime? Donald Fraser was a possibility. He had brains and ability, and a methodical turn of mind. But his motive for killing his sweetheart could only be jealousy - and jealousy does not tend to premeditation. Also I learned that he had his holiday early in August, which rendered it unlikely that he had anything to do with the Churston crime. We come to the Churston crime next - and at once we are on infinitely more promising ground.
"Sir Carmichael Clarke was an immensely wealthy man. Who inherits his money? His wife, who is dying, has a life interest in it, and it then goes to his brother Franklin."
Poirot turned slowly round till his eyes met those of Franklin Clarke.
"I was quite sure then. The man I had known a long time in my secret mind was the same as the man whom I had known as a person. A.B.C. and Franklin Clarke were one and the same! The daring adventurous character, the roving life, the partiality for England that had showed itself, very faintly, in the jeer at foreigners. The attractive free and easy manner - nothing easier for him than to pick up a gift in a cafй. The methodical tabular mind - he made a list here one day, ticked off over the headings A.B.C. - and finally, the boyish mind - mentioned by Lady Clarke and even shown by his taste in fiction - I have ascertained that there is a book in the library called The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. I had no further doubt in my own mind - A.B.C., the man who wrote the letters and committed the crimes, was Franklin Clarke."
Clarke suddenly burst out laughing.
"Very ingenious! And what about our friend Cust, caught red-handed? What about the blood on his coat? And the knife he hid in his lodgings? He may deny he committed the crimes -"
Poirot interrupted.
"You are quite wrong. He admits the fact."
"What?" Clarke looked really startled.
