"The point is, sir, he was there - on the spot. And we're not getting anywhere any other way. Up against a blank wall, that's where we are."
The chief constable blew his nose irritably.
"I know. I know. Makes me begin to believe in Mrs Masterton's homicidal pervert. I'd even use bloodhounds, if there were anywhere to use them."
"Bloodhounds can't follow a scent over water."
"Yes. I know what you've always thought, Bland. And I'm inclined to agree with you. But there's absolutely no motive, you know. Not an iota of motive."
"The motive may be out in the islands."
"Meaning that Hattie Stubbs knew something about De Sousa out there? I suppose that's reasonably possible, given her mentality. She was simple, everyone agrees on that. She might blurt out what she knew to anyone at any time. Is that the way you see it?"
"Something like that."
"If so, he waited a long time before crossing the sea and doing something about it."
"Well, sir, it's possible he didn't know what exactly had become of her. His own story was that he'd seen a piece in some society periodical about Nasse House, and its beautiful chвtelaine. (Which I have always thought myself," added Bland parenthetically, "to be a silver thing with chains, and bits and pieces hung on it that people's grandmothers used to clip on their waistbands - and a good idea, too. Wouldn't be all these silly women for ever leaving their handbags around.) Seems, though, that in women's jargon chвtelaine means mistress of a house. As I say, that's his story and maybe it's true enough, and he didn't know where she was or who she'd married until then."
"But once he did know, he came across post-haste in a yacht in order to murder her? It's far-fetched, Bland, very far-fetched."
"But it could be, sir."
"And what on earth could the woman know?"
"Remember what she said to her husband. 'He kills people.'"
"Murder remembered? From the time she was fifteen? And presumably only her word for it? Surely he'd be able to laugh that off?"
"We don't know the facts," said Bland stubbornly. "You know yourself, sir, how once one knows who did a thing, one can look for the evidence and find it."
"H'm. We've made inquiries about De Sousa - discreetly - through the usual channels - and got nowhere."
"That's just why, sir, this funny old Belgian boy might have stumbled on something. He was in the house - that's the important thing. Lady Stubbs talked to him. Some of the random things she said may have come together in his mind and made sense. However that may be, he's been down in Nassecombe most of today."
"And he rang you up to ask what kind of a yacht Etienne De Sousa had?"
"When he rang up the first time, yes. The second time was to ask me to arrange this meeting."
"Well," the chief constable looked at his watch, "if he doesn't come within five minutes..."
But it was at that very moment that Hercule Poirot was shown in.
His appearance was not as immaculate as usual. His moustache was limp, affected by the damp Devon air, his patent-leather shoes were heavily coated with mud, he limped, and his hair was ruffled.
"Well, so here you are, M. Poirot." The chief constable shook hands. "We're all keyed up, on our toes, waiting to hear what you have to tell us."
The words were faintly ironic, but Hercule Poirot, however damp physically, was in no mood to be damped mentally.
"I cannot imagine," he said, "how it was I did not see the truth before."
The chief constable received this rather coldly.
"Are we to understand that you do see the truth now?"
"Yes, there are details - but the outline is clear."
"We want more than an outline," said the chief constable dryly. "We want evidence. Have you got evidence, M. Poirot?"
"I can tell you where to find the evidence."
Inspector Bland spoke. "Such as?"
Poirot turned to him and asked a question.
"Etienne De Sousa has, I suppose, left the country."
"Two weeks ago." Bland added bitterly, "It won't be easy to get him back."
"He might be persuaded."
"Persuaded? There's not sufficient evidence to warrant an extradition order, then?"
"It is not a question of an extradition order. If the facts are put to him -"
"But what facts, M. Poirot?" The chief constable spoke with some irritation. "What are these facts you talk about so glibly?"
"The fact that Etienne De Sousa came here in a lavishly appointed luxury yacht showing that his family is rich, the fact that old Merdell was Marlene Tucker's grandfather (which I did not know until today), the fact that Lady Stubbs was fond of wearing the coolie type of hat, the fact that Mrs Oliver, in spite of an unbridled and unreliable imagination, is, unrealised by herself, a very shrewd judge of character, the fact that Marlene Tucker had lipsticks and bottles of perfume hidden at the back of her bureau drawer, the fact that Miss Brewis maintains that it was Lady Stubbs who asked her to take a refreshment tray down to Marlene at the boathouse."
"Facts?" The chief constable stared. "You call those facts? But there's nothing new there."
"You prefer evidence - definite evidence - such as - Lady Stubbs's body?"
Now it was Bland who stared.
"You have found Lady Stubbs's body?"
"Not actually found it - but I know where it is hidden. You shall go to the spot, and when you have found it, then - then you will have evidence - all the evidence you need. For only one person could have hidden it there."
"And who's that?"
Hercule Poirot smiled - the contented smile of a cat who has lapped up a saucer of cream.
"The person it so often is," he said softly; "the husband. Sir George Stubbs killed his wife."
"But that's impossible, M. Poirot. We know it's impossible."
"Oh, no," said Poirot, "it is not impossible at all! Listen, and I will tell you."
Chapter 20
Hercule Poirot paused a moment at the big wrought-iron gates. He looked ahead of him along the curving drive. The last of the golden brown leaves fluttered down from the trees. The cyclamen were over.
Poirot sighed. He turned aside and rapped gently on the door of the little white pilastered lodge.
After a few moments' delay he heard footsteps inside, those slow hesitant footsteps. The door was opened by Mrs Folliat. He was not startled this time to see how old and frail she looked.
She said, "M. Poirot? You again?"
"May I come in?"
"Of course."
He followed her in.
She offered him tea which he refused. Then she asked in a quiet voice:
"Why have you come?"
"I think you can guess, Madame."
Her answer was oblique.
"I am very tired," she said.
"I know." He went on, "There have now been three deaths, Hattie Stubbs, Marlene Tucker, old Merdell."
She said sharply:
"Merdell? That was an accident. He fell from the quay. He was very old, half-blind, and he'd been drinking in the pub."
"It was not an accident. Merdell knew too much."
"What did he know?"
"He recognised a face, or a way of walking, or a voice - something like that. I talked to him the day I first came down here. He told me then all about the Folliat family - about your father-in-law and your husband, and your sons who were killed in the war. Only - they were not both killed, were they? Your son Henry went down with his ship, but your second son, James, was not killed. He deserted. He was reported at first, perhaps, Missing believed killed, and later you told everyone that he was killed. It was nobody's business to disbelieve that statement. Why should they?"
Poirot paused and then went on:
"Do not imagine I have no sympathy for you, Madame. Life has been hard for you, I know. You can have had no real illusions about your younger son, but he was your son, and you loved him. You did all you could to give him a new life. You had the charge of a young girl, a subnormal but very rich girl. Oh yes, she was rich. You gave out that her parents had lost all their money, that she was poor, and that you had advised her to marry a rich man many years older than herself. Why should anybody disbelieve your story? Again, it was nobody's business. Her parents and near relatives had been killed. A firm of French lawyers in Paris acted as instructed by lawyers in San Miguel. On her marriage, she assumed control of her own fortune. She was, as you have told me, docile, affectionate, suggestible. Everything her husband asked her to sign, she signed. Securities were probably changed and resold many times, but in the end the desired financial result was reached. Sir George Stubbs, the new personality assumed by your son, became a rich man and his wife became a pauper. It is no legal offence to call yourself 'sir' unless it is done to obtain money under false pretences. A title creates confidence - it suggests, if not birth, then certainly riches. So the rich Sir George Stubbs, older and changed in appearance and having grown a beard, bought Nasse House and came to live where he belonged, though he had not been there since he was a boy. There was nobody left after the devastations of war who was likely to have recognised him. But old Merdell did. He kept the knowledge to himself, but when he said to me slyly that there would always be Folliats at Nasse House, that was his own private joke.
"So all had turned out well, or so you thought. Your plan, I fully believe, stopped there. Your son had wealth, his ancestral home, and though his wife was subnormal she was a beautiful and docile girl, and you hoped he would be kind to her and that she would be happy."
Mrs Folliat said in a low voice:
"That's how I thought it would be - I would look after Hattie and care for her. I never dreamed -"
"You never dreamed - and your son carefully did not tell you, that at the time of the marriage he was already married. Oh, yes - we have searched the records for what we knew must exist. Your son had married a girl in Trieste, a girl of the underground criminal world with whom he concealed himself after his desertion. She had no mind to be parted from him, nor for that matter had he any intention of being parted from her. He accepted the marriage with Hattie as a means to wealth, but in his own mind he knew from the beginning what he intended to do."
"No, no, I do not believe that! I cannot believe it... It was that woman - that wicked creature."
Poirot went on inexorably:
"He meant murder. Hattie had no relations, few friends. Immediately on their return to England, he brought her here. The servants hardly saw her that first evening, and the woman they saw the next morning was not Hattie, but his Italian wife made up as Hattie and behaving roughly much as Hattie behaved. And there again it might have ended. The false Hattie would have lived out her life as the real Hattie though doubtless her mental powers would have unexpectedly improved owing to what would vaguely be called 'new treatment.' The secretary, Miss Brewis, already realised that there was very little wrong with Lady Stubbs's mental processes.
"But then a totally unforeseen thing happened. A cousin of Hattie's wrote that he was coming to England on a yachting trip, and although that cousin had not seen her for many years, he would not be likely to be deceived by an imposter.
"It is odd," said Poirot, breaking off his narrative, "that though the thought did cross my mind that De Sousa might not be De Sousa, it never occurred to me that the truth lay the other way round - that is to say, that Hattie was not Hattie."
He went on:
"There might have been several different ways of meeting that situation. Lady Stubbs could have avoided a meeting with a plea of illness, but if De Sousa remained long in England she could hardly have continued to avoid meeting him. And there was already another complication. Old Merdell, garrulous in his old age, used to chatter to his granddaughter. She was probably the only person who bothered to listen to him, and even she dismissed most of what he said because she thought him 'batty.' Nevertheless, some of the things he said about having seen 'a woman's body in the woods,' and 'Sir George Stubbs being really Mr James' made sufficient impression on her to make her hint about them tentatively to Sir George. In doing so, of course, she signed her own death warrant. Sir George and his wife could take no chances of stories like that getting around. I imagine that he handed her out small sums of hush money, and proceeded to make his plans.
"They worked out their scheme very carefully. They already knew the date when De Sousa was due at Helmmouth. It coincided with the date fixed for the fкte. They arranged their plan so that Marlene should be killed and Lady Stubbs 'disappear' in conditions which should throw vague suspicion on De Sousa. Hence the reference to his being a 'wicked man' and the accusation: 'he kills people.' Lady Stubbs was to disappear permanently (possibly a conveniently unrecognisable body might be identified at some time by Sir George), and a new personality was to take her place. Actually, 'Hattie' would merely resume her own Italian personality. All that was needed was for her to double the parts over a period of a little more than twenty-four hours. With the connivance of Sir George, this was easy. On the day I arrived, 'Lady Stubbs' was supposed to have remained in her room until just before teatime. Nobody saw her there except Sir George. Actually, she slipped out, took a bus or a train to Exeter, and travelled from Exeter in the company of another girl student (several travel every day this time of year) to whom she confided her story of the friend who had eaten bad veal and ham pie. She arrives at the hostel, books her cubicle, and goes out to 'explore.' By tea time, Lady Stubbs is in the drawing-room. After dinner, Lady Stubbs goes early to bed - but Miss Brewis caught a glimpse of her slipping out of the house a short while afterwards. She spends the night in the hostel, but is out early, and is back at Nasse as Lady Stubbs for breakfast. Again she spends a morning in her room with a 'headache,' and this time manages to stage an appearance as a 'trespasser' rebuffed by Sir George from the window of his wife's room where he pretends to turn and speak to his wife inside that room. The changes of costume were not difficult - shorts and an open shirt under one of the elaborate dresses that Lady Stubbs was fond of wearing. Heavy white make-up for Lady Stubbs with a big coolie hat to shade her face; a gay peasant scarf, sunburned complexion, and bronze-red curls for the Italian girl. No one would have dreamed that those two were the same woman.
