Hercule Poirot listened. As Japp had said, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a real person. She had lived in Calcutta and taught elocution and worked among the native population. She had been respectable, well-meaning, a little fussy and stupid perhaps, but also what is termed a woman with a heart of gold.
And Mrs. Adams' voice ran on:
"She was so much in earnest over everything, M. Poirot. And she found people so apathetic - so hard to rouse. It was very difficult to get subscriptions out of people - worse every year, with the income tax rising and the cost of living and everything. She said to me once: 'When one knows what money can do - the wonderful good you can accomplish with it - well, really, sometimes, Alice, I feel I would commit a crime to get it.' That shows, doesn't it, M. Poirot, how strongly she felt?"
"She said that, did she?" said Poirot thoughtfully.
He asked, casually, when Miss Sainsbury Seale had enunciated this particular statement, and learned that it had been about three months ago.
He left the house and walked away lost in thought.
He was considering the character of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale.
A nice woman - an earnest and kindly woman - a respectable dent type of woman. It was among that type of person that Mr. Barnes had suggested a potential criminal could be found.
She had travelled back on the same boat from India as Mr. Amberiotis. There seemed reason to believe that she had lunched with him at the Savoy.
She had accosted and claimed acquaintance with Alistair Blunt and laid claim to an intimacy with his wife.
She had twice visited King Leopold Mansions where, later, a dead body had been found dressed in her clothes and with her handbag conveniently identifying it.
A little too convenient, that!
She had left the Glengowrie Court Hotel suddenly after an interview with the police.
Could the theory that Hercule Poirot believed to be true account for and explain all those facts?
He thought it could.
III
These meditations had occupied Hercule Poirot on his homeward way until he reached Regent's Park.
He decided to traverse a part of the Park on foot before taking a taxi. By experience, he knew to a nicety the moment when his smart patent leather shoes began to press painfully on his feet.
It was a lovely summer's day and Poirot looked indulgently on courting nursemaids and their swains, laughing and giggling while their chubby charges profited by nurse's inattention. Dogs barked and romped. Little boys sailed boats.
And under nearly every tree was a couple sitting close together...
"Ah! Jeunesse, jeunesse," murmured Hercule Poirot, pleasurably affected by the sight.
They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air.
Their figures, however, he considered, lamentably deficient. Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer?
He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women... One woman, in particular - what a sumptuous creature - a Bird of Paradise - a Venus...
What woman was there among these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff? A genuine Russian aristocrat, an aristocrat to her fingertips! And also, he remembered, a most accomplished thief One of those natural geniuses...
With a sigh, Poirot wrenched his thoughts away from the flamboyant creature of his dreams.
It was not only, he noted, the little nursemaids and their like who were being wooed under the trees of Regent's Park.
That was a Schiaparelli creation there, under that lime tree, with the young man who bent his head so close to hers, who was pleading so earnestly.
One must not yield too soon! He hoped the girl understood that. The pleasure of the chase must be extended as long as possible...
His beneficent eye still on them, he became suddenly aware of a familiarity in those two figures.
So Jane Olivera had come to Regent's Park to meet her young American revolutionary?
His face grew suddenly sad and rather stern.
After only a brief hesitation he crossed the grass to them. Sweeping off his hat with a flourish, he said: "Bonjour, Mademoiselle."
Jane Olivera, he thought, was not entirely displeased to see him.
Howard Raikes, on the other hand, was a good deal annoyed at the interruption.
He growled:
"Oh, so it's you again!"
"Good afternoon, M. Poirot," said Jane. "How unexpectedly you always pop up, don't you?"
"Kind of a Jack-in-the-Box," said Raikes, still eyeing Poirot with considerable coldness.
"I do not intrude?" Poirot asked anxiously.
Jane Olivera said kindly:
"Not at all."
Howard Raikes said nothing.
"It is a pleasant spot you have found here," said Poirot.
"It was," said Mr. Raikes.
Jane said: "Be quiet, Howard. You need to learn manners!"
Howard Raikes snorted and asked:
"What's the good of manners?"
"You'll find they kind of help you along," said Jane. "I haven't got any myself, but that doesn't matter so much. To begin with I'm rich, and I'm moderately good looking, and I've got a lot of influential friends - and none of those unfortunate disabilities they talk about so freely in the advertisements nowadays. I can get along all right without manners."
Raikes said:
"I'm not in the mood for small talk, Jane. I guess I'll take myself off."
He got up, nodded curtly to Poirot and strode away.
Jane Olivera stared after him, her chin cupped in her palm.
Poirot said with a sigh:
"Alas, the proverb is true. When you are courting, two is company, is it not, three is none?"
Jane said:
"Courting? What a word!"
"But yes, it is the right word, is it not? For a young man who pays attention to a young lady before asking her hand in marriage? They say, do they not, a courting couple?"
"Your friends seem to say some very funny things."
Hercule Poirot chanted softly:
"Thirteen, fourteen, maids are courting. See, all around us they are doing it."
Jane said sharply:
"Yes - I'm just one of a crowd, I suppose."
She turned suddenly to Poirot.
"I want to apologize to you. I made a mistake the other day. I thought you had wormed your way in and come down to Exsham just to spy on Howard. But afterwards Uncle Alistair told me that he had definitely asked you because he wanted you to clear up this business of that missing woman - Sainsbury Seale. That's right, isn't it?"
"Absolutely."
"So I'm sorry for what I said to you that evening. But it did look like it, you know. I mean, as though you were just following Howard and spying on us both."
"Even if it were true, Mademoiselle - I was an excellent witness to the fact that Mr. Raikes bravely saved your uncle's life by springing on his assailant and preventing him from firing another shot."
"You've got a funny way of saying things, M. Poirot. I never know whether you're serious or not."
Poirot said gravely:
"At the moment I am very serious, Miss Olivera."
Jane said with a slight break in her voice:
"Why do you look at me like that? As though - as though you were sorry for me?"
"Perhaps because I am sorry, Mademoiselle, for the things that I shall have to do so soon -"
"Well, then - don't do them!"
"Alas, Mademoiselle, but I must."
She stared at him for a minute or two, then she said:
"Have you found that woman?"
Poirot said:
"Let us say - that I know where she is."
"Is she dead?"
"I have not said so."
"She's alive, then?"
"I have not said that either."
Jane looked at him with irritation. She exclaimed:
"Well, she's got to be one or the other, hasn't she?"
"Actually, it is not quite so simple."
"I believe you just like making things difficult!"
"It has been said of me," admitted Hercule Poirot.
Jane shivered. She said:
"Isn't it funny? It's a lovely warm day - and yet I suddenly feel cold..."
"Perhaps you had better walk on, Mademoiselle."
Jane rose to her feet. She stood a minute irresolute.
She said abruptly:
"Howard wants me to marry him. At once. Without letting anyone know. He says - he says it's the only way I'll ever do it - that I'm weak -"
She broke off, then with one hand she gripped Poirot's arm with surprising strength.
"What shall I do about it, M. Poirot?"
"Why ask me to advise you? There are those who are nearer!"
"Mother? She'd scream the house down at the bare idea! Uncle Alistair? He'd be cautious and prosy. 'Plenty of time, my dear. Got to make quite sure, you know. Bit of an odd fish - this young man of yours. No sense in rushing things -'"
"Your friends?" suggested Poirot.
"I haven't got any friends. Only a silly crowd I drink and dance and talk inane catchwords with! Howard's the only real person I've ever come up against."
"Still - why ask me, Miss Olivera?"
Jane said:
"Because you've got a queer look on your face - as though you were sorry about something - as though you knew something that - that - was - coming -"
She stopped.
"Well?" she demanded. "What do you say?"
Hercule Poirot slowly shook his head.
IV
When Poirot reached home, George said: "Chief Inspector Japp is here, sir."
Japp grinned in a rueful way as Poirot came into the room.
"Here I am, old boy. Come round to say aren't you a marvel? How do you do it? What makes you think of these things?"
"All this meaning -? But pardon, you will have some refreshment? Wine? Or perhaps the whisky?"
"The whisky is good enough for me."
A few minutes later he raised his glass, observing:
"Here's to Hercule Poirot who is always right!"
"No, no, mon ami."
"Here we had a lovely case of suicide. H. P. says it's murder - wants it to be murder - and dash it all, it's murder!"
"Ah? So you agree at last?"
"Well, nobody can say I'm pig-headed. I don't fly in the face of evidence. The trouble was there wasn't any evidence before."
"But there is now?"
"Yes, and I've come round to make the amende honorable, as you call it, and present the tidbit to you on toast, as it were."
"I am all agog, my good Japp."
"All right. Here goes. The pistol that Frank Carter tried to shoot Blunt with on Saturday is a twin pistol to the one that killed Morley!"
Poirot stared:
"But that is extraordinary!"
"Yes, it makes it look rather black for Master Frank."
"It is not conclusive."
"No, but it's enough to make us reconsider the suicide verdict. They're a foreign make of pistol and rather uncommon at that!"
Hercule Poirot stared. His eyebrows looked like crescent moons. He said at last:
"Frank Carter? No - surely not!"
Japp breathed a sigh of exasperation.
"What's the matter with you, Poirot? First you will have it that Morley was murdered and that it wasn't suicide. Then when I come and tell you we're inclined to come round to your view you hem and haw and don't seem to like it."
"You really believe that Morley was murdered by Frank Carter?"
"It fits. Carter had got a grudge against Morley - that we knew all along. He came to Queen Charlotte Street that morning - and he pretended afterwards that he had come along to tell his young woman he'd got a job - but we've now discovered that he hadn't got the job then. He didn't get it till later in the day. He admits that now. So there's lie Number 1. He can't account for where he was at twenty-five past twelve onwards. Says he was walking in the Marylebone Road, but the first thing he can prove is having a drink in a pub at five past one. And the barman says he was in a regular state - his hand shaking and his face as white as a sheet!"
Hercule Poirot sighed and shoo his head. He murmured:
"It does not accord with my ideas?'
"What are these ideas of yours?"
"It is very disturbing what you tell me. Very disturbing indeed. Because, you see, if you are right..."
The door opened softly and George murmured deferentially:
"Excuse me, sir, but..."
He got no further. Miss Gladys Nevill thrust him aside and came agitatedly into the room. She was crying.
"Oh, M. Poirot -"
"Here, I'll be off," said Japp hurriedly.
He left the room precipitately.
Gladys Nevill paid his back the tribute of a venomous look.
"That's the man - that horrid Inspector from Scotland Yard - it's he who has trumped up a whole case against poor Frank."
"Now, now, you must not agitate yourself."
"But he has. First they pretend that he tried to murder this Mr. Blunt and not content with that they've accused him of murdering poor Mr. Morley."
Poirot coughed. He said:
"He was there, you know, at Exsham, when there was the shot at Mr. Blunt."
"But even if Frank did do a foolish thing like this... He is in that group that marches around, waving flags and march and salute, and of course I suppose Mr. Blunt's wife was a very prominent Jewess, and they just work up these poor young men - quite harmless ones like Frank - until they think they are doing something wonderful and patriotic."
"Is that Mr. Carter's defense?" asked Hercule Poirot.
"Oh, no. Frank just swears he didn't do anything and had never seen the pistol before. I haven't spoken to him, of course - they wouldn't let me - but he's got a solicitor acting for him and he told me what Frank had said. Frank just says it's all a frame-up."
Poirot murmured:
"And the solicitor is of the opinion that his client had better think of a more plausible story?"
