"That's a bit unusual, isn't it? Got your Police pals listening in, I've no doubt."
"You are wrong. This is a private interview between you and me."
Frank Carter laughed. He looked cunning and unpleasant. He said:
"Come off it! You don't take me in with that old gag."
"Do you remember a girl called Agnes Fletcher?"
"Never heard of her."
"I think you will remember her, though you may never have taken much notice of her. She was houseparlormaid at 58 Queen Charlotte Street."
"Well, what of it?"
Hercule Poirot said slowly:
"On the morning of the day that Mr. Morley was shot, this girl Agnes happened to look over the banisters from the top floor. She saw you on the stairs - waiting and listening. Presently she saw you go along to Mr. Morley's room. The time was then twenty-six minutes or thereabouts past twelve."
Frank Carter trembled violently. Sweat came out on his brow. His eyes, more furtive than ever, went wildly from side to side. He shouted angrily:
"It's a lie! It's a damned lie! You've paid her - the police have paid her - to say she saw me."
"At that time," said Hercule Poirot, "by your own account, you had left the house and were walking in the Marylebone Road."
"So I was. That girl's lying. She couldn't have seen me. It's a dirty plot. If it's true, why didn't she say so before?"
Hercule Poirot said quietly:
"She did mention it at the time to her friend and colleague the cook. They were worried and puzzled and didn't know what to do. When a verdict of suicide was brought in they were much relieved and decided that it wasn't necessary for them to say anything."
"I don't believe a word of it! They're in it together, that's all. A couple of dirty, lying little..."
He tailed off into furious profanity.
Hercule Poirot waited.
When Carter's voice at last ceased, Poirot spoke again, still in the same calm, measured voice.
"Anger and foolish abuse will not help you. These girls are going to tell their story and it is going to be believed. Because, you see, they are telling the truth. The girl, Agnes Fletcher, did see you. You were there on the stairs at that time. You had not left the house. And you did go into Mr. Morley's room."
He paused and then asked quietly: "What happened then?."
"It's a lie, I tell you!"
Hercule Poirot felt very tired - very old. He did not like Frank Carter. He disliked him very much. In his opinion Frank Carter was a bully, a liar, a swindler - altogether the type of young man the world could well do without. He, Hercule Poirot, had only to stand back and let this young man persist in his lies and the world would be rid of one of its more unpleasant inhabitants...
Hercule Poirot said:
"I suggest that you tell me the truth..."
He realized the issue very clearly. Frank Carter was stupid - but he wasn't so stupid as not to see that to persist in his denial was his best and safest course.
Let him once admit that he had gone into that room at twenty-six minutes past twelve and he was taking a step into grave danger. For after that, any story he told would have a good chance of being considered a lie.
Let him persist in his denial, then. If so, Hercule Poirot's duty would be over. Frank Carter would in all probability be hanged for the murder of Henry Morley - and it might be, justly hanged.
Hercule Poirot had only to get up and go. Frank Carter said again:
"It's a lie!"
There was a pause. Hercule Poirot did not get up and go. He would have liked to do so - very much.
Nevertheless, he remained.
He leaned forward. He said - and his voice held all the compelling force of his powerful personality -
"I am not lying to you. I ask you to believe me. If you did not kill Morley your only hope is to tell me the exact truth of what happened that morning."
The mean, treacherous face looking at him, wavered, became uncertain. Frank Carter pulled at his lip. His eyes went from side to side, terrified frankly animal eyes.
It was touch and go now...
Then suddenly, overborne by the strength of the personality confronting him, Frank Carter surrendered.
He said hoarsely:
"All right, then - I'll tell you. God curse you if you let me down now! I did go in... I went up the stairs and waited till I could be sure of getting him alone. Waited there, up above Morley's landing. Then a gent came out and went down - fat gent. I was just making up my mind to go - when another gent came out of Morley's room and went down too. I knew I'd got to be quick. I went along and nipped into his room without knocking. I was all set to have it out with him. Mucking about, putting my girl against me - damn him -"
He stopped.
"Yes?" said Hercule Poirot, and his voice was still urgent - compelling -
Carter's voice croaked uncertainly.
"And he was lying there - dead. It's true! I swear it's true! Lying just as they said at the inquest. I couldn't believe it at first. I stooped over him. But he was dead all right. His hand was stone cold and I saw the bullet hole in his head with a crust of blood round it."
At the memory of it, sweat broke out on his forehead again.
"I saw then I was in a jam. They'd go and say I'd done it. I hadn't touched anything except his hand and the door-handle. I wiped that with my handkerchief, both sides, as I went out, and I stole down stairs as quickly as I could. There was nobody in the hall and I let myself out and legged it away as fast as I could. No wonder I felt queer."
He paused. His scared eyes went to Poirot.
"That's the truth, I swear that's the truth. He was dead already. You've got to believe me!"
Poirot got up. He said - and his voice was tired and sad - "I believe you."
He moved towards the door.
Frank Carter cried out:
"They'll hang me - they'll hang me for sure if they know that I was in there."
Poirot said:
"By telling the truth you have saved yourself from being hanged."
"I don't see it. They'll say -"
Poirot interrupted him.
"Your story has confirmed what I knew to be the truth. You can leave it now to me."
He went out.
He was not at all happy.
IV
He reached Mr. Barnes' house at Ealing at 6:45. He remembered that Mr. Barnes had called that a good time of day.
Mr. Barnes was at work in his garden.
He said by way of greeting:
"We need rain, M. Poirot - need it badly."
He looked thoughtfully at his guest. He said:
"You don't look very well, M. Poirot?"
"Sometimes," said Hercule Poirot, "I do not like the things I have to do."
Mr. Barnes nodded his head sympathetically.
He said:
"I know."
Hercule Poirot looked vaguely round at the neat arrangement of the small beds. He murmured:
"It is well-planned, this garden. Everything is to scale. It is small but exact."
Mr. Barnes said:
"When you have only a small place you've got to make the most of it. You can't afford to make mistakes in the planning."
Hercule Poirot nodded.
Barnes went on:
"I see you've got your man?"
"Frank Carter?"
"Yes. I'm rather surprised, really."
"You did not think that it was, so to speak, a private murder?"
"No. Frankly I didn't. What with Amberiotis and Alistair Blunt - I was sure that it was of Espionage or Counter-Espionage mix-ups."
"That is the view you expounded to me at our first meeting."
"I know. I was quite sure of it at the time."
Poirot said slowly:
"But you were wrong."
"Yes. Don't rub it in. The trouble is, one has got one's own experience, I've been mixed up in that sort of thing so much I suppose I'm inclined to see it everywhere."
Poirot said:
"You have observed in your time an obvious a card, have you not? What is called forcing a card?"
"Yes, of course."
"That is what was done here. Every time one thinks of a private reason for Morley's dismiss, Adipresto! - the card is forced on one. Ambition - of Alistair Blunt, the unsettled state of politics of the country -" He shrugged his shoulders. "Ma foi, Mr. Barnes, you did more to mislead me than anybody."
"Oh, I say, Poirot, I'm sorry. I suppose that's true."
"You were in a position to know, your words carried weight."
"Well - I believed what I said. That's the only apology I can make."
He paused and sighed.
"And all the time, it was a purely private reasons?"
"Exactly. It has taken me a long time to check every reason for the murder - although I had a definite piece of luck."
"What was that?"
"A fragment of a conversation. Really, a very illuminating fragment if only I had had the sense to realize its significance at the time."
Mr. Barnes scratched his nose thoughtfully with the trowl. A small piece of earth adhered to the side of his nose.
"Being rather cryptic, aren't you?" he asked genially.
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He said:
"I am, perhaps, aggrieved that you were not more frank with me."
"I?"
"Yes."
"My dear fellow - I never had the least idea of Carter's guilt. As far as I knew, he'd left the house long before Morley was killed. I suppose now they've found he didn't leave when he said he did?"
Poirot said:
"Carter was in the house at twenty-six minutes past twelve. He actually saw the murderer."
"Then Carter didn't -"
"Carter saw the murderer, I tell you!"
Mr. Barnes said:
"Did - did he recognize him?"
Slowly Hercule Poirot shook his head.
Chapter 9
SEVENTEEN, EIGHTEEN, MAIDS IN WAITING
On the following day Hercule Poirot spent some hours with a theatrical agent of his acquaintance. In the afternoon he went to Oxford. On the day after that he drove down to the country - it was late when he returned.
He had telephoned before he left to make an appointment with Mr. Alistair Blunt for that same evening.
It was half past nine when he reached the Gothic House.
Alistair Blunt was alone in his library when Poirot was shown in.
He looked an eager question at his visitor as he shook hands. He said: "Well?"
Slowly Hercule Poirot nodded his head.
Blunt looked at him in almost incredulous appreciation.
"Have you found her?"
"Yes. Yes, I have found her."
He sat down. And he sighed.
Alistair Blunt said: "You are tired?"
"Yes. I am tired. And it is not pretty - what I have to tell you."
Blunt said:
"Is she dead?"
"That depends," said Hercule Poirot slowly, "on how you like to look at it."
Blunt frowned.
He said:
"My dear man, a person must be dead or alive. Miss Sainsbury Seale must be one or the other?"
"Ah, but who is Miss Sainsbury Seale?"
Alistair Blunt said:
"You don't mean that - that there isn't any such person?"
"Oh, no, no. There was such a person. She lived in Calcutta. She taught elocution. She busied herself with good works. She came to England in the Maharanah - the same boat in which Mr. Amberiotis travelled. Although they were not in the same class, he helped her over something - some fuss about her luggage. He was, it would seem, a kindly man in little ways. And sometimes, Mr. Blunt, kindness is repaid in an unexpected fashion. It was so, you know, with Mr. Amberiotis. He chanced to meet the lady again in the streets of London. He was feeling expansive, he good-naturedly invited her to lunch with him at the Savoy. An unexpected treat for her. And an unexpected windfall for Mr. Amberiotis! For his kindness was not premeditated - he had no idea that this faded, middle-aged lady was going to present him with the equivalent of a gold mine. But, nevertheless, that is what she did, though she never suspected the fact herself.
"She was never, you see, of the first order of intelligence. A good, well-meaning soul, but the brain, I should say, of a hen."
Blunt said:
"Then it wasn't she who killed the Chapman woman?"
Poirot said slowly:
"It is difficult to know just how to present the matter. I shall begin, I think, where the matter began for me. With a shoe."
Blunt said blankly:
"With a shoe?"
Hercule Poirot nodded.
"Yes, a buckled shoe. I came out from my seбnce at the dentist's and as I stood on the steps of 58 Queen Charlotte Street, a taxi stopped outside, the door opened and a woman's foot prepared to descend. I am a man who notices a woman's foot and ankle. It was a well-shaped foot, with a good ankle and an expensive stocking, but I did not like the shoe. It was a new, shining, patent leather shoe with a large ornate buckle. Not chic - not at all chic!
"And whilst I was observing this, the rest of the lady came into sight - and frankly it was a disappointment - a middle-aged lady without charm and badly dressed."
"Miss Sainsbury Seale?"
"Precisely. As she descended a contretemps occurred - she caught the buckle of her shoe in the door and it was wrenched off. I picked it up and returned it to her. Later that same day I went with Chief Inspector Japp to talk to this lady (she had not as yet fixed the shoe). On the same evening Miss Sainsbury Seale leaves the hotel and disappears. End of the first part.
"There is a second part to it. That, we shall say, began when Inspector Japp summoned me to King Leopold Mansions. There was a fur chest, and in that fur chest there was a body. I went into the room, I look into the chest - and the first thing I saw was buckled shoe!"
"And so?"
"You have not appreciated the point. It was a shabby shoe - a well-worn shoe. But you see, Miss Sainsbury Seale had come to King Leopold Mansions on the evening of that same day - the day of Mr. Morley's murder. In the morning the shoes were new shoes - in the evening they were worn shoes. One does not wear out a pair of shoes in a day, you comprehend."
