"I suppose you can look at it that way - but it seems very unlikely -"
"Of course it is unlikely! But taking that second hypothesis as fact - the story is true. Therefore Miss Sainsbury Seale did know your wife. She knew her well. Therefore - your wife must have been the type of person Miss Sainsbury Seale would have known well. Someone in her own station of life. An Anglo-Indian - a missionary - or, to go back farther still - an actress - Therefore - not Rebecca Arnholt!
"Now, Mr. Blunt, do you see what I meant when I talked of a private and a public life? You are the great banker. But you are also a man who married a rich wife. And before you married her you were only a junior partner in the firm - not very long down from Oxford.
"You comprehend - I began to look at the case the right way up. Expense no object? Naturally not - to you. Reckless of human life - that, too, since for a long time you have been virtually a dictator and to a dictator his own life becomes unduly important and those of others unimportant."
Alistair Blunt said:
"What are you suggesting M. Poirot?"
Poirot said quietly:
"I am suggesting, Mr. Blunt, that when you married Rebecca Arnholt, you were married already. That, dazzled by the vista, not so much of wealth, as of power, you suppressed that fact and deliberately committed bigamy. That your real wife acquiesced in the situation."
"And who was this real wife?"
"Mrs. Albert Chapman was the name she went under at King Leopold Mansions - a handy spot, no five minutes' walk from your house on the Chelsea Embankment. You borrowed the name of a real secret agent, realizing that it would give support to her hints of a husband engaged in intelligence work. Your scheme succeeded perfectly. No suspicion was ever aroused. Nevertheless, the fact remained, you had never been legally married to Rebecca Arnholt and you were guilty of bigamy. You never dreamed of danger after so many years. It came out, of the blue - in the form of a tiresome woman who remembered you after nearly twenty years, as her friend's husband. Chance brought her back to this country, chance let her meet you in Queen Charlotte Street - it was chance that your niece was with you and heard what she said to you. Otherwise I might never have guessed."
"I told you about that myself, my dear Poirot."
"No, it was your niece who insisted on telling me and you could not very well protest too violently in case it might arouse suspicions. And after that meeting, one more evil chance (from your point of view) occurred. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale met Amberiotis, went to lunch with him and babbled to him of this meeting with a friend's husband - 'after all these years! Looked older, of course, but had hardly changed!' That, I admit, is pure guesswork on my part but I believe it is what happened. I do not think that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale realized for a moment that the Mr. Blunt her friend had married was the shadowy figure behind the finance of the world. The name, after all, is not an uncommon one. But Amberiotis, remember, in addition to his espionage activities, was a blackmailer. Blackmailers have an uncanny nose for a secret. Amberiotis wondered. Easy to find out just who the Mr. Blunt was. And then, I have no doubt, he wrote to you... or telephoned. Oh! yes - a gold mine for Amberiotis."
Poirot paused, then went on:
"There is only one effectual method of dealing with a really efficient and experienced blackmailer. Silence him.
"It was not a case, as I had had erroneously suggested to me, of 'Blunt must go.' It was, on the contrary, 'Amberiotis must go.' But the answer was the same! The easiest way to get at a man is when he is off his guard, and when is a man more off his guard then in the dentist's chair?"
Poirot paused again. A faint smile came to his lips.
He said:
"The truth about the case was mentioned very early. The page boy, Alfred, was reading a crime story called Death at 11:45. We should have taken that as an omen. For, of course, that is just about the time when Morley was killed. You shot him just as you were leaving. Then you pressed his buzzer, turned on the taps of the wash basin and left the room. You timed it so that you came down the stairs just as Alfred was taking the false Mabelle Sainsbury Seale to the elevator. You actually opened the front door, perhaps you passed out, but as the elevator doors shut and the elevator went up you slipped inside again and went up the stairs.
"I know, from my own visits, just what Alfred did when he took up a patient. He knocked on the door, opened it, and stood back to let the patient pass in. Inside the water was running - inference, Morley was washing his hands as usual. But Alfred couldn't actually see him.
"As soon as Alfred had gone down again in the elevator, you slipped along into the surgery. Together you and your accomplice lifted the body and carried it into the adjoining office. Then a quick hunt through the files and the charts of Mrs. Chapman and Miss Sainsbury Seale were cleverly falsified. You put on a white linen coat, perhaps your wife applied a trace of make-up. But nothing much was needed. It was Amberiotis' first visit to Morley. He had never met you. And your photograph seldom appears in the papers. Besides, why should he have suspicions? A blackmailer does not fear his dentist. Miss Sainsbury Seale goes down and Alfred shows her out. The buzzer goes and Amberiotis is taken up. He finds the dentist washing his hands behind the door in approved fashion. He is conducted to the chair. He indicates the painful tooth. You talk the accustomed patter. You explain it will be best to freeze the gum. The procaine and adrenaline are there. You inject a big enough dose to kill. And incidentally he will not feel any lack of skill in your dentistry!
"Completely unsuspicious, Amberiotis leaves. You bring out Morley's body and arrange it on the floor, dragging it slightly on the carpet now that you have to manage it single-handed. You wipe the pistol and put it in his hand - wipe the door handle so that your prints shall not be the last. The instruments you used have all been passed into the sterilizer. You leave the room, go down the stairs and slip out of the front door at a suitable moment. That is your only moment of danger.
"It should all have passed off so well! Two people who threatened your safety - both dead. A third person also dead - but that, from your point of view, was unavoidable. And all so easily explained. Morley's suicide explained by the mistake he had made over Amberiotis. The two deaths cancel out. One of these regrettable accidents.
"But alas for you, I am on the scene. I have doubts. I make objections. All is not going as easily as you hoped. So there must be a second line of defenses. There must be, if necessary, a scapegoat. You have already informed yourself minutely of Morley's household. There is this mar, Frank Carter, he will do. So your accomplice arranges that he shall be engaged in a mysterious fashion as gardener. If, later, he tells such a ridiculous story no one will believe it. In due course, the body in the fur chest will come to light. At first it will be thought to be that of Miss Sainsbury Seale, then the dental evidence will be taken. Big sensation! It may seem a needless complication, but it was necessary. You do not want the police force of England to be looking for a missing Mrs. Albert Chapman. No, let Mrs. Chapman be dead - and let it be Mabelle Sainsbury Seale for whom the police look - since they can never find her. Besides, through your influence, you can arrange to have the case dropped.
"You did do that, but since it was necessary that you should know just what I was doing, you sent for me and urged me to find the missing woman for you. And you continued, steadily, to 'force a card' upon me. Your accomplice rang me up with a melodramatic warning - the same idea - espionage - the pub. She is a clever actress, this wife of yours, but to disguise one's voice the natural tendency is to imitate another voice. Your wife imitated the intonation of Mrs. Olivera. That puzzled me, I may say, a good deal.
"Then I was taken down to Exsham - the final performance was staged. How easy to arrange a loaded pistol amongst laurels so that a man, clipping them, shall unwittingly cause it to go off. The pistol falls at his feet. Startled, he picks it up. What more do you want? He is caught red-handed - with a ridiculous story and with a pistol which is a twin to the one with which Morley was shot.
"And all a snare for the feet of Hercule Poirot."
Alistair Blunt stirred a little in his chair. His face was grave and a little sad. He said:
"Don't misunderstand me, M. Poirot. How much do you guess? And how much do you actually know?"
Poirot said:
"I have a certificate of the marriage - at a registry office near Oxford - of Martin Alistair Blunt and Gerda Grant. Frank Carter saw two men leave Morley's surgery just after twenty-five past twelve. The first was a fat man - Amberiotis. The second was, of course, you. Frank Carter did not recognize you. He only saw you from above."
"How fair of you to mention that!"
"He went into the surgery and found Morley's body. The hands were cold and there was dried blood round the wound. That meant that Morley had been dead some time. Therefore the dentist who attended to Amberiotis could not have been Morley and must have been Morley' s murderer."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Helen Montressor was arrested this afternoon."
Alistair Blunt gave one sharp movement. Then he sat very still. He said:
"That - rather tears it."
Hercule Poirot said:
"Yes. The real Helen Montressor, your distant cousin, died in Canada seven years ago. You suppressed that fact, and took advantage of it."
A smile came to Alistair Blunt's lips. He spoke naturally and with a kind of boyish enjoyment.
"Gerda got a kick out of it all, you know. I'd like to make you understand. You're such a clever fellow. I married her without letting my people know. She was acting in repertory at the time. My people were the strait-laced kind, and I was going into the firm. We agreed to keep it dark. She went on acting. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was in the company, too. She knew about us. Then she went abroad with a touring company. Gerda heard of her once or twice from India. Then she stopped writing. Mabelle got mixed up with some Hindu. She was always a stupid, credulous girl.
"I wish I could make you understand about my meeting with Rebecca and my marriage. Gerda understood. The only way I can put it is that it was like Royalty. I had the chance of marrying a Queen and playing the part of Prince Consort or even King. I looked on my marriage to Gerda as morganatic. I loved her. I didn't want to get rid of her. And the whole thing worked splendidly. I liked Rebecca immensely. She was a women with a first-class financial brain and mine was just as good. We were good at teamwork. It was supremely exciting. She was an excellent companion and I think I made her happy. I was genuinely sorry when she died. The queer thing was that Gerda and I grew to enjoy the secret thrill of our meetings. We had all sorts of ingenious devices. She was an actress by nature. She had a repertoire of seven or eight characters - Mrs. Albert Chapman was only one of them. She was an American widow in Paris. I met her there when I went over on business. And she used to go to Norway with painting things as an artist. I went there for the fishing. And then, later, I passed her off as my cousin, Helen Montressor. It was great fun for us both, and it kept romance alive, I suppose. We could have married officially after Rebecca died - but we didn't want to. Gerda would have found it hard to live my official life and, of course, something from the past might have been raked up, but I think the real reason we went on more or less the same was that we enjoyed the secrecy of it. We should have found open domesticity dull."
Blunt paused. He said, and his voice changed and hardened:
"And then that damned fool of a woman messed up everything. Recognizing me - after all those years! And she told Amberiotis. You see - you must see - that something had to be done! It wasn't only myself - not only the selfish point of view. If I was ruined and disgraced - the country, my country was hit as well. For I've done something for England, M. Poirot. I've held it firm and kept it solvent. It's free from Dictators - from Fascism and from Communism. I don't really care for money as money. I do like power - I like to rule - but I don't want to tyrannize. We are democratic in England - truly democratic. We can grumble and say what we think and laugh at our politicians. We're free. I care for all that - it's been my life work. But if I went - well, you know what would probably happen, I'm needed, M. Poirot. And a damned, double-crossing, blackmailing rogue of a Greek was going to destroy my life work. Something had to be done. Gerda saw it, too. We were sorry about the Sainsbury Seale woman - but it was no good. We'd got to silence her. She couldn't be trusted to hold her tongue. Gerda went to see her, asked her to tea, told her to ask for Mrs. Chapman, said she was staying in Mrs. Chapman's flat. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale came, quite unsuspecting. She never knew anything - the medinal was in the tea - it's quite painless. You just sleep and don't wake up. The face business was done afterwards - rather sickening, but we felt it was necessary. Mrs. Chapman was to exit for good. I had given my 'cousin' Helen a cottage to live in. We decided that after a while we would get married. But first we had to get Amberiotis out of the way. It worked beautifully. He hadn't a suspicion that I wasn't a real dentist. I did my stuff with the hand-picks rather well. I didn't risk the drill. Of course, after the injection he couldn't feel what I was doing. Probably just as well!"
Poirot asked:
"The pistols?"
"Actually they belonged to a secretary I once had in America. He bought them abroad somewhere. When he left he forgot to take them."
There was a pause. Then Alistair Blunt asked:
"Is there anything else you want to know?"
Hercule Poirot said:
"What about Morley?"
Alistair Blunt said simply:
"I was sorry about Morley."
Hercule Poirot said:
"Yes, I see... "
There was a long pause, then Blunt said:
"Well, M. Poirot, what about it?"
Poirot said:
"Helen Montressor is arrested already."
