“Mesdames and Messieurs, you know what we are here for. The police are doing their utmost to track down the criminal. I, too, in my different way. But it seems to me a reunion of those who have a personal interest in the matter—and also, I may say, a personal knowledge of the victims—might have results that an outside investigation cannot pretend to attain.
“Here we have three murders—an old woman, a young girl, an elderly man. Only one thing links these three people together—the fact that the same person killed them. That means that the same person was present in three different localities and was seen necessarily by a large number of people. That he is a madman in an advanced stage of mania goes without saying. That his appearance and behaviour give no suggestion of such a fact is equally certain. This person—and though I say he, remember it may be a man or a woman—has all the devilish cunning of insanity. He has succeeded so far in covering his traces completely. The police have certain vague indications but nothing upon which they can act.
“Nevertheless, there must exist indications which are not vague but certain. To take one particular point—this assassin, he
did not arrive at Bexhill at midnight and find conveniently on the beach a young lady whose name began with B—”
“Must we go into that?”
It was Donald Fraser who spoke—the words wrung from him, it seemed, by some inner anguish.
“It is necessary to go into everything, monsieur,” said Poirot, turning to him. “You are here, not to save your feelings by refusing to think of details, but if necessary to harrow them by going into the matter au fond. As I say, it was not chance that provided A B C with a victim in Betty Barnard. There must have been deliberate selection on his part—and therefore premeditation. That is to say, he must have reconnoitred the ground beforehand. There were facts of which he had informed himself—the best hour for the committing of the crime at Andover—the mise en scène at Bexhill—the habits of Sir Carmichael Clarke at Churston. Me, for one, I refuse to believe that there is no indication—no slightest hint—that might help to establish his identity.
“I make the assumption that one—or possibly all of you—knows something that they do not know they know.
“Sooner or later, by reason of your association with one another, something will come to light, will take on a significance as yet undreamed of. It is like the jig-saw puzzle—each of you may have a piece apparently without meaning, but which when reunited may show a definite portion of the picture as a whole.”
“Words!” said Megan Barnard.
“Eh?” Poirot looked at her inquiringly.
“What you’ve been saying. It’s just words. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She spoke with that kind of desperate intensity that I had come to associate with her personality.
“Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”
“Well, I think it’s sense,” said Mary Drower. “I do really, miss. It’s often when you’re talking over things that you seem to see your way clear. Your mind gets made up for you sometimes without your knowing how it’s happened. Talking leads to a lot of things one way and another.”
“If ‘least said is soonest mended,’ it’s the converse we want here,” said Franklin Clarke.
“What do you say, Mr. Fraser?”
“I rather doubt the practical applicability of what you say, M. Poirot.”
“What do you think, Thora?” asked Clarke.
“I think the principle of talking things over is always sound.”
“Suppose,” suggested Poirot, “that you all go over your own remembrances of the time preceding the murder. Perhaps you’ll start, Mr. Clarke.”
“Let me see, on the morning of the day Car was killed I went off sailing. Caught eight mackerel. Lovely out there on the bay. Lunch at home. Irish stew, I remember. Slept in the hammock. Tea. Wrote some letters, missed the post, and drove into Paignton to post them. Then dinner and—I’m not ashamed to say it—reread a book of E. Nesbit’s that I used to love as a kid. Then the telephone rang—”
“No further. Now reflect, Mr. Clarke, did you meet anyone on your way down to the sea in the morning?”
“Lots of people.”
“Can you remember anything about them?”
“Not a damned thing now.”
“Sure?”
“Well—let’s see—I remember a remarkably fat woman—she wore a striped silk dress and I wondered why—had a couple of kids with her—two young men with a fox terrier on the beach throwing stones for it—Oh, yes, a girl with yellow hair squeaking as she bathed—funny how things come back—like a photograph developing.”
“You are a good subject. Now later in the day—the garden—going to the post—”
“The gardener watering…Going to the post? Nearly ran down a bicyclist—silly woman wobbling and shouting to a friend. That’s all, I’m afraid.”