Poirot was silent for a minute, two memories vividly before him—a girl in a garden at Assuan saying in a hard breathless voice: “I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger,” and another more recent memory, the same voice saying: “One feels one can’t go on—the kind of day when something breaks”—and that strange momentary flash of appeal in her eyes. What had been the matter with him not to respond to that appeal? He had been blind, deaf, stupid with his need for sleep….
Race went on: “I’ve got some slight official standing; they sent for me, put it in my hands. The boat’s due to start in half an hour, but it will be delayed till I give the word. There’s a possibility, of course, that the murderer came from the shore.”
Poirot shook his head.
Race acquiesced in the gesture.
“I agree. One can pretty well rule that out. Well, man, it’s up to you. This is your show.”
Poirot had been attiring himself with a neat-fingered celerity. He said now: “I am at your disposal.”
The two men stepped out on the deck.
Race said: “Bessner should be there by now. I sent the steward for him.”
There were four cabins de luxe, with bathrooms, on the boat. Of the two on the port side one was occupied by Dr. Bessner, the other by Andrew Pennington. On the starboard side the first was occupied by Miss Van Schuyler, and the one next to it by Linnet Doyle. Her husband’s dressing cabin was next door.
A white-faced steward was standing outside the door of Linnet Doyle’s cabin. He opened the door for them and they passed inside. Dr. Bessner was bending over the bed. He looked up and grunted as the other two entered.
“What can you tell us, Doctor, about this business?” asked Race.
Bessner rubbed his unshaven jaw meditatively.
“Ach! She was shot—shot at close quarters. See—here just above the ear—that is where the bullet entered. A very little bullet—I should say a twenty-two. The pistol, it was held close against her head, see, there is blackening here, the skin is scorched.”
Again in a sick wave of memory Poirot thought of those words uttered in Assuan.
Bessner went on: “She was asleep; there was no struggle; the murderer crept up in the dark and shot her as she lay there.”
“Ah! non!” Poirot cried out. His sense of psychology was outraged. Jacqueline de Bellefort creeping into a darkened cabin, pistol in hand—no, it did not “fit,” that picture.
Bessner stared at him with his thick lenses.
“But that is what happened, I tell you.”
“Yes, yes. I did not mean what you thought. I was not contradicting you.”
Bessner gave a satisfied grunt.
Poirot came up and stood beside him. Linnet Doyle was lying on her side. Her attitude was natural and peaceful. But above the ear was a tiny hole with an incrustation of dried blood round it.
Poirot shook his head sadly.
Then his gaze fell on the white painted wall just in front of him and he drew in his breath sharply. Its white neatness was marred by a big wavering letter J scrawled in some brownish-red medium.
Poirot stared at it, then he leaned over the dead girl and very gently picked up her right hand. One finger of it was stained a brownish-red.
“Non d’un
nom d’un nom!” ejaculated Hercule Poirot.
“Eh? What is that?”
Dr. Bessner looked up.
“Ach! That.”
Race said: “Well, I’m damned. What do you make of that, Poirot?”