“Certainly it’s mine!” the old lady snapped. “I missed it last night. I was asking everyone if they’d seen it.”
Poirot questioned Race with a glance, and the latter gave a slight nod of assent.
“Where did you see it last, Miss Van Schuyler?”
“I had it in the saloon yesterday evening. When I came to go to bed I could not find it anywhere.”
Race said quickly: “You realize what it’s been used for?” He spread it out, indicating with a finger the scorching and several small holes. “The murderer wrapped it round the pistol to deaden the noise of the shot.”
“Impertinence!” snapped Miss Van Schuyler. The colour rose in her wizened cheeks.
Race said: “I shall be glad, Miss Van Schuyler, if you will tell me the extent of your previous acquaintance with Mrs. Doyle.”
“There was no previous acquaintance.”
“But you knew of her?”
“I knew who she was, of course.”
“But your families were not acquainted?”
“As a family we have always prided ourselves on being exclusive, Colonel Race. My dear mother would never have dreamed of calling upon any of the Hartz family, who, outside their wealth, were nobodies.”
“That is all you have to say, Miss Van Schuyler?”
“I have nothing to add to what I have told you. Linnet Ridgeway was brought up in England and I never saw her till I came aboard this boat.”
She rose. Poirot opened the door and she marched out.
The eyes of the two men met.
“That’s her story,” said Race, “and she’s going to stick to it! It may be true. I don’t know. But—Rosalie Otterbourne? I hadn’t expected that.”
Poirot shook his head in a perplexed manner. Then he brought down his hand on the table with a sudden bang.
“But it does not make sense,” he cried. “Nom d’un nom d’un nom! It does not make sense.”
Race looked at him.
“What do you mean exactly?”
“I mean that up to a point it is all the clear sailing. Someone wished to kill Linnet Doyle. Someone overheard the scene in the saloon last night. Someone sneaked in there and retrieved the pistol—Jacqueline de Bellefort’s pistol, remember. Somebody shot Linnet Doyle with that pistol and wrote the letter J on the wall…All so clear, is it not? All pointing to Jacqueline de Bellefort as the murderess. And then what does the murderer do? Leave the pistol—the damning pistol—Jacqueline de Bellefort’s pistol, for everyone to find? No, he—or she—throws the pistol, that particularly damning bit of evidence, overboard. Why, my friend, why?”
Race shook his head. “It’s odd.”
“It is more than odd—it is impossible!”
“Not impossible, since it happened!”
“I do not mean that. I mean the sequence of events is impossible. Something is wrong.”
Seventeen
Colonel Race glanced curiously at his colleague. He respected—he had reason to respect—the brain of Hercule Poirot. Yet for the moment he did not follow the other’s process of thought. He asked no question, however. He seldom did ask questions. He proceeded straightforwardly with the matter in hand.
“What’s the next thing to be done? Question the Otterbourne girl?”
“Yes, that may advance us a little.”