He said, hesitating a little: “Do not, at all events, go by what Miss Bowers says. Hospital nurses, me, I find them always gloomy! The night nurse, always, she is astonished to find her patient alive in the evening; the day nurse, always, she is surprised to find him alive in the morning! They know too much, you see, of the possibilities that may arise. When one is motoring one might easily say to oneself: ‘If a car came out from that crossroad—or if that lorry backed suddenly—or if the wheel came off the car that is approaching—or if a dog jumped off the hedge on to my driving arm—eh bien, I should probably be killed!’ But one assumes, and usually rightly, that none of these things will happen, and that one will get to one’s journey’s end. But if, of course, one has been in an accident, or seen one or more accidents, then one is inclined to take the opposite point of view.”
Jacqueline asked, half smiling through her tears: “Are you trying to console me, Monsieur Poirot?”
“The bon Dieu knows what I am trying to do! You should not have come on this journey.”
“No—I wish I hadn’t. It’s been—so awful. But—it will be soon over now.”
“Mais oui—mais oui.”
“And Simon will go to the hospital, and they’ll give the proper treatment and everything will be all right.”
“You speak like the child! ‘And they lived happily ever afterward.’ That is it, is it not?”
She flushed suddenly scarlet.
“Monsieur Poirot, I never meant—never—”
“It is too soon to think of such a thing! That is the proper hypocritical thing to say, is it not? But you are partly a Latin, Mademoiselle Jacqueline. You should be able to admit facts even if they do not sound very decorous. Le roi est mort—vive le roi! The sun has gone and the moon rises. That is so, is it not?”
“You don’t understand. He’s just sorry for me—awfully sorry for me, because he knows how terrible it is for me to know I’ve hurt him so badly.”
“Ah, well,” said Poirot. “The pure pity, it is a very lofty sentiment.”
He looked at her half mockingly, half with some other emotion.
He murmured softly under his breath words in French:
“La vie est vaine.
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis bonjour.
La vie est brève.
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis bonsoir.”
He went out again on to the deck. Colonel Race was striding along the deck and hailed him at once.
“Poirot. Good man! I want you. I’ve got an idea.”
Thrusting his arm through Poirot’s he walked him up the deck.
“Just a chance remark of Doyle’s. I hardly noticed it at the time. Something about a telegram.”
“Tiens—c’est vrai.”
“Nothing in it, perhaps, but one can’t leave any avenue unexplored. Damn it all, man, two murders, and we’re still in the dark.”
Poirot shook his head. “No, not in the dark. In the light.”
Race looked at him curiously. “You have an idea?”