nged feet of Simon Doyle running past his cabin.”
Race said: “I still say it’s impossible. No man could work out the whole caboodle like that in a flash—especially a chap like Doyle who is slow in his mental processes.”
“But very quick and deft in his physical actions!”
“That, yes. But he wouldn’t be capable of thinking the whole thing out.”
“But he did not think it out himself, my friend. That is where we were all wrong. It looked like a crime committed on the spur of the moment, but it was not a crime committed on the spur of the moment. As I say, it was a very cleverly planned and well thought out piece of work. It could not be chance that Simon Doyle had a bottle of red ink in his pocket. No, it must be design. It was not chance that Jacqueline de Bellefort’s foot kicked the pistol under the settee, where it would be out of sight and unremembered until later.”
“Jacqueline?”
“Certainly. The two halves of the murder. What gave Simon his alibi? The shot fired by Jacqueline. What gave Jacqueline her alibi? The insistence of Simon which resulted in a hospital nurse remaining with her all night. There, between the two of them, you get all the qualities you require—the cool, resourceful, planning brain, Jacqueline de Bellefort’s brain, and the man of action to carry it out with incredible swiftness and timing.”
“Look at it the right way, and it answers every question. Simon Doyle and Jacqueline had been lovers. Realize that they are still lovers, and it is all clear. Simon does away with his rich wife, inherits her money, and in due course will marry his old love. It was all very ingenious. The persecution of Madame Doyle by Jacqueline, all part of the plan. Simon’s pretended rage…And yet—there were lapses. He held forth to me once about possessive women—held forth with real bitterness. It ought to have been clear to me that it was his wife he was thinking about—not Jacqueline. Then his manner to his wife in public. An ordinary, inarticulate Englishman, such as Simon Doyle, is very embarrassed at showing any affection. Simon was not a really good actor. He overdid the devoted manner. That conversation I had with Mademoiselle Jacqueline, too, when she pretended that somebody had overheard, I saw no one. And there was no one! But it was to be a useful red herring later. Then one night on this boat I thought I heard Simon and Linnet outside my cabin. He was saying, ‘We’ve got to go through with it now.’ It was Doyle all right, but it was to Jacqueline he was speaking.
“The final drama was perfectly planned and timed. There was a sleeping draught for me, in case I might put an inconvenient finger in the pie. There was the selection of Mademoiselle Robson as a witness—the working up of the scene, Mademoiselle de Bellefort’s exaggerated remorse and hysterics. She made a good deal of noise, in case the shot should be heard. En vérité, it was an extraordinarily clever idea. Jacqueline says she has shot Doyle; Mademoiselle Robson says so; Fanthorp says so—and when Simon’s leg is examined he has been shot. It looks unanswerable! For both of them there is a perfect alibi—at the cost, it is true, of a certain amount of pain and risk to Simon Doyle, but it is necessary that his wound should definitely disable him.
“And then the plan goes wrong. Louise Bourget has been wakeful. She has come up the stairway and she has seen Simon Doyle run along to his wife’s cabin and come back. Easy enough to piece together what has happened the following day. And so she makes her greedy bit for hush money, and in so doing signs her death warrant.”
“But Mr. Doyle couldn’t have killed her?” Cornelia objected.
“No, the other partner did that murder. As soon as he can, Simon Doyle asks to see Jacqueline. He even asks me to leave them alone together. He tells her then of the new danger. They must act at once. He knows where Bessner’s scalpels are kept. After the crime the scalpel is wiped and returned, and then, very late and rather out of breath, Jacqueline de Bellefort hurries in to lunch.
“And still all is not well, for Madame Otterbourne has seen Jacqueline go into Louise Bourget’s cabin. And she comes hot-foot to tell Simon about it. Jacqueline is the murderess. Do you remember how Simon shouted at the poor woman? Nerves, we thought. But the door was open and he was trying to convey the danger to his accomplice. She heard and she acted—acted like lightning. She remembered Pennington had talked about a revolver. She got hold of it, crept up outside the door, listened and, at the critical moment, fired. She boasted once that she was a good shot, and her boast was not an idle one.
“I remarked after that third crime that there were three ways the murderer could have gone. I meant that he could have gone aft (in which case Tim Allerton was the criminal), he could have gone over the side (very improbable) or he could have gone into a cabin. Jacqueline’s cabin was just two away from Dr. Bessner’s. She had only to throw down the revolver, bolt into the cabin, ruffle her hair and fling herself down on the bunk. It was risky, but it was the only possible chance.”
There was a silence, then Race asked: “What happened to the first bullet fired at Doyle by the girl?”
“I think it went into the table. There is a recently made hole there. I think Doyle had time to dig it out with a penknife and fling it through the window. He had, of course, a spare cartridge, so that it would appear that only two shots had been fired.”
Cornelia sighed. “They thought of everything,” she said. “It’s—horrible!”
Poirot was silent. But it was not a modest silence. His eyes seemed to be saying: “You are wrong. They didn’t allow for Hercule Poirot.”
Aloud he said, “And now, Doctor, we will go and have a word with your patient.”
Thirty
It was very much later that evening that Hercule Poirot came and knocked on the door of a cabin.
A voice said “Come in” and he entered.
Jacqueline de Bellefort was sitting in a chair. In another chair, close against the wall, sat the big stewardess.
Jacqueline’s eyes surveyed Poirot thoughtfully. She made a gesture towards the stewardess.
“Can she go?”
Poirot nodded to the woman and she went out. Poirot drew up her chair and sat down near Jacqueline. Neither of them spoke. Poirot’s face was unhappy.
In the end it was the girl who spoke first.
“Well,” she said, “it is all over! You were too clever for us, Monsieur Poirot.”
Poirot sighed. He spread out his hands. He seemed strangely dumb.
“All the same,” said Jacqueline reflectively, “I can’t really see that you had much proof. You were quite right, of course, but if we’d bluffed you out—”