There was a momentary silence as Poirot twirled his moustache.
Japp said:
“We’ve got one or two additional bits of information. She came home from India on the same boat as Amberiotis. But she was second class and he was first, so I don’t suppose there’s anything in that, although one of the waiters at the Savoy thinks she lunched there with him about a week or so before he died.”
“So there may have been a connection between them?”
“There may be—but I can’t feel it’s likely. I can’t see a Missionary lady being mixed up in any funny business.”
“Was Amberiotis mixed up in any ‘funny business,’ as you term it?”
“Yes, he was. He was in close touch with some of our Central European friends. Espionage racket.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Yes. Oh, he wasn’t doing any of the dirty work himself. We wouldn’t have been able to touch him. Organizing and receiving reports—that was his lay.”
Japp paused and then went on:
“But that doesn’t help us with the Sainsbury Seale. She wouldn’t have been in on that racket.”
“She had lived in India, remember. There was a lot of unrest there last year.”
“Amberiotis and the excellent Miss Sainsbury Seale—I can’t feel that they were teammates.”
“Did you know that Miss Sainsbury Seale was a close friend of the late Mrs. Alistair Blunt?”
“Who says so? I don’t believe it. Not in the same class.”
“She said so.”
“Who’d she say that to?”
“Mr. Alistair Blunt.”
“Oh! That sort of thing. He must be used to that lay. Do you mean that Amberiotis was using her that way? It wouldn’t work. Blunt would get rid of her with a subscription. He wouldn’t ask her down for a weekend or anything of that kind. He’s not so unsophisticated as that.”
This was so palpably true that Poirot could only agree. After a minute or two, Japp went on with his summing up of the Sainsbury Seale situation.
“I suppose her body might have been lowered into a tank of acid by a mad scientist—that’s another solution they’re very fond of in books! But take my word for it, these things are all my eye and Betty Martin. If the woman is dead, her body has just been quietly buried somewhere.”
“But where?”
“Exactly. She disappeared in London. Nobody’s got a garden there—not a proper one. A lonely chicken farm, that’s what we want!”
A garden! Poirot’s mind flashed suddenly to that neat prim garden in Ealing with its formal beds. How fantastic if a dead woman should be buried there! He told himself not to be absurd.
“And if she isn’t dead,” went on Japp, “where is she? Over a month now, description published in the Press, circulated all over England—”
“And nobody has seen her?”
“Oh yes, practically everybody has seen her! You’ve no idea how many middle-aged faded-looking women wearing olive green cardigan suits there are. She’s been seen on Yorkshire moors, and in Liverpool hotels, in guest houses in Devon and on the beach at Ramsgate! My men have spent their time patiently investigating all these reports—and one and all they’ve led nowhere, except to getting us in wrong with a number of perfectly respectable middle-aged ladies.”
Poirot clicked his tongue sympathetically.
“And yet,” went on Japp, “she’s a real person all right. I mean, sometimes you come across a dummy, so to speak—someone who just comes to a place and poses as a Miss Spinks—when all the time there isn’t a Miss Spinks. But this woman’s genuine—she’s got a past, a background! We know all about her from her childhood upwards! She’s led a perfectly normal, reasonable life—and suddenly, hey presto—vanish!”
“There must be a reason,” said Poirot.