His voice was triumphant.
'Yes,' said Poirot. His voice was meditative—silky. 'But it's so easy, isn't it, to make a mistake of one day? And if you're an obstinate, positive man, like Mr. Strange, you'll never consider the possibility of hawing been mistaken. What you've said you'll stick to. He's that kind of man. And the hotel register—it's very easy to put down the wrong date when you're signing it—probably no one will notice it at the time.'
'I was playing dominoes that evening!'
'You play dominoes very well, I believe.'
Mr. Cust was a little flurried by this. 'I—I—well, I believe I do.'
'It is a very absorbing game, is it not, with a lot of skill in it?'
'Oh, there's a lot of play in it—a lot of play! We used to play a lot in the city, in the lunch hour. You'd be surprised the way total strangers come together over a game of dominoes.'
He chuckled. 'I remember one man—I've never forgotten him because of something he told me—we just got talking over a cup of coffee, and we started dominoes. Well, I felt after twenty minutes that I'd known that man all his life.'
'What was it that he told you?' asked Poirot.
Mr. Cust's face clouded over. 'It gave me a turn—a nasty turn. Talking of your fate being written in your hand, he was. And he showed me his hand and the lines that showed he'd have two near escapes of being drowned—and he had had two near escapes. And then he looked at mine and he told me some amazing things. Said I was going to be one of the most celebrated men in England before I died. Said the whole country would be talking about me. But he said—he said—'
Mr. Cust broke down—faltered . . . .
'Yes?'
Poirot's gaze held a quiet magnetism. Mr. Cust looked at him, looked away, then back again like a fascinated rabbit.
'He said—he said—that it looked as though I might die a violent death—and he laughed and said: 'Almost looks as though you might die on the scaffold,' and then he laughed and said that was only his joke . . . .'
He was silent suddenly. His eyes left Poirot's face—they ran from side to side . . . .
'My head—I suffer very badly with my head . . . the headaches are something cruel sometimes. And then there are times when I don't know—when I don't know—'
He broke down.
Poirot leant forward. He spoke very quietly but with great assurance.
'But you do know, don't you,' he said, 'that you committed the murders?''
Mr. Cust looked up. His glance was quite simple and direct. All resistance had left him. He looked strangely at peace.
'Yes,' he said. 'I know.'
'But—I'm right, am I not?—you don't know why you did them?'
Mr. Cust shook his head.
'No,' he said. 'I don't.'
XXXIV. Poirot Explains
We were sitting in a state of tense attention to listen to Poirot's final explanation of the case.
'All along,' he said, 'I have been worried over the why of this case. Hastings said to me the other day that the case was ended. I replied to him that the case was the man. The mystery was not the mystery of the murders, but the mystery of A.B.C.. Why did he find it necessary to commit these murders? Why did he select me as his adversary?'
'It is no answer to say that the man was mentally unhinged. To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man—given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loincloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.'
'What was necessary in this case was to imagine a mind so constituted that it was logical and reasonable to commit four or more murders and to announce them beforehand by letters written to Hercule Poirot.'
'My friend, Hastings, will tell you that from the moment I received the first letter I was upset and disturbed. It seemed to me at once that there was something very wrong about the letter.'
'You were quite right,' said Franklin Clarke dryly.
'Yes. But there, at the very start, I made a grave error. I permitted my feeling—my very strong feeling about the letter to remain a mere impression. I treated it as though it had been an intuition. In a well-balanced, reasoning mind them is no such thing as an intuition—an inspired guess! You can guess, of course—and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you call it an intuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again. But what is often called an intuition is really impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely—his experience obviates that—the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience.'
'Eh bien, I admit that I did not regard that first letter in the way I should. It just made me extremely uneasy. The police regarded it as a hoax. I myself took it seriously. I was convinced that a murder would take place in Andover as stated. As you know, a murder did take place.'
'There was no means at that point, as I well realized, of knowing who the person was who had done the deed. The only course open to me was to try and understand just what kind of a person had done it.'
'I had certain indications. The letter—the manner of the crime—the person murdered. What I had to discover was: the motive of the crime, the motive of the letter.'
'Publicity,' suggested Clarke.
'Surely an inferiority complex covers that,' added Thora Gray.
'That was, of course, the obvious line to take. But why me? Why Hercule Poirot? Greater publicity could be ensured by sending the letters to Scotland Yard. More again by sending them to a newspaper. A newspaper might not print the first letter, but by the time the second crime took place, A.B.C. could have been assured of all the publicity the press could give. Why, then, Hercule Poirot? Was it for some personal reason? There was, discernible in the letter, a slight anti-foreign bias—but not enough to explain the matter to my satisfaction.'
'Then the second letter arrived—and was followed by the murder of Betty Barnard at Bexhill. It became clear now (what I had already suspected) that the murders were to proceed in an alphabetical plan, but that fact, which seemed final to most people, left the main question unaltered to my mind. Why did A.B.C. need to commit these murders?'
Megan Barnard stirred in her chair. 'Isn't them such a thing as—as a blood lust?' she said.
Poirot turned to her. 'You are quite right, mademoiselle. There is such a thing. The lust to kill. But that did not quite fit the facts of the case. A homicidal maniac who desires to kill usually desires to kill as many victims as possible. It is a recurring craving. The great idea of such a killer is to hide his tracks—not to advertise them. When we consider the four victims selected—or at any rate three of them (for I know very little of Mr. Downes or Mr. Earlsfield), we realize that if he had chosen, the murderer could have done away with them without incurring any suspicion.'
'Franz Ascher, Donald Fraser or Megan Barnard, possibly Mr. Clarke—those are the people the police would have suspected even if they had been unable to get direct proof. An unknown homicidal murderer would not have been thought of! Why, then, did the murderer feel it necessary to call attention to himself? Was it the necessity of leaving on each body a copy of an A.B.C. railway guide? Was that the compulsion?'
'Was there some complex connected with the railway guide?'
'I found it quite inconceivable at this point to enter into the mind of the murderer. Surely it could not be magnanimity? A horror of responsibility for the crime being fastened on an innocent person?'
