contradicted.'
'A lot of money in the gamble, I suspect?' said Stillingfleet.
'An enormous amount of money was involved. A terrific gamble - for a terrific stake. It came off. Andrew Restarick was a very rich man himself and he was his brother's heir. Nobody questioned his identity. And then - things went wrong.
Out of the blue, he got a letter from a woman who, if she ever came face to face with him, would know at once that he wasn't Andrew Restarick. And a second piece of bad fortune occurred - David Baker started to blackmail him.'
'That might have been expected, I suppose,' said Stillingfleet thoughtfully.
'They didn't expect it,' said Poirot.
'David had never blackmailed before. It was the enormous wealth of this man that went to his head, I expect. The sum he had been paid for faking the portrait seemed to him grossly inadequate. He wanted more.
So Restarick wrote him large cheques, and pretended that it was on account of his daughter - to prevent her from making an undesirable marriage. Whether he really wanted to marry her, I do not know - he may have done. But to blackmail two people like Orwell and Frances Cary was a dangerous thing to do.'
'You mean those two just cold-bloodedly planned to kill two people - quite calmly - just like that?' demanded Mrs. Oliver.
She looked rather sick.
'They might have added you to their list, Madame,' said Poirot.
'Me? Do you mean that it was one of them who hit me on the head? Frances, I suppose? Not the poor Peacock?'
'I do not think it was the Peacock. But you had been already to Borodene Mansions. Now you perhaps follow Frances to Chelsea, or so she thinks, with a rather dubious story to account for yourself.
So she slips out and gives you a nice little tap on the head to put paid to your curiosity for a while. You would not listen when I warned you there was danger about.'
'I can hardly believe it of her! Lying about in attitudes of a Burne-Jones heroine in that dirty studio that day. But why - ' She looked at Norma-then back at Poirot. 'They used her - deliberately - worked upon her, drugged her, made her believe that she had murdered two people.
Why?'
'They wanted a victim…' said Poirot.
He rose from his chair and went to Norma.
'Mon enfant, you have been through a terrible ordeal. It is a thing that need never happen to you again. Remember that now, you can have confidence in yourself always.
To have known, at close quarters, what absolute evil means, is to be armoured against what life can do to you.'
'I suppose you are right,' said Norma. 'To think you are mad - really to believe it, is a frightening thing…' She shivered. 'I don't see, even now, why I escaped - why anyone managed to believe that I hadn't killed David-not when even I believed I had killed him?'
'Blood was wrong,' said Dr. Stillingfleet in a matter-of-fact tone. 'Starting to coagulate. Shirt was 'stiff with it', as Miss Jacobs said, not wet. You were supposed to have killed him not more than about five minutes before Frances's screaming act.'
'How did she - ' Mrs. Oliver began to work things out. 'She had been to Manchester - '
'She came home by an earlier train, changed into her Mary wig and made-up on the train. Walked into Borodene Mansions and went up in the lift as an unknown blonde. Went into the flat where David was waiting for her, as she had told him to do. He was quite unsuspecting, and she stabbed him. Then she went out again, and kept watch until she saw Norma coming. She slipped into a public cloakroom, changed her appearance, and joined a friend at the end of the road and walked with her, said good-bye to her at Borodene Mansions and went up herself and did her stuff - quite enjoying doing it, I expect.
By the time the police had been called and got there, she didn't think anyone would suspect the time lag. I must say, Norma, you gave us all a hell of a time that day.
Insisting on having killed everyone the way you did!'
'I wanted to confess and get it all over… Did you - did you think I might really have done it, then?'
'Me? What do you take me for? I know what my patients will do or won't do. But I thought you were going to make things damned difficult. I didn't know how far Neele was sticking his neck out. Didn't seem proper police procedure to me. Look at the way he gave Poirot here his head.' Poirot smiled.
'Chief Inspector Neele and I have known each other for many years. Besides, he had been making enquiries about certain matters already. You were never really outside Louise's door. Frances changed the numbers. She reversed the 6 and the 7 on your own door. Those numbers were loose, stuck on with spikes. Claudia was away that night. Frances drugged you so that the whole thing was a nightmare dream to you.'
'I saw the truth suddenly. The only other person who could have killed Louise was the real 'third girl' Frances Gary.'
'You kept half recognising her you know,' said Stillingfleet, 'when you described to me how one person seemed to turn into another.' Norma looked at him thoughtfully.
'You were very rude to people,' she said to Stillingfleet. He looked slightly taken aback. 'Rude?'
'The things you said to everyone. The way you shouted at them.'
'Oh well, yes, perhaps I was… I've got in the way of it. People are so damned irritating.' He grinned suddenly at Poirot.
'She's quite a girl, isn't she?' Mrs. Oliver rose to her feet with a sigh.
'I must go home.' She looked at the two men and then at Norma. 'What are we going to do with her?' she asked. They both looked startled.
'I know she's staying with me at the moment,' she went on. 'And she says she's quite happy. But I mean there it is, quite a problem. Lots and lots of money because your father - the real one, I mean - left it all to you. And that will cause complications, and begging letters and all that. She could go and live with old Sir Roderick, but that wouldn't be much fun for a girl - he's pretty deaf already as well as blind - and completely selfish. By the way, what about his missing papers, and the girl, and Kew Gardens?'
'They turned up where he thought he'd already looked - Sonia found them,' said Norma, and added, 'Uncle Roddy and Sonia are getting married - next week - '
'No fool like an old fool,' said Stillingfleet.
'Aha!' said Poirot. 'So the young lady prefers life in England to being embroiled in la politique. She is perhaps wise, that little one.'
'So that's that,' said Mrs. Oliver with finality. 'But to go on about Norma, one has to be practical. One's got to make plans. The girl can't know what she wants to do all by herself. She's waiting for someone to tell her.' She looked at them severely.
Poirot said nothing. He smiled.
'Oh, her?' said Dr. Stillingfleet. 'Well, I'll tell you, Norma. I'm flying to Australia Tuesday week. I want to look around first - see if what's been fixed up for me is going to work, and all that. Then I'll cable you and you can join me. Then we get married. You'll have to take my word for it that it's not your money I want. I'm not one of those doctors who want to endow whacking great research establishments and all that. I'm just interested in people. I think, too, that you'd be able to manage me all right. All that about my being rude to people - I hadn't noticed it myself.
It's odd, really, when you think of all the mess you've been in - helpless as a fly in treacle-yet it's not going to be me running you, it's going to be you running, me.' Norma stood quite still. She looked at John Stillingfleet very carefully, as though she was considering something that she knew from an entirely different point of view.
And then she smiled. It was a very nice smile - like a happy young nannie.
'All right,' she said.
She crossed the room to Hercule Poirot.
'I was rude, too,' she said. 'The day I came here when you were having breakfast.
I said to you that you were too old to help me. That was a rude thing to say. And it wasn't true…,' She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
