'It's a court of inquiry, is it?' said Desmond.
'Yes. A court of inquiry into what happened.' He moved towards some iron seats which stood near the shelter of a large magnolia near the house. Poirot took from the case he carried a sheet of paper with writing on it. He said to Celia: 'To you, it has got to be that way? A definite choice.
Suicide or murder.'
'One of them must be true,' said Celia.
'I shall say to you that both are true, and more than those two. According to my ideas, we have here not only a murder and also a suicide, but we have as well what I shall call an execution, and we have a tragedy also. A tragedy of two people who loved each other and who died for love. A tragedy of love may not always belong to Romeo and Juliet. It is not necessarily only the young who suffer the pains of love and are ready to die for love. No. There is more to it than that.'
'I don't understand,' said Celia.
'Not yet.'
'Shall I understand?' said Celia.
'I think so,' said Poirot. 'I will tell you what I think happened and I will tell you how I came to think so. The first things that struck me were the things that were not explained by the evidence that the police examined. Some things were very commonplace, were not evidence at all, you'd think.
Among the possessions of the dead Margaret Ravenscroft, were four wigs.' He repeated with emphasis, 'Four wigs.' He looked at Zelle.
'She did not use a wig all the time,' said Zelle. 'Only occasionally. If she traveled or if she'd been out and got very disheveled and wanted to tidy herself in a hurry, or sometimes she'd use one that was suitable for evening wear.'
'Yes,' said Poirot, 'it was quite the fashion at that particular date. People certainly when they traveled abroad usually had a wig or two wigs. But in her possession were four wigs.
Four wigs seemed to me rather a lot. I wondered why she needed four. According to the police whom I asked, it was not that she had any tendency to baldness. She had the ordinary hair a woman of her age would have and in good condition.
All the same, I wondered about those. One of the wigs had a gray streak in it, I learned later. It was her hairdresser who told me that. And one of the wigs had little curls. It was the latter wig she was wearing the day she died.'
'Is that significant in any way?' asked Celia. 'She might have been wearing any of them.'
'She might. I also learned the housekeeper told the police that she had been wearing that particular wig almost all the time for the last few weeks before she died. It appeared to be her favorite one.'
'I can't see-'
'There was also a saying that Superintendent Garroway quoted to me, 'Same man-different hat.' It gave me furiously to think.'
Celia repeated, 'I don't see-'
Poirot said, 'There was also the evidence of the dog-'
'The dog-what did the dog do?'
'The dog bit her. The dog was said to be devoted to its mistress, but in the last few weeks of her life, the dog turned on her more than once and bit her quite severely.'
'Do you mean it knew she was going to commit suicide?' Desmond stared.
'No, something much simpler than that-'
'I don't-'
Poirot went on 'No, it knew what no one else seemed to know. It knew she was not its mistress. She looked like its mistress. The housekeeper who was slightly blind and also deaf saw a woman who wore Molly Ravenscroft's clothes and the most recognizable of Molly Ravenscroft's wigs-the one with little curls all over the head. The housekeeper said only that her mistress had been rather different in her manner the last few weeks of her life. 'Same man-different hat,' had been Garroway's phrase. And the thought-the conviction- came to me then. Same wig-different woman. The dog knew-he knew by what his nose told him. A different woman, not the woman he loved-a woman whom he disliked and feared. And I thought, suppose that woman was not Molly Ravenscroft-but who could she be? Could she be Dolly-the twin sister?'
'But that's impossible,' said Celia.
'No, it was not impossible. After all, remember, they were twins. I must come now to the things that were brought to my notice by Mrs. Oliver. The things people told her or suggested to her. The knowledge that Lady Ravenscroft had recently been in hospital or in a nursing home and that she perhaps had known that she suffered from cancer, or thought that she did. Medical evidence was against that, however. She still might have thought she did, but it was not the case. Then I learned little by little the early history of her and her twin sister, who loved each other very devotedly as twins do, did everything alike, wore clothes alike, the same things seemed to happen to them, they had illnesses at the same time, they married about the same time or not very far removed in time.
And eventually, as many twins do, instead of wanting to do everything in the same fashion and the same way, they wanted to do the opposite. To be as unlike each other as they could.
And even between them grew a certain amount of dislike.
More than that. There was a reason in the past for that.
Alistair Ravenscroft as a young man fell in love with Dorothea Preston-Grey, the elder twin of the two. But his affection shifted to the other sister, Margaret, whom he married.
There was jealousy then, no doubt, which led to an estrangement between the sisters. Margaret continued to be deeply attached to her twin, but Dorothea no longer was devoted in any way to Margaret. That seemed to me to be the explanation of a great many things. Dorothea was a tragic figure. By no fault of her own but by some accident of genes, of birth, of hereditary characteristics, she was always mentally unstable.
At quite an early age she had, for some reason which has never been made clear, a dislike of children. There is every reason to believe that a child came to its death through her action. The evidence was not definite, but it was definite enough for a doctor to advise that she should have mental treatment, and she was for some years treated in a mental home. When reported cured by doctors, she resumed normal life, came often to stay with her sister and went out to India, at a time when they were stationed out there, to join them there. And there, again, an accident happened. A child of a neighbor.
And again, although perhaps there was no very definite proof, it seems again Dorothea might have been responsible for it.
General Ravenscroft took her home to England and she was placed once more in medical care. Once again she appeared to be cured, and after psychiatric care it was again said that she could go once more and resume a normal life. Margaret believed this time that all would be well, and thought that she ought to live with them so that they could watch closely for any signs of any further mental disability. I don't think that General Ravenscroft approved. I think he had a very strong belief that just as someone can be born deformed, spastic or crippled in some way, she had a deformity of the brain which would recur from time to time and that she would have to be constantly watched and saved from herself in case some other tragedy happened.'
'Are you saying,' asked Desmond, 'that it was she who shot both the Ravenscrofts?'
'No,' said Poirot, 'that is not my solution. I think what happened was that Dorothea killed her sister, Margaret. They walked together on the cliff one day and Dorothea pushed Margaret over. The dormant obsession of hatred and resentment of the sister who though so like herself, was sane and healthy, was too much for her. Hate, jealousy, the desire to kill all rose to the surface and dominated her. I think that there was one outsider who knew, who was here at the time that this happened. I think you knew. Mademoiselle Zelle.'
'Yes,' said Zelle Meauhourat, 'I knew. I was here at the time. The Ravenscrofts had been worried about her. That is when they saw her attempt to injure their small son, Edward.
Edward was sent back to school and I and Celia went to my pensionnat. I came back here-after seeing Celia settled in.
Once the house was empty except for myself, General Ravenscroft and Dorothea and Margaret, nobody had any anxiety. And then one day it happened. The two sisters went out together. Dolly returned alone. She seemed in a very queer and nervous state. She came in and sat down at the tea table. It was then General Ravenscroft noticed that her right hand was covered with blood. He asked her if she had had a fall. She said, 'Oh, no, it was
