dentist was Mr. Morley. Morley was dead, but identification was still possible. You know the result. The body was identified in the coroner's court by' Mr. Morley's successor as that of Mrs. Albert Chapman.'
Blunt was fidgeting with some impatience, but Poirot took no notice. He went on:
'I was left now with a psychological problem. What sort of a woman was Mabelle Sainsbury Seale? There were two answers to that question. The first was the obvious one borne out by her whole life in India and by the testimony of her personal friends. That depicted her as an earnest, conscientious, slightly stupid woman. Was there another Miss Sainsbury Seale? Apparently there was. There was a woman who had lunched with a well-known foreign agent, who had accosted you in the street and claimed to be a close friend of your wife's (a statement that was almost certainly untrue), a woman who had left a man's house very shortly before a murder had been committed, a woman who had visited another woman on the evening when in all probability that other woman had been murdered, and who had since disappeared, although she must be aware that the police force of England was looking for her. Were all these actions compatible with the character which her friends gave her? It would seem that they were not. Therefore, if Miss Sainsbury Seale were not the good, amiable creature she seemed, then it would appear that she was quite possibly a cold-blooded murderess, or almost certainly an accomplice after the fact.
'I had one more criterion – my own personal impression. I had talked to Mabelle Sainsbury Seale myself. How had she struck me? And that, Mr. Blunt, was the most difficult question to answer of all. Everything that she said, her way of talking, her manner, her gestures, all were perfectly in accord with her given character. But they were equally in accord with a clever actress playing a part. And, after all, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale had started life as an actress.
'I had been much impressed by a conversation I had had with Mr. Barnes of Ealing who had also been a patient at 58 Queen Charlotte Street on that particular day. His theory, expressed very forcibly, was that the deaths of Morley and of Amberiotis were only incidental, so to speak – that the intended victim was you.'
Alistair Blunt said:
'Oh, come now – that's a bit farfetched.'
'Is it, Mr. Blunt? Is it not true that at this moment there are various groups of people to whom it is vital that you should be – removed, shall we say? Shall be no longer capable of exerting your influence?'
Blunt said:
'Oh, yes, that's true enough. But why mix up this business of Morley's death with that?'
Poirot said:
'Because there is a certain – how shall I put it? – lavishness about the case – expense is no object – human life is no object. Yes, there is a recklessness, a lavishness – that points to a big crime!'
'You don't think Morley shot himself because of a mistake?'
'I never thought so – not for a minute. No, Morley was murdered, Amberiotis was murdered, an unrecognizable woman was murdered – Why? For some big stake. Barnes' theory was that somebody had tried to bribe Morley or his partner to put you out of the way.'
Alistair Blunt said sharply:
'Nonsense!'
'Ah, but is it nonsense? Say one wishes to put someone out of the way. Yes, but that someone is forewarned, forearmed, difficult of access. To kill that person it is necessary to be able to approach him without awakening his suspicions – and where would a man be less suspicious than in a dentist's chair?'
'Well, that's true, I suppose. I never thought of it like that.'
'It is true. And once I realized it I had my first vague glimmering of the truth.'
'So you accepted Barnes' theory? Who is Barnes, by the way?'
'Barnes was Reilly's twelve o'clock patient. He is retired from the Home Office and lives at Ealing. An insignificant little man. But you are wrong when you say I accepted his theory. I did not. I only accepted the principle of it.'
'What do you mean?'
Hercule Poirot said:
'All along, all the way through, I have been led astray – sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and for a purpose. All along it was presented to me, forced upon me, that this was what you might call a public crime. That is to say, that you, Mr. Blunt, were the focus of it all, in your public character. You, the banker, you, the controller of finance, you, the upholder of conservative tradition!
'But every public character has a private life also. That was my mistake, I forgot the private life. There existed private reasons for killing Morley – Frank Carter's, for instance.
'There could also exist private reasons for killing you… You had relations who would inherit money when you died. You had people who loved and hated you – as a man – not as a public figure.
'And so I came to the supreme instance of what I call 'the forced card.' The purported attack upon you by Frank Carter. If that attack was genuine – then it was a political crime. But was there any other explanation? There could be. There was a second man in the shrubbery. The man who rushed up and seized Carter. A man who could easily have fired that shot and then tossed the pistol to Carter's feet so that the latter would almost inevitably pick it up and be found with it in his hand…
'I considered the problem of Howard Raikes. Raikes had been at Queen Charlotte Street that morning of Morley's death. Raikes was a bitter enemy of all that you stood for and were. Yes, but Raikes was something more. Raikes was the man who might marry your niece, and with you dead, your niece would inherit a very handsome income, even though you had prudently arranged that she could not touch the principal.
'Was the whole thing, after all, a private crime – a crime for private gain, for private satisfaction? Why had I thought it a public crime? Because, not once, but many times, that idea had been suggested to me, had been forced upon me like a forced card…
'It was then, when that idea occurred to me, that I had my first glimmering of the truth. I was in church at the time and singing a verse of a psalm. It spoke of a snare laid with cords…
'A snare? Laid for me? Yes, it could be… But in that case who had laid it? There was only one person who could have laid it… And that did not make sense – or did it? Had I been looking at the case upside down? Money no object? Exactly! Reckless disregard of human life? Yes, again. For the stakes for which the guilty person was playing were enormous…
'But if this new, strange idea of mine were right, it must explain everything. It must explain, for instance, the mystery of the dual nature of Miss Sainsbury Seale. It must solve the riddle of the buckled shoe. And it must answer the question: Where is Miss Sainsbury Seale now?
'Eh bien – it did all that and more. It showed me that Miss Sainsbury Seale was the beginning and middle and end of the case. No wonder it had seemed to me that there were two Mabelle Sainsbury Seales. There were two Mabelle Sainsbury Seales. There was the good, stupid, amiable woman who was vouched for so confidently by her friends. And there was the other – the woman who was mixed up with two murders and who told lies and who vanished mysteriously.
'Remember, the porter at King Leopold Mansions said that Miss Sainsbury Seale had been there once before…
'In my reconstruction of the case, that first time was the only time. She never left King Leopold Mansions. The other Miss Sainsbury Seale took her place. That other Mabelle Sainsbury Seale, dressed in clothes of the same type and wearing a new pair of shoes with buckles because the others were too large for her, went to the Russell Square Hotel at a busy time of day, packed up the dead woman's clothes, paid the bill and left. She went to the Glengowrie Court Hotel. None of the real Miss Sainsbury Seale's friends saw her after that time, remember. She played the part of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale there for over a week. She wore Mabelle Sainsbury Seale's clothes, she talked in Mabelle Sainsbury Seale's voice, but she had to buy a smaller pair of evening shoes, too. And then – she vanished, her last appearance being when she was seen reentering King Leopold Mansions on the evening of the day Morley was killed.'
'Are you trying to say,' demanded Alistair Blunt, 'that it was Mabelle Sainsbury Seale's dead body in that flat, after all?'
'Of course it was! It was a very clever double bluff – the smashed face was meant to raise a question of the woman's identity!'
'But the dental evidence?'
