'Ah! Now we come to it. It was not the dentist himself who gave evidence. Morley was dead. He couldn't give evidence as to his own work. He would have known who the dead woman was. It was the charts that were put in as evidence – and the charts were faked. Both women were his patients, remember. All that had to be done was to relabel the charts, exchanging the names.'
Hercule Poirot added:
'And now you see what I meant when you asked me if the woman was dead and I replied, 'That depends.' For when you say, 'Miss Sainsbury Seale' – which woman do you mean? The woman who disappeared from the Glengowrie Court Hotel or the real Mabelle Sainsbury Seale?'
Alistair Blunt said:
'I know, M. Poirot, that you have a great reputation. Therefore, I accept that you must have some grounds for this extraordinary assumption – for it is an assumption, nothing more. But all I can see is the fantastic improbability of the whole thing. You are saying, are you not, that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was deliberately murdered and that Morley was also murdered to prevent his identifying her dead body. But why? That's what I want to know. Here's this woman – a perfectly harmless, middle-aged woman – with plenty of friends and apparently no enemies. Why on earth all this elaborate plot to get rid of her?'
'Why? Yes, that is the question. Why? As you say, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a perfectly harmless creature who wouldn't hurt a fly! Why, then, was she deliberately and brutally murdered? Well, I will tell you what I think.'
'Yes?'
Poirot leaned forward. He said:
'It is my belief that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was murdered because she happened to have too good a memory for faces.'
'What do you mean?'
Hercule Poirot said:
'We have separated the dual personality. There is the harmless lady from India, and there is the clever actress playing the part of the harmless lady from India. But there is one incident that falls between the two roles. Which Miss Sainsbury Seale was it who spoke to you on the doorstep of Mr. Morley's house? She claimed, you will remember, to be 'a great friend of your wife's.' Now that claim was adjudged by her friends and by the light of ordinary probability to be untrue. So we can say: 'That was a lie. The real Miss Sainsbury Seale does not tell lies.' So it was a lie uttered by the impostor for a purpose of her own.'
Alistair Blunt nodded.
'Yes, that reasoning is quite clear. Though I still don't know what the purpose was.'
Poirot said:
'Ah, pardon – but let us first look at it the other way round. It was the real Miss Sainsbury Seale. She does not tell lies. So the story must be true.'
'I suppose you can look at it that way – but it seems very unlikely -'
'Of course it is unlikely! But taking that second hypothesis as fact – the story is true. Therefore Miss Sainsbury Seale did know your wife. She knew her well. Therefore – your wife must have been the type of person Miss Sainsbury Seale would have known well. Someone in her own station of life. An Anglo-Indian – a missionary – or, to go back farther still – an actress – Therefore – not Rebecca Arnholt!
'Now, Mr. Blunt, do you see what I meant when I talked of a private and a public life? You are the great banker. But you are also a man who married a rich wife. And before you married her you were only a junior partner in the firm – not very long down from Oxford.
'You comprehend – I began to look at the case the right way up. Expense no object? Naturally not – to you. Reckless of human life – that, too, since for a long time you have been virtually a dictator and to a dictator his own life becomes unduly important and those of others unimportant.'
Alistair Blunt said:
'What are you suggesting M. Poirot?'
Poirot said quietly:
'I am suggesting, Mr. Blunt, that when you married Rebecca Arnholt, you were married already. That, dazzled by the vista, not so much of wealth, as of power, you suppressed that fact and deliberately committed bigamy. That your real wife acquiesced in the situation.'
'And who was this real wife?'
'Mrs. Albert Chapman was the name she went under at King Leopold Mansions – a handy spot, no five minutes' walk from your house on the Chelsea Embankment. You borrowed the name of a real secret agent, realizing that it would give support to her hints of a husband engaged in intelligence work. Your scheme succeeded perfectly. No suspicion was ever aroused. Nevertheless, the fact remained, you had never been legally married to Rebecca Arnholt and you were guilty of bigamy. You never dreamed of danger after so many years. It came out, of the blue – in the form of a tiresome woman who remembered you after nearly twenty years, as her friend's husband. Chance brought her back to this country, chance let her meet you in Queen Charlotte Street – it was chance that your niece was with you and heard what she said to you. Otherwise I might never have guessed.'
'I told you about that myself, my dear Poirot.'
'No, it was your niece who insisted on telling me and you could not very well protest too violently in case it might arouse suspicions. And after that meeting, one more evil chance (from your point of view) occurred. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale met Amberiotis, went to lunch with him and babbled to him of this meeting with a friend's husband – 'after all these years! Looked older, of course, but had hardly changed!' That, I admit, is pure guesswork on my part but I believe it is what happened. I do not think that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale realized for a moment that the Mr. Blunt her friend had married was the shadowy figure behind the finance of the world. The name, after all, is not an uncommon one. But Amberiotis, remember, in addition to his espionage activities, was a blackmailer. Blackmailers have an uncanny nose for a secret. Amberiotis wondered. Easy to find out just who the Mr. Blunt was. And then, I have no doubt, he wrote to you… or telephoned. Oh! yes – a gold mine for Amberiotis.'
Poirot paused, then went on:
'There is only one effectual method of dealing with a really efficient and experienced blackmailer. Silence him.
'It was not a case, as I had had erroneously suggested to me, of 'Blunt must go.' It was, on the contrary, 'Amberiotis must go.' But the answer was the same! The easiest way to get at a man is when he is off his guard, and when is a man more off his guard then in the dentist's chair?'
Poirot paused again. A faint smile came to his lips.
He said:
'The truth about the case was mentioned very early. The page boy, Alfred, was reading a crime story called Death at 11:45. We should have taken that as an omen. For, of course, that is just about the time when Morley was killed. You shot him just as you were leaving. Then you pressed his buzzer, turned on the taps of the wash basin and left the room. You timed it so that you came down the stairs just as Alfred was taking the false Mabelle Sainsbury Seale to the elevator. You actually opened the front door, perhaps you passed out, but as the elevator doors shut and the elevator went up you slipped inside again and went up the stairs.
'I know, from my own visits, just what Alfred did when he took up a patient. He knocked on the door, opened it, and stood back to let the patient pass in. Inside the water was running – inference, Morley was washing his hands as usual. But Alfred couldn't actually see him.
'As soon as Alfred had gone down again in the elevator, you slipped along into the surgery. Together you and your accomplice lifted the body and carried it into the adjoining office. Then a quick hunt through the files and the charts of Mrs. Chapman and Miss Sainsbury Seale were cleverly falsified. You put on a white linen coat, perhaps your wife applied a trace of make-up. But nothing much was needed. It was Amberiotis' first visit to Morley. He had never met you. And your photograph seldom appears in the papers. Besides, why should he have suspicions? A blackmailer does not fear his dentist. Miss Sainsbury Seale goes down and Alfred shows her out. The buzzer goes and Amberiotis is taken up. He finds the dentist washing his hands behind the door in approved fashion. He is conducted to the chair. He indicates the painful tooth. You talk the accustomed patter. You explain it will be best to freeze the gum. The procaine and adrenaline are there. You inject a big enough dose to kill. And incidentally he will not feel any lack of skill in your dentistry!
'Completely unsuspicious, Amberiotis leaves. You bring out Morley's body and arrange it on the floor,
