'Ah!' said Poirot, nodding his head sagely. 'That was her tragedy. She attracted people-and then they 'went off her'. Instead of liking her better and better you fell in love with her friend. She began to hate Madame-Madame who had a rich friend behind her. Last winter when she made a will, she was fond of Madame. Later it was different.'
'She remembered that will. She did not know that Croft had suppressed it-that it had never reached its destination. Madame (or so the world would say) had got a motive for desiring her death. So it was to Madame she telephoned asking her to get the chocolates. Tonight, the will would have been read, naming Madame her residuary legatee-and then the pistol would be found in her coat-the pistol with which Maggie Buckley was shot. If Madame found it, she might incriminate herself by trying to get rid of it.'
'She must have hated me,' murmured Frederica.
'Yes, Madame. You had what she had not-the knack of winning love, and keeping it.'
'I'm rather dense,' said Challenger, 'but I haven't quite fathomed the will business yet.'
'No? That's a different business altogether-a very simple one. The Crofts are lying low down here. Mademoiselle Nick has to have an operation. She has made no will. The Crofts see a chance. They persuade her to make one and take charge of it for the post. Then, if anything happens to her-if she dies-they produce a cleverly forged will-leaving the money to Mrs Croft with a reference to Australia and Philip Buckley whom they know once visited the country.'
'But Mademoiselle Nick has her appendix removed quite satisfactorily so the forged will is no good. For the moment, that is. Then the attempts on her life begin. The Crofts are hopeful once more. Finally, I announce her death. The chance is too good to be missed. The forged will is immediately posted to M. Vyse. Of course, to begin with, they naturally thought her much richer than she is. They knew nothing about the mortgage.'
'What I really want to know, M. Poirot,' said Lazarus, 'is how you actually got wise to all this. When did you begin to suspect?'
'Ah! there I am ashamed. I was so long-so long. There were things that worried me-yes. Things that seemed not quite right. Discrepancies between what Mademoiselle Nick told me and what other people told me. Unfortunately, I always believed Mademoiselle Nick.'
'And then, suddenly, I got a revelation. Mademoiselle Nick made one mistake. She was too clever. When I urged her to send for a friend she promised to do so-and suppressed the fact that she had already sent for Mademoiselle Maggie. It seemed to her less suspicious-but it was a mistake.'
'For Maggie Buckley wrote a letter home immediately on arrival, and in it she used one innocent phrase that puzzled me: 'I don't see why Nick should have telegraphed for me the way she did. Tuesday would have done just as well.' What did that mention of Tuesday mean? It could only mean one thing. Maggie had been coming to stay on Tuesday anyway. But in that case Mademoiselle Nick had lied-or had at any rate suppressed the truth.'
'And for the first time I looked at her in a different light. I criticized her statements. Instead of believing them, I said, 'Suppose this were not true.' I remembered the discrepancies. 'How would it be if every time it was Mademoiselle Nick who was lying and not the other person?''
'I said to myself: 'Let us be simple. What has really happened?''
'And I saw that what had really happened was that Maggie Buckley had been killed. Just that! But who could want Maggie Buckley dead?'
'And then I thought of something else-a few foolish remarks that Hastings had made not five minutes before. He had said that there were plenty of abbreviations for Margaret-Maggie, Margot, etc. And it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what was Mademoiselle Maggie's real name?'
'Then, tout d'un coup, it came to me! Supposing her name was Magdala! It was a Buckley name, Mademoiselle Nick had told me so. Two Magadala Buckleys. Supposing…'
'In my mind I ran over the letters of Michael Seton's that I had read. Yes-there was nothing impossible. There was a mention of Scarborough-but Maggie had been in Scarborough with Nick-her mother had told me so.'
'And it explained one thing which had worried me. Why were there so few letters? If a girl keeps her love letters at all, she keeps all of them. Why these select few? Was there any peculiarity about them?'
'And I remembered that there was no name mentioned in them. They all began differently-but they began with a term of endearment. Nowhere in them was there the name-Nick.
'And there was something else, something that I ought to have seen at once-that cried the truth aloud.'
'What was that?'
'Why-this. Mademoiselle Nick underwent an operation for appendicitis on February 27th last. There is a letter of Michael Seton's dated March 2nd, and no mention of anxiety, of illness or anything unusal. That ought to have shown me that the letters were written to a different person altogether.'
'Then I went through a list of questions that I had made. And I answered them in the light of my new idea.'
'In all but a few isolated questions the result was simple and convincing. And I answered, too, another question which I had asked myself earlier. Why did Mademoiselle Nick buy a black dress? The answer was that she and her cousin had to be dressed alike, with the scarlet shawl as an additional touch. That was the true and convincing answer, not the other. A girl would not buy mourning before she knew her lover was dead. She would be unreal-unnatural.'
'And so I, in turn, staged my little drama. And the thing I hoped for happened! Nick Buckley had been very vehement about the question of a secret panel. She had declared there was no such thing. But if there were-and I did not see why Ellen should have invented it-Nick must know of it. Why was she so vehement? Was it possible that she had hidden the pistol there? With the secret intention of using it to throw suspicion on somebody later?'
'I let her see that appearances were very black against Madame. That was as she had planned. As I foresaw, she was unable to resist the crowning proof. Besides it was safer for herself. That secret panel might be found by Ellen and the pistol in it!'
'We are all safely in here. She is waiting outside for her cue. It is absolutely safe, she thinks, to take the pistol from its hiding place and put it in Madame's coat…'
'And so-at the last-she failed…'
Frederica shivered.
'All the same,' she said. 'I'm glad I gave her my watch.'
'Yes, Madame.'
She looked up at him quickly.
'You know about that too?'
'What about Ellen?' I asked, breaking in. 'Did she know or suspect anything?'
'No. I asked her. She told me that she decided to stay in the house that night because in her own phrase she 'thought something was up'. Apparently Nick urged her to see the fireworks rather too decisively. She had fathomed Nick's dislike of Madame. She told me that 'she felt in her bones something was going to happen', but she thought it was going to happen to Madame. She knew Miss Nick's temper, she said, and she was always a queer little girl.'
'Yes,' murmured Frederica. 'Yes, let us think of her like that. A queer little girl. A queer little girl who couldn't help herself… I shall-anyway.'
Poirot took her hand and raised it gently to his lips. Charles Vyse stirred uneasily.
'It's going to be a very unpleasant business,' he said, quietly. 'I must see about some kind of defence for her, I suppose.'
'There will be no need, I think,' said Poirot, gently. 'Not if I am correct in my assumptions.'
He turned suddenly on Challenger.
'That's where you put the stuff, isn't it?' he said. 'In those wrist-watches.'
'I-I-' The sailor stammered-at a loss.
'Do not try and deceive me-with your hearty good-fellow manner. It has deceived Hastings -but it does not deceive me. You make a good thing out of it, do you not-the traffic in drugs-you and your uncle in Harley Street.'
'M. Poirot.'
Challenger rose to his feet.
My little friend blinked up at him placidly.
'You are the useful 'boy friend'. Deny it, if you like. But I advise you, if you do not want the facts put in the
