'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.'

'Itis 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 in Ealing. An insignificant little man. But you are wrong when you say I accepted his theory. I did not. I only accepted theprinciple 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, M. Blunt, were the focus of it all, in yourpublic character. You, the banker, you the controller of finance, you, the upholder of conservative tradition!

'But every public character has aprivate life also. That was my mistake,I forgot the private life . There existedprivate reasons for killing Morley-Frank Carter's for instance.

'There could also exist private reasons for killingyou ...You had relations who would inherit money when you died. You had people who loved and hated you-as aman -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 itwas 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 princ.i.p.al.

'Was the whole thing, after all, aprivate crime-a crime forprivate gain, forprivate satisfaction? Why had I thought it apublic 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 casewho had laid it?There was only one person who could have laid it ...And that did not make sense-ordid it? Had I been looking at the caseupside down? Money no object? Exactly! Reckless disregard of human life? Yes again. For the stakes for which the guilty person was playing wereenormous ...

'But if this new, strange idea of mine were right, it must explaineverything . 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. Therewere 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 re-entering King Leopold Mansions on the evening of the day Morley was killed.'

'Are you trying to say,' demanded Alistair Blunt, 'that itwas 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 wasmeant to raise a question of the woman's ident.i.ty!'

'But the dental evidence?'

'Ah! Now we come to it. It was not thedentist 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 a.s.sumption-for it is an a.s.sumption, 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?'

Hercule 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. 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 itthe other way round . It was thereal Miss Sainsbury Seale. She doesnot tell lies.So the story must be true .'

'I suppose youcan look at it that way-but it seems very unlikely-'

'Of course it is unlikely! But taking that second hypothesis as fact-the story istrue . Therefore Miss Sainsbury Sealedid know your wife. She knew herwell . 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-notRebecca Arnholt!

'Now, M. 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 theright 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, M. 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, not 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 dreamt 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 guess-work 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. He 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 than 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 calledDeath at Eleven Forty-Five . 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 lift. You actually opened the front door, perhaps you pa.s.sed out, but as the lift doors shut and the lift 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 pa.s.s in. Inside the water was running-inference, Morley was washing his hands as usual. But Alfred couldn't actuallysee him.

'As soon as Alfred had gone down again in the lift, 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 adrenalin 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, dragging it slightly on the carpet now that you have to manage it single-handed. You wipe the pistol and put it in his hand-wipe the door-handle so that your prints shall not be the last. The instruments you used have all been pa.s.sed into the sterilizer. You leave the room, go down the stairs and slip out of the front door at a suitable moment. That is your only moment of danger.

'It should all have pa.s.sed off so well! Two people who threatened your safety-both dead. A third person also dead-but that, from your point of view, was unavoidable. And all so easily explained. Morley's suicide explained by the mistake he had made over Amberiotis. The two deaths cancel out. One of these regrettable accidents.

'But alas for you,I am on the scene.I have doubts.I make objections. All is not going as easily as you hoped. So there must be a second line of defences. There must be, if necessary, a scapegoat. You have already informed yourself minutely, of Morley's household. There is this man, Frank Carter, he will do. So your accomplice arranges that he shall be engaged in a mysterious fashion as gardener. If, later, he tells such a ridiculous story no one will believe it. In due course, the body in the fur chest will come to light. At first it will be thought to be that of Miss Sainsbury Seale, then the dental evidence will be taken. Big sensation! It may seem a needless complication, but it wasnecessary . You do not want the police force of England to be looking for a missing Mrs Albert Chapman. No, let Mrs Chapman be dead-and let it be Mabelle Sainsbury Seale for whom the police look. Since they can never find her. Besides, through your influence, you can arrange to have the case dropped.

'You did do that, but since it was necessary that you should know just whatI was doing, you sent for me and urged me to find the missing woman for you. And you continued, steadily, to "force a card" upon me. Your accomplice rang me up with a melodramatic warning-the same idea-espionage-thepublic aspect. She is a clever actress, this wife of yours, but to disguise one's voice the natural tendency is to imitate another voice. Your wife imitated the intonation of Mrs Olivera. That puzzled me, I may say, a good deal.

'Then I was taken down to Exsham-the final performance was staged. How easy to arrange a loaded pistol amongst laurels so that a man, clipping them, shall unwittingly cause it to go off. The pistol falls at his feet. Startled, he picks it up. What more do you want? He is caught red-handed-with a ridiculous story and with a pistol which is a twin to the one with which Morley was shot.

'And all a snare for the feet of Hercule Poirot.'

Alistair Blunt stirred a little in his chair. His face was grave and a little sad. He said: 'Don't misunderstand me, M. Poirot. How much do you guess? And how much do you actuallyknow ?'

Poirot said: 'I have a certificate of the marriage-at a registry office near Oxford-of Martin Alistair Blunt and Gerda Grant. Frank Carter saw two men leave Morley's surgery just after twenty-five past twelve. The first was a fat man-Amberiotis. The second was, of course, you. Frank Carter did not recognize you. He only saw you from above.'

'How fair of you to mention that!'

'He went into the surgery and found Morley's body. The hands were cold and there was dried blood round the wound. That meant that Morley had been dead some time. Therefore the dentist who attended to Amberiotis could not have been Morley and must have been Morley's murderer.'

'Anything else?'

'Yes.Helen Montressor was arrested this afternoon .'

Alistair Blunt gave one sharp movement. Then he sat very still. He said: 'That-rather tears it.'

Hercule Poirot said: 'Yes. The real Helen Montressor, your distant cousin, died in Canada seven years ago. You suppressed that fact, and took advantage of it.'

A smile came to Alistair Blunt's lips. He spoke naturally and with a kind of boyish enjoyment.

'Gerda got a kick out of it all, you know. I'd like to make you understand. You're such a clever fellow. I married her without letting my people know. She was acting in repertory at the time. My people were the strait-laced kind, and I was going into the firm. We agreed to keep it dark. She went on acting. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was in the company too. She knew about us. Then she went abroad with a touring company. Gerda heard of her once or twice from India. Then she stopped writing. Mabelle got mixed up with some Hindu. She was always a stupid, credulous girl.

'I wish I could make you understand about my meeting with Rebecca and my marriage. Gerda understood. The only way I can put it is that it was like Royalty. I had the chance of marrying a Queen and playing the part of Prince Consort or even King. I looked on my marriage to Gerda as morganatic. I loved her. I didn't want to get rid of her. And the whole thing worked splendidly. I liked Rebecca immensely. She was a woman with a first-cla.s.s financial brain and mine was just as good. We were good at team work. It was supremely exciting. She was an excellent companion and I think I made her happy. I was genuinely sorry when she died. The queer thing was that Gerda and I grew to enjoy the secret thrill of our meetings. We had all sorts of ingenious devices. She was an actress by nature. She had a repertoire of seven or eight characters-Mrs Albert Chapman was only one of them. She was an American widow in Paris. I met her there when I went over on business. And she used to go to Norway with painting things as an artist. I went there for the fishing. And then, later, I pa.s.sed her off as my cousin. Helen Montressor. It was great fun for us both, and it kept romance alive, I suppose. We could have married officially after Rebecca died-but we didn't want to. Gerda would have found it hard to live my official life and, of course, something from the pastmight have been raked up, but I think the real reason we went on more or less the same was that weenjoyed the secrecy of it. We should have found open domesticity dull.'

Blunt paused. He said, and his voice changed and hardened: 'And then that d.a.m.ned fool of a woman messed up everything. Recognizing me-after all those years!

And she told Amberiotis. You see-youmust see-that something had to be done! It wasn't only myself-not only the selfish point of view. If I was ruined and disgraced-the country,my country was. .h.i.t as well. For I've done something for England, M. Poirot. I've held it firm and kept it solvent. It's free from Dictators-from Fascism and from Communism. I don't really care for money as money. I do like power-I like to rule-but I don't want to tyrannize. Weare democratic in England-truly democratic. We can grumble and say what we think and laugh at our politicians. We'refree . I care for all that-it's been my life-work. But ifI went-well, you know what would probably happen. I'mneeded , M. Poirot. And a d.a.m.ned double-crossing, blackmailing rogue of a Greek was going to destroy my life work. Somethinghad to be done. Gerda saw it, too. We were sorry about the Sainsbury Seale woman-but it was no good. We'd got to silence her. She couldn't be trusted to hold her tongue. Gerda went to see her, asked her to tea, told her to ask for Mrs Chapman, said she was staying in Mr Chapman's flat. Mabelle Sainsbury Seale came, quite unsuspecting. She never knew anything-the medinal was in the tea-it's quite painless. You just sleep and don't wake up. The face business was done afterwards-rather sickening, but we felt it was necessary. Mrs Chapman was to exit for good. I had given my "cousin" Helen a cottage to live in. We decided that after a while we would get married. But first we had to get Amberiotis out of the way. It worked beautifully. He hadn't a suspicion that I wasn't a real dentist. I did my stuff with the hand-p.r.i.c.ks rather well. I didn't risk the drill. Of course, after the injection he couldn't feel what I was doing. Probably just as well!'

Poirot asked: 'The pistols?'

'Actually they belonged to a secretary I once had in America. He bought them abroad somewhere. When he left he forgot to take them.'

There was a pause. Then Alistair Blunt asked: 'Is there anything else you want to know?'

Hercule Poirot said: 'What about Morley?'

Alistair Blunt said simply: 'I was sorry about Morley.'

Hercule Poirot said: 'Yes, I see...'

There was a long pause, then Blunt said: 'Well, M. Poirot, what about it?'

Poirot said: 'Helen Montressor is arrested already.'

'And now it's my turn?'

'That was my meaning, yes.'

Blunt said gently: 'But you are not happy about it, eh?'

'No, I am not at all happy.'

Alistair Blunt said: 'I've killed three people. So presumably Iought to be hanged. But you've heard my defence.'

'Which is-exactly?'

'That I believe, with all my heart and soul, that I am necessary to the continued peace and well-being of this country.'

Hercule Poirot allowed: 'That may be-yes.'

'You agree, don't you?'

'I agree, yes. You stand for all the things that to my mind are important. For sanity and balance and stability and honest dealing.'

Alistair Blunt said quietly: 'Thanks.'

He added: 'Well, what about it?'

'You suggest that I-retire from the case?'

'Yes.'

'And your wife?'

'I've got a good deal of pull. Mistaken ident.i.ty, that's the line to take.'

'And if I refuse?'

'Then,' said Alistair Blunt simply, 'I'm for it.'

He went on: 'It's in your hands, Poirot. It's up to you. But I tell you this-and it's not just self-preservation-I'm needed in the world. And do you know why? Because I'm an honest man. And because I've got common sense-and no particular axe of my own to grind.'

Poirot nodded. Strangely enough, he believed all that.

He said: 'Yes, that is one side. You are the right man in the right place. You have sanity, judgement, balance. But there is the other side. Three human beings who are dead.'

'Yes, but think of them! Mabelle Sainsbury Seale-you said yourself-a woman with the brains of a hen! Amberiotis-a crook and a blackmailer!'

'And Morley?'

'I've told you before. I'm sorry about Morley. But after all-he was a decent fellow and a good dentist-but thereare other dentists.'

'Yes,' said Poirot, 'there are other dentists. And Frank Carter? You would have let him die, too, without regret?'

Blunt said: 'I don't waste any pity onhim . He's no good. An utter rotter.'