‘What made you do that?’
‘Her spontaneous and genuine grief at the sight of her husband’s body. I could swear that the agony in that cry of hers was genuine.’
‘Yes,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘one cannot mistake these things.’
‘I beg your pardon, my friend—one can always be mistaken. Regard a great actress, does not her acting of grief carry you away and impress you with its reality? No, however strong my own impression and belief, I needed other evidence before I allowed myself to be satisfied. The great criminal can be a great actor. I base my certainty in this case not upon my own impression, but upon the undeniable fact that Madame Renauld actually fainted. I turned up her eyelids and felt her pulse. There was no deception—the swoon was genuine. Therefore I was satisfied that her anguish was real and not assumed. Besides, a small additional point without interest, it was unnecessary for Madame Renauld to exhibit unrestrained grief. She had had one paroxysm on learning of her husband’s death, and there would be no need for her to emulate another such a violent one on beholding his body. No, Madame Renauld was not her husband’s murderess.’
‘But why has she lied? She lied about the wristwatch, she lied about the masked men, she lied about a third thing. Tell me, Hastings, what is your explanation of the open door?’
‘Well,’ I said, rather embarrassed, ‘I suppose it was an oversight. They forgot to shut it.’
Poirot shook his head, and sighed. ‘That is the explanation of Giraud. It does not satisfy me. There is a meaning behind that open door which for the moment I cannot fathom. One thing I am fairly sure of—they did not leave through the door. They left by the window.’
‘What?’
‘Precisely.’
‘But there were no footmarks in the flowerbed underneath.’
”No—and there ought to have been. Listen, Hastings. The gardener, Auguste as you heard him say, planted both those beds the preceding afternoon. In the one the are plenty of impressions of his big hobnailed boots—in the other, none! You see? Someone had passed that way, someone who, to obliterate their footprints, smoothed over the surface of the bed with a rake.’
‘Where did they get a rake?’
‘Where they got the spade and the gardening gloves,’ said Poirot impatiently. ‘There is no difficulty about that.’
‘What makes you think that they left that way though? Surely it is more probable that they entered by the window, and left by the door?’
‘That is possible of course. Yet I have a strong idea that they left by the window.’
‘I think you are wrong.’
‘Perhaps, mon ami.’
I mused, thinking over the new field of conjecture that Poirot’s deductions had opened up to me. I recalled my wonder at his cryptic allusion to the flowerbed and the wristwatch. His remarks had seemed so meaningless at the moment, and now, for the first time I realized how remarkably, from a few slight incidents, he had unravelled much of the mystery that surrounded the case. I paid a belated homage to my friend.
‘In the meantime,’ I said, considering, ‘although we know a great deal more than we did we are no nearer to solving the mystery of who killed Mr. Renauld.’
‘No,’ said Poirot cheerfully. ‘In fact we are a great deal farther off.’
The fact seemed to afford him such peculiar satisfaction that I gazed at him in wonder. He met my eye and smiled.
Suddenly a light burst upon me.
‘Poirot! Mrs Renauld! I see it now. She must be shielding somebody.’
From the quietness with which Poirot received my remark, I could se that the idea had already occurred to him.
‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Shielding someone—or screening someone. One of the two.’
Then, as we entered our hotel he enjoined silence on me with a gesture.
CHAPTER 13
THE GIRL WITH THE ANXIOUS EYES
We lunched with an excellent appetite. For a while we ate in silence, and then Poirot observed maliciously: ‘Eh bien. And your indiscretions! You recount them not?’
I felt myself blushing. ‘Oh, you mean this morning?’ I endeavoured to adopt a tone of absolute nonchalance.