I awoke to find the sun pouring in through the open windows and Poirot, [unreadable] and smiling, sitting beside the bed.
‘Enfin, you wake! But it is that you are a famous sleeper, Hastings! Do you know that it is nearly eleven o’clock?’
I groaned and put a hand to my head. ‘I must have been dreaming,’ I said. ‘Do you know, I actually dreamt that we found Marthe Daubreuil’s body in Mrs. Renauld’s room, and that you declared her to have murdered Mr. Renauld?’
‘You were not dreaming. All that is quite true.’
‘But Bella Duveen killed Mr. Renauld?’
‘Oh no, Hastings, she did not! She said she did—yes—but that was to save the man she loved from the guillotine.’
‘What?’
‘Remember Jack Renauld’s story. They both arrived on the scene on the same instant and each took the other to be the perpetrator of the crime. The girl stares at him in horror, and then with a cry rushes away. But when she hears that the crime has been brought home to him, she cannot bear it and comes forward to accuse herself and save him from certain death.’
Poirot leaned back in his chair, and brought the tips of his fingers together in familiar style.
‘The case was not quite satisfactory to me,’ he observed judicially. ‘All along I was strongly under the impression that we were dealing with a cold-blooded and premeditated crime committed by someone who had contented themselves (very cleverly) with using Monsieur Renauld’s own plans for throwing the police off the track. The great criminal (as you may remember my remarking to you once) is always supremely simple.’
I nodded.
‘Now, to support this theory, the criminal must have been fully cognizant of Monsieur Renauld’s plans. That leads us to Mrs. Renauld. But facts fail to support any theory of her guilt. Is there anyone else who might have known of them? Yes. From Marthe Daubreuil’s own lips we have the admission that she overheard Mr. Renauld’s quarrel with the tramp. If she could overhear that, there is no reason why she should not have heard everything else, especially if Mr. And Madame Renauld were imprudent enough to discuss their plans sitting on the bench. Remember how easily you overheard Marthe’s conversation with Jack Renauld from that spot.’
‘But what possible motive could Marthe have for murdering Mr. Renauld?’ I argued.
‘What motive! Money! Renauld was a millionaire several times over, and at his death (or so she and Jack believed) half that vast fortune would pass to his son. Let us reconstruct the scene from the standpoint of Marthe Daubreuil.’
‘Marthe Daubreuil overhears what passes between Renauld and his wife. So far he has been a nice little source of income to the Daubreuil mother and daughter, but now he proposes to escape from their toils. At first, possibly, her idea is to prevent that escape. But a bolder idea takes its place, and one that fails to horrify the daughter of Jeanne Beroldy! At present Renauld stands inexorably in the way of her marriage with Jack. If the latter defies his father, he will be a pauper—which is not at all to the mind of Mademoiselle Marthe. In fact, I doubt if she has ever cared a straw for Jack Renauld. She can simulate emotion but in reality she is of the same cold, calculating type as her mother. I doubt, too, whether she was really very sure of her hold over the boy’s affections. She had dazzled and captivated him, but separated from her, as his father could so easily manage to separate them, she might lose him. But with Renauld dead, and Jack the heir to half his millions, the marriage can take place at once, and at a stroke she will attain wealth—not the beggarly thousands that have been extracted from him so far.’
‘And her clever brain takes in the simplicity of the thing. It is all so easy. Renauld is planning all the circumstances of his death—she has only to step in at the right moment and turn the farce into a grim reality. And here comes in the second point which led me infallibly to Marthe Daubreuil—the dagger: Jack Renauld had three souvenirs made. One he gave to his mother, one to Bella Duveen—was it not highly probable that he had given the third one to Marthe Daubreuil?’