‘Well, for one thing, Carlotta was speaking in a general sort of way one day. About a man having hard luck, and how it might affect character. That a man might be a decent sort really and yet go down the hill. More sinned against then sinning – you know the idea. The first thing a woman kids herself with when she’s getting soft about a man. I’ve heard the old wheeze so often! Carlotta had plenty of sense, yet here she was coming out with this stuff just like a complete ass who knew nothing of life. “Hello,” I said to myself. “Something’s up.” She didn’t mention a name – it was all general. But almost immediately after that she began to speak of Ronald Marsh and that she thought he’d been badly treated. She was very impersonal and offhand about it. I didn’t connect the two things at the time. But now – I wonder. It seems to me that it was Ronald she meant. What do you think, M. Poirot?’
Her face looked earnestly up into his.
‘I think, Mademoiselle, that you have perhaps given me some very valuable information.’
‘Good.’ Jenny clapped her hands.
Poirot looked kindly at her.
‘Perhaps you have not heard – the gentleman of whom you speak, Ronald Marsh – Lord Edgware – has just been arrested.’
‘Oh!’ Her mouth flew open in surprise. ‘Then my bit of thinking comes rather late in the day.’
‘It is never too late,’ said Poirot. ‘Not with me, you understand. Thank you, Mademoiselle.’
She left us to return to Bryan Martin.
‘There, Poirot,’ I said. ‘Surely that shakes your belief.’
‘No, Hastings. On the contrary – it strengthens it.’
Despite that valiant assertion I believed myself that secretly he had weakened.
During the days that followed he never once mentioned the Edgware case. If I spoke of it, he answered monosyllabically and without interest. In other words, he had washed his hands of it. Whatever he had had lingering in his fantastic brain, he had now been forced to admit that it had not materialized – that his first conception of the case had been the true one and that Ronald Marsh was only too truly accused of the crime. Only, being Poirot, he could not admit openly that such was the case! Therefore he pretended to have lost interest.
Such, as I say, was my interpretation of his attitude. It seemed borne out by the facts. He took no faintest interest in the police court proceedings, which in any case were purely formal. He busied himself with other cases and, as I say, he displayed no interest when the subject was mentioned.
It was nearly a fortnight later than the events mentioned in my last chapter when I came to realize that my interpretation of his attitude was entirely wrong.
It was breakfast time. The usual heavy pile of letters lay by Poirot’s plate. He sorted through them with nimble fingers. Then he uttered a quick exclamation of pleasure and picked up a letter with an American stamp on it.
He opened it with his little letter-opener. I looked on with interest since he seemed so moved to pleasure about it. There was a letter and a fairly thick enclosure.
Poirot read the former through twice, then he looked up.
‘Would you like to see this, Hastings?’
I took it from him. It ran as follows:
Dear M. Poirot, – I was much touched by your kind – your very kind letter. I have been feeling so bewildered by everything. Apart from my terrible grief, I have been so affronted by the things that seem to have been hinted about Carlotta – the dearest, sweetest sister that a girl ever had. No, M. Poirot, she did not take drugs. I’m sure of it. She had a horror of that kind of thing. I’ve often heard her say so. If she played a part in that poor man’s death, it was an entirely innocent one – but of course her letter to me proves that. I am sending you the actual letter itself since you ask me to do so. I hate parting with the last letter she ever wrote, but I know you will take care of it and let me have it back, and if it helps you to clear up some of the mystery about her death, as you say it may do – why, then, of course it must go to you.
You ask whether Carlotta mentioned any friend specially in her letters. She mentioned a great many people, of course, but nobody in a very outstanding way. Bryan Martin whom we used to know years ago, a girl called Jenny Driver, and a Captain Ronald Marsh were, I think, the ones she saw most of.
I wish I could think of something to help you. You write so kindly and with such understanding, and you seem to realize what Carlotta and I were to each other.
Gratefully yours,
Lucie Adams
P.S. An officer has just been here for the letter. I told him that I had already mailed it to you. This, of course, was not true, but I felt somehow or other that it was important you should see it first. It seems Scotland Yard need it as evidence, against the murderer. You will take it to them. But, oh! please be sure they let you have it back again some day. You see, it is Carlotta’s last words to me.
‘So you wrote yourself to her,’ I remarked as I laid the letter down. ‘Why did you do that, Poirot? And why did you ask for the original of Carlotta Adams’ letter?’
He was bending over the enclosed sheets of the letter I mentioned.
‘In verity I could not say, Hastings – unless it is that I hoped against hope that the original letter might in some way explain the inexplicable.’
‘I don’t see how you can get away from the text of that letter. Carlotta Adams gave it herself to the maid to post. There was no hocus pocus about it. And certainly it reads as a perfectly genuine ordinary epistle.’
Poirot sighed.
‘I know. I know. And that is what makes it so difficult. Because, Hastings, as it stands, that letter is impossible.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Si, si, it is so. See you, as I have reasoned it out, certain things must be – they follow each other with method and order in an understandable fashion. But then comes this letter. It does not accord. Who, then, is wrong? Hercule Poirot or the letter?’
‘You don’t think it possible that it could be Hercule Poirot?’ I suggested as delicately as I was able.
Poirot threw me a glance of reproof.
‘There are times when I have been in error – but this is not one of them. Clearly then, since the letter seems impossible, it is impossible. There is some fact about the letter which escapes us. I seek to discover what that fact is.’
And thereupon he resumed his study of the letter in question, using a small pocket microscope.
As he finished perusing each page, he passed it across to me. I, certainly, could find nothing amiss. It was written in a firm fairly legible handwriting and it was word for word as it had been telegraphed across.
Poirot sighed deeply.
‘There is no forgery of any kind here – no, it is all written in the same hand. And yet, since, as I say, it is impossible–’
He broke off. With an impatient gesture he demanded the sheets from me. I passed them over, and once again he went slowly through them.
Suddenly he uttered a cry.
I had left the breakfast table and was standing looking out of the window. At this sound, I turned sharply.
Poirot was literally quivering with excitement. His eyes were green like a cat’s. His pointing finger trembled.
‘See you, Hastings? Look here – quickly – come and look.’
I ran to his side. Spread out before him was one of the middle sheets of the letter. I could see nothing unusual about it.
‘See you not? All these other sheets they have the clean edge – they are single sheets. But this one – see – one side of it is ragged – it has been torn. Now do you see what I mean?This letter was a double sheet, and so, you comprehend,one page of the letter is missing.’
I stared stupidly, no doubt.
‘But how can it be. It makes sense.’
‘Yes, yes, it makes sense. That is where the cleverness of the idea comes in. Read – and you will see.’