Cards on the Table - Agatha Christie [19]
He paused:
‘So you see, that does not help us much. No—there is only one way in this crime. We must go back into the past.’
Battle sighed.
‘You’ve said it,’ he murmured.
‘In the opinion of Mr Shaitana, each of those four people had committed murder. Had he evidence? Or was it a guess? We cannot tell. It is unlikely, I think, that he could have had actual evidence in all four cases—’
‘I agree with you there,’ said Battle, nodding his head. ‘That would be a bit too much of a coincidence.’
‘I suggest that it might come about this way—murder or a certain form of murder is mentioned, and Mr Shaitana surprised a look on someone’s face. He was very quick—very sensitive to expression. It amuses him to experiment—to probe gently in the course of apparently aimless conversation—he is alert to notice a wince, a reservation, a desire to turn the conversation. Oh, it is easily done. If you suspect a certain secret, nothing is easier than to confirm your suspicion. Every time a word goes home you notice it—if you are watching for such a thing.’
‘It’s the sort of game that would have amused our late friend,’ said Battle, nodding.
‘We may assume, then, that such was the procedure in one or more cases. He may have come across a piece of actual evidence in another case and followed it up. I doubt whether, in any of the cases, he had sufficient actual knowledge with which, for instance, to have gone to the police.’
‘Or it mayn’t have been the kind of case,’ said Battle. ‘Often enough there’s a fishy business—we suspect foul play, but we can’t ever prove it. Anyway, the course is clear. We’ve got to go through the records of all these people—and note any deaths that may be significant. I expect you noticed, just as the Colonel did, what Shaitana said at dinner.’
‘The black angel,’ murmured Mrs Oliver.
‘A neat little reference to poison, to accident, to a doctor’s opportunities, to shooting accidents. I shouldn’t be surprised if he signed his death-warrant when he said those words.’
‘It was a nasty sort of pause,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Yes,’ said Poirot. ‘Those words went home to one person at least—that person probably thought that Shaitana knew far more than he really did. That listener thought that they were the prelude to the end—that the party was a dramatic entertainment arranged by Shaitana leading up to arrest for murder as its climax! Yes, as you say, he signed his death-warrant when he baited his guests with those words.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘This will be a long business,’ said Battle with a sigh. ‘We can’t find out all we want in a moment—and we’ve got to be careful. We don’t want any of the four to suspect what we’re doing. All our questioning and so on must seem to have to do with this murder. There mustn’t be a suspicion that we’ve got any idea of the motive for the crime. And the devil of it is we’ve got to check up on four possible murders in the past, not one.’
Poirot demurred.
‘Our friend Mr Shaitana was not infallible,’ he said. ‘He may—it is just possible—have made a mistake.’
‘About all four?’
‘No—he was more intelligent than that.’
‘Call it fifty-fifty?’
‘Not even that. For me, I say one in four.’
‘One innocent and three guilty? That’s bad enough. And the devil of it is, even if we get at the truth it mayn’t help us. Even if somebody did push their great-aunts down the stairs in 1912, it won’t be much use to us in 1937.’
‘Yes, yes, it will be of use to us.’ Poirot encouraged him. ‘You know that. You know it as well as I do.’
Battle nodded slowly.
‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘Same hall-mark.’
‘Do you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘that the former victim will have been stabbed with a dagger too?’
‘Not quite as crude as that, Mrs Oliver,’ said Battle turning to her. ‘But I don’t doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them