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By Root 537 0

“Here we were face to face with a very curious unexplained circumstance. The next interesting point was the fact that in Linnet Doyle’s cabin I found two bottles of coloured nail polish. Now ladies very often vary the colour of their nails, but so far Linnet Doyle’s nails had always been the shade called Cardinal—a deep dark red. The other bottle was labelled Rose, which is a shade of pale pink, but the few drops remaining in the bottle were not pale pink but a bright red. I was sufficiently curious to take out the stopper and sniff. Instead of the usual strong odour of peardrops, the bottle smelt of vinegar! That is to say, it suggested that the drop or two of fluid in it was red ink. Now there is no reason why Madame Doyle should not have had a bottle of red ink, but it would have been more natural if she had had red ink in a red ink bottle and not in a nail polish bottle. It suggested a link with the faintly stained handkerchief which had been wrapped round the pistol. Red ink washes out quickly but always leaves a pale pink stain.

“I should perhaps have arrived at the truth with these slender indications, but an event occurred which rendered all doubt superfluous. Louise Bourget was killed in circumstances which pointed unmistakably to the fact that she had been blackmailing the murderer. Not only was a fragment of a mille franc note still clasped in her hand, but I remembered some very significant words she had used this morning.

“Listen carefully, for here is the crux of the whole matter. When I asked her if she had seen anything the previous night she gave this very curious answer: ‘Naturally, if I had been unable to sleep, if I had mounted the stairs, then perhaps I might have seen this assassin, this monster enter or leave Madame’s cabin…’ Now what exactly did that tell us?”

Bessner, his nose wrinkling with intellectual interest, replied promptly: “It told you that she had mounted the stairs.”

“No, no; you fail to see the point. Why should she have said that, to us?”

“To convey a hint.”

“But why hint to us? If she knows who the murderer is, there are two courses open to her—to tell us the truth, or to hold her tongue and demand money for her silence from the person concerned! But she does neither. She neither says promptly: ‘I saw nobody. I was asleep.’ Nor does she say: ‘Yes, I saw someone, and it was so and so.’ Why use that significant indeterminate rigmarole of words? Parbleu, there can be only one reason! She is hinting to the murderer; therefore the murderer must have been present at the time. But, besides myself and Colonel Race, only two people were present—Simon Doyle and Dr. Bessner.”

The doctor sprang up with a roar.

“Ach! what is that you say? You accuse me? Again? But it is ridiculous—beneath contempt.”

Poirot said sharply: “Be quiet. I am telling you what I thought at the time. Let us remain impersonal.”

“He doesn’t mean he thinks it’s you now,” said Cornelia soothingly.

Poirot went on quickly: “So it lay there—between Simon Doyle and Dr. Bessner. But what reason has Bessner to kill Linnet Doyle? None, so far as I know. Simon Doyle, then? But that was impossible! There were plenty of witnesses who could swear that Doyle never left the saloon that evening until the quarrel broke out. After that he was wounded and it would then have been physically impossible for him to have done so. Had I good evidence on both those points? Yes, I had the evidence of Mademoiselle Robson, of Jim Fanthorp, and of Jacqueline de Bellefort as to the first, and I had the skilled testimony of Dr. Bessner and of Mademoiselle Bowers as to the other. No doubt was possible.

“So Dr. Bessner must be the guilty one. In favour of this theory there was the fact that the maid had been stabbed with a surgical knife. On the other hand Bessner had deliberately called attention to this fact.

“And then, my friends, a second perfectly indisputable fact became apparent to me. Louise Bourget’s hint could not have been intended for Dr. Bessner, because she could perfectly well have spoken to him in private at any time she liked.