Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie [58]
“Well, we’d better have the fellow here.”
Race rang the bell and gave the order. Then he asked, “Any other—possibilities?”
“Plenty, my friend. There is, for example, the American trustee.”
“Pennington?”
“Yes, Pennington. There was a curious little scene in here the other day.” He narrated the happenings to Race. “You see—it is significant. Madame, she wanted to read all the papers before signing. So he makes the excuse of another day. And then, the husband, he makes a very significant remark.”
“What was that?”
“He says—‘I never read anything. I sign where I am told to sign.’ You perceive the significance of that. Pennington did. I saw it in his eye. He looked at Doyle as though an entirely new idea had come into his head. Just imagine, my friend, that you have been left trustee to the daughter of an intensely wealthy man. You use, perhaps, that money to speculate with. I know it is so in all detective novels—but you read of it too in the newspapers. It happens, my friend, it happens.”
“I don’t dispute it,” said Race.
“There is, perhaps, still time to make good by speculating wildly. Your ward is not yet of age. And then—she marries! The control passes from your hands into hers at a moment’s notice! A disaster! But there is still a chance. She is on a honeymoon. She will perhaps be careless about business. A casual paper, slipped in among others, signed without reading…But Linnet Doyle was not like that. Honeymoon or no honeymoon, she is a business woman. And then her husband makes a remark, and a new idea comes to that desperate man who is seeking a way out from ruin. If Linnet Doyle were to die, her fortune would pass to her husband—and he would be easy to deal with; he would be a child in the hands of an astute man like Andrew Pennington. Mon cher Colonel, I tell you I saw the thought pass through Andrew Pennington’s head. ‘If only it were Doyle I had got to deal with…’ That is what he was thinking.”
“Quite possible, I dare say,” said Race dryly, “but you’ve no evidence.”
“Alas, no.”
“Then there’s young Ferguson,” said Race. “He talks bitterly enough. Not that I go by talk. Still, he might be the fellow whose father was ruined by old Ridgeway. It’s a little far-fetched but it’s possible. People do brood over bygone wrongs sometimes.” He paused a minute and then said: “And there’s my fellow.”
“Yes, there is ‘your fellow’ as you call him.”
“He’s a killer,” said Race. “We know that. On the other hand, I can’t see any way in which he could have come up against Linnet Doyle. Their orbits don’t touch.”
Poirot said slowly: “Unless, accidentally, she had become possessed of evidence showing his identity.”
“That’s possible, but it seems highly unlikely.”
There was a knock at the door. “Ah, here’s our would-be bigamist.”
Fleetwood was a big, truculent-looking man. He looked suspiciously from one to the other of them as he entered the room. Poirot recognized him as the man he had seen talking to Louise Bourget.
Fleetwood asked suspiciously: “You wanted to see me?”
“We did,” said Race. “You probably know that a murder was committed on this boat last night?”
Fleetwood nodded.
“And I believe it is true that you had reason to feel anger against the woman who was killed.”
A look of alarm sprang up in Fleetwood’s eyes.
“Who told you that?”
“You considered that Mrs. Doyle had interfered between you and a young woman.”
“I know who told you that—that lying French hussy. She’s a liar through and through, that girl.”
“But this particular story happens to be true.”
“It’s a dirty lie!”
“You say that, although you don’t know what it is yet.”
The shot told. The man flushed and gulped.
“It is true, is it not, that you were going to marry the girl Marie, and that she broke it off when she discovered that you were a married man already?