One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [68]
‘Are you trying to say,’ demanded Alistair Blunt, ‘that it was Mabelle Sainsbury Seale’s dead body in that flat, after all.’
‘Of course it was! It was a very clever double bluff — the smashed face was meant to raise a question of the woman’s identity!’
‘But the dental evidence?’
‘Ah! Now we come to it. It was not the dentist himself who gave evidence. Morley was dead. He couldn’t give evidence as to his own work. He would have known who the dead woman was. It was the charts that were put in as evidence — and the charts were faked. Both women were his patients, remember. All that had to be done was to relabel the charts, exchanging the names.’
Hercule Poirot added:
‘And now you see what I meant when you asked me if the woman was dead and I replied, “That depends.” For when you say “Miss Sainsbury Seale” — which woman do you mean? The woman who disappeared from the Glengowrie Court Hotel or the real Mabelle Sainsbury Seale.’
Alistair Blunt said:
‘I know, M. Poirot, that you have a great reputation. Therefore I accept that you must have some grounds for this extraordinary assumption — for it is an assumption, nothing more. But all I can see is the fantastic improbability of the whole thing. You are saying, are you not, that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was deliberately murdered and that Morley was also murdered to prevent his identifying her dead body. But why? That’s what I want to know. Here’s this woman — a perfectly harmless, middle-aged woman — with plenty of friends and apparently no enemies. Why on earth all this elaborate plot to get rid of her?’
‘Why? Yes, that is the question. Why? As you say, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a perfectly harmless creature who wouldn’t hurt a fly! Why, then, was she deliberately and brutally murdered? Well, I will tell you what I think.’
‘Yes?’
Hercule Poirot leaned forward. He said:
‘It is my belief that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was murdered because she happened to have too good a memory for faces.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘We have separated the dual personality. There is the harmless lady from India. But there is one incident that falls between the two roles. Which Miss Sainsbury Seale was it who spoke to you on the doorstep of Mr Morley’s house? She claimed, you will remember, to be “a great friend of your wife’s”. Now that claim was adjudged by her friends and by the light of ordinary probability to be untrue. So we can say: “That was a lie. The real Miss Sainsbury Seale does not tell lies.” So it was a lie uttered by the impostor for a purpose of her own.’
Alistair Blunt nodded.
‘Yes, that reasoning is quite clear. Though I still don’t know what the purpose was.’
Poirot said:
‘Ah, pardon — but let us first look at it the other way round. It was the real Miss Sainsbury Seale. She does not tell lies. So the story must be true.’
‘I suppose you can look at it that way — but it seems very unlikely —’
‘Of course it is unlikely! But taking that second hypothesis as fact — the story is true. Therefore Miss Sainsbury Seale did know your wife. She knew her well. Therefore — your wife must have been the type of person Miss Sainsbury Seale would have known well. Someone in her own station of life. An Anglo-Indian — a missionary — or, to go back farther still — an actress — Therefore — not Rebecca Arnholt!
‘Now, M. Blunt, do you see what I meant when I talked of a private and a public life? You are the great banker. But you are also a man who married a rich wife. And before you married her you were only a junior partner in the firm — not very long down from Oxford.
‘You comprehend — I began to look at the case the right way up. Expense no object? Naturally not — to you. Reckless of human life — that, too, since for a long time you have been virtually a dictator and to a dictator his own life becomes unduly important and those