‘Is that M. Poirot, Ellis? Make him sit right down. I’ll find a rag to put on and be there in a moment.’
Jane Wilkinson’s idea of a rag was a gossamer negligée which revealed more than it hid. She came in eagerly, saying: ‘Well?’
Poirot rose and bowed over her hand.
‘Exactly the word, Madame, it is well.’
‘Why—how do you mean?’
‘Lord Edgware is perfectly willing to agree to a divorce.’
‘What?’
Either the stupefaction on her face was genuine, or else she was indeed a most marvellous actress.
‘M. Poirot! You’ve managed it! At once! Like that! Why, you’re a genius. How in mercy’s name did you set about it?’
‘Madame, I cannot take compliments where they are not earned. Six months ago your husband wrote to you withdrawing his opposition.’
‘What’s that you say? Wrote to me? Where?’
‘It was when you were at Hollywood, I understand.’
‘I never got it. Must have gone astray, I suppose. And to think I’ve been thinking and planning and fretting and going nearly crazy all these months.’
‘Lord Edgware seemed to be under the impression that you wished to marry an actor.’
‘Naturally. That’s what I told him.’ She gave a pleased child’s smile. Suddenly it changed to a look of alarm. ‘Why, M. Poirot, you didn’t go and tell him about me and the duke?’
‘No, no, reassure yourself. I am discreet. That would not have done, eh?’
‘Well, you see, he’s got a queer mean nature. Marrying Merton, he’d feel, was perhaps a kind of leg up for me—so then naturally he’d queer the pitch. But a film actor’s different. Though, all the same, I’m surprised. Yes, I am. Aren’t you surprised, Ellis?’
I had noticed that the maid had come to and fro from the bedroom tidying away various outdoor garments which were lying flung over the backs of chairs. It had been my opinion that she had been listening to the conversation. Now it seemed that she was completely in Jane’s confidence.
‘Yes, indeed, m’lady. His lordship must have changed a good deal since we knew him,’ said the maid spitefully.
‘Yes, he must.’
‘You cannot understand his attitude. It puzzles you?’ suggested Poirot.
‘Oh, it does. But anyway, we needn’t worry about that. What does it matter what made him change his mind so long as he has changed it?’
‘It may not interest you, but it interests me, Madame.’
Jane paid no attention to him.
‘The thing is that I’m free—at last.’
‘Not yet, Madame.’
She looked at him impatiently.
‘Well, going to be free. It’s the same thing.’
Poirot looked as though he did not think it was.
‘The duke is in Paris,’ said Jane. ‘I must cable him right away. My—won’t his old mother be wild!’
Poirot rose.
‘I am glad, Madame, that all is turning out as you wish.’
‘Goodbye, M. Poirot, and thanks awfully.’
‘I did nothing.’
‘You brought me the good news, anyway, M. Poirot, and I’m ever so grateful. I really am.’
‘And that is that,’ said Poirot to me, as we left the suite. ‘The single idea—herself! She has no speculation, no curiosity as to why that letter never reached her. You observe, Hastings, she is shrewd beyond belief in the business sense, but she has absolutely no intellect. Well, well, the good God cannot give everything.’
‘Except to Hercule Poirot,’ I said slyly.
‘You mock yourself at me, my friend,’ he replied serenely. ‘But come, let me walk along the Embankment. I wish to arrange my ideas with order and method.’
I maintained a discreet silence until such time as the oracle should speak.
‘That letter,’ he resumed when we were pacing along by the river. ‘It intrigues me. There are four solutions of that problem, my friend.’
‘Four?’
‘Yes. First, it was lost in the post. That does happen, you know. But not very often. No, not very often. Incorrectly addressed, it would have been returned to Lord Edgware long before this. No, I am inclined to rule out that solution—though, of course, it may be the true one.
‘Solution two, our beautiful lady is lying when she says she never received it. That, of course, is quite possible. That charming lady is capable of telling any lie to her advantage with the most childlike candour. But I cannot see, Hastings, how it could be to her advantage. If she knows that he will divorce her, why send me to ask him to do so? It does not make sense.
‘Solution three. Lord Edgware is lying. And if anyone is lying it seems more likely that it is he than his wife. But I do not see much point in such a lie. Why invent a fictitious letter sent six months ago? Why not simply agree to my proposition? No, I am inclined to think that he did send that letter—though what the motive was for his sudden change of attitude I cannot guess.
‘So we come to the fourth solution—that someone suppressed that letter. And there, Hastings, we enter on a very interesting field of speculation, because that letter could have been suppressed at either end—in America or England.
‘Whoever suppressed it was someone who did not want that marriage dissolved. Hastings, I would give a great deal to know what is behind this affair. There is something—I swear there is something.’
He paused and then added slowly.
‘Something of which as yet I have only been able to get a glimpse.’
The following day was the 30th of June.
It was just half-past nine when we were told that Inspector Japp was below and anxious to see us.
It was some years since we had seen anything of the Scotland Yard inspector.
‘Ah! ce bon Japp,’ said Poirot. ‘What does he want, I wonder?’
‘Help,’ I snapped. ‘He’s out of his depth over some case and he’s come to you.’
I had not the indulgence for Japp that Poirot had. It was not so much that I minded his picking Poirot’s brains—after all, Poirot enjoyed the process, it was a delicate flattery. What did annoy me was Japp’s hypocritical pretence that he was doing nothing of the kind. I liked people to be straightforward. I said so, and Poirot laughed.
‘You are the dog of the bulldog breed, eh, Hastings? But you must remember that the poor Japp he has to save his face. So he makes his little pretence. It is very natural.’
I thought it merely foolish and said so. Poirot did not agree.
‘The outward form—it is a bagatelle—but it matters to people. It enables them to keep the amour propre.’
Personally