I could not help laughing.
“My dear Poirot, I am sure you are capable of thinking of seventy! But, seriously, in spite of what I heard you say to the detectives, you surely cannot still believe in the possibility of Alfred Inglethorp’s innocence?”
“Why not now as much as before? Nothing has changed.”
“But the evidence is so conclusive.”
“Yes, too conclusive.”
We turned in at the gate of Leastways Cottage, and proceeded up the now familiar stairs.
“Yes, yes, too conclusive,” continued Poirot, almost to himself. “Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined—sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured—so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Because, so long as the evidence against him was vague and intangible, it was very hard to disprove. But, in his anxiety, the criminal has drawn the net so closely that one cut will set Inglethorp free.”
I was silent. And in a minute or two, Poirot continued:
“Let us look at the matter like this. Here is a man, let us say, who sets out to poison his wife. He has lived by his wits as the saying goes. Presumably, therefore, he has some wits. He is not altogether a fool. Well, how does he set about it? He goes boldly to the village chemist’s and purchases strychnine under his own name, with a trumped up story about a dog which is bound to be proved absurd. He does not employ the poison that night. No, he waits until he has had a violent quarrel with her, of which the whole household is cognisant, and which naturally directs their suspicions upon him. He prepares no defence—no shadow of an alibi, yet he knows the chemist’s assistant must necessarily come forward with the facts. Bah! do not ask me to believe that any man could be so idiotic! Only a lunatic, who wished to commit suicide by causing himself to be hanged, would act so!”
“Still—I do not see—” I began.
“Neither do I see. I tell you, mon ami, it puzzles me. Me —Hercule Poirot!”
“But if you believe him innocent, how do you explain his buying the strychnine?”
“Very simply. He did not buy it.”
“But Mace recognized him!”
“I beg your pardon, he saw a man with a black beard like Mr. Inglethorp’s, and wearing glasses like Mr. Inglethorp, and dressed in Mr. Inglethorp’s rather noticeable clothes. He could not recognize a man whom he had probably only seen in the distance, since, you remember, he himself had only been in the village a fortnight, and Mrs. Inglethorp dealt principally with Coot’s in Tadminster.”
“Then you think——”
“Mon ami, do you remember the two points I laid stress upon? Leave the first one for the moment, what was the second?”
“The important fact that Alfred Inglethorp wears peculiar clothes, has a black beard, and uses glasses,” I quoted.
“Exactly. Now suppose anyone wished to pass himself off as John or Lawrence Cavendish. Would it be easy?”
“No,” I said thoughtfully. “Of course an actor——”
But Poirot cut me short ruthlessly.
“And why would it not be easy? I will tell you, my friend: Because they are both clean-shaven men. To make up successfully as one of these two in broad daylight, it would need an actor of genius, and a certain initial facial resemblance. But in the case of Alfred Inglethorp, all that is changed. His clothes, his beard, the glasses which hide his eyes—those are the salient points about his personal appearance. Now, what is the first instinct of the criminal? To divert suspicion from himself, is it not so? And how can he best do that? By throwing it on some one else. In this instance, there was a man ready to his hand. Everybody was predisposed to believe in Mr. Inglethorp’s guilt. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be suspected; but, to make it a sure thing there must be tangible proof—such as the actual buying of the poison, and that, with a man of the peculiar appearance of Mr. Inglethorp, was not difficult. Remember, this young Mace had never actually spoken to Mr. Inglethorp. How should he doubt that the man in his clothes, with his beard and his glasses, was not Alfred Inglethorp?”
“It may be so,” I said, fascinated by Poirot’s eloquence. “But, if that was the case, why does he not say where he was at six o’clock on Monday evening?”
“Ah, why indeed?” said Poirot, calming down. “If he were arrested, he probably would speak, but I do not want it to come to that. I must make him see the gravity of his position. There is, of course, something discreditable behind his silence. If he did not murder his wife, he is, nevertheless, a scoundrel, and has something of his own to conceal, quite apart from the murder.”
“What can it be?” I mused, won over to Poirot’s views for the moment, although still retaining a faint conviction that the obvious deduction was the correct one.
“Can you not guess?” asked Poirot, smiling.
“No, can you?”
“Oh, yes, I had a little idea sometime ago—and it has turned out to be correct.”
“You never told me,” I said reproachfully.
Poirot spread out his hands apologetically.
“Pardon me, mon ami, you were not precisely sympathique.” He turned to me earnestly. “Tell me—you see now that he must not be arrested?”
“Perhaps,” I said doubtfully, for I was really quite indifferent to the fate of Alfred Inglethorp, and thought that a good fright would do him no harm.
Poirot, who was watching me intently, gave a sigh.
“Come, my friend,” he said, changing the subject, “apart from Mr. Inglethorp, how did the evidence at the inquest strike you?”
“Oh, pretty much what I expected.”
“Did nothing strike you as peculiar about it?”
My thoughts flew to Mary Cavendish, and I hedged:
“In what way?”
“Well, Mr. Lawrence Cavendish’s evidence for instance?”
I was relieved.
“Oh, Lawrence! No, I don’t think so. He’s always a nervous chap.”
“His suggestion that his mother might have been poisoned accidentally by means of the tonic she was taking, that did not strike you as strange—hein?”
“No, I can’t say it did. The doctors ridiculed it of course. But it was quite a natural suggestion for a layman to make.”
“But Monsieur Lawrence is not a layman. You told me yourself that he had started by studying medicine, and that he had taken his degree.”
“Yes, that’s true. I never thought of that.” I was rather startled. “It is odd.”
Poirot nodded.
“From the first, his behaviour has been peculiar. Of all the household, he alone would be likely to recognize the symptoms of strychnine poisoning, and yet we find him the only member of the family to uphold strenuously the theory of death from natural causes. If it had been Monsieur John, I could have understood it. He has no technical knowledge, and is by nature unimaginative. But Monsieur Lawrence—no! And now, to-day, he puts forward a suggestion that he himself must have known was ridiculous. There is food for thought in this, mon ami!”
“It’s very confusing,”