Race acquiesced in the gesture.
‘I agree. One can pretty well rule that out. Well, man, it’s up to you. This is your show.’
Poirot had been attiring himself with a neat-fingered celerity. He said now:
‘I am at your disposal.’
‘Bessner should be there by now. I sent the steward for him.’
There were four cabins de luxe, with bathrooms, on the boat. Of the two on the port side one was occupied by Dr Bessner, the other by Andrew Pennington. On the starboard side the first was occupied by Miss Van Schuyler, and the one next to it by Linnet Doyle. Her husband’s dressing cabin was next door.
A steward was standing outside the door of Linnet Doyle’s cabin. He opened the door for them and they passed inside. Dr Bessner was bending over the bed. He looked up and grunted as the other two entered.
‘What can you tell us, Doctor, about this business?’ asked Race.
Bessner rubbed his unshaven jaw meditatively.
‘Ach! She was shot – shot at close quarters. See – here just above the ear – that is where the bullet entered. A very little bullet – I should say a.22. The pistol, it was held close against her head – see, there is blackening here, the skin is scorched.’
Again in a sick wave of memory Poirot thought of those words uttered in Aswan.
Bessner went on.
‘She was asleep – there was no struggle – the murderer crept up in the dark and shot her as she lay there.’
‘Ah! non!’ Poirot cried out. His sense of psychology was outraged. Jacqueline de Bellefort creeping into a darkened cabin, pistol in hand – no, it did not ‘fit’, that picture.
Bessner stared at him with his thick lenses.
‘But that is what happened, I tell you.’
‘Yes, yes. I did not mean what you thought. I was not contradicting you.’
Bessner gave a satisfied grunt.
Poirot came up and stood beside him. Linnet Doyle was lying on her side. Her attitude was natural and peaceful. But above the ear was a tiny hole with an incrustation of dried blood round it.
Poirot shook his head sadly. Then his gaze fell on the white painted wall just in front of him and he drew in his breath sharply. Its white neatness was marred by a big wavering letter J scrawled in some brownish-red medium.
Poirot stared at it, then he leaned over the dead girl and very gently picked up her right hand. One finger of it was stained a brownish-red.
‘Non d’un nom d’un nom!’ ejaculated Hercule Poirot.
‘Eh? What is that?’
Dr Bessner looked up.
‘Ach! That.’
Race said:
‘Well, I’m damned. What do you make of that, Poirot?’
Poirot swayed a little on his toes.
‘You ask me what I make of it. Eh bien, it is very simple, is it not? Madame Doyle is dying; she wishes to indicate her murderer, and so she writes with her finger, dipped in her own blood, the initial letter of her murderer’s name. Oh, yes, it is astonishingly simple.’
‘Ach, but-’
Dr Bessner was about to break out, but a peremptory gesture from Race silenced him.
‘So it strikes you that?’ he asked slowly.
Poirot turned round on him, nodding his head.
‘Yes, yes. It is, as I say, of an astonishing simplicity! It is so familiar, is it not? It has been done so often, in the pages of the romance of crime! It is now, indeed, a little vieux jeu! It leads one to suspect that our murderer is – old-fashioned!’
Race drew a long breath.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I thought at first-’ He stopped.
Poirot said with a very faint smile:
‘That I believed in all the old clichés of melodrama? But pardon, Dr Bessner, you were about to say-?’
Bessner broke out gutturally:
‘What do I say? Pah! I say it is absurd – it is the nonsense! The poor lady she died instantaneously. To dip her finger in the blood (and as you see, there is hardly any blood) and write the latter J upon the wall. Bah – it is the nonsense – the melodramatic nonsense!’
‘C’est de l’enfantillage,’ agreed Poirot.
‘But it was done with a purpose,’ suggested Race.
‘That – naturally,’ agreed Poirot, and his face was grave.
Race said. ‘What does J stand for?’
Poirot replied promptly:
‘J stands for Jacqueline de Bellefort, a young lady who declared to me less than a week ago that she would like nothing better than to-’ he paused and then deliberately quoted, ‘ “to put my dear little pistol close against her head and then just press with my finger…” ’
‘Gott im Himmel! exclaimed Dr Bessner.
There was a momentary silence. Then Race drew a deep breath and said:
‘Which is just what was done here?’
Bessner nodded.
‘That is so, yes. It was a pistol of very small calibre – as I say, probably a.22. The bullet has got to be extracted, of course, before we can say definitely.’
Race nodded in swift comprehension. Then he said:
‘What about time of death?’
Bessner stroked his jaw again. His finger made a rasping sound.
‘I would not care to be too precise. It is now eight o’clock. I will say, with due regard to the temperature last night, that she has been dead certainly six hours and probably not longer than eight.’
‘That puts it between midnight and two a. m.’
‘That is so.’
There was a pause. Race looked around.
‘What about her husband? I suppose he sleeps in the cabin next door.’
‘At the moment,’ said Dr Bessner, ‘he is asleep in my cabin.’
Both men looked very surprised.
Bessner nodded his head several times.
‘Ach, so. I see you have not been told about that. Mr Doyle was shot last night in the saloon.’
‘Shot? By whom?’
‘By the young lady, Jacqueline de Bellefort.’
Race asked sharply: ‘Is he badly hurt?’
‘Yes, the bone was splintered. I have done all that is possible at the moment, but it is necessary, you understand, that the fracture should be X-rayed as soon as possible and proper treatment given, such as is impossible on this boat.’
Poirot murmured:
‘Jacqueline de Bellefort.’
His eyes went again to the J on the wall.
Race said abruptly: ‘If there is nothing more we can do here for the moment, let’s go below. The management has put the smoking room at our disposal. We must get the details of what happened last night.’
They left the cabin. Race locked the door and took the key with him.
‘We can come back later,’ he said. ‘The first thing to do is to get all the facts clear.’
They went down to the deck