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He saw her flinch for a moment and then recover herself.
“Yes,” she said. “That is true.”
“No, Mademoiselle, it was false.”
“You misunderstood me. I mean that it is true that I lied to you.”
“Ah, you admit it?”
Her lips curved into a smile.
“Certainly. Since you have found me out.”
“You are at least frank, Mademoiselle.”
“There does not seem anything else for me to be.”
“Well, of course, that is true. And now, Mademoiselle, may I ask you the reason for these evasions?”
“I should have thought the reason leapt to the eye, M. Poirot?”
“It does not leap to mine, Mademoiselle.”
She said in a quiet, even voice with a trace of hardness in it:
“I have my living to get.”
“You mean—?”
She raised her eyes and looked him full in the face.
“How much do you know, M. Poirot, of the fight to get and keep decent employment? Do you think that a girl who had been detained in connection with a murder case, whose name and perhaps photographs were reproduced in the English papers—do you think that any nice ordinary middle-class Englishwoman would want to engage that girl as governess to her daughters?”
“I do not see why not—if no blame attached to you.”
“Oh, blame—it is not blame—it is publicity! So far, M. Poirot, I have succeeded in life. I have had well-paid, pleasant posts. I was not going to risk the position I had attained when no good end could have been served.”
“I will venture to suggest, Mademoiselle, that I would have been the best judge of that, not you.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“For instance, you could have helped me in the matter of identification.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it possible, Mademoiselle, that you did not recognize in the Countess Andrenyi Mrs. Armstrong’s young sister whom you taught in New York?”
“Countess Andrenyi? No.” She shook her head. “It may seem extraordinary to you, but I did not recognize her. She was not grown up, you see, when I knew her. That was over three years ago. It is true that the Countess reminded me of someone—it puzzled me. But she looks so foreign—I never connected her with the little American schoolgirl. It is true that I only glanced at her casually when coming into the restaurant car. I noticed her clothes more than her face—” she smiled faintly—“women do! And then—well, I had my own preoccupations.”
“You will not tell me your secret, Mademoiselle?”
Poirot’s voice was very gentle and persuasive.
She said in a low voice:
“I can’t—I can’t.”
And suddenly, without warning she broke down, dropping her face down upon her outstretched arms and crying as though her heart would break.
The Colonel sprang up and stood awkwardly beside her.
“I—look here—”
He stopped and, turning round, scowled fiercely at Poirot.
“I’ll break every bone in your damned body, you dirty little whippersnapper,” he said.
“Monsieur,” protested M. Bouc.
Arbuthnot had turned back to the girl.
“Mary—for God’s sake—”
She sprang up.
“It’s nothing. I’m all right. You don’t need me any more, do you, M. Poirot? If you do, you must come and find me. Oh, what an idiot—what an idiot I’m making of myself!”
She hurried out of the car. Arbuthnot, before following her, turned once more on Poirot.
“Miss Debenham’s got nothing to do with this business—nothing, do you hear? And if she’s worried and interfered with, you’ll have me to deal with.”
He strode out.
“I like to see an angry Englishman,” said Poirot. “They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.”
But M. Bouc was not interested in the emotional reactions of Englishmen. He was overcome by admiration of his friend.
“Mon cher, vous êtes épatant,” he cried. “Another miraculous guess. C’est formidable.”
“It is incredible how you think of these things,” said Dr. Constantine admiringly.
“Oh, I claim no credit this time. It was not a guess. Countess Andrenyi practically told me.”
“Comment? Surely not?”
“You remember I asked her about her governess or companion? I had already decided in my mind that if Mary Debenham were mixed up in the matter, she must have figured in the household in some such capacity.”
“Yes, but the Countess Andrenyi described a totally different person.”
“Exactly. A tall, middle-aged woman with red hair—in fact, the exact opposite in every respect of Miss Debenham, so much so as to be quite remarkable. But then she had to invent a name quickly, and there it was that the unconscious association of ideas gave her away. She said Miss Freebody, you remember.”
“Yes?”
“Eh bien, you may not know it, but there is a shop in London that was called, until recently, Debenham & Freebody. With the name Debenham running in her head, the Countess clutches at another name quickly, and the first that comes is Freebody. Naturally I understood immediately.”
“That is yet another lie. Why did she do it?”
“Possibly more loyalty. It makes things a little difficult.”
“Ma foi,” said M. Bouc with violence. “But does everybody on this train tell lies?”
“That,” said Poirot, “is what we are about to find out.”
Eight
FURTHER SURPRISING REVELATIONS
“Nothing would surprise me now,” said M. Bouc. “Nothing! Even if everybody in the train proved to have been in the Armstrong household I should not express surprise.”
“That is a very profound remark,” said Poirot. “Would you like to see what your favourite suspect, the Italian, has to say for himself?”
“You are going to make another of these famous guesses of yours?”
“Precisely.”
“It is really a most extraordinary case,” said Constantine.
“No, it is most natural.” M. Bouc flung up his arms in comic despair.
“If this is what you call natural, mom ami—”
Words failed him.
Poirot had by this time requested the dining car attendant to fetch Antonio Foscarelli.
The big Italian had a wary look in his eye as he came in. He shot nervous glances from side to side like a trapped animal.
“What do you want?” he said. “I have nothing to tell you—nothing, do you hear! Per Dio—” He struck his hand on the table.
“Yes, you have something more to tell us,” said Poirot firmly. “The truth!”
“The truth?” He shot an uneasy glance at Poirot. All the assurance and geniality had gone out of his manner.
“Mais oui. It may be that I know it already. But it will be a point in your favour if it comes from you spontaneously.”
“You talk like the American police. ‘Come clean,’ that is what they say—‘come clean.’”
“Ah! so you have had experience of the New York police?”
“No, no, never. They could not prove a thing against me—but it was not for want of trying.”
Poirot said
quietly:
“That was in the Armstrong case, was it not? You were the chauffeur?”
His eyes met those of the Italian. The bluster went out of the big man. He was like a pricked balloon.
“Since you know—why ask me?”
“Why did you lie this morning?”
“Business reasons. Besides, I do not trust the Yugo-Slav police. They hate the Italians. They would not have given me justice.”
“Perhaps it is exactly justice that they would have given you!”
“No, no, I had nothing to do with this business last night. I never left my carriage. The long-faced Englishman, he can tell you so. It was not I who killed this pig—this Ratchett. You cannot prove anything against me.”
Poirot was writing something on a sheet of paper. He looked up and said quietly:
“Very good. You can go.”
Foscarelli lingered uneasily.
“You realize that it was not I—that I could have had nothing to do with it?”
“I said that you could go.”
“It is a conspiracy. You are going to frame me? All for a pig of a man who should have gone to the chair! It was an infamy that he did not. If it had been me—if I had been arrested—”
“But it was not you. You had nothing to do with the kidnapping of the child.”
“What is that you are saying? Why, that little one—she was the delight of the house. Tonio, she called me. And she would sit in the car and pretend to hold the wheel. All the household worshipped her! Even the police came to understand that. Ah, the beautiful little one.”
His voice had softened. The tears came into his eyes. Then he wheeled round abruptly on his heel and strode out of the dining car.
“Pietro,” called Poirot.
The dining car attendant came at a run.
“The No. 10—the Swedish lady.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Another?” cried M. Bouc. “Ah, no—it is not possible. I tell you it is not possible.”
“Mon cher, we have to know. Even if in the end everybody on the train proves to have a motive for killing Ratchett, we have to know. Once we know, we can settle once for all where the guilt lies.”
“My head is spinning,” groaned M. Bouc.
Greta Ohlsson was ushered in sympathetically by the attendant. She was weeping bitterly.
