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“I put the idea out of my head as quickly as possible. I felt it was monstrous.”
“Did you search for no explanation?”
“Well,” he hesitated. “I wondered if worrying and brooding over the past had perhaps affected my wife’s brain slightly. I thought she might possibly have written those letters to herself without being conscious of having done so. That is possible, isn’t it?” he added, turning to Dr. Reilly.
Dr. Reilly pursed up his lips.
“The human brain is capable of almost anything,” he replied vaguely.
But he shot a lightning glance at Poirot, and as if in obedience to it, the latter abandoned the subject.
“The letters are an interesting point,” he said. “But we must concentrate on the case as a whole. There are, as I see it, three possible solutions.”
“Three?”
“Yes. Solution one: the simplest. Your wife’s first husband is still alive. He first threatens her and then proceeds to carry out his threats. If we accept this solution, our problem is to discover how he got in or out without being seen.
“Solution two: Mrs. Leidner, for reasons of her own (reasons probably more easily understood by a medical man than a layman), writes herself threatening letters. The gas business is staged by her (remember, it was she who roused you by telling you she smelt gas). But, if Mrs. Leidner wrote herself the letters, she cannot be in danger from the supposed writer. We must, therefore, look elsewhere for the murderer. We must look, in fact, amongst the members of your staff. Yes,” in answer to a murmur of protest from Dr. Leidner, “that is the only logical conclusion. To satisfy a private grudge one of them killed her. That person, I may say, was probably aware of the letters—or was at any rate aware that Mrs. Leidner feared or was pretending to fear someone. That fact, in the murderer’s opinion, rendered the murder quite safe for him. He felt sure it would be put down to a mysterious outsider—the writer of the threatening letters.
“A variant of this solution is that the murderer actually wrote the letters himself, being aware of Mrs. Leidner’s past history. But in that case it is not quite clear why the criminal should have copied Mrs. Leidner’s own handwriting since, as far as we can see, it would be more to his or her advantage that they should appear to be written by an outsider.
“The third solution is the most interesting to my mind. I suggest that the letters are genuine. They are written by Mrs. Leidner’s first husband (or his younger brother), who is actually one of the expedition staff.”
Sixteen
THE SUSPECTS
Dr. Leidner sprang to his feet.
“Impossible! Absolutely impossible! The idea is absurd!”
Mr. Poirot looked at him quite calmly but said nothing.
“You mean to suggest that my wife’s former husband is one of the expedition and that she didn’t recognize him?”
“Exactly. Reflect a little on the facts. Some fifteen years ago your wife lived with this man for a few months. Would she know him if she came across him after that lapse of time? I think not. His face will have changed, his build will have changed—his voice may not have changed so much, but that is a detail he can attend to himself. And remember, she is not looking for him amongst her own household. She visualizes him as somewhere outside—a stranger. No, I do not think she would recognize him. And there is a second possibility. The young brother—the child of those days who was so passionately devoted to his elder brother. He is now a man. Will she recognize a child of ten or twelve years old in a man nearing thirty? Yes, there is young William Bosner to be reckoned with. Remember, his brother in his eyes may not loom as a traitor but as a patriot, a martyr for his own country—Germany. In his eyes Mrs. Leidner is the traitor—the monster who sent his beloved brother to death! A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life.”
“Quite true,” said Dr. Reilly.
“The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.”
“Bien. You have these two possibilities. Frederick Bosner, a man by now of fifty odd, and William Bosner, whose age would be something short of thirty. Let us examine the members of your staff from these two points of view.”
“This is fantastic,” murmured Dr. Leidner. “My staff! The members of my own expedition.”
“And consequently considered above suspicion,” said Poirot dryly. “A very useful point of view. Commençons! Who could emphatically not be Frederick or William?”
“The women.”
“Naturally. Miss Johnson and Mrs. Mercado are crossed off. Who else?”
“Carey. He and I have worked together for years before I even met Louise—”
“And also he is the wrong age. He is, I should judge, thirty-eight or nine, too young for Frederick, too old for William. Now for the rest. There is Father Lavigny and Mr. Mercado. Either of them might be Frederick Bosner.”
“But, my dear sir,” cried Dr. Leidner in a voice of mingled irritation and amusement, “Father Lavigny is known all over the world as an epigraphist and Mercado has worked for years in a well-known museum in New York. It is impossible that either of them should be the man you think!”
Poirot waved an airy hand.
