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“Yes, Sir Charles was an actor. He obeyed his actor’s instinct. He tried out his murder before committing it. No suspicion could possibly attach to him. Not one of those people’s deaths could benefit him in any way, and, moreover, as everyone has found, he could not have been proved to have poisoned any particular person. And, my friends, the dress rehearsal went well. Mr. Babbington dies, and foul play is n
ot even suspected. It is left to Sir Charles to urge that suspicion and he is highly gratified at our refusal to take it seriously. The substitution of the glass, too, that has gone without a hitch. In fact, he can be sure that, when the real performance comes, it will be ‘all right on the night.’
“As you know, events took a slightly different turn. On the second occasion a doctor was present who immediately suspected poison. It was then to Sir Charles’s interests to stress the death of Babbington. Sir Bartholomew’s death must be presumed to be the outcome of the earlier death. Attention must be focused on the motive for Babbington’s murder, not on any motive that might exist for Sir Bartholomew’s removal.
“But there was one thing that Sir Charles failed to realize—the efficient watchfulness of Miss Milray. Miss Milray knew that her employer dabbled in chemical experiments in the tower in the garden. Miss Milray paid bills for rose spraying solution, and realized that quite a lot of it had unaccountably disappeared. When she read that Mr. Babbington had died of nicotine poisoning, her clever brain leaped at once to the conclusion that Sir Charles had extracted the pure alkaloid from the rose solution.
“And Miss Milray did not know what to do, for she had known Mr. Babbington as a little girl, and she was in love, deeply and devotedly as an ugly woman can be, with her fascinating employer.
“In the end she decided to destroy Sir Charles’s apparatus. Sir Charles himself had been so cocksure of his success that he had never thought it necessary. She went down to Cornwall, and I followed.”
Again Sir Charles laughed. More than ever he looked a fine gentleman disgusted by a rat.
“Is some old chemical apparatus all your evidence?” he demanded contemptuously.
“No,” said Poirot. “There is your passport showing the dates when you returned to and left England. And there is the fact that in the Harverton County Asylum there is a woman, Gladys Mary Mugg, the wife of Charles Mugg.”
Egg had so far sat silent—a frozen figure. But now she stirred. A little cry—almost a moan—came from her.
Sir Charles turned superbly.
“Egg, you don’t believe a word of this absurd story, do you?”
He laughed. His hands were outstretched.
Egg came slowly forward as though hypnotized. Her eyes, appealing, tortured, gazed into her lover’s. And then, just before she reached him, she wavered, her glance fell, went this way and that as though seeking for reassurance.
Then with a cry she fell on her knees by Poirot.
“Is this true? Is this true?”
He put both hands on her shoulders, a firm, kindly touch.
“It is true, mademoiselle.”
There was no sound then but Egg’s sobs.
Sir Charles seemed suddenly to have aged. It was an old man’s face, a leering satyr’s face.
“God damn you,” he said.
And never, in all his acting career, had words come with such utter and compelling malignancy.
Then he turned and went out of the room.
Mr. Satterthwaite half sprang up from his chair, but Poirot shook his head, his hand still gently stroking the sobbing girl.
“He’ll escape,” said Mr. Satterthwaite.
Poirot shook his head.
“No, he will only choose his exit. The slow one before the eyes of the world, or the quick one off stage.”
The door opened softly and someone came in. It was Oliver Manders. His usual sneering expression was gone. He looked white and unhappy.
Poirot bent over the girl.
“See, mademoiselle,” he said gently. “Here is a friend come to take you home.”
