Colonel Race rose:
“I’m sorry I can’t stop with you. Too much to do. I’d like to see the end of this business. Shouldn’t be surprised if there never was an end. Even if you find out who did it, it’s going to be next to impossible to prove. I’ve given you the facts you wanted, but in my opinion Despard’s not the man. I don’t believe he’s ever committed murder. Shaitana may have heard some garbled rumour of Professor Luxmore’s death, but I don’t believe there’s more to it than that. Despard’s a white man, and I don’t believe he’s ever been a murderer. That’s my opinion. And I know something of men.”
“What’s Mrs. Luxmore like?” asked Battle.
“She lives in London, so you can see for yourself. You’ll find the address among those papers. Somewhere in South Kensington. But I repeat, Despard isn’t the man.”
Colonel Race left the room, stepping with the springy noiseless tread of a hunter.
Battle nodded his head thoughtfully as the door closed behind him.
“He’s probably right,” he said. “He knows men, Colonel Race does. But all the same, one can’t take anything for granted.”
He looked through the mass of documents Race had deposited on the table, occasionally making a pencil note on the pad beside him.
“Well, Superintendent Battle,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Aren’t you going to tell us what you have been doing?”
He looked up and smiled, a slow smile that creased his wooden face from side to side.
“This is all very irregular, Mrs. Oliver. I hope you realize that.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I don’t suppose for a moment you’ll tell us anything you don’t want to.”
Battle shook his head.
“No,” he said decidedly. “Cards on the table. That’s the motto for this business. I mean to play fair.”
Mrs. Oliver hitched her chair nearer.
“Tell us,” she begged.
Superintendent Battle said slowly:
“First of all, I’ll say this. As far as the actual murder of Mr. Shaitana goes, I’m not a penny the wiser. There’s no hint or clue of any kind to be found in his papers. As for the four others, I’ve had them shadowed, naturally, but without any tangible result. No, as M. Poirot said, there’s only one hope—the past. Find out what crime exactly (if any, that is to say—after all, Shaitana may have been talking through his hat to make an impression on M. Poirot) these people have committed—and it may tell you who committed this crime.”
“Well, have you found out anything?”
“I’ve got a line on one of them.”
“Which?”
“Dr. Roberts.”
Mrs. Oliver looked at him with thrilled expectation. “As M. Poirot here knows, I tried out all kinds of theories. I established the fact pretty clearly that none of his immediate family had met with a sudden death. I’ve explored every alley as well as I could, and the whole thing boils down to one possibility—and rather an outside possibility at that. A few years ago Roberts must have been guilty of indiscretion, at least, with one of his lady patients. There may have been nothing in it—probably wasn’t. But the woman was the hysterical, emotional kind who likes to make a scene, and either the husband got wind of what was going on, or his wife ‘confessed.’ Anyway, the fat was in the fire as far as the doctor was concerned. Enraged husband threatening to report him to the General Medical Council—which would probably have meant the ruin of his professional career.”
“What happened?” demanded Mrs. Oliver breathlessly.
“Apparently Roberts managed to calm down the irate gentleman temporarily—and he died of anthrax almost immediately afterwards.”
“Anthrax? But that’s a cattle disease?”
The superintendent grinned.
“Quite right, Mrs. Oliver. It isn’t the untraceable arrow poison of the South American Indians! You may remember that there was rather a scare about infected shaving brushes of cheap make about that time. Craddock’s shaving brush was proved to have been the cause of infection.”
“Did Dr. Roberts attend him?”
“Oh, no. Too canny for that. Daresay Craddock wouldn’t have wanted him in any case. The only evidence I’ve got—and that’s precious little—is that among the doctor’s patients there was a case of anthrax at the time.”
“You mean the doctor infected the shaving brush?”
“That’s the big idea. And mind you, it’s only an idea. Nothing whatever to go on. Pure conjecture. But it could be.”
“He didn’t marry Mrs. Craddock afterwards?”
“Oh, dear me, no, I imagine the affection was always on the lady’s side. She tended to cut up rough, I hear, but suddenly went off to Egypt quite happily for the winter. She died there. A case of some obscure blood poisoning. It’s got a long name, but I don’t expect it would convey much to you. Most uncommon in this country, fairly common among the natives in Egypt.”
“So the doctor couldn’t have poisoned her?”
“I don’t know,” said Battle slowly. “I’ve been chatting to a bacteriologist friend of mine—awfully difficult to get straight answers out of these people. They never can say yes or no. It’s always ‘that might be possible under certain conditions’—‘it would depend on the pathological condition of the recipient’—‘such cases have been known’—‘a lot depends on individual idiosyncrasy’—all that sort of stuff. But as far as I could pin my friend down I got at this—the germ, or germs, I suppose, might have been introduced into the blood before leaving England. The symptoms would not make their appearance for sometime to come.”
Poirot asked:
“Was Mrs. Craddock inoculated for typhoid before going to Egypt? Most people are, I fancy.”
“Good for you, M. Poirot.”
“And Dr. Roberts did the inoculation?”
“That’s right. There you are again—we can’t prove anything. She had the usual two inoculations—and they may have been typhoid inoculations for all we know. Or one of them may have been typhoid inoculation and the other—something else. We don’t know. We never shall know. The whole thing is pure hypothesis. All we can say is: it might be.”
Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
“It agrees very well with some remarks made to me by Mr. Shaitana. He was exalting the successful murderer—the man against whom his crime could never be brought home.”
“How did Mr. Shaitana know about it, then?” asked Mrs. Oliver.
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“That we shall never learn. He himself was in Egypt at one time. We know that, because he met Mrs. Lorrimer there. He may have heard some local doctor comment on curious features of Mrs. Craddock’s case—a wonder as to how the infection arose. At some other time he may have heard gossip about Roberts and Mrs. Craddock. He might have amused himself by making some cryptic remark to the doctor and noted the startled awareness in his eye—all that one can never know. Some people have an uncanny gift of divining secrets. Mr. Shaitana was one of those people. All that does not concern us. We have only to say—he guessed. Did he guess right?”
“Well, I think he did,” said Battle. “I’ve a feeling that our cheerful, genial doctor wouldn’t be too scrupulous. I’ve known one or two like him—wonderful how certain types resemble each other. In my opinion he’s a killer all right. He killed Craddock. He may have killed Mrs. Craddock if she was beginning to be a nuisance and cause a scandal. But did he kill Shaitana? That’s the real question. And comparing the crimes, I rather doubt it. In the case of the Craddocks he used medical methods each time. The deaths appeared to be due to natural causes. In my opinion if he had killed Shaitana, he would have done so in a medical way. He’d have used the germ and not the knife.”
“I never thought it was him,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Not for a minute. He’s too obvious, somehow.”
“Exit Roberts,” murmured Poirot. “And the others?”
Battle made a gesture of impatience.
“I’ve pretty well
drawn blank. Mrs. Lorrimer’s been a widow for twenty years now. She’s lived in London most of the time, occasionally going abroad in the winter. Civilized places—the Riviera, Egypt, that sort of thing. Can’t find any mysterious death associated with her. She seems to have led a perfectly normal, respectable life—the life of a woman of the world. Everyone seems to respect her and to have the highest opinion of her character. The worst that they can say about her is that she doesn’t suffer fools gladly! I don’t mind admitting I’ve been beaten all along the line there. And yet there must be something! Shaitana thought there was.”
He sighed in a dispirited manner.
“Then there’s Miss Meredith. I’ve got her history taped out quite clearly. Usual sort of story. Army officer’s daughter. Left with very little money. Had to earn her living. Not properly trained for anything. I’ve checked up on her early days at Cheltenham. All quite straightforward. Everyone very sorry for the poor little thing. She went first to some people in the Isle of Wight—kind of nursery-governess and mother’s help. The woman she was with is out in Palestine but I’ve talked with her sister and she says Mrs. Eldon liked the girl very much. Certainly no mysterious deaths nor anything of that kind.
“When Mrs. Eldon went abroad, Miss Meredith went to Devonshire and took a post as companion to an aunt of a school friend. The school friend is the girl she is living with now—Miss Rhoda Dawes. She was there over two years until Miss Dawes got too ill and she had to have a regular trained nurse. Cancer, I gather. She’s alive still, but very vague. Kept under morphia a good deal, I imagine. I had an interview with her. She remembered ‘Anne,’ said she was a nice child. I also talked to a neighbour of hers who would be better able to remember the happenings of the last few years. No deaths in the parish except one or two of the older villagers, with whom, as far as I can make out, Anne Meredith never came into contact.
“Since then there’s been Switzerland. Thought I might get on the track of some fatal accident there, but nothing doing. And there’s nothing in Wallingford either.”
“So Anne Meredith is acquitted?” asked Poirot.
Battle hesitated.
“I wouldn’t say that. There’s something … There’s a scared look about her that can’t quite be accounted for by panic over Shaitana. She’s too watchful. Too much on the alert. I’d swear there was something. But there it is—she’s led a perfectly blameless life.”
Mrs. Oliver took a deep breath—a breath of pure enjoyment.
“And yet,” she said, “Anne Meredith was in the house when a woman took poison by mistake and died.”