The man looked round, then gave a bashful nod of the head towards Dr. Roberts.
“Him,” he said.
“Tell us when you saw him last and what he was doing.”
“This morning it was. Eight o’clock job at a lady’s house in Cheyne Lane. I started on the windows there. Lady was in bed. Looked ill she did. She was just turning her head round on the pillow. This gent I took to be a doctor. He shoved her sleeve up and jabbed something into her arm about here—” He gestured. “She just dropped back on the pillow again. I thought I’d better hop it to another window, so I did. Hope I didn’t do wrong in any way?”
“You did admirably, my friend,” said Poirot.
He said quietly:
“Eh bien, Dr. Roberts?”
“A—a simple restorative—” stammered Roberts. “A last hope of bringing
her round. It’s monstrous—”
Poirot interrupted him.
“A simple restorative?—N-methyl—cyclo—hexenyl—methyl—malonyl urea,” said Poirot. He rolled out the syllables unctuously. “Known more simply as Evipan. Used as an anaesthetic for short operations. Injected intravenously in large doses it produces instant unconsciousness. It is dangerous to use it after veronal or any barbiturates have been given. I noticed the bruised place on her arm where something had obviously been injected into a vein. A hint to the police surgeon and the drug was easily discovered by no less a person than Sir Charles Imphery, the Home Office Analyst.”
“That about cooks your goose, I think,” said Superinten dent Battle. “No need to prove the Shaitana business, though, of course, if necessary we can bring a further charge as to the murder of Mr. Charles Craddock—and possibly his wife also.”
The mention of those two names finished Roberts.
He leaned back in his chair.
“I throw in my hand,” he said. “You’ve got me! I suppose that sly devil Shaitana put you wise before you came that evening. And I thought I’d settled his hash so nicely.”
“It isn’t Shaitana you’ve got to thank,” said Battle. “The honours lie with M. Poirot here.”
He went to the door and two men entered.
Superintendent Battle’s voice became official as he made the formal arrest.
As the door closed behind the accused man Mrs. Oliver said happily, if not quite truthfully:
“I always said he did it!”
Thirty-one
CARDS ON THE TABLE
It was Poirot’s moment, every face was turned to his in eager anticipation.
“You are very kind,” he said, smiling. “You know, I think, that I enjoy my little lecture. I am a prosy old fellow.
“This case, to my mind, has been one of the most interesting cases I have ever come across. There was nothing, you see, to go upon. There were four people, one of whom must have committed the crime but which of the four? Was there anything to tell one? In the material sense—no. There were no tangible clues—no fingerprints—no incriminating papers or documents. There were only—the people themselves.
“And one tangible clue—the bridge scores.
“You may remember that from the beginning I showed a particular interest in those scores. They told me something about the various people who had kept them and they did more. They gave me one valuable hint. I noticed at once, in the third rubber, the figure of 1500 above the line. That figure could only represent one thing—a call of grand slam. Now if a person were to make up their minds to commit a crime under these somewhat unusual circumstances (that is, during a rubber game of bridge) that person was clearly running two serious risks. The first was that the victim might cry out and the second was that even if the victim did not cry out someone of the other three might chance to look up at the psychological moment and actually witness the deed.
“Now as to the first risk, nothing could be done about it. It was a matter of gambler’s luck. But something could be done about the second. It stands to reason that during an interesting or an exciting hand the attention of the three players would be wholly on the game, whereas during a dull hand they were more likely to be looking about them. Now a bid of grand slam is always exciting. It is very often (as in this case it was) doubled. Every one of the three players is playing with close attention—the declarer to get his contract, the adversaries to discard correctly and to get him down. It was, then, a distinct possibility that the murder was committed during this particular hand and I determined to find out, if I could, exactly how the bidding had gone. I soon discovered that dummy during this particular hand had been Dr. Roberts. I bore that in mind and approached the matter from my second angle—psychological probability. Of the four suspects Mrs. Lorrimer struck me as by far the most likely to plan and carry out a successful murder—but I could not see her as committing any crime that had to be improvised on the spur of the moment. On the other hand her manner that first evening puzzled me. It suggested either that she had committed the murder herself or that she knew who had committed it. Miss Meredith, Major Despard and Dr. Roberts were all psychological possibilities, though, as I have already mentioned, each of them would have committed the crime from an entirely different angle.
“I next made a second test. I got everyone in turn to tell me just what they remembered of the room. From that I got some very valuable information. First of all, by far the most likely person to have noticed the dagger was Dr. Roberts. He was a natural observer of trifles of all kinds—what is called an observant man. Of the bridge hands, however, he remembered practically nothing at all. I did not expect him to remember much, but his complete forgetfulness looked as though he had had something else on his mind all the evening. Again, you see, Dr. Roberts was indicated.
“Mrs. Lorrimer I found to have a marvellous card memory, and I could well imagine that with anyone of her powers of concentration a murder could easily be committed close at hand and she would never notice anything. She gave me a valuable piece of information. The grand slam was bid by Dr. Roberts (quite unjustifiably)—and he bid it in her suit, not his own, so that she necessarily played the hand.