“By whom?”
“Her British lawyer. Now that’s not the kind of accusation you can fling around anyhow. I made up my mind to come over right away and see into matters myself.”
“That does great credit to your vigilance, I am sure. But why the little deception about not having received the letter?”
“Well, I ask you—” Pennington spread out his hands. “You can’t butt in on a honeymoon couple without more or less coming down to brass tacks and giving your reasons. I thought it best to make the meeting accidental. Besides, I didn’t know anything about the husband. He might have been mixed up in the racket for all I knew.”
“In fact all your actions were actuated by pure disinterestedness,” said Colonel Race dryly.
“You’ve said it, Colonel.”
There was a pause. Race glanced at Poirot. The little man leant forward.
“Monsieur Pennington, we do not believe a word of your story.”
“The hell you don’t! And what the hell do you believe?”
“We believe that Linnet Ridgeway’s unexpected marriage put you in a financial quandary. That you came over posthaste to try and find some way out of the mess you were in—that is to say, some way of gaining time. That, with that end in view, you endeavoured to obtain Madame Doyle’s signature to certain documents and failed. That on the journey up the Nile, when walking along the cliff top at Abu Simbel, you dislodged a boulder which fell and only very narrowly missed its object—”
“You’re crazy.”
“We believe that the same kind of circumstances occurred on the return journey. That is to say, an opportunity presented itself of putting Madame Doyle out of the way at a moment when her death would be almost certainly ascribed to the action of another person. We not only believe, but know, that it was your revolver which killed a woman who was about to reveal to us the name of the person who she had reason to believe killed both Linnet Doyle and the maid Louise—”
“Hell!” The forcible ejaculation broke forth and interrupted Poirot’s stream of eloquence. “What are you getting at? Are you crazy? What motive had I to kill Linnet? I wouldn’t get her money; that goes to her husband. Why don’t you pick on him? He’s the one to benefit—not me.”
Race said coldly: “Doyle never left the lounge on the night of the tragedy till he was shot at and wounded in the leg. The impossibility of his walking a step after that is attested to by a doctor and a nurse—both independent and reliable witnesses. Simon Doyle could not have killed his wife. He could not have killed Louise Bourget. He most definitely did not kill Mrs. Otterbourne. You know that as well as we do.”
“I know he didn’t kill her.” Pennington sounded a little calmer. “All I say is, why pick on me when I don’t benefit by her death?”
“But, my dear sir,” Poirot’s voice came soft as a purring cat, “that is rather a matter of opinion. Madame Doyle was a keen woman of business, fully conversant with her own affairs and very quick to spot any irregularity. As soon as she took up the control of her property, which she would have done on her return to England, her suspicions were bound to be aroused. But now that she is dead and that her husband, as you have just pointed out, inherits, the whole thing is different. Simon Doyle knows nothing whatever of his wife’s affairs except that she was a rich woman. He is of a simple, trusting disposition. You will find it easy to place complicated statements before him, to involve the real issue in a net of figures, and to delay settlement with pleas of legal formalities and the recent depression. I think that it makes a very considerable difference to you whether you deal with the husband or the wife.”
Pennington shrugged his shoulders.
“Your ideas are—fantastic.”
“Time will show.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Time will show!’ This is a matter of three deaths—three murders. The law will demand the most searching investigation into the condition of Madame Doyle’s estate.”
He saw the sudden sag in the other’s shoulders and knew that he had won. Jim Fanthorp’s suspicions were well founded.
Poirot went on: “You’ve played—and lost. Useless to go on bluffing.”
“You don’t understand,” Pennington muttered. “It’s all square enough really. It’s been this damned slump—Wall Street’s been crazy. But I’d staged a comeback. With luck everything will be O.K. by the middle of June.”
With shaking hands he took a cigarette, tried to light it, failed.
“I suppose,” mused Poirot, “that the boulder was a sudden temptation. You thought nobody saw you.”
“That was an accident. I swear it was an accident!” The man leant forward, his face working, his eyes terrified. “I stumbled and fell against it. I swear it was an accident….”
The two men said nothing.
Pennington suddenly pulled himself together. He was still a wreck of a man, but his fighting spirit had returned in a certain measure. He moved towards the door.
“You can’t pin that on me, gentlemen. It was an accident. And it wasn’t I who shot her. D’you hear? You can’t pin that on me either—and you never will.”