Lord Edgware Dies

He relapsed into silence. Jenny gave a quick glance at him then glanced away. She seemed rather preoccupied about something this morning. 

A moment later Japp entered the room.

He was, I think, a trifle surprised to find Bryan Martin and Jenny Driver there, but he made no sign. He greeted Poirot with his usual jocularity.

‘Well, M. Poirot, what’s it all about? You’ve got some wonderful theory or other, I suppose.’

Poirot beamed at him.

‘No, no-nothing wonderful. Just a little story quite simple-so simple that I am ashamed not to have seen it at once. I want, if you permit, to take you with me through the case from the beginning.’

Japp sighed and looked at his watch.

‘If you won’t be more than an hour-’ he said.

‘Reassure yourself,’ said Poirot. ‘It will not take as long as that. See here, you want to know, do you not, who it was killed Lord Edgware, who it was killed Miss Adams, who it was killed Donald Ross?’

‘I’d like to know the last,’ said Japp cautiously.

‘Listen to me and you shall know everything. See, I am going to be humble.’ (Not likely! I thought unbelievingly.) ‘I am going to show you every step of the way-I am going to reveal how I was hoodwinked, how I displayed the gross imbecility, how it needed the conversation of my friend Hastings and a chance remark by a total stranger to put me on the right track.’

He paused and then, clearing his throat, he began to speak in what I called his ‘lecture’ voice. 

‘I will begin at the supper party at the Savoy. Lady Edgware accosted me and asked for a private interview. She wanted to get rid of her husband. At the close of our interview she said-somewhat unwisely, I thought-that she might have to go round in a taxi and kill him herself. Those words were heard by Mr Bryan Martin, who came in at that moment.’

He wheeled round.

‘Eh? That is so, is it not?’

‘We all heard,’ said the actor. ‘The Widburns, Marsh, Carlotta-all of us.’

‘Oh! I agree. I agree perfectly. Eh bien, I did not have a chance to forget those words of Lady Edgware’s. Mr Bryan Martin called on the following morning for the express purpose of driving those words home.’

‘Not at all,’ cried Bryan Martin angrily. ‘I came-’

Poirot held up a hand.

‘You came, ostensibly, to tell me a cock-and-bull story about being shadowed. A tale that a child might have seen through. You probably took it from an out-of-date film. A girl whose consent you had to obtain-a man whom you recognized by a gold tooth. Mon ami, no young man would have a gold tooth-it is not done in these days-and especially in America. The gold tooth it is a hopelessly old-fashioned piece of dentistry. Oh! it was all of a piece-absurd! Having told your cock-and-bull story you get down to the real purpose of your visit-to poison my mind against Lady Edgware. To put it clearly, you prepare the ground for the moment when she murders her husband.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ muttered Bryan Martin. His face was deathly pale.

‘You ridicule the idea that he will agree to a divorce! You think I am going to see him the following day, but actually the appointment is changed. I go to see him that morning and he does agree to a divorce. Any motive for a crime on Lady Edgware’s part is gone. Moreover, he tells me that he has already written to Lady Edgware to that effect.

‘But Lady Edgware declares that she never got that letter. Either she lies, her husband lies, or somebody has suppressed it-who?

‘Now I ask myself why does M. Bryan Martin give himself the trouble to come and tell me all these lies? What inner power drives him on. And I form the idea, Monsieur, that you have been frantically in love with that lady. Lord Edgware says that his wife told him she wanted to marry an actor. Well, supposing that is so, but that the lady changes her mind. By the time Lord Edgware’s letter agreeing to the divorce arrives, it is someone else she wants to marry-not you! There would be a reason, then, for you suppressing that letter.’

‘I never-’ 

‘Presently you shall say all you want to say. Now you will attend to me.

‘What, then, would be your frame of mind-you, a spoilt idol who has never known a rebuff? As I see it, a kind of baffled fury, a desire to do Lady Edgware as much harm as possible. And what greater harm could you do her than to have her accused-perhaps hanged-for murder.’

‘Good lord!’ said Japp.

Poirot turned to him.

‘But yes, that was the little idea that began to shape itself in my mind. Several things came to support it. Carlotta Adams had two principal men friends-Captain Marsh and Bryan Martin. It was possible, then, that Bryan Martin, a rich man, was the one who suggested the hoax and offered her ten thousand dollars to carry it through. It has seemed to me unlikely all along that Miss Adams could ever have believed Ronald Marsh would have ten thousand dollars to give her. She knew him to be extremely hard up. Bryan Martin was a far more likely solution.’

‘I didn’t-I tell you-’ came hoarsely from the film actor’s lips.