How often had Dollent said to himself: ‘A solid fact, even one, and then, if you’re not sidetracked, if you don’t lose the thread, you must automatically arrive at the truth.’
Solid facts. They were:
1. Monsieur Mordaut had placed no obstacle in the way of the Little Doctor’s investigation and had insisted on his staying at the château.
2. Ernestine was strong and healthy. She counted on living to be a hundred and two like her grandmother, and everything she did was with this single aim in view; and she was haunted by the idea of cancer.
3. Ernestine said that her niece was not Monsieur Mordaut’s mistress.
4. Rose was healthy, too, and had a lover or fiancé in the Colonial forces.
5. Rose also said that she was not Monsieur Mordaut’s mistress.
6. Monsieur Mordaut showed all the symptoms of the beginnings of slow arsenical poisoning.
7. Like the three dead women, Ernestine had a life insurance which would be paid to her master.
“Would you like to know what I really think?” It was Ernestine’s turn to be questioned in the ill-lit drawing room.
“Well, my idea is that my master has gone slightly mad... and when he knew that he was being found out, he preferred to finish with it all. But, as he was unbalanced and not like other people, he didn’t want any of us to survive him.
“If poor Monsieur Hector hadn’t drunk that rum, we should all be dead by now, including the Doctor.”
This thought gave Dollent shivers down his spine.
“Monsieur,” he murmured to the Police Superintendent, moving towards the door, “I’d like to have a word with you in private.”
They spoke in the corridor, which was as gloomy as everywhere else in the house.
“I suppose — I hope that you have the necessary powers,” the Little Doctor concluded. “There is still time... if you send an officer by car.”
His work was over. The mystery was solved, and as usual, it had been in a single flash. Diverse facts, little points of illumination in the fog, and then, suddenly...
The only way in which the Superintendent and the Little Doctor had managed to escape public curiosity was to take the banqueting chamber on the first floor of the little inn.
After an omelette, made not with rum but with fines herbes, they had ordered stewed rabbit, which they were now eating.
“Until we hear from the solicitor, all that I can tell you, Monsieur, is simply hypothesis.
“Well, I was struck by the fact that a man who took out a life insurance for everyone else didn’t take one out for himself. If the man is a murderer, and if his object is to get the money from all those policies, what would he do to conceal his intention? First and foremost take out a policy for himself, so as to avert suspicion... Monsieur Mordaut has no life insurance. For some time he has had no family. For some time also he has been suffering from the effects of slow arsenical poisoning, just like the previous victims. So I ask, who will inherit on his death? Which is why I asked you to send an officer to the solicitor.
“Follow me closely now,” said the Little Doctor. “It would seem that the person who inherits from Monsieur Mordaut must almost inevitably be the murderer...”
“And the murderer is?”
“A moment. Do you want to know who I think is Monsieur Mordaut’s heir? Rose.”
“So that...”
“Not so fast. Let me follow my fantasy, if I can use such a word, until your officer returns from the solicitor. I came to the conclusion that at some time, years ago no doubt, Mordaut and Ernestine were lovers. The years went by. He married to restore his fortunes, and Ernestine didn’t oppose the match.
“She just killed his wife, slowly, as she had killed the aunt whose death brought in so much money. For she was more than Mordaut’s mistress, she was his heir. She knew that one day everything he possessed would come to her. I am sure it was she, and not some insurance agent, who was behind that long series of policies. And she had the splendid idea of making him take one out for her, so that she would appear, when the time came, as a potential victim.
“You don’t understand all this? It’s because you don’t live, as I do, in the country, and you are not familiar with long-term schemes. Ernestine intends to live a long time. It hardly matters that she wastes twenty or thirty years with Mordaut. Afterwards she’ll be free, and rich. She’ll have the house of her dreams and live to be as old as her grandmother.
“That’s why she’s so frightened of illness. She doesn’t want to have worked so hard for nothing. But, the fortune she is eventually to inherit must be big enough. Emilie Duplantet, Madame Mordaut, Solange Duplantet. One by one they die, and their fortunes go to Monsieur Mordant — and finally to Ernestine.
“What’s the risk? No one will suspect her because nobody thinks site is the beneficiary of all these deaths. No one knows that she made her lover draw up a will leaving everything to her in default of direct heirs. She kills without any danger to herself. If anything happens, he will be the one to go to prison, to be condemned. She only starts worrying the day that she feels that her niece, whom she unwillingly brought into the house, is beginning to exert some influence. For Rose is young and pretty, and Mordaut...”
“It’s disgusting,” interpolated the Superintendent.
“Alas, it’s life. His passion for Ernestine is transferred to her niece. Rose has a lover or a fiancé, but what does it matter to her? Rose has something of her aunt’s character. She’ll wait a few years. She’ll wait for the inheritance her master has promised her. She doesn’t have to kill anyone. Did she have any suspicions about these murders? She could ignore them, because, in the end, they fare to her benefit.”
“It’s been a long business, Messieurs,” sighed the police officer who had had no lunch and was now confronted with the remnants of the feast. “Apart from the son,” he continued, “all Monsieur Mordaut’s property is left to Mademoiselle Rose Saupiquet.”
The Little Doctor’s eyes shone.
“Is there no other will?” asked the Superintendent.
“There was another, in which everything was left to Mademoiselle Ernestine Saupiquet, but it was altered nearly eight years ago.”
“Did Mademoiselle Ernestine know?”
“No, the change was made in secret.”
The Little Doctor laughed. “So now do you see it all? Ernestine didn’t know about the new will. She was certain, one day, of profiting from her crimes, but she wouldn’t kill Mordaut until he had amassed enough money.”
“And Rose?”
“Legally she’s certainly not an accomplice. But still, I wonder if she hadn’t guessed what her aunt was up to.”
Another bottle was placed on the table, ostensibly for the police officer. But it was the Little Doctor who helped himself first and who, after a gulp, said:
“Do you know what put me on the right track? It was when Ernestine affirmed her niece’s virtue, because to doubt that would be to doubt Mordaut’s virtue, and if I became suspicious of this, I might begin to suspect other things.
“In fact, we interrupted her in the middle of her work. She only killed Hector by chance in her attempt to get rid of the poison and to incriminate Mordaut. He had ordered the rum omelette for dinner. What better way to throw suspicion on him than to poison the rum? I’m sure that the rum wouldn’t in fact have been poured over the omelette — but how easy to say afterwards that it seemed to have a funny smell — and so lead to the rum-bottle being examined!
“Little more would have remained to be done. And then the pretty home in the country and forty years of life lived according to her dreams.”
The Little Doctor replenished his glass once more and concluded: