‘Tommyrot,’ said Mr Coleman. ‘Why all of you listen to this chap beats me.’
‘Of the three young men there remains Mr Emmott,’ went on Poirot. ‘He again might be a possible shield for the identity of William Bosner. Whatever personal reasons he might have for the removal of Mrs Leidner I soon realized that I should have no means of learning them from him. He could keep his own counsel remarkably well, and there was not the least chance of provoking him nor of tricking him into betraying himself on any point. Of all the expedition he seemed to be the best and most dispassionate judge of Mrs Leidner’s personality. I think that he always knew her for exactly what she was – but what impression her personality made on him I was unable to discover. I fancy that Mrs Leidner herself must have been provoked and angered by his attitude.
‘I may say that of all the expedition,as far as character and capacity were concerned, Mr Emmott seemed to me the most fitted to bring a clever and well-timed crime off satisfactorily.’
For the first time, Mr Emmott raised his eyes from the toes of his boots.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
There seemed to be just a trace of amusement in his voice.
‘The last two people on my list were Richard Carey and Father Lavigny.
‘According to the testimony of Nurse Leatheran and others, Mr Carey and Mrs Leidner disliked each other. They were both civil with an effort. Another person, Miss Reilly, propounded a totally different theory to account for their attitude of frigid politeness.
‘I soon had very little doubt that Miss Reilly’s explanation was the correct one. I acquired my certitude by the simple expedient of provoking Mr Carey into reckless and unguarded speech. It was not difficult. As I soon saw, he was in a state of high nervous tension. In fact he was – and is – very near a complete nervous breakdown. A man who is suffering up to the limit of his capacity can seldom put up much of a fight.
‘Mr Carey’s barriers came down almost immediately. He told me, with a sincerity that I did not for a moment doubt, that he hated Mrs Leidner.
‘And he was undoubtedly speaking the truth. He did hate Mrs Leidner. But why did he hate her?
‘I have spoken of women who have a calamitous magic. But men have that magic too. There are men who are able without the least effort to attract women. What they call in these days le sex appeal! Mr Carey had this quality very strongly. He was to begin with devoted to his friend and employer, and indifferent to his employer’s wife. That did not suit Mrs Leidner. She must dominate – and she set herself out to capture Richard Carey. But here, I believe, something entirely unforeseen took place. She herself for perhaps the first time in her life, fell a victim to an overmastering passion. She fell in love – really in love – with Richard Carey.
‘And he – was unable to resist her. Here is the truth of the terrible state of nervous tension that he has been enduring. He has been a man torn by two opposing passions. He loved Louise Leidner – yes, but he also hated her. He hated her for undermining his loyalty to his friend. There is no hatred so great as that of a man who has been made to love a woman against his will.
‘I had here all the motive that I needed. I was convinced thatat certain moments the most natural thing for Richard Carey to do would have been to strike with all the force of his arm at the beautiful face that had cast a spell over him.
‘All along I had felt sure that the murder of Louise Leidner was a crime passionnel. In Mr Carey I had found an ideal murderer for that type of crime.
‘There remains one other candidate for the title of murderer – Father Lavigny. My attention was attracted to the good Father straightaway by a certain discrepancy between his description of the strange man who had been seen peering in at the window and the one given by Nurse Leatheran. In all accounts given by different witnesses there is usually some discrepancy, but this was absolutely glaring. Moreover, Father Lavigny insisted on a certain characteristic – a squint – which ought to make identification much easier.
‘But very soon it became apparent that while Nurse Leatheran’s description was substantially accurate, Father Lavigny’s was nothing of the kind. It looked almost as though Father Lavigny was deliberately misleading us – as though he did not want the man caught.
‘But in that case he must know something about this curious person. He had been seen talking to the man but we had only his word for what they had been talking about.
‘What had the Iraqi been doing when Nurse Leatheran and Mrs Leidner saw him? Trying to peer through the window – Mrs Leidner’s window, so they thought, but I realized when I went and stood where they had been, that it might equally have been the antika-room window.
‘The night after that an alarm was given. Someone was in the antika-room. Nothing proved to have been taken, however. The interesting point to me is that when Dr Leidner got there he found Father Lavigny there before him. Father Lavigny tells his story of seeing a light. But again we have only his word for it.
‘I begin to get curious about Father Lavigny. The other day when I make the suggestion that Father Lavigny may be Frederick Bosner, Dr Leidner pooh-poohs the suggestion. He says Father Lavigny is a well-known man. I advance the supposition that Frederick Bosner, who has had nearly twenty years to make a career for himself, under a new name, may very possiblybe a well-known man by this time! All the same, I do not think that he has spent the intervening time in a religious community. A very much simpler solution presents itself.
‘Did anyone at the expedition know Father Lavigny by sight before he came? Apparently not. Why then should not it be someone impersonating the good Father? I found out that a telegram had been sent to Carthage on the sudden illness of Dr Byrd, who was to have accompanied the expedition. To intercept a telegram, what could be easier? As to the work, there was no other epigraphist attached to the expedition. With a smattering of knowledge a clever man might bluff his way through. There had been very few tablets and inscriptions so far, and already I gathered that Father Lavigny’s pronouncements had been felt to be somewhat unusual.
‘It looked very much as though Father Lavigny were an imposter.
‘But was he Frederick Bosner?
‘Somehow, affairs did not seem to be shaping themselves that way. The truth seemed likely to lie in quite a different direction.
‘I had a lengthy conversation with Father Lavigny. I am a practising Catholic and I know many priests and members of religious communities. Father Lavigny struck me as not ringing quite true to his role. But he struck me, on the other hand, as familiar in quite a different capacity. I had met men of his type quite frequently – but they were not members of a religious community. Far from it!
‘I began to send off telegrams.
‘And then, unwittingly, Nurse Leatheran gave me a valuable clue. We were examining the gold ornaments in the antika-room and she mentioned a trace of wax having been found adhering to a gold cup. Me, I say, “Wax?” and Father Lavigny, he said “Wax?” and his tone was enough! I knew in a flash exactly what he was doing here.’
Poirot paused and addressed himself directly to Dr Leidner.
‘I regret to tell you, monsieur, that the gold cup in the antika-room, the gold dagger, the hair ornaments and several other thingsare not the genuine articles found by you. They are very clever electrotypes. Father Lavigny, I have just learned by this last answer to my telegrams, is none other than Raoul Menier, one of the cleverest thieves known to the French police. He specializes in thefts from museums of objets d’art and such like. Associated with him is Ali Yusuf, a semi-Turk, who is a first-class working jeweller. Our first knowledge of Menier was when certain objects in the Louvre were found not to be genuine – in every case it was discovered that a distinguished archaeologist not known previously by sight to the director had recently had the handling of the spurious articles when paying a visit to the Louvre. On inquiry all these distinguished gentlemen denied having paid a visit to the Louvre at the times stated!