Bessner uttered a colossal snort.
"Ach! it is foolish, that! Do you think a man with a fractured bone and a splint on his leg could go walking about the boat and stabbing people? I tell you, it was impossible for Simon Doyle to leave his cabin."
Poirot said gently: "I know. That is quite true. The thing was impossible. It was impossible, but it was also true! There could be only one logical meaning behind Louise Bourget's words.
"So I returned to the beginning and reviewed the crime in the light of this new knowledge. Was it possible that in the period preceding the quarrel Simon Doyle had left the saloon and the others had forgotten or not noticed it? I could not see that that was possible. Could the skilled testimony of Dr Bessner and Mademoiselle Bowers be disregarded? Again I felt sure it could not. But, I remembered, there was a gap between the two. Simon Doyle had been alone in the saloon for a period of five minutes, and the skilled testimony of Dr Bessner only applied to the time after that period. For that period we had only the evidence of visual appearance, and, though apparently that was perfectly sound, it was no longer certain. What had actually been seen - leaving assumption out of the question?
"Mademoiselle Robson had seen Mademoiselle de Bellefort fire her pistol, had seen Simon Doyle collapse onto a chair, had seen him clasp a handkerchief to his leg and seen that handkerchief gradually soak through red. What had Monsieur Fanthorp heard and seen? He heard a shot, he found Doyle with a red-stained handkerchief clasped to his leg. What had happened then? Doyle had been very insistent that Mademoiselle de Bellefort should be got away, that she should not be left alone. After that, he suggested that Fanthorp should get hold of the doctor.
"Accordingly Mademoiselle Robson and Monsieur Fanthorp go out with Mademoiselle de Bellefort and for the next five minutes they are busy, on the port side of the deck. Mademoiselle Bowers', Dr Bessner's and Mademoiselle de Bellefort's cabins are all on the port side. Two minutes are all that Simon Doyle needs. He picks up the pistol from under the sofa, slips out of his shoes, runs like a hare silently along the starboard deck, enters his wife's cabin, creeps up to her as she was asleep, shoots her through the head, puts the bottle that has contained the red ink on her washstand (it mustn't be found on him) runs back, gets hold of Mademoiselle Van Schuyler's velvet stole, which he has quietly stuffed down the side of a chair in readiness, muffles it round the pistol and fires a bullet into his leg. His chair into which he falls (in genuine agony this time) is by a window. He lifts the window and throws the pistol (wrapped up with the telltale handkerchief in the velvet stole) into the Nile."
"Impossible!" said Race.
"No, my friend, not impossible. Remember the evidence of Tim Allerton. He heard a pop - followed by a splash. And he heard something else - the footsteps of a man running - a man running past his door. But nobody should have been running along the starboard side of the deck. What he heard was the stockinged feet of Simon Doyle running past his cabin."
Race said: "I still say it's impossible. No man could work out the whole caboodle like that in a flash - especially a chap like Doyle who is slow in his mental processes."
"But very quick and deft in his physical actions!"
"That, yes. But he wouldn't be capable of thinking the whole thing out."
"But he did not think it out himself, my friend. That is where we were all wrong. It looked like a crime committed on the spur of the moment, but it was not a crime committed on the spur of the moment. As I say it was a very cleverly planned and well thought out piece of work. It could not be chance that Simon Doyle had a bottle of red ink in his pocket. No, it must be design. It was not chance that be had a plain unmarked handkerchief with him. It was not chance that Jacqueline de Bellefort's foot kicked the pistol under the settee, where it would be out of sight and unremembered until later."
"Jacqueline?"
"Certainly. The two halves of the murderer. What gave Simon his alibi? The shot fired by Jacqueline. What gave Jacqueline her alibi? The insistence of Simon, which resulted in a hospital nurse remaining with her all night. There, between the two of them, you get all the qualities you require - the cool, resourceful, planning brain, Jacqueline de Bellefort's brain, and the man of action to carry it out with incredible swiftness and timing.
"Look at it the right way, and it answers every question. Simon Doyle and Jacqueline had been lovers. Realize that they are still lovers, and it is all clear. Simon does away with his rich wife, inherits her money, and in due course will marry his old love. It was all very ingenious. The persecution of Madame Doyle by Jacqueline, all part of the plan. Simon's pretended rage... And yet - there were lapses. He held forth to me once about possessive women - held forth with real bitterness. It ought to have been clear to me that it was his wife he was thinking about - not Jacqueline. Then his manner to his wife in public. An ordinary, inarticulate Englishman, such as Simon Doyle, is very embarrassed at showing any affection. Simon was not a really good actor. He overdid the devoted manner. That conversation I had with Mademoiselle Jacqueline, too, when she pretended that somebody had overheard. I saw no one. And there was no one! But it was to be a useful red herring later. Then one night on this boat I thought I heard Simon and Linnet outside my cabin. He was saying, 'We've got to go through with it now.' It was Doyle all right, but it was to Jacqueline he was speaking.
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