The doctor was just a well meaning G.P., couldn't be expected to recognize them.
In the third case, anxious mother was driving car in a hurry to get to her sick child.
Sob stuff – the jury acquitted her of blame!"
He paused: "All quite natural.
And soon forgotten.
But I'll just tell you where those three people are now.
The anaesthetist is set up on his own with a first-class research laboratory – no expense spared.
That G.P. has retired from practice. He's got a yacht, and a nice little place on the Broads.
The mother is giving all her children a first-class education, ponies to ride in the holidays, nice house in the country with a big garden and paddocks."
He nodded his head slowly.
"In every profession and walk of life there is someone who is vulnerable to temptation.
The trouble in our case was that Morley wasn't!"
"You think it was like that?" said Hercule Poirot.
Mr. Barnes said: "I do.
It's not easy to get at one of these big men, you know. They're fairly well protected.
The car stunt is risky and doesn't always succeed.
But a man is defenseless enough in a dentist's chair."
He took off his pince-nez, polished them and put them on again.
He said: "That's my theory!
Morley wouldn't do the job. He knew too much, though, so they had to put him out."
"They?" asked Poirot.
"When I say they – I mean the organization that's behind all this.
Only one person actually did the job, of course."
"Which person?"
"Well, I could make a guess," said Mr. Barnes, "but it's only a guess and I might be wrong."
Poirot said quietly: "Reilly?"
"Of course!
He's the obvious person.
I think that probably they never asked Morley to do the job himself.
What he was to do, was to turn Blunt over to his partner at the last minute.
Sudden illness, something of that sort.
Reilly would have done the actual business – and there would have been another regrettable accident – death of a famous banker – unhappy young dentist in court in such a state of dither and misery that he would have been let down lightly.
He'd have given up dentistry afterwards – and settled down somewhere on a nice income of several thousands a year."
Mr. Barnes looked across at Poirot.
"Don't think I'm romancing," he said.
"These things happen."
"Yes, yes, I know they happen."
Mr. Barnes went on, tapping a book with a lurid jacket that lay on a table close at hand: "I read a lot of these spy yarns.
Fantastic, some of them. But curiously enough they're not any more fantastic than the real thing.
There are beautiful adventuresses, and dark sinister men with foreign accents, and gangs and international associations and supercrooks! I'd blush to see some of the things I know set down in print – nobody would believe them for a minute!"
Poirot said: "In your theory, where does Amberiotis come in?"
"I'm not quite sure.
I think he was meant to take the rap.
He's played a double game more than once and I daresay he was framed.
That's only an idea, mind."
Hercule Poirot said quietly: "Granting that your ideas are correct – what will happen next?"
Mr. Barnes rubbed his nose.
"They'll try to get him again," he said.
"Oh, yes. They'll have another try.
Time's short.