He's not so unsophisticated as that."
This was so palpably true that Poirot could only agree.
After a minute or two, Japp went on with his summing up of the Sainsbury Seale situation.
"I suppose her body might have been lowered into a tank of acid by a mad scientist – that's another solution they're very fond of in books!
But take my word for it, these things are all my eye and Betty Martin.
If the woman is dead, her body has just been quietly buried somewhere."
"But where?"
"Exactly.
She disappeared in London.
Nobody's got a garden there – not a proper one.
A lonely chicken farm, that's what we want!"
A garden? Poirot's mind flashed suddenly to that neat prim garden at Ealing with its formal beds.
How fantastic if a dead woman should be buried there!
He told himself not to be absurd.
"And if she isn't dead," went on Japp, "where is she?
Over a month now, description published in the Press, circulated all over England -"
"And nobody has seen her?"
"Oh, yes, practically everybody has seen her!
You've no idea how many middle-aged, faded looking women wearing olive green cardigan suits there are.
She's been seen on Yorkshire moors, and in Liverpool hotels, in guest houses in Devon and on the beach at Ramsgate!
My men have spent their time patiently investigating all these reports – and one and all they've led nowhere, except to getting us in wrong with a number of perfectly respectable middle-aged ladies."
Poirot clicked his tongue sympathetically.
"And yet," went on Japp, "she's a real person all right.
I mean sometimes you come across a dummy, so to speak – someone who just comes to a place and poses as a Miss Spinks – when all the time there isn't a Miss Spinks. But this woman's genuine – she's got a past, a background! We know all about her from her childhood upwards!
She's led a perfectly normal reasonable life – and suddenly, hey, presto! – vanished!"
"There must be a reason," said Poirot.
"She didn't shoot Morley, if that's what you mean.
Amberiotis saw him alive after she left – and we've checked up on her movements after she left Queen Charlotte Street that morning."
Poirot said impatiently: "I am not suggesting for a moment that she shot Morley. Of course she did not. But all the same -"
Japp said: "If you are right about Morley, then it's far more likely that he told her something which, although she doesn't suspect it, gives a clue to his murderer.
In that case, she might have been deliberately put out of the way."
Poirot said: "All this involves an organization, some big concern quite out of proportion to the death of a quiet dentist in Queen Charlotte Street."
"Don't you believe everything Reginald Barnes tells you.
He's a funny old bird – got spies and communists on the brain."
Japp got up and Poirot said: "Let me know if you have news."
When Japp had gone out, Poirot sat frowning down at the table in front of him.
He had definitely the feeling of waiting for something.
What was it?
He remembered how he had sat before, jotting down various unrelated facts and a series of names.
A bird had flown past the window with a twig in its mouth. He too, had been collecting twigs. Five, six, pick up sticks… He had the sticks – quite a number of them now. They were all there, neatly pigeonholed in his orderly mind – but he had not as yet attempted to set them in order. That was the next step – lay them straight.
What was holding him up?
He knew the answer.
He was waiting for something. Something inevitable, foreordained, the next link in the chain.
When it came – then – then he could go on.
II It was late evening a week later when the summons came. Japp's voice was brusque over the telephone.
"That you, Poirot?
We've found her.
You'd better come round.
King Leopold Mansions. Battersea Park. Number 45."
A quarter of an hour later a taxi deposited Poirot outside King Leopold Mansions.