You are saying, are you not, that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was deliberately murdered and that Morley was also murdered to prevent his identifying her dead body.
But why?
That's what I want to know. Here's this woman – a perfectly harmless, middle-aged woman – with plenty of friends and apparently no enemies.
Why on earth all this elaborate plot to get rid of her?"
"Why?
Yes, that is the question. Why?
As you say, Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was a perfectly harmless creature who wouldn't hurt a fly!
Why, then, was she deliberately and brutally murdered?
Well, I will tell you what I think." "Yes?" Poirot leaned forward. He said: "It is my belief that Mabelle Sainsbury Seale was murdered because she happened to have too good a memory for faces."
"What do you mean?"
Hercule Poirot said: "We have separated the dual personality.
There is the harmless lady from India, and there is the clever actress playing the part of the harmless lady from India.
But there is one incident that falls between the two roles. Which Miss Sainsbury Seale was it who spoke to you on the doorstep of Mr. Morley's house?
She claimed, you will remember, to be 'a great friend of your wife's.'
Now that claim was adjudged by her friends and by the light of ordinary probability to be untrue. So we can say: 'That was a lie.
The real Miss Sainsbury Seale does not tell lies.' So it was a lie uttered by the impostor for a purpose of her own."
Alistair Blunt nodded. "Yes, that reasoning is quite clear.
Though I still don't know what the purpose was."
Poirot said: "Ah, pardon – but let us first look at it the other way round.
It was the real Miss Sainsbury Seale. She does not tell lies. So the story must be true."
"I suppose you can look at it that way – but it seems very unlikely -"
"Of course it is unlikely!
But taking that second hypothesis as fact – the story is true.
Therefore Miss Sainsbury Seale did know your wife. She knew her well.
Therefore – your wife must have been the type of person Miss Sainsbury Seale would have known well.
Someone in her own station of life.
An Anglo-Indian – a missionary – or, to go back farther still – an actress – Therefore – not Rebecca Arnholt!
"Now, Mr. Blunt, do you see what I meant when I talked of a private and a public life?
You are the great banker.
But you are also a man who married a rich wife.
And before you married her you were only a junior partner in the firm – not very long down from Oxford.
"You comprehend – I began to look at the case the right way up.
Expense no object? Naturally not – to you.
Reckless of human life – that, too, since for a long time you have been virtually a dictator and to a dictator his own life becomes unduly important and those of others unimportant."
Alistair Blunt said: "What are you suggesting M. Poirot?"
Poirot said quietly: "I am suggesting, Mr. Blunt, that when you married Rebecca Arnholt, you were married already.
That, dazzled by the vista, not so much of wealth, as of power, you suppressed that fact and deliberately committed bigamy.
That your real wife acquiesced in the situation."
"And who was this real wife?"
"Mrs. Albert Chapman was the name she went under at King Leopold Mansions – a handy spot, no five minutes' walk from your house on the Chelsea Embankment.
You borrowed the name of a real secret agent, realizing that it would give support to her hints of a husband engaged in intelligence work.
Your scheme succeeded perfectly.
No suspicion was ever aroused.
Nevertheless, the fact remained, you had never been legally married to Rebecca Arnholt and you were guilty of bigamy.
You never dreamed of danger after so many years. It came out, of the blue – in the form of a tiresome woman who remembered you after nearly twenty years, as her friend's husband.
Chance brought her back to this country, chance let her meet you in Queen Charlotte Street – it was chance that your niece was with you and heard what she said to you.
Otherwise I might never have guessed."
"I told you about that myself, my dear Poirot."
"No, it was your niece who insisted on telling me and you could not very well protest too violently in case it might arouse suspicions.
And after that meeting, one more evil chance (from your point of view) occurred.