But I, mademoiselle, am a very special kind of murderer. I can kill - and I can restore to life.” He turned and in a different tone of voice, an apologetic everyday voice, he said: “A magnificent performance, Sir Charles.
I congratulate you.
Perhaps you would now like to take your curtain.”
With a laugh the actor sprang to his feet and bowed mockingly.
Egg gave a great gasp. “M. Poirot, you - you beast.”
“Charles,” cried Angela Sutcliffe. “You complete devil ... ”
“But why - ?”
“How - ?”
“What on earth - ?”
By means of his upraised hand, Poirot obtained silence.
“Messieurs, messdames. I demand pardon of you all.
This little farce was necessary to prove to you all, and incidentally, to prove to myself a fact which my reason already told me is true.”
“Listen. On this tray of glasses I placed in one glass a teaspoonful of plain water. That water represented pure nicotine.
These glasses are of the same kind as those possessed by Sir Charles Cartwright and by Sir Bartholomew Strange.
Owing to the heavy cut glass, a small quantity of a colourless liquid is quite undetectable.
Imagine, then, the sport glass of Sir Bartholomew Strange.
After it was put on the table somebody introduced into it a sufficient quantity of pure nicotine.
That might have been done by anybody. The butler, the parlourmaid, or one of the guests who slipped into the dining room on his or her way downstairs.
Dessert arrived, the port is taken round, the glass is filled. Sir Bartholomew drinks - and dies.”
“Tonight we have played a third tragedy - a sham tragedy - I asked Sir Charles to play the part of the victim.
This he did magnificently.
Now suppose for a minute that this was not a farce, but truth.
Sir Charles is dead.
What will be the steps taken by the police?”
Miss Sutcliffe cried: “Why, the glass, of course.” She nodded to where the glass lay on the floor as it had fallen from Sir Charles’s hand. “You only put water in, but if it had been nicotine - ”
“Let us suppose it was nicotine.” Poirot touched the glass gently with his toe. “You are of opinion that the police would analyse the glass, and that traces of nicotine would be found?”
“Certainly.”
Poirot shook his head gently.
“You are wrong.
No nicotine would be found.”
They stared at him.
“You see,” he smiled, “that is not the glass from which Sir Charles drank.” With an apologetic grin he extended a glass from the tail pocket of his coat. “This is the glass he used.” He went on:
“It is, you see, the simple theory of the conjuring trick.
The attention cannot be in two places at once. To do my conjuring trick I need the attention focused elsewhere. Well, there is a moment, a psychological moment.
When Sir Charles falls - dead - every eye in the room is on his dead body. Everyone crowds forward to get near him, and no one, no one at all, looks at Hercule Poirot, and in that moment I exchange the glasses and no one sees ...
“So you see, I prove my point ...
There was such a moment at Crow's Nest, there was such a moment at Melfort Abbey - and so, there was nothing in the cocktail glass and nothing in the port glass ... ”
Egg cried: “Who changed them?”
Looking at her, Poirot replied:
“That, we have still to find out ... ”
“You don’t know?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
Rather uncertainly, the guests made signs of departure.
Their manner was a little cold. They felt they had been badly fooled.
With a gesture of the hand, Poirot arrested them.
“One little moment, I pray of you. There is one thing more that I have to say.
Tonight, admittedly, we have played the comedy. But the comedy may be played in earnest - it may become a tragedy.
Under certain conditions the murderer may strike a third time ...
I speak now to all of you here present.
If anyone of you knows something - something that may bear in any way one this crime, I implore that person to speak now. To keep knowledge to oneself at this juncture may be dangerous - so dangerous that death may be the result of silence. Therefore I beg again - if anyone knows anything, let that person speak now ... ”