But she was an observer.
When dishes were handed to her she had automatically noted - not the face - but the hands that held the dishes.
“It did not occur to her that Ellis was Sir Charles.
But when Sir Charles was talking to her it did suddenly occur to her that Sir Charles was Ellis!
And so she asked him to pretend to hand her a dish of vegetables. But it was not whether the birthmark was on the right or the left wrist that interested her.
She wanted a pretext to study his hands - hands held in the same position as those of Ellis the butler.
“And so she leaped to the truth.
But she was a peculiar woman. She enjoyed knowledge for its own sake.
Besides, she was by no means sure that Sir Charles had murdered his friend.
He had masqueraded as a butler, yes - but that did not necessarily make him a murderer.
Many an innocent man has kept silence because speech would place him in an awkward position.
“So Miss Wills kept her knowledge to herself - and enjoyed it.
But Sir Charles was worried.
He did not like that expression of satisfied malice on her face that he saw as he left the room.
She knew something.
What?
Did it affect him?
He could not be sure. But he felt that it was something connected with Ellis the butler.
First Mr. Satterthwaite - now Miss Wills.
Attention must be drawn away from that vital point. It must be focused definitely elsewhere.
And he thought of a plan - simple, audacious and, as he fancied, definitely mystifying.
“On the day of my Sherry Party I imagine Sir Charles rose very early, went to Yorkshire and, disguised in shabby clothes, gave the telegram to a small boy to send off.
Then he returned to town in time to act the part I had indicated in my little drama.
He did one more thing. He posted a box of chocolates to a woman he had never seen and of whom he knew nothing ...
“You know what happened that evening.
From Sir Charles’s uneasiness I was fairly sure that Miss Wills had certain suspicions.
When Sir Charles did his ‘death scene’ I watched Miss Wills’s face. I saw the look of astonishment that showed on it. I knew then that Miss Wills definitely suspected Sir Charles of being the murderer. When he appeared to die poisoned like the other two she thought her deductions must be wrong.
“But if Miss Wills suspected Sir Charles, then Miss Wills was in serious danger.
A man who has killed twice will kill again.
I uttered a very solemn warning. Later that night I communicated with Miss Wills by telephone, and on my advice she left home suddenly the next day.
Since then she had been living here in this hotel.
That I was wise is proved by the fact that Sir Charles went out to Tooting on the following evening after he had returned from Gilling.
He was too late. The bird had flown.
“In the meantime, from his point of view, the plan had worked well.
Mrs. de Rushbridger had something of importance to tell us. Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed before she could speak.
How dramatic!
How like the detective stories, the plays, the films!
Again the cardboard and the tinsel and the painted cloth.
“But I, Hercule Poirot, was not deceived.
Mr. Satterthwaite said to me she was killed in order that she should not speak. I agreed. He went on to say she was killed before she could tell us what she knew.
I said,
‘Or what she did NOT know.’
I think he was puzzled. But he should have seen then the truth.
Mrs. de Rushbridger was killed because she could, in actual fact, have told us nothing at all. Because she had no connection with the crime.
If she were to be Sir Charles’s successful red herring - she could only be so dead.
And so Mrs. de Rushbridger, a harmless stranger, was murdered ...
“Yet even in that seeming triumph Sir Charles made a colossal - a childish - error!
The telegram was addressed to me, Hercule Poirot, at the Ritz Hotel.
But Mrs. de Rushbridger had never heard of my connection with the case!
No one up in that part of the world knew of it. It was an unbelievably childish error.