Rosalie did not answer. Her mouth opened; then she closed it again. For once she seemed at a loss.
“There is no need for you to talk, Mademoiselle. I will do all the talking. I was interested at Assuan in the relations existing between you. I saw at once that, in spite of your carefully studied unfilial remarks, you were in reality passionately protecting her from something. I very soon knew what that something was. I knew it long before I encountered your mother one morning in an unmistakable state of intoxication. Moreover, her case, I could see, was one of secret bouts of drinking—by far the most difficult kind of case with which to deal. You were coping with it manfully. Nevertheless, she had all the secret drunkard’s cunning. She managed to get hold of a secret supply of spirits and to keep it successfully hidden from you. I should not be surprised if you discovered its hiding place only yesterday. Accordingly, last night, as soon as your mother was really soundly asleep, you stole out with the contents of the cache, went round to the other side of the boat (since your own side was up against the bank) and cast it overboard into the Nile.”
He paused.
“I am right, am I not?”
“Yes—you’re quite right.” Rosalie spoke with sudden passion. “I was a fool not to say so, I suppose! But I didn’t want everyone to know. It would go all over the boat. And it seemed so—so silly—I mean—that I—”
Poirot finished the sentence for her.
“So silly that you should be suspected of committing a murder?”
Rosalie nodded.
Then she burst out again: “I’ve tried so hard to—keep everyone from knowing…It isn’t really her fault. She got discouraged. Her books didn’t sell anymore. People are tired of all that cheap sex stuff…It hurt her—it hurt her dreadfully. And so she began to—to drink. For a long time I didn’t know why she was so queer. Then, when I found out, I tried to—to stop it. She’d be all right for a bit, and then, suddenly, she’d start, and there would be dreadful quarrels and rows with people. It was awful.” She shuddered. “I had always to be on the watch—to get her away….”
“And then—she began to dislike me for it. She—she’s turned right against me. I think she almost hates me sometimes.”
“Pauvre petite,” said Poirot.
She turned on him vehemently.
“Don’t be sorry for me. Don’t be kind. It’s easier if you’re not.” She sighed—a long heartrending sigh. “I’m so tired…I’m so deadly, deadly tired.”
“I know,” said Poirot.
“People think I’m awful. Stuck-up and cross and bad-tempered. I can’t help it. I’ve forgotten how to be—to be nice.”
“That is what I said to you; you have carried your burden by yourself too long.”
Rosalie said slowly. “It’s a relief—to talk about it. You—you’ve always been kind to me, Monsieur Poirot. I’m afraid I’ve been rude to you often.”
“La politesse, it is not necessary between friends.”
The suspicion came back to her face suddenly.
“Are you—are you going to tell everyone? I suppose you must, because of those damned bottles I threw overboard.”
“No, no, it is not necessary. Just tell me what I want to know. At what time was this? Ten minutes past one?”
“About that, I should think. I don’t remember exactly.”
“Now tell me, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Van Schuyler saw you, did you see her?”
Rosalie shook her head.
“No, I didn’t.”
“She says that she looked out of the door of her cabin.”
“I don’t think I should have seen her. I just looked along the deck and then out to the river.”
Poirot nodded.
“And did you see anyone—anyone at all, when you looked down the deck?”
There was a pause—quite a long pause. Rosalie was frowning. She seemed to be thinking earnestly.
At last she shook her head quite decisively.
“No,” she said. “I saw nobody.”
Hercule Poirot slowly nodded his head. But his eyes were grave.
Twenty
People crept into the dining saloon by ones and twos in a very subdued manner. There seemed a general feeling that to sit down eagerly to food displayed an unfortunate heartlessness. It was with an almost apologetic air that one passenger after another came and sat down at their tables.
Tim Allerton arrived some few minutes after his mother had taken her seat. He was looking in a thoroughly bad temper.
“I wish we’d never come on this blasted trip,” he growled.
Mrs. Allerton shook her head sadly.
“Oh, my dear, so do I. That beautiful girl! It all seems such a waste. To think that anyone could shoot her in cold blood. It seems awful to me that anyone could do such a thing. And that other poor child.”
“Jacqueline?”
“Yes; my heart aches for her. She looks so dreadfully unhappy.”
“Teach her not to go round loosing off toy firearms,” said Tim unfeelingly as he helped himself to butter.
“I expect she was badly brought up.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother, don’t go all maternal about it.”
“You’re in a shocking bad temper, Tim.”
“Yes I am. Who wouldn’t be?”
“I don’t see what there is to be cross about. It’s just frightfully sad.”
Tim said crossly: “You’re taking the romantic point of view! What you don’t seem to realize is that it’s no joke being mixed up in a murder case.”
Mrs. Allerton looked a little startled.
“But surely—”
“That’s just it. There’s no ‘But surely’ about it. Everyone on this damned boat is under suspicion—you and I as well as the rest of them.”
Mrs. Allerton demurred. “Technically we are, I suppose—but actually it’s ridiculous!”
“There’s nothing ridiculous where murder’s concerned! You may sit there, darling, just exuding virtue and conscious rectitude, but a lot of unpleasant policeman at Shellal or Assuan won’t take you at your face value.”
“Perhaps the truth will be known before then.”
“Why should it be?”
“Monsieur Poirot may find out.”
“That old mountebank? He won’t find out anything. He’s all talk and moustaches.”
“Well, Tim,” said Mrs. Allerton. “I dare say everything you say is true, but, even if it is, we’ve got to go through with it, so we might as well make up our minds to it and go through with it as cheerfully as we can.”
But her son showed no abatement of gloom.
“There’s this blasted business of the pearls being missing, too.”
“Linnet’s pearls?”
“Yes. It seems somebody must have pinched ’em.”
“I suppose that was the motive for the crime,” said Mrs. Allerton.
“Why should it be? You’re mixing up two perfectly different things.”
“Who told you that they were missing?”
“Ferguson. He got it from his tough friend in the engine room, who got it from the maid.”
“They were lovely pearls,” declared Mrs. Allerton.
Poirot sat down at the table, bowing to Mrs. Allerton.
“I am a little late,” he said.
“I expect you have been busy,” Mrs. Allerton replied.
“Yes, I have been much occupied.”
He ordered a fresh bottle of wine from the waiter.
“We’re very catholic in our tastes,” said Mrs. Allerton. “You drink wine always; Tim drinks whisky and soda, and I try all the different brands of mineral water in turn.”
“Tiens!” said Poirot. He stared at her for a moment. He murmured to himself: “It is an idea, that….”
Then, with an impatient shrug of his shoulders, he dismissed the sudden preoccupation that had distracted him and began to chat lightly of other matters.
“Is Mr. Doyle badly hurt?” asked Mrs. Allerton.
>
“Yes, it is a fairly serious injury. Dr. Bessner is anxious to reach Assuan so that his leg can be X-rayed and the bullet removed. But he hopes there will be no permanent lameness.”
“Poor Simon,” said Mrs. Allerton. “Only yesterday he looked such a happy boy, with everything in the world he wanted. And now his beautiful wife killed and he himself laid up and helpless. I do hope, though—”
“What do you hope, Madame?” asked Poirot as Mrs. Allerton paused.
“I hope he’s not too angry with that poor child.”
“With Mademoiselle Jacqueline? Quite the contrary. He was full of anxiety on her behalf.”
He turned to Tim.
“You know, it is a pretty little problem of psychology, that. All the time that Mademoiselle Jacqueline was following them from place to place, he was absolutely furious; but now, when she has actually shot him, and wounded him dangerously—perhaps made him lame for life—all his anger seems to have evaporated. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” said Tim thoughtfully, “I think I can. The first thing made him feel a fool—”
Poirot nodded. “You are right. It offended his male dignity.”
“But now—if you look at it a certain way, it’s she who’s made a fool of herself. Everyone’s down on her, and so—”
“He can be generously forgiving,” finished Mrs. Allerton. “What children men are!”
“A profoundly untrue statement that women always make,” murmured Tim.
Poirot smiled. Then he said to Tim: “Tell me, Madame Doyle’s cousin, Miss Joanna Southwood, did she resemble Madame Doyle?”
“You’ve got it a little wrong, Monsieur Poirot. She was our cousin and Linnet’s friend.”
“Ah, pardon—I was confused. She is a young lady much in the news, that. I have been interested in her for some time.”
“Why?” asked Tim sharply.
Poirot half rose to bow to Jacqueline de Bellefort, who had just come in and passed their table on the way to her own. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and her breath came a little unevenly. As he resumed his seat Poirot seemed to have forgotten Tim’s question. He murmured vaguely: “I wonder if all young ladies with valuable jewels are as careless as Madame Doyle was?”
“It is true, then, that they were stolen?” asked Mrs. Allerton.
“Who told you so, Madame?”
“Ferguson said so,” Tim volunteered.
Poirot nodded gravely.
“It is quite true.”
“I suppose,” Mrs. Allerton nervously, “that this will mean a lot of unpleasantness for all of us. Tim says it will.”
Her son scowled, but Poirot had turned to him.
“Ah! You have had previous experience, perhaps? You have been in a house where there was a robbery?”
“Never,” said Tim.
“Oh, yes, darling, you were at the Portarlingtons’ that time—when that awful woman’s diamonds were stolen.”
“You always get things hopelessly wrong, Mother. I was there when it was discovered that the diamonds she was wearing round her fat neck were only paste! The actual substitution was probably done months earlier. As a matter of fact, of lot of people said she’d had it done herself!”
“Joanna said so, I expect.”
“Joanna wasn’t there.”
“But she knew them quite well. And it’s very like her to make that kind of suggestion.”
“You’re always down on Joanna, Mother.”
Poirot hastily changed the subject. He had it in mind to make a really big purchase at one of the Assuanshops. Some very attractive purple and gold material at one of the Indian merchants. There would, of course, be the duty to pay, but—
“They tell me that they can—how do you say—expedite it for me. And that the charges will not be too high. How think you, will it arrive all right?”
Mrs. Allerton said that many people, so she had heard, had had things sent straight to England from the shops in question and that everything had arrived safely.
“Bien. Then I will do that. But the trouble one has, when one is abroad, if a parcel comes out from England! Have you had experience of that? Have you had any parcels arrive since you have been on your travels?”
“I don’t think we have, have we, Tim? You get books sometimes, but of course there is never any trouble about them.”
“Ah, no, books are different.”
Dessert had been served. Now, without any previous warning, Colonel Race stood up and made his speech.
He touched on the circumstances of the crime and announced the theft of the pearls. A search of the boat was about to be instituted, and he would be obliged if all the passengers would remain in the saloon until this was completed. Then, after that, if the passengers agreed, as he was sure they would, they themselves would be kind enough to submit to a search.
Poirot slipped nimbly along to his side. There was a little buzz and hum all round them. Voices doubtful, indignant, excited….
Poirot reached Race’s side and murmured something in his ear just as the latter was about to leave the dining saloon.
Race listened, nodded assent, and beckoned a steward. He said a few brief words to him; then, together with Poirot, he passed out on to the deck, closing the door behind him.
They stood for a minute or two by the rail. Race lit a cigarette.
“Not a bad idea of yours,” he said. “We’ll soon see if there’s anything in it. I’ll give ’em three minutes.”
The door of the dining saloon opened and the same steward to whom they had spoken came out. He saluted Race and said: “Quite right, sir. There’s a lady who says it’s urgent she should speak to you at once without delay.”
“Ah!” Race’s face showed satisfaction.
“Who is it?”
“Miss Bowers, sir, the hospital nurse lady.”
A slight shade of surprise showed on Race’s face. He said, “Bring her to the smoking room. Don’t let anyone else leave.”
“No, sir—the other steward will attend to that.”
He went back into the dining room. Poirot and Race went to the smoking room.
“Bowers, eh?” muttered Race.
They had hardly got inside the smoking room before the steward reappeared with Miss Bowers. He ushered her in and left, shutting the door behind him.
“Well, Miss Bowers?” Colonel Race looked at her inquiringly. “What’s all this?”
Miss Bowers looked her usual composed, unhurried self. She displayed no particular emotion.
“You’ll excuse me, Colonel Race,” she said, “but under the circumstances I thought the best thing to do would be to speak to you at once”—she opened her neat black handbag—“and to return you these.”
She took out a string of pearls and laid them on the table.
Twenty-One
If Miss Bowers had been the kind of woman who enjoyed creating a sensation, she would have been richly repaid by the result of her action.
A look of utter astonishment passed over Colonel Race’s face as he picked up the pearls from the table.
“This is most extraordinary,” he said. “Will you kindly explain, Miss Bowers?”
“Of course. That’s what I’ve come to do.” Miss Bowers settled herself comfortably in a chair. “Naturally it was a little difficult for me to decide what it was best for me to do. The family would naturally be averse to scandal of any kind, and they trusted my discretion, but the circumstances are so very unusual that it really leaves me no choice. Of course, when you didn’t find anything in the cabins, your next move would be a search of the passengers, and, if the pearls were then found in my possession, it would be rather an awkward situation and the truth would come out just the same.”
“And just what is the truth? Did you take these pearls from Mrs. Doyle’s cabin?”
“Oh, no, Colonel Race, of course not. Miss Van Schuyler did.”
“Miss Van Schuyler?”
“Yes. She can’t help it, you kno
w, but she does—er—take things. Especially jewellery. That’s really why I’m always with her. It’s not her health at all; it’s this little idiosyncrasy. I keep on the alert, and fortunately there’s never been any trouble since I’ve been with her. It just means being watchful, you know. And she always hides the things she takes in the same place—rolled up in a pair of stockings—so that it makes it very simple. I look each morning. Of course I’m a light sleeper, and I always sleep next door to her, and with the communicating door open if it’s in a hotel, so that I usually hear. Then I go after her and persuade her to go back to bed. Of course it’s been rather more difficult on a boat. But she doesn’t usually do it at night. It’s more just picking up things that she sees left about. Of course, pearls have a great attraction for her always.”
Miss Bowers ceased speaking.
Race asked: “How did you discover they had been taken?”
“They were in her stockings this morning. I knew whose they were, of course. I’ve often noticed them. I went along to put them back, hoping that Mrs. Doyle wasn’t up yet and hadn’t discovered her loss. But there was a steward standing there, and he told me about the murder and that no one could go in. So then, you see, I was in a regular quandary. But I still hoped to slip them back in the cabin later, before their absence had been noticed. I can assure you I’ve passed a very unpleasant morning wondering what was the best thing to do. You see, the Van Schuyler family is so very particular and exclusive. It would never do if this got into the newspapers. But that won’t be necessary, will it?”
Miss Bowers really looked worried.
“That depends on circumstances,” said Colonel Race cautiously.
“But we shall do our best for you, of course. What does Miss Van Schuyler say to this?”
“Oh, she’ll deny it, of course. She always does. Says some wicked person has put it there. She never admits taking anything. That’s why if you catch her in time she goes back to bed like a lamb. Says she just went out to look at the moon. Something like that.”
“Does Miss Robson know about this—er—failing?”
“No, she doesn’t. Her mother knows, but she’s a very simple kind of girl and her mother thought it best she should know nothing about it. I was quite equal to dealing with Miss Van Schuyler,” added the competent Miss Bowers.