The ABC Murders (18 page)

“Now I examined them again—and this time I came to a totally different conclusion. What was wrong with them was
the fact that they were written by a sane man!
”

“What?” I cried.

“But yes—just that precisely! They were wrong as a picture is wrong—
because they were a fake!
They pretended to be the letters of a madman—of a homicidal lunatic, but in reality they were nothing of the kind.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Franklin Clarke repeated.

“
Mais si!
One must reason—reflect. What would be the object of writing such letters? To focus attention on the writer, to call attention to the murders!
En vérité,
it did not seem to make sense at first sight. And then I saw light. It was to focus attention on several murders—on a
group
of murders…Is it not your great Shakespeare who has said ‘You cannot see the trees for the wood.'”

I did not correct Poirot's literary reminiscences. I was trying to see his point. A glimmer came to me. He went on:

“When do you notice a pin least? When it is in a pincushion!
When do you notice an individual murder least? When it is one of
a series of related murders
.

“I had to deal with an intensely clever, resourceful murderer—reckless, daring and a thorough gambler.
Not
Mr. Cust! He could never have committed these murders! No, I had to deal with a very different stamp of man—a man with a boyish temperament (witness the schoolboy-like letters and the railway guide), an attractive man to women, and a man with a ruthless disregard for human life, a man who was necessarily a prominent person in
one
of the crimes!

“Consider when a man or woman is killed, what are the questions that the police ask? Opportunity. Where everybody was at the time of the crime? Motive. Who benefited by the deceased's death? If the motive and the opportunity are fairly obvious, what is a would-be murderer to do? Fake an alibi—that is, manipulate
time
in some way? But that is always a hazardous proceeding. Our murderer thought of a more fantastic defence. Create a
homicidal
murderer!

“I had now only to review the various crimes and find the possible guilty person. The Andover crime? The most likely suspect for that was Franz Ascher, but I could not imagine Ascher inventing and carrying out such an elaborate scheme, nor could I see him planning a premeditated murder. The Bexhill crime? Donald Fraser was a possibility. He had brains and ability, and a methodical turn of mind. But his motive for killing his sweetheart could only be jealousy—and jealousy does not tend to premeditation. Also I learned that he had his holidays
early
in August, which rendered it unlikely he had anything to do with the Churston crime. We come to the Churston crime next—and at once we are on infinitely more promising ground.

“Sir Carmichael Clarke was an immensely wealthy man. Who inherits his money? His wife, who is dying, has a life interest in it, and it then goes to
his brother Franklin
.”

Poirot turned slowly round till his eyes met those of Franklin Clarke.

“I was quite sure then. The man I had known a long time in my secret mind
was the same as the man whom I had known as a person. A B C and Franklin Clarke were one and the same!
The daring adventurous character, the roving life, the partiality for England that had showed itself, very faintly, in the jeer at foreigners. The attractive free and easy manner—nothing easier for him than to pick up a girl in a café. The methodical tabular mind—he made a list here one day, ticked off over the headings A B C—and finally, the boyish mind—mentioned by Lady Clarke and even shown by his taste in fiction—I have ascertained that there is a book in the library called
The Railway Children
by E. Nesbit. I had no further doubt in my own mind—A B C, the man who wrote the letters and committed the crimes, was
Franklin Clarke
.”

Clarke suddenly burst out laughing.

“Very ingenious! And what about our friend Cust, caught red-handed? What about the blood on his coat? And the knife he hid in his lodgings? He may deny he committed the crimes—”

Poirot interrupted.

“You are quite wrong. He admits the fact.”

“What?” Clarke looked really startled.

“Oh, yes,” said Poirot gently. “I had no sooner spoken to him than I was aware that Cust
believed himself to be guilty
.”

“And even that didn't satisfy M. Poirot?” said Clarke.

“No. Because as soon as I saw him
I also knew that he could not be
guilty!
He has neither the nerve nor the daring—nor, I may add, the
brains
to plan! All along I have been aware of the dual personality of the murderer. Now I see wherein it consisted. Two people were involved—the real murderer, cunning, resourceful and daring—and the
pseudo
murderer, stupid, vacillating and suggestible.

“Suggestible—it is in that word that the mystery of Mr. Cust consists! It was not enough for you, Mr. Clarke, to devise this plan of a
series
to distract attention from a
single
crime. You had also to have a stalking horse.

“I think the idea first originated in your mind as the result of a chance encounter in a city coffee den with this odd personality with his bombastic Christian names. You were at that time turning over in your mind various plans for the murder of your brother.”

“Really? And why?”

“Because you were seriously alarmed for the future. I do not know whether you realize it, Mr. Clarke, but you played into my hands when you showed me a certain letter written to you by your brother. In it he displayed very clearly his affection and absorption in Miss Thora Grey. His regard may have been a paternal one—or he may have preferred to think it so. Nevertheless, there was a very real danger that on the death of your sister-in-law he might, in his loneliness, turn to this beautiful girl for sympathy and comfort and it might end—as so often happens with elderly men—in his marrying her. Your fear was increased by your knowledge of Miss Grey. You are, I fancy, an excellent, if somewhat cynical judge of character. You judged, whether correctly or not, that Miss Grey was a type of young woman ‘on the make.' You had no doubt that she would jump at the chance of becoming Lady Clarke. Your brother was an extremely healthy and vigorous man. There might
be children and your chance of inheriting your brother's wealth would vanish.

“You have been, I fancy, in essence a disappointed man all your life. You have been the rolling stone—and you have gathered very little moss. You were bitterly jealous of your brother's wealth.

“I repeat then that, turning over various schemes in your mind, your meeting with Mr. Cust gave you an idea. His bombastic Christian names, his account of his epileptic seizures and of his headaches, his whole shrinking and insignificant personality, struck you as fitting him for the tool you wanted. The whole alphabetical plan sprang into your mind—Cust's initials—the fact that your brother's name began with a C and that he lived at Churston were the nucleus of the scheme. You even went so far as to hint to Cust at his possible end—though you could hardly hope that that suggestion would bear the rich fruit that it did!

“Your arrangements were excellent. In Cust's name you wrote for a large consignment of hosiery to be sent to him. You yourself sent a number of A B C's looking like a similar parcel. You wrote to him—a typed letter purporting to be from the same firm offering him a good salary and commission. Your plans were so well laid beforehand that you typed all the letters that were sent subsequently,
and then presented him with the machine on which they had been typed
.

“You had now to look about for two victims whose names began with A and B respectively and who lived at places also beginning with those same letters.

“You hit on Andover as quite a likely spot and your preliminary reconnaissance there led you to select Mrs. Ascher's shop as the scene of the first crime. Her name was written clearly over the
door, and you found by experiment that she was usually alone in the shop. Her murder needed nerve, daring and reasonable luck.

“For the letter B you had to vary your tactics. Lonely women in shops might conceivably have been warned. I should imagine that you frequented a few cafés and teashops, laughing and joking with the girls there and finding out whose name began with the right letter and who would be suitable for your purpose.

“In Betty Barnard you found just the type of girl you were looking for. You took her out once or twice, explaining to her that you were a married man, and that outings must therefore take place in a somewhat hole-and-corner manner.

“Then, your preliminary plans completed, you set to work! You sent the Andover list to Cust, directing him to go there on a certain date, and you sent off the first A B C letter to me.

“On the appointed day you went to Andover—and killed Mrs. Ascher—without anything occurring to damage your plans.

“Murder No. 1 was successfully accomplished.

“For the second murder, you took the precaution of committing it, in reality,
the day before
. I am fairly certain that Betty Barnard was killed well before midnight on the 24th July.

“We now come to murder No. 3—the important—in fact, the
real
murder from your point of view.

“And here a full meed of praise is due to Hastings, who made a simple and obvious remark to which no attention was paid.

“He suggested that the third letter went astray intentionally!

“And he was right!…

“In that one simple fact lies the answer to the question that has puzzled me so all along. Why were the letters addressed in the first place to Hercule Poirot, a private detective, and not to the police?

“Erroneously I imagined some personal reason.

“Not at all! The letters were sent to me because the essence of your plan was that one of them
should be wrongly addressed and go astray
—but you cannot arrange for a letter addressed to the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard to go astray! It is necessary to have a
private
address. You chose me as a fairly well-known person, and a person who was sure to take the letters to the police—and also, in your rather insular mind, you enjoyed scoring off a foreigner.

“You addressed your envelope very cleverly—Whitehaven—Whitehorse—quite a natural slip. Only Hastings was sufficiently perspicacious to disregard subtleties and go straight for the obvious!

“Of course the letter was
meant
to go astray! The police were to be set on the trail
only when the murder was safely over
. Your brother's nightly walk provided you with the opportunity. And so successfully had the A B C terror taken hold on the public mind that the possibility of your guilt never occurred to anyone.

“After the death of your brother, of course, your object was accomplished. You had no wish to commit any more murders. On the other hand, if the murders stopped without reason, a suspicion of the truth might come to someone.

“Your stalking horse, Mr. Cust, had so successfully lived up to his role of the invisible—because insignificant—man, that so far no one had noticed that the same person had been seen in the vicinity of the three murders! To your annoyance, even his visit to Combeside had not been mentioned. The matter had passed completely out of Miss Grey's head.

“Always daring, you decided that one more murder must take place but this time the trail must be well blazed.

“You selected Doncaster for the scene of operations.

“Your plan was very simple. You yourself would be on the scene in the nature of things. Mr. Cust would be ordered to Doncaster by his firm. Your plan was to follow him round and trust to opportunity. Everything fell out well. Mr. Cust went to a cinema. That was simplicity itself. You sat a few seats away from him. When he got up to go, you did the same. You pretended to stumble, leaned over and stabbed a dozing man in the row in front, slid the A B C on to his knees and managed to collide heavily with Mr. Cust in the darkened doorway, wiping the knife on his sleeve and slipping it into his pocket.

“You were not in the least at pains to choose a victim whose name began with D. Anyone would do! You assumed—and quite rightly—that it would be considered to be a
mistake
. There was sure to be someone whose name began with D not far off in the audience. It would be assumed that he had been intended to be the victim.

“And now, my friends, let us consider the matter from the point of view of the false A B C—from the point of view of Mr. Cust.

“The Andover crime means nothing to him. He is shocked and surprised by the Bexhill crime—why, he himself was there about the time! Then comes the Churston crime and the headlines in the newspapers. An A B C crime at Andover when he was there, an A B C crime at Bexhill, and now another close by…Three crimes
and he has been at the scene of each of them.
Persons suffering from epilepsy often have blanks when they cannot remember what they have done…Remember that Cust was a nervous, highly neurotic subject and extremely suggestible.

“Then he receives the order to go to Doncaster.

“Doncaster! And the next A B C crime is to be in Doncaster. He must have felt as though it was fate. He loses his nerve, fancies his landlady is looking at him suspiciously, and tells her he is going to Cheltenham.

“He goes to Doncaster because it is his duty. In the afternoon he goes to a cinema. Possibly he dozes off for a minute or two.

“Imagine his feelings when on his return to his inn he discovers
that there is blood on his coat sleeve and a blood-stained knife in his pocket
. All his vague forebodings leap into certainty.