Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/143

 to be a consummate actress, then by all means assume her to be one. But is it necessary? I do not believe Madame Renauld to be in league with Madame Daubreuil for several reasons, some of which I have already enumerated to you. The others are self-evident. Therefore, that possibility eliminated, we draw very near to the truth, which is, as always, very curious and interesting.”

“Poirot,” I cried. “what more do you know?”

“Mon ami, you must make your own deductions. You have access to the facts! Concentrate your gray cells. Reasonnot like Giraudbut like Hercule Poirot.”

“But are you sure?”

"My friend, in many ways I have been an imbecile. But at last I see clearly.”

“You know everything?”

“I have discovered what M. Renauld sent for me to discover.”

“And you know the murderer?”

“I know one murderer.”

“What do you mean?”

“We talk a little at cross-purposes. There are here not one crime, but two. The first I have solved, the secondeh bien, I will confess, I am not sure!”

“But, Poirot, I thought you said the man in the shed had died a natural death?”

“Ta-ta-ta.” Poirot made his favorite ejaculation of impatience. “Still you do not understand. One may have a crime without a murderer, but for two crimes it is essential to have two bodies.”

His remark struck me as so peculiarly lacking in lucidity that I looked at him in some anxiety. But he appeared perfectly normal. Suddenly he rose and strolled to the window.

“Here he is,” he observed.

“Who?”

“M. Jack Renauld. I sent a note up to the villa to ask him to come here.”

That changed the course of my ideas, and I asked Poirot if he knew that Jack Renauld had been in Merlinville on the night of the crime. I had hoped to catch my astute little