Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/219

 his millions, the marriage can take place at once, and at a stroke she will attain wealthnot the beggarly thousands that have been extracted from him so far. And her clever brain takes in the simplicity of the thing. It is all so easy. M. Renauld is planning all the circumstances of his deathshe has only to step in at the right moment and turn the farce into a grim reality. And here comes in the sccond point which led me infallibly to Marthe Daubreuilthe dagger! Jack Renauld had three souvenirs made. One he gave to his mother, one to Bella Duveen; was it not highly probable that he had given the third one to Marthe Daubreuil?

“So then, to sum up, there were four points of note against Marthe Daubreuil:

“(1) Marthe Daubreuil could have overheard M. Renauld’s plans.

“(2) Marthe Daubreuil had a direct interest in causing M. Renauld's death.

“(3) Marthe Daubreuil was the daughter of the notorious Madame Beroldy, who in my opinion was morally and virtually the murderess of her husband, although it may have been Georges Conneau’s hand which struck the actual blow.

“(4) Marthe Daubreuil was the only person, besides Jack Renauld, likely to have the third dagger in her possession.”

Poirot paused and cleared his throat.

“Of course, when I learned of the existence of the other girl, Bella Duveen, I realized that it was quite possible that she might have killed M. Renauld. The solution did not commend itself to me, because, as I pointed out to you, Hastings, an expert, such as I am, likes to meet a foeman worthy of his steel. Still one must take crimes as one finds them, not as one would like them to be. It did not seem very likely that Bella Duveen would be wandering about carrying a souvenir paper-knife in her hand, but of course she might have had some idea all the time of revenging herself on Jack Renauld. When she actually came forward and confessed to the murder, it seemed that all was over. And yetI was not satisfied, ''mon ami. I was not satisfied.''

“I went over the case again minutely, and I came to the