Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/37

 know what I should dokill myself perhaps! I couldn’t live without you. Sometimes I fancy another woman is coming between us. Let her look out, that’s alland you too! I’d as soon kill You as let her have you! I mean it.

But there, I’m writing high-flown nonsense. You love me, and I love youyes, love you, love you, love you!

Your own adoring

Bella.

There was no address or date. Poirot handed it back with a grave face.

“And the assumption is, M. le juge?”

The examining magistrate shrugged his shoulders. “Obviously M. Renauld was entangled with this EnglishwomanBella. He comes over here, meets Madame Daubreuil, and starts an intrigue with her. He cools off to the other, and she instantly suspects something. This letter contains a distinct threat. M. Poirot, at first sight the case seemed simplicity itself. Jealousy! The fact that M. Renauld was stabbed in the back seemed to point distinctly to its being a woman’s crime.”

Poirot nodded.

“The stab in the back, yesbut not the grave! That was laborious work, hard workno woman dug that grave, monsieur. That was a man’s doing.”

The commissary exclaimed excitedly, “Yes, yes, you are right. We did not think of that.”

“As I said,” continued M. Hautet, “at first sight the case seemed simple, but the masked men and the letter you received from M. Renauld complicate matters. Here we seem to have an entirely different set of circumstances, with no relationship between the two. As regards the letter written to yourself, do you think it is possible that it referred in any way to this Bella, and her threats?”

Poirot shook his head.

“Hardly. A man like M. Renauld, who has led an adventurous life in out-of-the-way places, would not be likely to ask for protection against a woman.”

The examining magistrate nodded his head emphatically.