Twenty-eight

JOURNEY’S END

Poirot looked round. Every eye was now fixed¹ upon him. There had been a certain relaxation—aslackening of tension. Now the tension suddenly returned.

There was something coming .?.?. something .?.?.

Poirot’s voice, quiet and unimpassioned, went on: “The letters, the roof, ‘the window’ .?.?.

Yes, everything was explained—everything fell into place.

“I said just now that three men had alibis³ for the time of the crime. Two of those alibis I haveshown to be worthless. I saw now my great—my amazing mistake. The third alibi² was worthlesstoo. Not only could Dr.?Leidner have committed the murder—but I was convinced that he hadcommitted it.”

There was a silence, a bewildered, uncomprehending silence. Dr.?Leidner said nothing. Heseemed lost in his faraway world still. David Emmott, however, stirred uneasily and spoke⁴.

“I don’t know what you mean to imply, M.?Poirot. I told you that Dr.?Leidner never left theroof until at least a quarter to three. That is the absolute truth. I swear it solemnly. I am not lying.

And it would have been quite impossible for him to have done so without my seeing him.”

Poirot nodded.

“Oh, I believe you. Dr.?Leidner did not leave the roof. That is an undisputed fact. But what Isaw—and what Miss?Johnson had seen—was that Dr.?Leidner could murder his wife from the roofwithout leaving it.”

We all stared.

“The window,” cried Poirot. “Her window! That is what I realized—just as Miss?Johnsonrealized it. Her window was directly underneath⁵, on the side away from the courtyard. AndDr.?Leidner was alone up there with no one to witness his actions. And those heavy stone quernsand grinders were up there all ready to his hand. So simple, so very simple, granted one thing—that the murderer had the opportunity to move the body before anyone else saw it .?.?. Oh, it isbeautiful—of an unbelievable simplicity⁶!

“Listen—it went like this:

“Dr.?Leidner is on the roof working with the pottery⁷. He calls you up, Mr.?Emmott, and whilehe holds you in talk he notices that, as usually happens, the small boy takes advantage of yourabsence to leave his work and go outside the courtyard. He keeps you with him ten minutes, thenhe lets you go and as soon as you are down below shouting to the boy he sets his plan in operation.

“He takes from his pocket the plasticine-smeared mask with which he has already scared hiswife on a former occasion and dangles⁸ it over the edge of the parapet till it taps on his wife’swindow.

“That, remember, is the window giving on the countryside facing the opposite direction to thecourtyard.

“Mrs.?Leidner is lying on her bed half asleep. She is peaceful and happy. Suddenly the maskbegins tapping on the window and attracts her attention. But it is not dusk now—it is broaddaylight—there is nothing terrifying about it. She recognizes it for what it is—a crude form oftrickery! She is not frightened but indignant. She does what any other woman would do in herplace. Jumps off the bed, opens the window, passes her head through the bars and turns her faceupward to see who is playing the trick on her.

“Dr.?Leidner is waiting. He has in his hands, poised⁹ and ready, a heavy quern. At thepsychological moment he drops it. .?.?.

“With a faint cry (heard by Miss?Johnson) Mrs.?Leidner collapses¹⁰ on the rug underneath thewindow.

“Now there is a hole in this quern, and through that Dr.?Leidner had previously¹¹ passed a cord.

He has now only to haul in the cord and bring up the quern. He replaces the latter neatly,bloodstained side down, amongst the other objects of that kind on the roof.

“Then he continues his work for an hour or more till he judges the moment has come for thesecond act. He descends¹² the stairs, speaks to Mr.?Emmott and Nurse Leatheran, crosses thecourtyard and enters his wife’s room. This is the explanation he himself gives of his movementsthere:

“ ‘I saw my wife’s body in a heap by the bed. For a moment or two I felt paralysed as thoughI couldn’t move. Then at last I went and knelt down by her and lifted up her head. I saw she wasdead . . . At last I got up. I felt dazed and as though I were drunk. I managed to get to the door andcall out.’

“A perfectly¹³ possible account of the actions of a grief-dazed man. Now listen to what Ibelieve to be the truth. Dr.?Leidner enters the room, hurries to the window, and, having pulled on apair of gloves, closes and fastens it, then picks up his wife’s body and transports it to a positionbetween the bed and the door. Then he notices a slight stain on the window-side rug. He cannotchange it with the other rug, they are a different size, but he does the next best thing. He puts thestained rug in front of the washstand and the rug from the washstand under the window. If thestain is noticed, it will be connected with the washstand—not with the window—a very importantpoint. There must be no suggestion that the window played any part in the business. Then hecomes to the door and acts the part of the overcome husband, and that, I imagine, is not difficult.

For he did love his wife.”

“My good man,” cried Dr.?Reilly impatiently, “if he loved her, why did he kill her? Where’sthe motive¹⁴? Can’t you speak, Leidner? Tell him he’s mad.”

Dr.?Leidner neither spoke nor moved.

Poirot said: “Did I not tell you all along that this was a crime passionnel? Why did her firsthusband, Frederick Bosner, threaten to kill her? Because he loved her .?.?. And in the end, you see,he made his boast good. .?.?.

“Mais oui—mais oui—once I realize that it is Dr.?Leidner who did the killing¹⁵, everythingfalls into place. .?.?.

“For the second time, I recommence my journey from the beginning—Mrs.?Leidner’s firstmarriage—the threatening letters—her second marriage. The letters prevented her marrying anyother man—but they did not prevent her marrying Dr.?Leidner. How simple that is—if Dr.?Leidneris actually Frederick Bosner.

“Once more let us start our journey—from the point of view this time of young FrederickBosner.

“To begin with, he loves his wife Louise with an overpowering passion such as only awoman of her kind can evoke¹⁶. She betrays him. He is sentenced to death. He escapes. He isinvolved in a railway accident but he manages to emerge with a second personality—that of ayoung Swedish archaeologist, Eric Leidner, whose body is badly disfigured and who will beconveniently buried as Frederick Bosner.

“What is the new Eric Leidner’s attitude to the woman who was willing to send him to hisdeath? First and most important, he still loves her. He sets to work to build up his new life. He is aman of great ability, his profession is congenial to him and he makes a success of it. But he neverforgets the ruling passion of his life. He keeps himself informed of his wife’s movements. Of onething he is cold-bloodedly determined¹⁷ (remember Mrs.?Leidner’s own description of him to NurseLeatheran—gentle and kind but ruthless), she shall belong to no other man. Whenever he judges itnecessary he despatches a letter. He imitates some of the peculiarities¹⁸ of her handwriting in caseshe should think of taking his letters to the police. Women who write sensational¹⁹ anonymousletters to themselves are such a common phenomenon that the police will be sure to jump to thatsolution given the likeness²¹ of the handwriting. At the same time he leaves her in doubt as towhether he is really alive or not.

“At last, after many years, he judges that the time has arrived; he reenters her life. All goeswell. His wife never dreams of his real identity. He is a well-known man. The upstanding, good-looking young fellow is now a middle-aged²² man with a beard and stooping shoulders. And so wesee history repeating itself. As before, Frederick is able to dominate Louise. For the second timeshe consents to marry him. And no letter comes to forbid the banns.

“But afterwards a letter does come. Why?

“I think that Dr.?Leidner was taking no chances. The intimacy²³ of marriage might awaken²⁴ amemory. He wishes to impress on his wife, once and for all, that Eric Leidner and FrederickBosner are two different people. So much so that a threatening letter comes from the former onaccount of the latter. The rather puerile²⁵ gas poisoning business follows—arranged by Dr.?Leidner,of course. Still with the same object in view.

“After that he is satisfied. No more letters need come. They can settle down to happy marriedlife together.

“And then, after nearly two years, the letters recommence.

“Why? Eh bien, I think I know. Because the threat underlying²⁶ the letters was always agenuine threat. (That is why Mrs.?Leidner has always been frightened. She knew her Frederick’sgentle but ruthless nature.) If she belongs to any other man but him he would kill her. And she hasgiven herself to Richard Carey.

“And so, having discovered this, cold-bloodedly, calmly, Dr.?Leidner prepares the scene formurder.

“You see now the important part played by Nurse Leatheran? Dr.?Leidner’s rather curiousconduct (it puzzled me at the very first) in securing her services for his wife is explained. It wasvital that a reliable professional witness should be able to state incontrovertibly that Mrs.?Leidnerhad been dead over an hour when her body was found—that is, that she had been killed at a timewhen everybody could swear her husband was on the roof. A suspicion might have arisen that hehad killed her when he entered the room and found the body—but that was out of the questionwhen a trained hospital nurse would assert positively²⁷ that she had already been dead an hour.

“Another thing that is explained is the curious state of tension and strain that had come overthe expedition this year. I never from the first thought that that could be attributed solely²⁸ toMrs.?Leidner’s influence. For several years this particular expedition had had a reputation forhappy good fellowship. In my opinion, the state of mind of a community is always directly due tothe influence of the man at the top. Dr.?Leidner, quiet though he was, was a man of greatpersonality. It was due to his tact²⁹, to his judgment³⁰, to his sympathetic manipulation of humanbeings that the atmosphere had always been such a happy one.

“If there was a change, therefore, the change must be due to the man at the top—in otherwords, to Dr.?Leidner. It was Dr.?Leidner, not Mrs.?Leidner, who was responsible for the tensionand uneasiness. No wonder the staff felt the change without understanding it. The kindly³¹, genialDr.?Leidner, outwardly the same, was only playing the part of himself. The real man was anobsessed fanatic³² plotting to kill.

“And now we will pass on to the second murder — that of Miss?Johnson. In tidying upDr.?Leidner’s papers in the office (a job she took on herself unasked, craving³³ for something to do)she must have come on some unfinished draft of one of the anonymous²⁰ letters.

“It must have been both incomprehensible and extremely upsetting to her! Dr.?Leidner hasbeen deliberately³⁴ terrorizing his wife! She cannot understand it—but it upsets her badly. It is inthis mood that Nurse Leatheran discovers her crying.

“I do not think at the moment that she suspected Dr.?Leidner of being the murderer, but myexperiments with sounds in Mrs.?Leidner’s and Father Lavigny’s rooms are not lost upon her. Sherealizes that if it was Mrs.?Leidner’s cry she heard, the window in her room must have been open,not shut. At the moment that conveys nothing vital to her, but she remembers it.

“Her mind goes on working—ferreting its way towards the truth. Perhaps she makes somereference to the letters which Dr.?Leidner understands and his manner changes. She may see thathe is, suddenly, afraid.

“But Dr.?Leidner cannot have killed his wife! He was on the roof all the time.

“And then, one evening, as she herself is on the roof puzzling about it, the truth comes to herin a flash. Mrs.?Leidner has been killed from up here, through the open window.

“It was at that minute that Nurse Leatheran found her.

“And immediately, her old affection reasserting itself, she puts up a quick camouflage³⁵. NurseLeatheran must not guess the horrifying³⁶ discovery she has just made.

“She looks deliberately in the opposite direction (towards the courtyard) and makes a remarksuggested to her by Father Lavigny’s appearance as he crosses the courtyard.

“She refuses to say more. She has got to ‘think things out.’

“And Dr.?Leidner, who has been watching her anxiously, realizes that she knows the truth.

She is not the kind of woman to conceal³⁷ her horror and distress³⁸ from him.

“It is true that as yet she has not given him away—but how long can he depend upon her?

“Murder is a habit. That night he substitutes a glass of acid for her glass of water. There isjust a chance she may be believed to have deliberately poisoned herself. There is even a chanceshe may be considered to have done the first murder and has now been overcome with remorse³⁹. Tostrengthen the latter idea he takes the quern from the roof and puts it under her bed.

“No wonder that poor Miss?Johnson, in her death agony, could only try desperately⁴⁰ to imparther hard- won information. Through ‘the window,’ that is how Mrs.?Leidner was killed, notthrough the door—through the window. .?.?.

“And so thus, everything is explained, everything falls into place .?.?. Psychologically perfect.

“But there is no proof .?.?. No proof at all .?.?.”

None of us spoke. We were lost in a sea of horror .?.?. Yes, and not only horror. Pity, too.

Dr.?Leidner had neither moved nor spoken. He sat just as he had done all along. A tired, wornelderly man.

At last he stirred slightly and looked at Poirot with gentle, tired eyes.

“No,” he said, “there is no proof. But that does not matter. You knew that I would not denytruth .?.?. I have never denied truth .?.?. I think—really—I am rather glad .?.?. I’m so tired. .?.?.”

Then he said simply: “I’m sorry about Anne. That was bad—senseless—it wasn’t me! Andshe suffered, too, poor soul. Yes, that wasn’t me. It was fear. .?.?.”

A little smile just hovered⁴¹ on his pain-twisted lips.

“You would have made a good archaeologist, M.?Poirot. You have the gift of recreating thepast.

“It was all very much as you said.

“I loved Louise and I killed her .?.?. if you’d known Louise you’d have understood .?.?. No, Ithink you understand anyway. .?.?.”

 

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