‘That is,’ she added, ‘if Captain Maitland doesn’t mind my staying?’

I’m not quite sure what Captain Maitland would have said. Poirot forestalled him.

‘Stay by all means, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘It is, indeed, necessary that you should.’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Necessary?’

‘That is the word I used, mademoiselle. There are some questions I shall have to ask you.’

Again her eyebrows went up but she said nothing further. She turned her face to the window as though determined to ignore what went on in the room behind her.

‘And now,’ said Captain Maitland, ‘perhaps we shall get at the truth!’

He spoke rather impatiently. He was essentially a man of action. At this very moment I felt sure that he was fretting to be out and doing things – directing the search for Father Lavigny’s body, or alternatively sending out parties for his capture and arrest.

He looked at Poirot with something akin to dislike.

‘If the beggar’s got anything to say, why doesn’t he say it?’

I could see the words on the tip of his tongue.

Poirot gave a slow appraising glance at us all, then rose to his feet.

I don’t know what I expected him to say – something dramatic certainly. He was that kind of person.

But I certainly didn’t expect him to start off with a phrase in Arabic.

Yet that is what happened. He said the words slowly and solemnly – and really quite religiously, if you know what I mean.

‘Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim.’

And then he gave the translation in English.

‘In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.’

Chapter 27. Beginning of a Journey

‘Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim. That is the Arab phrase used before starting out on a journey.Eh bien, we too start on a journey. A journey into the past. A journey into the strange places of the human soul.’

I don’t think that up till that moment I’d ever felt any of the so-called ‘glamour of the East’. Frankly, what had struck me was the mess everywhere. But suddenly, with M. Poirot’s words, a queer sort of vision seemed to grow up before my eyes. I thought of words like Samarkand and Ispahan – and of merchants with long beards – and kneeling camels – and staggering porters carrying great bales on their backs held by a rope round the forehead – and women with henna-stained hair and tattooed faces kneeling by the Tigris and washing clothes, and I heard their queer wailing chants and the far-off groaning of the water-wheel.

They were mostly things I’d seen and heard and thought nothing much of. But now, somehow they seemed different – like a piece of fusty old stuff you take into the light and suddenly see the rich colours of an old embroidery…

Then I looked round the room we were sitting in and I got a queer feeling that what M. Poirot said was true – we were all starting on a journey. We were here together now, but we were all going our different ways.

And I looked at everyone as though, in a sort of way, I were seeing them for the first time – and for the last time – which sounds stupid, but it was what I felt all the same.

Mr Mercado was twisting his fingers nervously – his queer light eyes with their dilated pupils were staring at Poirot. Mrs Mercado was looking at her husband. She had a strange watchful look like a tigress waiting to spring. Dr Leidner seemed to have shrunk in some curious fashion. This last blow had just crumpled him up. You might almost say he wasn’t in the room at all. He was somewhere far away in a place of his own. Mr Coleman was looking straight at Poirot. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes protruded. He looked almost idiotic. Mr Emmott was looking down at his feet and I couldn’t see his face properly. Mr Reiter looked bewildered. His mouth was pushed out in a pout and that made him look more like a nice clean pig than ever. Miss Reilly was looking steadily out of the window. I don’t know what she was thinking or feeling. Then I looked at Mr Carey, and somehow his face hurt me and I looked away. There we were, all of us. And somehow I felt that when M. Poirot had finished we’d all be somewhere quite different…

It was a queer feeling…

Poirot’s voice went quietly on. It was like a river running evenly between its banks…running to the sea…

‘From the very beginning I have felt that to understand this case one must seek not for external signs or clues, but for the truer clues of the clash of personalities and the secrets of the heart.

‘And I may say that though I have now arrived at what I believe to be the true solution of the case, I have no material proof of it. I know it is so, because it must be so, because in no other way can every single fact fit into its ordered and recognized place.

‘And that, to my mind, is the most satisfying solution there can be.’

He paused and then went on:

‘I will start my journey at the moment when I myself was brought into the case – when I had it presented to me as an accomplished happening. Now, every case, in my opinion, has a definite shape and form. The pattern of this case, to my mind, all revolved round the personality of Mrs Leidner. Until I knew exactly what kind of a woman Mrs Leidner was I should not be able to know why she was murdered and who murdered her.

‘That, then, was my starting point – the personality of Mrs Leidner.

‘There was also one other psychological point of interest – the curious state of tension described as existing amongst the members of the expedition. This was attested to by several different witnesses – some of them outsiders – and I made a note that although hardly a starting point, it should nevertheless be borne in mind during my investigations.

‘The accepted idea seemed to be that it was directly the result of Mrs Leidner’s influence on the members of the expedition, but for reasons which I will outline to you later this did not seem to me entirely acceptable.

‘To start with, as I say, I concentrated solely and entirely on the personality of Mrs Leidner. I had various means of assessing that personality. There were the reactions she produced in a number of people, all varying widely in character and temperament, and there was what I could glean by my own observation. The scope of the latter was naturally limited. But I did learn certain facts.

‘Mrs Leidner’s tastes were simple and even on the austere side. She was clearly not a luxurious woman. On the other hand, some embroidery she had been doing was of an extreme fineness and beauty. That indicated a woman of fastidious and artistic taste. From the observation of the books in her bedroom I formed a further estimate. She had brains, and I also fancied that she was, essentially, an egoist.

‘It had been suggested to me that Mrs Leidner was a woman whose main preoccupation was to attract the opposite sex – that she was, in fact, a sensual woman. This I did not believe to be the case.

‘In her bedroom I noticed the following books on a shelf: Who were the Greeks?, Introduction to Relativity, Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, Back to Methuselah, Linda Condon, Crewe Train.

‘She had, to begin with, an interest in culture and in modern science – that is, a distinct intellectual side. Of the novels, Linda Condon, and in a lesser degree Crewe Train, seemed to show that Mrs Leidner had a sympathy and interest in the independent woman – unencumbered or entrapped by man. She was also obviously interested by the personality of Lady Hester Stanhope. Linda Condon is an exquisite study of the worship of her own beauty by a woman. Crewe Train is a study of a passionate individualist, Back to Methuselah is in sympathy with the intellectual rather than the emotional attitude to life. I felt that I was beginning to understand the dead woman.