Agatha Christie - The Secret of Chimneys

'Look well,' said Anthony. 'Don't be put off by the makeup. She was an actress once, remember.'

The Baron stared again. Suddenly he started.

'God in heaven,' he breathed, 'it is not possible.'

'What is not possible?' asked George. 'Who is the lady? You recognize her, Baron?'

'No, no, it is not possible.' The Baron continued to mutter. 'She was killed. They were both killed. On the steps of the palace. Her body was recovered.'

'Mutilated and unrecognizable,' Anthony reminded him. She managed to put up a bluff. I think she escaped to America, and has spent a good many years lying low in deadly terror of the Comrades of the Red Hand. They promoted the revolution, remember, and, to use an expressive phrase, they always had it in for her. Then King Victor was released, and they planned to recover the diamond together. She was searching for it that night when she came suddenly upon Prince Michael, and he recognized her. There was never much fear of her meeting him in the ordinary way of things. Royal guests don't come in contact with governesses, and she could always retire with a convenient migraine, as she did the day the Baron was here.

'However, she met Prince Michael face to face when she least expected it. Exposure and disgrace stared her in the face. She shot him. It was she who placed the revolver in Isaacstein's suitcase, so as to confuse the trial, and she who returned the letters.'

Lemoine moved forward.

'She was coming down to search for the jewel that night, you say,' he said. 'Might she not have been going to meet her accomplice, King Victor, who was coming from outside? Eh? What do you say to that?'

Anthony sighed.

'Still at it, my dear Lemoine? How persistent you are! You won't take my hint that I've got a trump card up my sleeve?'

But George, whose mind worked slowly, now broke in.

'I am still completely at sea. Who was this lady, Baron? You recognize her, it seems?'

But the Baron drew himself up and stood very straight and stiff.

'You are in error, Mr Lomax. To my knowledge I have not this lady seen before. A complete stranger she is to me.'

'But -' George stared at him bewildered. The Baron took him into a corner of the room, and murmured something into his ear. Anthony watched with a good deal of enjoyment, George's face turning slowly purple, his eyes bulging, and all the incipient symptoms of apoplexy. A murmur of George's throaty voice came to him.

'Certainly... certainly... by all means... no need at all... complicate situation... utmost discretion.'

'Ah!' Lemoine hit the table sharply with his hand. 'I do not care about all this! The murder of Prince Michael - that was not my affair. I want King Victor.'

Anthony shook his head gently

'I'm sorry for you, Lemoine. You're really a very able fellow. But, all the same, you're going to lose the trick. I'm about to play my trump card.'

He stepped across the room and rang the bell. Tredwell answered it.

'A gentleman arrived with me this evening, Tredwell.'

'Yes, sir, a foreign gentleman.'

'Quite so. Will you kindly ask him to join us here as soon as possible?'

'Yes, sir.'

Tredwell withdrew.

'Entry of the trump card, the mysterious Monsieur X,' remarked Anthony. 'Who is he? Can anyone guess?'

'Putting two and two together,' said Herman Isaacstein, 'what with your mysterious hints this morning, and your attitude this afternoon, I should say there was no doubt about it. Somehow or other you've managed to get hold of Prince Nicholas of Herzoslovakia.'

'You think the same, Baron?'

'I do. Unless yet another impostor you have put forward. But that I will not believe. With me, your dealings most honourable have been.'

'Thank you, Baron. I shan't forget those words. So you are all agreed?'

His eyes swept round the circle of waiting faces. Only Lemoine did not respond, but kept his eyes fixed sullenly on the table.

Anthony's quick ears had caught the sound of footsteps outside in the hall.

'And yet, you know,' he said with a queer smile, 'you're all wrong!'

He crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open.

A man stood on the threshold - a man with a neat black beard, eyeglasses, and a foppish appearance slightly marred by a bandage round the head.

'Allow me to present you to the real Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté.'

There was a rush and a scuffle, and then the nasal tones of Mr Hiram Fish rose bland and reassuring from the window:

'No, you don't, sonny - not this way. I have been stationed here this whole evening for the particular purpose of preventing your escape. You will observe that I have you covered well and good with this gun of mine. I came over to get you, and I've got you - but you sure are some lad!'

'You owe us an explanation, I think, Mr Cade,' said Herman Isaacstein, somewhat later in the evening.

'There's nothing much to explain,' said Anthony modestly. 'I went to Dover and Fish followed me under the impression that I was King Victor. We found a mysterious stranger imprisoned there, and as soon as we heard his story we knew where we were. The same idea again, you see. The real man kidnapped, and the false one - in this case King Victor himself - takes his place. But it seems that Battle here always thought there was something fishy about his French colleague, and wired to Paris for his fingerprints and other means of identification.'

'Ah!' cried the Baron. 'The fingerprints. The Bertillon measurements that that scoundrel talked about?'

'It was a clever idea,' said Anthony. 'I admired it so much that I felt forced to play it up. Besides, my doing so puzzled the false Lemoine enormously. You see, as soon as I had given the tip about the "rows" and where the jewel really was, he was keen to pass on the news to his accomplice, and at the same time to keep us all in that room. The note was really to Mademoiselle Brun. He told Tredwell to deliver it at once, and Tredwell did so by taking it upstairs to the schoolroom. Lemoine accused me of being King Victor, by that means creating a diversion and preventing anyone from leaving the room. By the time all that had been cleared up and we adjourned to the library to look for the stone, he flattered himself that the stone would be no longer there to find!'

George cleared his throat.

'I must say, Mr Cade,' he said pompously, 'that I consider your action in that matter highly reprehensible. If the slightest hitch had occurred in your plans, one of our national possessions might have disappeared beyond the hope of recovery. It was foolhardy, Mr Cade, reprehensibly foolhardy.'

'I guess you haven't tumbled to the little idea, Mr Lomax,' said the drawling voice of Mr Fish. 'That historic diamond was never behind the books in the library.'

'Never?'

'Not on your life.'

'You see,' explained Anthony, 'that little device of Count Stylptitch's stood for what it had originally stood for - a rose. When that dawned upon me on Monday afternoon, I went straight to the rose garden. Mr Fish had already tumbled to the same idea. If, standing with your back to the sundial, you take seven paces straight forward, then eight to the left and three to the right you come to some bushes of a bright red rose called Richmond. The house has been ransacked to find the hiding-place, but nobody has thought of digging in the garden. I suggest a little digging party tomorrow morning.'

'Then the story about the books in the library -'

'An invention of mine to trap the lady. Mr Fish kept watch on the terrace, and whistled when the psychological moment had arrived. I may say that Mr Fish and I established martial law at the Dover house, and prevented the Comrades from communicating with the false Lemoine. He sent them an order to clear out, and word was conveyed to him that this had been done. So he went happily ahead with his plans for denouncing me.'