‘You play dominoes very well, I believe.’

Mr Cust was a little flurried by this.

‘I—I—well, I believe I do.’

‘It is a very absorbing game, is it not, with a lot of skill in it?’

‘Oh, there’s a lot of play in it—a lot of play! We used to play a lot in the city, in the lunch hour. You’d be surprised the way total strangers come together over a game of dominoes.’

He chuckled.

‘I remember one man—I’ve never forgotten him because of something he told me—we just got talking over a cup of coffee, and we started dominoes. Well, I felt after twenty minutes that I’d known that man all my life.’

‘What was it that he told you?’ asked Poirot.

Mr Cust’s face clouded over.

‘It gave me a turn—a nasty turn. Talking of your fate being written in your hand, he was. And he showed me his hand and the lines that showed he’d have two near escapes of being drowned—and he had had two near escapes. And then he looked at mine and he told me some amazing things. Said I was going to be one of the most celebrated men in England before I died. Said the whole country would be talking about me. But he said—he said…’

Mr Cust broke down—faltered…

‘Yes?’

Poirot’s gaze held a quiet magnetism. Mr Cust looked at him, looked away, then back again like a fascinated rabbit.

‘He said—he said—that it looked as though I might die a violent death—and he laughed and said: “Almost looks as though you might die on the scaffold,” and then he laughed and said that was only his joke…’

He was silent suddenly. His eyes left Poirot’s face—they ran from side to side…

‘My head—I suffer very badly with my head…the headaches are something cruel sometimes. And then there are times when I don’t know—when I don’t know…’

He broke down.

Poirot leant forward. He spoke very quietly but with great assurance.

‘But you do know, don’t you,’ he said, ‘that you committed the murders?’

Mr Cust looked up. His glance was quite simple and direct. All resistance had left him. He looked strangely at peace.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’

‘But—I am right, am I not?—you don’t know why you did them?’

Mr Cust shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

Chapter 34

Poirot Explains

We were sitting in a state of tense attention to listen to Poirot’s final explanation of the case.

‘All along,’ he said, ‘I have been worried over the why of this case. Hastings said to me the other day that the case was ended. I replied to him that the case was the man! The mystery was not the mystery of the murders, but the mystery of A B C. Why did he find it necessary to commit these murders? Why did he select me as his adversary?

‘It is no answer to say that the man was mentally unhinged. To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his actions as a sane man—given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.