“Yes.”
“But if the tracks are obliterated, how do you know?”
“Because, blurred as they are, the prints of the woman’s shoe are unmistakable. Also, by this—” And, leaning forward, he drew something from the handle of the dagger and held it up for me to see. It was a woman’s long black hair—similar to the one Poirot had taken from the arm-chair in the library.
With a slightly ironic smile he wound it round the dagger again.
“We will leave things as they are as much as possible,” he explained. “It pleases the examining magistrate. Eh bien, do you notice anything else?”
I was forced to shake my head.
“Look at his hands.”
I did. The nails were broken and discoloured, and the skin was hard. It hardly enlightened me as much as I should have liked it to have done. I looked up at Giraud.
“They are not the hands of a gentleman,” he said, answering my look. “On the contrary his clothes are those of a well-to-do man. That is curious, is it not?”
“Very curious,” I agreed.
“And none of his clothing is marked. What do we learn from that? This man was trying to pass himself off as other than he was. He was masquerading. Why? Did he fear something? Was he trying to escape by disguising himself? As yet we do not know, but one thing we do know—he was as anxious to conceal his identity as we are to discover it.”
He looked down at the body again.
“As before there are no finger-prints on the handle of the dagger. The murderer again wore gloves.”
“You think, then, that the murderer was the same in both cases?” I asked eagerly.
Giraud became inscrutable.
“Never mind what I think. We shall see. Marchaud!”
