(ACT V)

     I remembered the next morning distinctly because of what I saw in the paper.

     “Look here, Poirot! ‘Blue Beetle Wins Derby!’”

     “You are certain that this is today’s paper, mon ami?”

     “Of course!  And my horse won because I was wearing a blue jacket yesterday!”

     “You may think that, Hastings, but you will never have the chance to see what would have happened if you had not worn it. It really would have made no difference, but the power of—”

     Whenever he stopped talking like that in the middle of a sentence I knew some revelation had struck him. He paced around the hotel room in a burst of energy, running his hands together and shaking his head.

     “I have been stupid, Hastings, a total imbecile!” he said.

     “What about, my dear fellow?”

     “The power of suggestion, it is so simple!”

     He got on the telephone and rang up some record office to inquire about old birth certificates. I couldn’t understand what he was doing, and so I left him to it. When we left the hotel, we could see fire engines driving in haste and great commotion in the street.

     “I say, what’s going on?”

     “Those fire engines, they are heading, unless Poirot is mistaken, to Lord Macduff’s house, and I am too late.” He stamped his foot on the pavement.

     A young man spotted us and came running down the sidewalk with a tall man in a trench coat at his side.

     “You’re Hercule Poirot, aren’t you?”

      My friend bowed.

    “My name is Fleance Banquo, and this is Inspector Siward from Scotland Yard. You must have heard what happened to my father.”

     “Yes, we did.” I said. “Terribly sorry.” 

     “But sir, I now know there are men out to finish the job,” said Fleance.

     “How do you know this, Monsieur?”

     “I saw what happened to Macduff’s house. His whole household has been burnt to death,” said Inspector Siward.

     “Good Lord!” I cried.

     “This was done to drive us out; they know that wherever Macduff is, I will be,” said Fleance.

     “You believe this was arson, which has yet to be proven. Monsieur Banquo, who do you believe is trying to kill you?”

     He looked at the man beside him.

     “I dare not say anything until I’m sure.”

     “That is most wise of you,” said Poirot, “Can you take me to where Lord Macduff is?”

     “Yes, he’s in hiding with Malcolm Duncan,” said the inspector.

     We got in a car and drove to a very private house. There were two people in the sitting room: Macduff sat with his hands clenched in his lap, his face drawn and pale. Malcolm, ever kingly, sat back in an armchair like a throne.

     “I don’t want to sit here,” said Macduff. “How can I do nothing when I’ve lost everything?”

     “Your waiting will end soon; I promise you that. I think I can help you have your revenge,” said Poirot.

     “What have you found out, sir, that I did not suspect?” said Malcolm.

     We heard the door open and close; another man came in and went to Inspector Siward.

     “The arsonist has been taken,” he said.

     “Excellent. Inspector, I have some instructions for your men that may sound peculiar.”

     Poirot took the inspector aside and whispered to him.

    “Now we proceed to the car, and Castle Glamis,” he said. 

     The five of us filed into Macduff’s car and we returned to the castle, but as we discovered from the servant at the door (a different one than the drunkard), Lord Macbeth was not at his castle but at one of the estates he had acquired at Dunsinane. The servant there we did not recognize either.

     “Lord Macbeth does not wish to have any visitors today. He has moved here for the sake of his wife’s health.”

     “Oh, but I think he will wish to speak to Hercule Poirot.”

     The servant disappeared for a minute during which time I saw Poirot and Siward look off expectantly at the garden, and when the servant returned, he opened the door all the way to admit us.

     “Lord Macbeth will see you.”

     “Merci,” said Poirot.

     We were shown into the sitting room, where Lord Macbeth was lounging, looking the worst I had ever seen him. His eyes were like black, sunken sockets, his face as white as the window drapes. He jumped up when he saw Malcolm.

     “What is that murderer doing in my castle?”

     “Calm yourself, Lord Macbeth; please to sit down,” said Poirot. “I thank you all for cooperating. Inspector, no one is to leave this room.”

     “What is this—what’s going on?” said Macduff.

      Macbeth sat with his hands clenched and his eyes narrowly moving between each of us.

     “What do you want here?” said Macbeth.

     My friend said nothing; he strolled to the window and gently brushed the drapes.

     “From the beginning, there have been many puzzling features about this case. And yet, once the hidden motive was explained, it was simplicity itself.”

     “Save your talk for later, Poirot. I want to know who murdered my family and why,” said Macduff.

     “Have patience: Poirot will deliver all. At the banquet of the late Lord Duncan there were many who had either the means or the motive for killing him. But it was for me to single out those who had the motive.

     “You, Malcolm.” Poirot came up close to the young man.

     “You knew that if your father died you would inherit everything, but if he lived to change his will, it would have all been given to your brother, Donalbain, the brother who did not favor gambling. You, who at the dinner asked me if I had the chance to grasp ultimate power, would I not strike down anyone in my way?”  Poirot’s eyes were like fire.

     “How dare you!” hissed Malcolm. “I was in my bed all night!”

     “Yes, Monsieur Malcolm, you were. Still, it could have been any one of us, but only two had a motive, and both had potential accomplices. On the night of the murder, Lord Duncan was in the best of spirits; he had his family around him, he had drunk deeply, and he was unsuspecting. Yet that night, someone drugged the wine that his servants drank, putting them instantly to sleep. I detected it in the goblets we found in the closet; I knew then that they were innocent.”

     “What are you talking about?” said Macbeth, “Drunken men don’t need a motive, and they were the only ones that could have done it!”

     “But sadly, these men were shot so they could not proclaim their innocence. Someone took care to make sure that their hands were covered in blood, and that the murder weapons should be placed in view next to them. Indeed, your home has become a very troubled place. It is dangerous to appear at any banquet, but even more dangerous not to appear at one, as Lord Banquo and the family of Lord Macduff found out.”

     “It was not of my doing! I wanted to protect Duncan’s rightful heirs!” insisted Macduff.

     “You are correct, Lord Macduff; Malcolm is by right Duncan’s rightful heir, but he had been cut out years ago on account of his gambling. In that time, the will had been made out to someone else.”

     He moved to the armchair whose arms Macbeth clenched.

     “It had been made to Lord Macbeth, his oldest friend.”

     “How dare you accuse me in my own castle?”

     “But this is not your castle, Lord Macbeth; this is a property that once belonged to your dead friend, the friend who had given you the estates of Cawdor, the friend whom you mercilessly squelched in the court case. That was what troubled me; why would you seek to have this estate when you had just received a gracious bounty? It was not until my friend, Hastings, reminded me, that I knew exactly what the motive was.”

     They all looked at me.

     “Whether the three spiritualist sisters possess the power of foresight or not, it is not important. What is important is that they suggested to the mind of Lord Macbeth this murder.”

     “But Banquo was with me; he could have done it!” cried Macbeth.

     “But Lord Banquo was soon to become a victim himself, correct? What the prophecy was, Poirot can guess judging by your actions afterwards. First, that you would win the Cawdor estates, as shown by not just your pleasure at receiving the news in the letter at the Blasted Heath, but your inexplicable horror. Second, that you would have Lord Duncan’s title; this was the happiest prospect for you, and it excited you so much that you wrote a letter to your wife about it, to tell her that she might be an equal partner in your ambition. The letter’s ashes I found in your wife’s fireplace. But third, the prophecy went that a child of Banquo would take it from you. And so for Macbeth, his plan was clear: kill the first and blame it on the servants, then the second and the third and blame it on the murderers and arsonists you hired for it.”

     “You little devil!” said Macbeth.

     “But fortunately, the primary object of the third part of the prophecy survived. The father was dead, but the son had flown. The news of this wracked your guilty mind at the banquet to the point that you imagined you saw your murdered friend at the table. Here you demanded of the three sisters more prophecies; you paid them much to tell you what would happen. These prophecies myself and Captain Hastings listened to. One of these prophecies told you that Macduff was dangerous to your holding onto your ill-gotten gains, and so you had his house burned down, but he was not there.”

     “So it was you!” said Macduff.  

     “You still have to prove all this, you filthy Belgian—I am untouchable!”  thundered Macbeth, rising from his seat. I moved next to Poirot for fear of this desperate man.

     “Yes, that prophecy we heard, that you would never fall until the forest would rise against you. But look outside, Macbeth!”

     He went to the drapes and wrenched them all the way open. To our amazement, we could see pine branches in coordinated movement beyond the garden, drawing closer and closer!

     “You see, your time has come!” said Poirot.

     Macbeth began to laugh.

     “That may be some trick; the prophecy said that no man of woman born would ever harm me! So now, I call your bluff!”

      “And since all of you were born of woman, none of you could ever harm me!”

     “You’re wrong, Macbeth!” said Macduff. “Your assurance crumbles before me. I had a caesarean birth!”

     What little color was left in Macbeth’s face vanished.  We all jumped back as he drew a gun.

     “I don’t care; I’m steeped so far in blood! What’s one more death?”

     One shot went off and hit the ceiling as Siward and Macduff tried to tackle him. The next hit a pair of crossed battle axes over the mantelpiece; these fell and cut into the carpet. I saw Macduff roll to seize one as I jumped in to help Siward, whom Macbeth had finally bettered in the struggle. Macbeth had his finger on the trigger and was aiming at the inspector, when there was a flash of metal, a bellow of rage from Macduff, and a fountain of blood spraying out. 

  “Good Lord, Macduff!”

  We all saw the sickening severed head of Macbeth roll under a table. 

     We searched the rest of the castle for the Lady, but could not find her until we inspected the grounds.  Her body was lying directly under an open window.

     “Was it suicide, do you think?” I asked Poirot.

     “Or perhaps he was tired of her manipulation, Hastings; I noticed how much control she had over him at the banquet. It was she, I do not doubt, who was his accomplice. You will notice how quickly the guilt deranged her.”

     “But, she was just such a lovely lady.”

     Poirot shook his head. Later, as the coroners were removing the remains of Macbeth, I got a look at the tree costumes worn by inspector Siward’s men.

     “Quite a clever ploy, Poirot, using the prophecy to make him confess,” I said.

     “It was also simple, mon ami, to look up the birth certificates of all the lords who were in the castle on the night of the murder, and only one was not born of woman, strictly speaking.”

     We passed Malcolm on the way to the car.

     “I wish to thank you, sir, for bringing to justice the murderer of my father,” he said.

     He offered his hand to Poirot, which he did not take.

     “Yes, yes, I’m certain your father meant as much to you as your brother, Donalbain. Where is your brother?”

     Malcolm’s lips quivered.

     “He—he fled to Ireland when I went to England, to make ourselves less traceable.”

     “Lord Macduff,” called out my friend, “Did Donalbain travel with you when you fled to England?”

     “Yes, he was with us the whole journey,” said Macduff.

     Malcolm’s eyes narrowed at Macduff.

     “How then, Monsieur—”

     “That’s Lord Duncan, to you,” said Malcolm.

     “How then, Lord Duncan, do you account for this?” Poirot reached into his coat and pulled out a long paper pamphlet.

     “He slipped and fell; I was nowhere near the river!” insisted Malcolm.

     “Ah, but you see, my lord, it is nothing but Hastings’s fishing license. But I already knew that Donalbain’s body had been found washed up with a bullet wound in his back.” 

Siward, who had been listening, took Malcolm by the arm. We saw Fleance looking very surprised.

     “Bonjour, my lord!” said Poirot.

     As we drove back to our hotel, I made a personal note never to travel to the Scottish Highlands for any reason. And thus, thank goodness, we closed the case of the Scottish nobleman.