ABC谋杀案 38

Thirty-four,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 theother day that the case was ended. I replied to him that the case was the man! The mystery was notthe mystery of the murders, but the mystery of A B C. Why did he find it necessary to commit thesemurders? 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 thingsbecause he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in hisactions as a sane man—given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists ongoing out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in theextreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi,then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.,“What was necessary in this case was to imagine a mind so constituted that it was logical andreasonable to commit four or more murders and to announce them beforehand by letters written toHercule Poirot.,“You were quite right, ” said Franklin Clarke dryly.,“Yes. But there, at the very start, I made a grave error. I permitted my feeling—my very strongfeeling about the letter — to remain a mere impression. I treated it as though it had been anintuition. In a well-balanced, reasoning mind there is no such thing as an intuition—an inspiredguess! You can guess, of course—and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you call it anintuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again. But what is often called an intuition isreally an impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there issomething wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is reallybasing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely—his experience obviates that—the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. Butit is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience.,“Eh bien, I admit that I did not regard that first letter in the way I should. It just made meextremely uneasy. The police regarded it as a hoax. I myself took it seriously. I was convinced thata murder would take place in Andover as stated. As you know, a murder did take place.,“There was no means at that point, as I well realized, of knowing who the person was who haddone the deed. The only course open to me was to try and understand just what kind of a personhad done it.,“I had certain indications. The letter—the manner of the crime—the person murdered. What Ihad to discover was: the motive of the crime, the motive of the letter.
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