of fifteen, two or three of eleven or twelve well that sort of thing.
About twenty-five or thirty in all, perhaps.'
'Any strangers?'
'They all knew each other, I think.
Some better than others. I think the girls were mostly in the same school. There were a couple of women who had come in to help with the food and the supper and things like that. When the party ended, most of the mothers went home with their children. I stayed behind with Judith and a couple of others to help Rowena Drake, the woman who gave the party, to clear up a bit, so the cleaning women who came in the morning wouldn't have so much mess to deal with. You know, there was a lot of flour about, and paper caps out of crackers and different things. So we swept up a bit, and we got to the library last of all.
And that's when-when we found her. And then I remembered what she'd said.'
'What who had said?'
'Joyce.'
'What did she say? We are coming to it now, are we not? We are coming to the reason why you are here?'
'Yes. I thought it wouldn't mean anything to-oh, to a doctor or the police or anyone, but I thought it might mean something to you.'
' A bien,' said Poirot, 'tell me. Was this something Joyce said at the party?'
'No-earlier in the day. That afternoon when we were fixing things up.
It was after they'd talked about my writing murder stories and Joyce said 'I saw a murder once' and her mother or somebody said 'Don't be silly, Joyce, saying things like that' and one of the older girls said 'You're just making it up' and Joyce said ?I did. I saw it I tell you.
I did. I saw someone do a murder,' but no one believed her. They just laughed and she got very angry.'
'Did you believe her?'
'No, of course not.'
'I see,' said Poirot, 'yes, I see.' He was silent for some moments, tapping a finger on the table. Then he said: 'I wonder-she gave no details-no names?'
'No. She went on boasting and shouting a bit and being angry because most of the other girls were laughing at her. The mothers, I think, and the older people, were rather cross with her. But the girls and the younger boys just laughed at her!
They said things like 'Go on, Joyce, when was this? Why did you never tell us about it?' And Joyce said, 'I'd forgotten all about it, it was so long ago'.'
'Aha! Did she say how long ago?'
''Years ago,' she said. You know, in rather a would-be grown-up way.'
''Why didn't you go and tell the police then?' one of the girls said.
Ann, I think, or Beatrice. Rather a smug, superior girl.'
'Aha, and what did she say to that?'
'She said: 'Because I didn't know at the time it was a murder.''
'A very interesting remark,' said Poirot, sitting up rather straighter in his chair.
'She'd got a bit mixed up by then, I think,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'You know, trying to explain herself and getting angry because they were all teasing her.
'They kept asking her why she hadn't gone to the police, and she kept on saying 'Because I didn't know then that it was a murder. It wasn't until afterwards that it came to me quite suddenly that that was what I had seen.''
'But nobody showed any signs of believing her-and you yourself did not believe her-but when you came across her dead you suddenly felt that she might have been speaking the truth?'
'Yes, just that. I didn't know what I ought to do, or what I could do.
But then, later, I thought of you.'
Poirot bowed his head gravely in acknowledgment.
He was silent for a moment or two, then he said:
'I must pose to you a serious question, and reflect before you answer it. Do you think that this girl had really seen a murder? Or do you think that she merely believed that she had seen a murder?'
'The first, I think,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I didn't at the time. I just thought that she was vaguely remembering something she had once seen and was working it up to make it sound important and exciting.
She became very vehement, saying, (I did see it, I tell you. I did see it happen.'
'And so.'
'And so I've come along to you,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'because the only way her death makes sense is that there really was a murder and that she was witness to it.'
'That would involve certain things. It would involve that one of the people who were at the party committed the murder, and that that same person must also have been there earlier that day and have heard what Joyce said.'
'You don't think I'm just imagining things, do you?' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Do you think that it is all just my very farfetched imagination?'
'A girl was murdered,' said Poirot. 'Murdered by someone who had strength enough to hold her head down in a bucket of water. An ugly murder and a murder that was committed with what we might Gall, no time to lose. Somebody was threatened, and whoever it was struck as soon as it was humanly possible.'
'Joyce could not have known who it was who did the murder she saw,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I mean she wouldn't have said what she did if there was someone actually in the room who was concerned.'
'No,' said Poirot, 'I think you are right there. She saw a murder, but she did not see the murderer's face. We have to go beyond that.'
'I don't understand exactly what you mean.'
'It could be that someone who was I'll there earlier in the day and heard Joyce's accusation knew about the murder, knew who committed the murder, perhaps was closely involved with that person. It may have been that that someone thought he was the only person who knew what his wife had done, or his mother or his daughter or his son. Or it might have been a woman who knew what her husband or mother or daughter or son had done.
Someone who thought that no-one else knew. And then Joyce began talking?'
'And so-'
'Joyce had to die?'
'Yes. What are you going to do?'
'I have just remembered,' said Hercule Poirot, 'why the name of Woodleigh Common was familiar to me.'
HERCULE POI ROTlooked over the small gate which gave admission to Pine Crest. It was a modern, perky little house, nicely built.
Hercule Poirot was slightly out of breath.
The small, neat house in front of him was very suitably named. It was on a hill top, and the hill top was planted with a few sparse pines. It had a small neat garden and a large elderly man was trundling along a path a big tin galvanised waterer.
Superintendent Spence's hair was now grey all over instead of having a neat touch of grey hair at the temples. He had not shrunk much in girth. He stopped trundling his can and look at the visitor at
