He raised a hand to heaven, and then settling himself back in his chair and shutting his eyelids, he murmured comfortably:
“And the other is Hercule Poirot.”
“I assure you, Monsieur, you are completely mistaken. Monsieur le Comte left Paris on Monday night—”
“True,” said Poirot—“by the Rapide. I do not know where he broke his journey. Perhaps you do not know that. What I do know is that he arrived here on Wednesday morning, and not on Tuesday morning.”
“Monsieur is mistaken,” said Marie stolidly.
Poirot rose to his feet.
“Then the law must take its course,” he murmured. “A pity.”
“What do you mean, Monsieur?” asked Marie, with a shade of uneasiness.
“You will be arrested and held as accomplices concerned in the murder of Mrs. Kettering, the English lady who was killed.”
“Murder!”
The man’s face had gone chalk white, his knees knocked together. Marie dropped the rolling-pin and began to weep.
“But it is impossible—impossible. I thought—”
“Since you stick to your story, there is nothing to be said. I think you are both foolish.”
He was turning towards the door when an agitated voice arrested him.
“Monsieur, Monsieur, just a little moment. I—I had no idea that it was anything of this kind. I—I thought it was just a matter concerning a lady. There have been little awkwardnesses with the police over ladies before. But murder—that is very different.”
“I have no patience with you,” cried Poirot. He turned round on them and angrily shook his fist in Hipolyte’s face. “Am I to stop here all day, arguing with a couple of imbeciles thus? It is the truth I want. If you will not give it to me, that is your lookout. For the last time, when did Monsieur le Comte arrive at the Villa Marina—Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning?”
“Wednesday,” gasped the man, and behind him Marie nodded confirmation.
Poirot regarded them for a minute or two, then inclined his head gravely.
“You are wise, my children,” he said quietly. “Very nearly you were in serious trouble.”
He left the Villa Marina, smiling to himself.
“One guess confirmed,” he murmured to himself. “Shall I take a chance on the other?”
It was six o’clock when the card of Monsieur Hercule Poirot was brought up to Mirelle. She stared at it for a moment or two, and then nodded. When Poirot entered, he found her walking up and down the room feverishly. She turned on him furiously.
“Well?” she cried. “Well? What is it now? Have you not tortured me enough, all of you? Have you not made me betray my poor Dereek? What more do you want?”
“Just one little question, Mademoiselle. After the train left Lyons, when you entered Mrs. Kettering’s compartment—”
“What is that?”
Poirot looked at her with an air of mild reproach and began again.
“I say when you entered Mrs. Kettering’s compartment—”
“I never did.”
“And found her—”
“I never did.”
“Ah, sacré!”
He turned on her in a rage and shouted at her, so that she cowered back before him.
“Will you lie to me? I tell you I know what happened as well as though I had been there. You went into her compartment and you found her dead. I tell you I know it. To lie to me is dangerous. Be careful, Mademoiselle Mirelle.”
Her eyes wavered beneath his gaze and fell.
“I—I didn’t—” she began uncertainly and stopped.
“There is only one thing about which I wonder,” said Poirot—“I wonder, Mademoiselle, if you found what you were looking for or whether—”
“Whether what?”
“Or whether someone else had been before you.”
“I will answer no more questions,” screamed the dancer. She tore herself away from Poirot’s restraining hand, and flinging herself down on the floor in a frenzy, she screamed and sobbed. A frightened maid came rushing in.
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, and quietly left the room.
But he seemed satisfied.
XXX
Miss Viner Gives Judgment
Katherine looked out of Miss Viner’s bedroom window. It was raining, not violently, but with a quiet, well-bred persistence. The window looked out on a strip of front garden with a path down to the gate and neat little flowerbeds on either side, where later roses and pinks and blue hyacinths would bloom.
Miss Viner was lying in a large Victorian bedstead. A tray with the remains of breakfast had been pushed to one side and she was busy opening her correspondence and making various caustic comments upon it.
Katherine had an open letter in her hand and was reading it through for the second time. It was dated from the Ritz Hotel, Paris.
“Chère Mademoiselle Katherine” (it began)—“I trust that you are in good health and that the return to the English winter has not proved too depressing. Me, I prosecute my inquiries with the utmost diligence. Do not think that it is the holiday that I take here. Very shortly I shall be in England, and I hope then to have the pleasure of meeting you once more. It shall be so, shall it not? On arrival in London I shall write to you. You remember that we are the colleagues in this affair? But indeed I think you know that very well. Be assured, Mademoiselle, of my most respectful and devoted sentiments.
Katherine frowned slightly. It was as though something in the letter puzzled and intrigued her.
“A choirboys’ picnic indeed,” came from Miss Viner. “Tommy Saunders and Albert Dykes ought to be left behind, and I shan’t subscribe to it unless they are. What those two boys think they are doing in church on Sundays I don’t know. Tommy sang, ‘O God, make speed to save us,’ and never opened his lips again, and if Albert Dykes wasn’t sucking a mint humbug, my nose is not what it is and always has been.”
“I know, they are awful,” agreed Katherine.
She opened her second letter, and a sudden flush came to her cheeks. Miss Viner’s voice in the room seemed to recede into the far distance.
When she came back to a sense of her surroundings Miss Viner
