Still protesting, Meredith Blake led the way. He unlocked the door and swung back the shutters. Poirot spoke to him authoritatively.

‘Now then, my friend. You have showed your visitors your interesting preparations of herbs. Shut your eyes now and think-’

Meredith Blake did so obediently. Poirot drew a handkerchief from his pocket and gently passed it to and fro. Blake murmured, his nostrils twitching slightly:

‘Yes, yes-extraordinary how things come back to one. Caroline, I remember, had on a pale coffee-coloured dress. Phil was looking bored…He always thought my hobby was quite idiotic.’

Poirot said:

‘Reflect now, you are about to leave the room. You are going to the library where you are going to read the passage about the death of Socrates. Who leaves the room first-do you?’

‘Elsa and I-yes. She passed through the door first. I was close behind her. We were talking. I stood there waiting for the others to come so that I could lock the door again. Philip-yes, Philip came out next. And Angela-she was asking him what bulls and bears were. They went on through the hall. Amyas followed them. I stood there waiting still-for Caroline, of course.’

‘So you are quite sure Caroline stayed behind. Did you see what she was doing?’

Blake shook his head.

‘No, I had my back to the room, you see. I was talking to Elsa-boring her, I expect-telling her how certain plants must be gathered at the full of the moon according to old superstition. And then Caroline came out-hurrying a little-and I locked the door.’

He stopped and looked at Poirot, who was replacing a handkerchief in his pocket. Meredith Blake sniffled disgustedly and thought: ‘Why, the fellow actually usesscent!’

Aloud he said:

‘I am quite sure of it. That was the order. Elsa, myself, Philip, Angela and Caroline. Does that help you at all?’

Poirot said:

‘It all fits in. Listen. I want to arrange a meeting here. It will not, I think, be difficult…’

III

‘Well?’

Elsa Dittisham said it almost eagerly-like a child.

‘I want to ask you a question, madame.’

‘Yes?’

Poirot said:

‘After it was all over-the trial, I mean-did Meredith Blake ask you to marry him?’

Elsa stared. She looked contemptuous-almost bored.

‘Yes-he did. Why?’

‘Were you surprised?’

‘Was I? I don’t remember.’

‘What did you say?’

Elsa laughed. She said:

‘What do you think I said? AfterAmyas -Meredith? It would have been ridiculous! It was stupid of him. He always was rather stupid.’

She smiled suddenly.

‘He wanted, you know, to protect me-to “look after me”-that’s how he put it! He thought like everybody else that the Assizes had been a terrible ordeal for me. And the reporters! And the booing crowds! And all the mud that was slung at me.’

She brooded a minute. Then said:

‘Poor old Meredith! Such an ass!’ And laughed again.

IV

Once again Hercule Poirot encountered the shrewd penetrating glance of Miss Williams, and once again felt the years falling away and himself a meek and apprehensive little boy.

There was, he explained, a question he wished to ask.

Miss Williams intimated her willingness to hear what the question was.

Poirot said slowly, picking his words carefully:

‘Angela Warren was injured as a very young child. In my notes I find two references to that fact. In one of them it is stated that Mrs Crale threw a paperweight at the child. In the other that she attacked the baby with a crowbar. Which of those versions is the right one?’

Miss Williams replied briskly:

‘I never heard anything about a crowbar. The paperweight is the correct story.’

‘Who was your own informant?’

‘Angela herself. She volunteered the information quite early.’

‘What did she say exactly?’

‘She touched her cheek and said: “Caroline did this when I was a baby. She threw a paperweight at me. Never refer to it, will you, because it upsets her dreadfully.” ’

‘Did Mrs Crale herself ever mention the matter to you?’

‘Only obliquely. She assumed that I knew the story. I remember her saying once: “I know you think I spoil Angela, but you see, I always feel there is nothing I can do to make up to her for what I did.” And on another occasion she said: “To know you have permanently injured another human being is the heaviest burden any one could have to bear.” ’

‘Thank you, Miss Williams. That is all I wanted to know.’

Cecilia Williams said sharply:

‘I don’t understand you, M. Poirot. You showed Carla my account of the tragedy?’

Poirot nodded.

‘And yet you are still-’ She stopped.

Poirot said:

‘Reflect a minute. If you were to pass a fishmonger’s and saw twelve fish laid out on his slab, you would think they were all real fish, would you not? But one of them might be stuffed fish.’

Miss Williams replied with spirit:

‘Most unlikely and anyway-’

‘Ah, unlikely, yes, but not impossible-because a friend of mine once took down a stuffed fish (it was his trade, you comprehend) to compare it with the real thing! And if you saw a bowl of innias in a drawing-room in December you would say that they were false-but they might be real ones flown home from Baghdad.’

‘What is the meaning of all this nonsense?’ demanded Miss Williams.

‘It is to show you that it is the eyes of the mind with which one really sees…’

V

Poirot slowed up a little as he approached the big block of flats overlooking Regent’s Park.

Really, when he came to think of it, he did not want to ask Angela Warren any questions at all. The only question he did want to ask her could wait…

No, it was really only his insatiable passion for symmetry that was bringing him here. Five people-there should be five questions! It was neater so. It rounded off the thing better.

Ah well-he would think of something.

Angela Warren greeted him with something closely approaching eagerness. She said:

‘Have you found out anything? Have you got anywhere?’

Slowly Poirot nodded his head in his best China mandarin manner. He said:

‘At last I make progress.’

‘Philip Blake?’ It was halfway between statement and a question.

‘Mademoiselle, I do not wish to say anything at present. The moment has not yet come. What I will ask of you is to be so good as to come down to Handcross Manor. The others have consented.’

She said with a slight frown:

‘What do you propose to do? Reconstruct something that happened sixteen years ago?’

‘See it, perhaps, from a clearer angle. You will come?’

Angela Warren said slowly:

‘Oh, yes, I’ll come. It will be interesting to see all those people again. I shall seethem now, perhaps, from a clearer angle (as you put it) than I did then.’

‘And you will bring with you the letter that you showed me?’

Angela Warren frowned.

‘That letter is my own. I showed it to you for a good and sufficient reason, but I have no intention of allowing it to be read by strange and unsympathetic persons.’

‘But you will allow yourself to be guided by me in this matter?’

‘I will do nothing of the kind. I will bring the letter with me, but I shall use my own judgement which I venture to think is quite as good as yours.’

Poirot spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. He got up to go. He said:

‘You permit that I ask one little question?’

‘What is it?’

‘At the time of the tragedy, you had lately read, had you not, Somerset Maugham’sThe Moon and Sixpence?’

Angela stared at him. Then she said:

‘I believe-why, yes, that is quite true.’ She looked at him with frank curiosity. ‘How did you know?’

‘I want to show you, mademoiselle, that even in a small unimportant matter, I am something of a magician. There are things I know without having to be told.’

The afternoon sun shone into the laboratory at Handcross Manor. Some easy chairs and a settee had been brought into the room, but they served more to emphasize its forlorn aspect than to furnish it.

Slightly embarrassed, pulling at his moustache, Meredith Blake talked to Carla in a desultory way. He broke off once to say: ‘My dear, you are very like your mother-and yet unlike her, too.’

Carla asked: ‘How am I like her and how unlike?’

‘You have her colouring and her way of moving, but you are-how shall I put it-morepositive than she ever was.’

Philip Blake, a scowl creasing over his forehead, looked out of the window and drummed impatiently on the pane. He said:

‘What’s the sense of all this? A perfectly fine Saturday afternoon-’

Hercule Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.

‘Ah, I apologize-it is, I know, unpardonable to disarrange the golf.Mais voyons, M. Blake, this is the daughter of your best friend. You will stretch a point for her, will you not?’

The butler announced: ‘Miss Warren.’

Meredith went to welcome her. He said: ‘It’s good of you to spare the time, Angela. You’re busy, I know.’

He led her over to the window.

Carla said: ‘Hallo, Aunt Angela. I read your article inThe Times this morning. It’s nice to have a distinguished relative.’ She indicated the tall, square-jawed young man with the steady grey eyes. ‘This is John Rattery. He and I-hope-to be married.’

Angela Warren said: ‘Oh!-I didn’t know…’

Meredith went to greet the next arrival.

‘Well, Miss Williams, it’s a good many years since we met.’

Thin, frail and indomitable, the elderly governess advanced up the room. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Poirot for a minute, then they went to the tall, square-shouldered figure in the well-cut tweeds.

Angela Warren came forward to meet her and said with a smile: ‘I feel like a schoolgirl again.’

‘I’m very proud of you, my dear,’ said Miss Williams. ‘You’ve done me credit. This is Carla, I suppose? She won’t remember me. She was too young…’

Philip Blake said fretfully: ‘Whatis all this? Nobody told me-’

Hercule Poirot said: ‘I call it-me-an excursion into the past. Shall we not all sit down? Then we shall be ready when the last guest arrives. And when she is here we can proceed to our business-to lay the ghosts.’