Insisting on having killed everyone the way you did!" "I wanted to confess and get it all over… Did you - did you think I might really have done it, then?" "Me? What do you take me for? I know what my patients will do or won't do. But I thought you were going to make things damned difficult. I didn't know how far Neele was sticking his neck out. Didn't seem proper police procedure to me. Look at the way he gave Poirot here his head." Poirot smiled.

"Chief Inspector Neele and I have known each other for many years. Besides, he had been making enquiries about certain matters already. You were never really outside Louise's door. Frances changed the numbers. She reversed the 6 and the 7 on your own door. Those numbers were loose, stuck on with spikes. Claudia was away that night. Frances drugged you so that the whole thing was a nightmare dream to you." "I saw the truth suddenly. The only other person who could have killed Louise was the real 'third girl" Frances Gary." "You kept half recognising her you know," said Stillingfleet, "when you described to me how one person seemed to turn into another." Norma looked at him thoughtfully.

"You were very rude to people," she said to Stillingfleet. He looked slightly taken aback.

"Rude?" "The things you said to everyone. The way you shouted at them." "Oh well, yes, perhaps I was… I've got in the way of it. People are so damned irritating." He grinned suddenly at Poirot.

"She's quite a girl, isn't she?" Mrs. Oliver rose to her feet with a sigh.

"I must go home." She looked at the two men and then at Norma. "What are we going to do with her?" she asked.

They both looked startled.

(c! know she's staying with me at the moment," she went on. "And she says she's quite happy. But I mean there it is, quite a problem. Lots and lots of money because your father - the real one, I mean - left it all to you. And that will cause complications, and begging letters and all that. She could go and live with old Sir Roderick, but| that wouldn't be much fun for a girl - he's pretty deaf already as well as blind - and completely selfish. By the way, what about his missing papers, and the girl, and Kew Gardens?" "They turned up where he thought he'd already looked - Sonia found them," said Norma, and added, "Uncle Roddy and Sonia are getting married - next week - " "No fool like an old fool," said Stillingfleet.

"Aha!" said Poirot. "So the young lady prefers life in England to being embroiled in la politique. She is perhaps wise, that little one." "So that's that," said Mrs. Oliver with finality. "But to go on about Norma, one has to be practical. One's got to make plans. The girl can't know what she wants to do all by herself. She's waiting for someone to tell her." She looked at them severely.

Poirot said nothing. He smiled.

"Oh, her?" said Dr. Stillingfleet. "Well, I'll tell you, Norma. I'm flying to Australia Tuesday week. I want to look around first - see if what's been fixed up for me is going to work, and all that. Then I'll cable you and you can join me. Then we get married. You'll have to take my word for it that it's not your money I want. I'm not one of those doctors who want to endow whacking great research establishments and all that. I'm just interested in people. I think, too, that you'd be able to manage me all right. All that about my being rude to people - I hadn't noticed it myself.

It's odd, really, when you think of all the mess you've been in - helpless as a fly in treacle-yet it's not going to be me running you, it's going to be you running, me." Norma stood quite still. She looked at John Stillingfleet very carefully, as though she was considering something that she knew from an entirely different point of view.

And then she smiled. It was a very nice smile - like a happy young nannie.

"All right," she said.

She crossed the room to Hercule Poirot.

"/ was rude, too," she said. "The day I came here when you were having breakfast.

I said to you that you were too old to help me. That was a rude thing to say. And it wasn't true…," She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

"You'd better get us a taxi," she said to Stillingfleet.

Dr. Stillingfleet nodded and left the room. Mrs. Oliver collected a handbag and a fur stole and Norma slipped on a coat and followed her to the door.

"Madamey un petit moment - " Mrs. Oliver turned. Poirot had collected from the recesses of the sofa a handsome coil of grey hair.

Mrs. Oliver exclaimed vexedly: "It's)ust like everything that they make nowadays, no good at all! Hairpins, I mean.

They just slip out, and everything falls." She went out frowning.

A moment or two later she poked her head round the door again. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper: "Just tell me-it's all right, I've sent her on down - did you send that girl to this particular doctor on purpose?"

"Of course I did. His qualifications are - " "Never mind his qualifications. You know what I mean. He and she - Did you?" "If you must know, yes."

"I thought so," said Mrs. Oliver. "You do think of things, don't you."