‘By the 9.30, I suppose?’ said Donald Fraser.

His mind, shrinking from reality, ran for safety along these unimportant details.

‘Yes.’

There was silence for a minute or two, then Fraser said:

‘The police? Are they doing anything?’

‘They’re upstairs now. Looking through Betty’s things, I suppose.’

‘They’ve no idea who—? They don’t know—?’

He stopped.

He had all a sensitive, shy person’s dislike of putting violent facts into words.

Poirot moved forward a little and asked a question. He spoke in a businesslike, matter-of-fact voice as though what he asked was an unimportant detail.

‘Did Miss Barnard tell you where she was going last night?’

Fraser replied to the question. He seemed to be speaking mechanically:

‘She told me she was going with a girl friend to St Leonards.’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘I—’ Suddenly the automaton came to life. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

His face then, menacing, convulsed by sudden passion, made me understand that a girl might well be afraid of rousing his anger.

Poirot said crisply:

‘Betty Barnard was killed by a homicidal murderer. Only by speaking the exact truth can you help us to get on his track.’

His glance for a minute turned to Megan.

‘That’s right, Don,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a time for considering one’s own feelings or anyone else’s. You’ve got to come clean.’

Donald Fraser looked suspiciously at Poirot.

‘Who are you? You don’t belong to the police?’

‘I am better than the police,’ said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.

‘Tell him,’ said Megan.

Donald Fraser capitulated.

‘I—wasn’t sure,’ he said. ‘I believed her when she said it. Never thought of doing anything else. Afterwards— perhaps it was something in her manner. I—I, well, I began to wonder.’

‘Yes?’ said Poirot.

He had sat down opposite Donald Fraser. His eyes, fixed on the other man’s, seemed to be exercising a mesmeric spell.

‘I was ashamed of myself for being so suspicious. But—but I was suspicious…I thought of going to the front and watching her when she left the café. I actually went there. Then I felt I couldn’t do that. Betty would see me and she’d be angry. She’d realize at once that I was watching her.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went over to St Leonards. Got over there by eight o’clock. Then I watched the buses—to see if she were in them…But there was no sign of her…’

‘And then?’

‘I—I lost my head rather. I was convinced she was with some man. I thought it probable he had taken her in his car to Hastings. I went on there—looked in hotels and restaurants, hung round cinemas—went on the pier. All damn foolishness. Even if she was there I was unlikely to find her, and anyway, there were heaps of other places he might have taken her to instead of Hastings.’

He stopped. Precise as his tone had remained, I caught an undertone of that blind, bewildering misery and anger that had possessed him at the time he described.