"There you are," he said.

A piece of wedding cake lay on the sheet looking somewhat the worse for wear.

"How extraordinary," said Susan.

"Oh no, it's not. Perhaps your generation doesn't do it. Young ladies nowadays mayn't set so much store on getting married. But it's an old custom. Put a piece of wedding cake under your pillow and you'll dream of your future husband."

"But surely Miss Gilchrist -"

"She didn't want to tell us about it because she felt foolish doing such a thing at her age. But I had a notion that's what it might be." His face sobered. "And if it hadn't been for an old maid's foolishness, Miss Gilchrist mightn't be alive today."

"But who could have possibly wanted to kill her?"

His eyes met hers, a curious speculative look in them that made Susan feel uncomfortable.

"You don't know? "he asked.

"No - of course I don't."

"It seems then as though we shall have to find out," said Inspector Morton.

Chapter 12

Two elderly men sat together in a room whose furnishings were of the most modern kind. There were no curves in the room. Everything was square. Almost the only exception was Hercule Poirot himself who was full of curves. His stomach was pleasantly rounded, his head resembled an egg in shape, and his moustaches curved upwards in a flamboyant flourish.

He was sipping a glass of sirop and looking thoughtfully at Mr Goby.

Mr Goby was small and spare and shrunken. He had always been refreshingly nondescript in appearance and he was now so

nondescript as practically not to be there at all. He was not looking at Poirot because Mr Goby never looked at anybody.

Such remarks as he was now making seemed to be addressed to the left-hand corner of the chromium-plated fireplace curb.

Mr Goby was famous for the acquiring of information. Very few people knew about him and very few employed his services - but those few were usually extremely rich. They had to be, for Mr Goby was very expensive. His speciality was the acquiring of information quickly. At the flick of Mr Goby's double jointed thumb, hundreds of patient questioning plodding men and women, old and young, of all apparent stations in life, were despatched to question, and probe, and achieve results.

Mr Goby had now practically retired from business. But he occasionally "obliged" a few old patrons. Hercule Poirot was one of these.

"I've got what I could for you," Mr Goby told the fire curb in a soft confidential whisper. "I sent the boys out. They do what they can - good lads - good lads all of them, but not what they used to be in the old days. They don't come that way nowadays. Not willing to learn, that's what it is. Think they know everything after they've only been a couple of years on the job. And they work to time. Shocking the way they work to time."