'She had to be punished for daring to speak to me like that!' And then wept and said he was too wicked to live and a lot of things like that. The medicos have a long word for that sort of thing - guilt complex or something - and don't believe it was deliberate at all, just carelessness, but that he wanted to make it important and serious."

"Ça se peut," said Hercule Poirot.

"Pardon? Anyway, he went into this Sanitorium and they treated him and discharged him as cured, and he met Miss Abernethie as she was then. And he got a job in this respectable but rather obscure little chemist's shop. Told them he'd been out of England for a year and a half, and gave them his former reference from some shop in Eastbourne. Nothing against him in that shop, but a fellow dispenser said he had a very queer temper and was odd in his manner sometimes. There's a story about a customer saying once as a joke,

'Wish you'd sell me something to poison my wife, ha ha!' And Banks says to him, very soft and quiet: 'I could... It would cost you two hundred pounds.' The man felt uneasy and laughed it off. May have been all a joke, but it doesn't seem to me that Banks is the joking kind."

"Mon ami," said Hercule Poirot. "It really amazes me how you get your information! Medical and highly confidential most of it!"

Mr Goby's eyes swivelled right round the room and he murmured, looking expectantly at the door, that there were ways...

"Now we come to the country department. Mr and Mrs Timothy Abernethie. Very nice place they've got, but sadly needing money spent on it. Very straitened they seem to be, very straitened. Taxation and unfortunate investments. Mr Abernethie enjoys ill health and the emphasis is on the enjoyment. Complains a lot and has everyone running and fetching and carrying. Eats hearty meals, and seems quite strong physically if he likes to make the effort. There's no one in the house after the daily woman goes and no one's allowed into Mr Abernethie's room unless he rings his bell. He was in a very bad temper the morning of the day after the funeral. Swore at Mrs Jones. Ate only a little of his breakfast and said he wouldn't have any lunch - he'd had a bad night. He said the supper she had left out for him was unfit to eat and a good deal more. He was alone in the house and unseen by anybody from 9.30 that morning until the following morning."

"And Mrs Abernethie?"

"She started off from Enderby by car at the time you mentioned. Arrived on foot at a small local garage in a place called Cathstone and explained her car had broken down a couple of miles away.