Meticulously, in detail, he told of the poisoned wedge of wedding cake.

Poirot took a deep, hissing breath.

"Ingenious - yes, ingenious... I warned Mr Entwhistle to look after Miss Gilchrist. An attack on her was always a possibility. But I must confess that I did not expect poison. I anticipated a repetition of the hatchet motif. I merely thought that it would be inadvisable for her to walk alone in unfrequented lanes after dark."

"But why did you anticipate an attack on her? I think M. Poirot, you ought to tell me that."

Poirot nodded his head slowly.

"Yes I will tell you. Mr Entwhistle will not tell you, because he is a lawyer and lawyers do not like to speak of suppositions, of inferences made from the character of a dead woman, or from a few irresponsible words. But he will not be averse to my telling you - no, he will be relieved. He does not wish to appear foolish or or fanciful, but he wants to know what may - only may - be the facts."

Poirot paused as Georges entered with a glass of beer.

"Some refreshment, Inspector. No, no, I insist."

"Won't you join me?"

"I do not drink the beer. But I will myself have a glass of sirop de cassis

-the English they do not care for it, I have noticed."

Inspector Morton looked gratefully at his beer.

Poirot, sipping delicately from his glass of dark purple fluid, said:

"It begins, all this, at a funeral. Or rather, to be exact, after the funeral."

Graphically, with many gestures he set forth the story as Mr Entwhistle had told it to him, but with such embellishments as his exuberant nature suggested. One almost felt that Hercule Poirot had himself been an eye-witness of the scene.

Inspector Morton had an excellent clear-cut brain. He seized at once on what were, for his purposes, the salient points.

"This Mr Abernethie may have been poisoned?"

"It is a possibility."

"And the body has been cremated and there is no evidence?"

"Exactly."

Inspector Morton ruminated.

"Interesting. There's nothing in it for us. Nothing, that is, to make Richard Abernethie's death worth investigating. It would be waste of time."

"Yes."

"But there are the people - the people who were there - the people who heard Cora Lansquenet say what she did, and one of whom may have

thought that she might say it again and with more detail."

"As she undoubtedly would have. There are, Inspector, as you say, the people. And now you see why I was at the inquest, why I interest myself in the case - because it is, always, people in whom I interest myself."

"Then the attack on Miss Gilchrist -"