She stared at him. "I don't understand what you mean!"

"I think you understand very well."

Her eyes dropped. She said, uncertainly: "It was—a great shock."

"Was it?"

The blood rushed to her face. She stared at him helplessly.

Now he saw fear in her eyes. "Was it such a great shock, Mademoiselle? Remembering a certain conversation you had with your brother Raymond one night in Jerusalem?"

His shot proved right. He saw it in the way the color drained out of her cheeks again. "You know about that?" she whispered.

"Yes, I know."

"But how—how?"

"Part of your conversation was overheard."

"Oh!" Carol Boynton buried her face in her hands. Her sobs shook the table. Hercule Poirot waited a minute, then he said quietly: "You were planning together to bring about your stepmother's death."

Carol sobbed out brokenly: "We were mad—mad—that evening!"

"Perhaps."

"It's impossible for you to understand the state we were in!" She sat up, pushing back the hair from her face. "It would sound fantastic. It wasn't so bad in America—but traveling brought it home to us so."

"Brought what home to you?" His voice was kind now, sympathetic.

"Our being different from—other people! We—we got desperate about it. And there was Jinny."

"Jinny?"

"My sister. You haven't seen her. She was going—well—queer. And Mother was making her worse. She didn't seem to realize. We were afraid, Ray and I, that Jinny was going quite mad! And we saw [unreadable]

Poirot nodded his head slowly. "Yes, it has seemed so, I know, to many. That is, by history."

"That's how Ray and I felt that night. . . ." She put her hand on the table. "But we didn't really do it. Of course we didn't do it! When daylight came the thing seemed absurd, melodramatic. Oh, yes, and wicked too! Indeed, indeed, M. Poirot, Mother died naturally of heart failure. Ray and I had nothing to do with it."

Poirot said quietly: "Will you swear to me, Mademoiselle, as your salvation after death, that Mrs. Boynton did not die as a result of any action of yours?"

She lifted her head. Her voice came steadily "I swear," said Carol, "as I hope for salvation I never harmed her. . . ."

Poirot leaned back in his chair. "No," he said, "that is that."

There was silence. Poirot thoughtfully caressed his moustache. Then he said: "What exactly was your plan?"

"Plan?"

"Yes, you and your brother must have had a plan."

In his mind he ticked off the seconds before her answer came. One, two, three.

"We had no plan," said Carol at last. "We never got as far as that."

Hercule Poirot got up.

"That is all, Mademoiselle. Will you be so good as to send your brother to me."

Carol rose. She stood undecidedly for a minute. "M. Poirot, you do—you do believe me?"

"Have I said," asked Poirot, "that I do not?"

"No, but—" She stopped.

He said: "You will ask your brother to come here?"