‘I begin to comprehend,’ he said. ‘Now tell me, Julia, tell me everything from the beginning.’

Julia told him. It was quite a long story and a comprehensive one—but she told it clearly—with an occasional break as she went back over something she had forgotten.

She brought her story up to the moment when she had examined the tennis racquet in her bedroom last night.

‘You see, I thought it was just like Aladdin—new lamps for old—and there must be something about that tennis racquet.’

‘And there was?’

‘Yes.’

Without any false modesty, Julia pulled up her skirt, rolled up her knicker leg nearly to her thigh and exposed what looked like a grey poultice attached by adhesive plaster to the upper part of her leg.

She tore off the strips of plaster, uttering an anguished ‘Ouch’ as she did so, and freed the poultice which Poirot now perceived to be a packet enclosed in a portion of grey plastic sponge bag. Julia unwrapped it and without warning poured a heap of glittering stones on the table.

‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom!’ ejaculated Poirot in an awe-inspired whisper.

He picked them up, letting them run through his fingers.

‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom! But they are real. Genuine.’

Julia nodded.

‘I think they must be. People wouldn’t kill other people for them otherwise, would they? But I can understand people killing for these!’

And suddenly, as had happened last night, a woman looked out of the child’s eyes.

Poirot looked keenly at her and nodded.

‘Yes—you understand—you feel the spell. They cannot be to you just pretty coloured playthings—more is the pity.’

‘They’re jewels!’ said Julia, in tones of ecstasy.

‘And you found them, you say, in this tennis racquet?’

Julia finished her recital.

‘And you have now told me everything?’

‘I think so. I may, perhaps, have exaggerated a little here and there. I do exaggerate sometimes. Now Jennifer, my great friend, she’s the other way round. She can make the most exciting things sound dull.’ She looked again at the shining heap. ‘M. Poirot, who do they really belong to?’

‘It is probably very difficult to say. But they do not belong to either you or to me. We have to decide now what to do next.’

Julia looked at him in an expectant fashion.

‘You leave yourself in my hands? Good.’

Hercule Poirot closed his eyes.

Suddenly he opened them and became brisk.

‘It seems that this is an occasion when I cannot, as I prefer, remain in my chair. There must be order and method, but in what you tell me, there is no order and method. That is because we have here many threads. But they all converge and meet at one place, Meadowbank. Different people, with different aims, and representing different interests—all converge at Meadowbank. So, I, too, go to Meadowbank. And as for you—where is your mother?’

‘Mummy’s gone in a bus to Anatolia.’

‘Ah, your mother has gone in a bus to Anatolia. Il ne manquait que ça! I perceive well that she might be a friend of Mrs Summerhayes! Tell me, did you enjoy your visit with Mrs Summerhayes?’