"She never reads anything but the cheapest kind of novel. She takes no interest in his work. She doesn't keep abreast of current thought. She just talks about her health to everyone who will listen."

"I still maintain," said Poirot, "that she uses her grey cells in ways that you, my child, know nothing about."

"She's a very feminine sort of woman," said Judith. "She coos and purrs. I expect you like 'em like that, Uncle Hercule."

"Not at all," I said. "He likes them large and flamboyant and Russian for choice."

"So that is how you give me away, Hastings? Your father, Judith, has always had a penchant for auburn hair. It has landed him in trouble many a time." Judith smiled at us both indulgently. She said:

"What a funny couple you are."

She turned away and I rose.

"I must get unpacked, and I might have a bath before dinner." Poirot pressed a little bell within reach of his hand and a minute or two later his valet attendant entered. I was surprised to find that the man was a stranger.

"Why! Where's Georges?"

Poirot's valet, Georges, had been with him for many years.

"Georges has returned to his family. His father is ill. I hope he will come back to me sometime. In the meantime," he smiled at the new valet, "Curtiss looks after me."

Curtiss smiled back respectfully. He was a big man with a bovine rather stupid face.

As I went out of the door, I noted that Poirot was carefully locking up the dispatch case with the papers inside it.

My mind in a whirl, I crossed the passage to my own room.

FOUR

I went down to dinner that night feeling that the whole of life had become suddenly unreal.

Once or twice, while dressing, I had asked myself if possibly Poirot had imagined the whole thing. After all, the dear old chap was an old man now and sadly broken in health. He himself might declare his brain was as sound as ever - but in point of fact, was it? His whole life had been spent in tracking down crime. Would it really be surprising if, in the end, he was to fancy crimes where no crimes were? His enforced inaction must have fretted him sorely. What more likely than that he should invent for himself a new manhunt? Wishful thinking - a perfectly reasonable neurosis. He had selected a number of publicly reported happenings, and had read into them something that was not there - a shadowy figure behind them - a mad mass murderer. In all probability Mrs. Etherington had really killed her husband, the labourer had shot his wife, a young woman had given her old aunt an overdose of morphia, a jealous wife had polished off her husband as she had threatened to do, and a crazy spinster had really committed the murder for which she had subsequently given herself up. In fact these crimes were exactly what they seemed!