"She's so gushing with it all," I complained.

Boyd Carrington looked amused.

"I know. All sweetness. But have you played bridge with them?" I replied feelingly that I had.

"On the whole I steer clear of women bridge players," said Boyd Carrington. "And if you take my tip, you'll do the same."

I told him how uncomfortable Norton and myself had felt on the first evening of my arrival.

"Exactly. One doesn't know where to look!"

He added:

"Nice fellow, Norton. Very quiet though. Always looking at birds and things. Doesn't care for shooting them, he told me. Extraordinary! No feeling for sport. I told him he missed a lot. Can't see myself what excitement there can be stalking about through cold woods peering at birds through glasses." How little we realized then that Norton's hobby might have an important part to play in the events that were to come.

EIGHT

The days passed. It was an unsatisfactory time - with its uneasy feeling of waiting for something.

Nothing, if I may put it in such a way, actually happened. Yet there were incidents, scraps of odd conversations, sidelights upon the various inmates of Styles, elucidating remarks. They all mounted up and, if properly pieced together, could have done a lot towards enlightening me.

It was Poirot who, with a few forceful words, showed me something to which I had been criminally blind.

I was complaining, for the umpteenth time, of his wilful refusal to admit me to his confidence. It was not fair I told him. Always he and I had had equal knowledge - even if I had been dense and he had been astute in drawing the right conclusions from that knowledge.

He waved an impatient hand.

"Quite so, my friend. It is not fair! It is not sporting! It is not playing the game!

Admit all that and pass from it. This is not a game - it is not le sport. For you, you occupy yourself in guessing wildly at the identity of X. It is not for that that I asked you to come here. Unnecessary for you to occupy yourself with that. I know the answer to that question. But what I do not know and what I must know is this:

'Who is going to die - very soon?' It is a question, mon vieux, not of you playing a guessing game, but of preventing a human being from dying." I was startled.

"Of course," I said slowly. "I - well, I did know that you practically said so once, but I haven't quite realized it."

"Then realize it now - immediately."

"Yes, yes, I will - I mean, I do."

"Bien! Then tell me, Hastings, who is it who is going to die?" I stared at him blankly.

"I have really no idea!"

"Then you should have an idea! What else are you here for?"

'Surely," I said, going back over my meditations on the subject, "there must be a connection between the victim and X so that if you told me who X was - " Poirot shook his head with so much vigour that it was quite painful to watch.