"Tell me something about Mr. Norton."

"There isn't really much to tell. He's very nice - rather shy - just a little stupid, perhaps. He's always been rather delicate. He's lived with his mother - rather a peevish, stupid woman. She bossed him a good deal, I think. She died a few years ago. He's keen on birds and flowers and things like that. He's a very kind person - and he's the sort of person who sees a lot." "Through his glasses, you mean?" Miss Cole smiled.

"Well, I wasn't meaning it quite so literally as that. I meant more that he notices a good deal. Those quiet people often do. He's unselfish - and very considerate for a man, but he's rather - ineffectual, if you know what I mean." I nodded. "Oh yes, I know."

Elizabeth Cole said suddenly, and once more the deep bitter note was in her voice:

"That's the depressing part of places like this. Guest houses run by brokendown gentlepeople. They're full of failures - of people who have never got anywhere and never will get anywhere, of people who - who have been defeated and broken by life, of people who are old and tired and finished."

Her voice died away. A deep and spreading sadness permeated me. How true it was! Here we were, a collection of twilit people. Grey heads, grey hearts, grey dreams. Myself, sad and lonely, the woman beside me also a bitter and disillusioned creature. Dr. Franklin, his ambitions curbed and thwarted, his wife a prey to ill health. Quiet little Norton limping about looking at birds. Even Poirot, the once brilliant Poirot, now a broken, crippled old man.

How different it had been in the old days - the days when I had first come to Styles. The thought was too much for me - a stifled exclamation of pain and regret came to my lips.

My companion said quickly:

"What is it?"

"Nothing. I was just struck by the contrast - I was here, you know, many years ago, as a young man. I was thinking of the difference between then and now."

"I see. It was a happy house then? Everyone was happy here?" Curious, sometimes, how one's thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern.

My regret had been for the past as the past, not for the reality. For even then, in that far-off time, there had been no happiness at Styles. I remembered dispassionately the real facts. My friend John and his wife, both unhappy and chafing at the life they were forced to lead. Lawrence Cavendish, sunk in melancholy. Cynthia, her girlish brightness damped by her dependent position. Inglethorp married to a rich woman for her money. No, none of them had been happy. And now, again, no one here was happy - Styles was not a lucky house. I said to Miss Cole: