"But one must not complain," said Poirot again. "I am content to suffer - for a good cause."

A sudden thought struck me.

"I say, Poirot, you're not - er - hard up, are you? I know the war hit investments very badly - "

Poirot reassured me quickly.

"No, no, my friend. I am in most comfortable circumstances. Indeed, I am rich. It is not the economy that brings me here."

"Then that's all right," I said.

I went on:

"I think I can understand your feeling. As one gets on, one tends more and more to revert to the old days. One tries to recapture old emotions. I find it painful to be here, in a way, and yet it brings back to me a hundred old thoughts and emotions that I'd quite forgotten I ever felt. I daresay you feel the same."

"Not in the least. I do not feel like that at all."

"They were good days," I said sadly.

"You may speak for yourself, Hastings. For me, my arrival at Styles St. Mary was a sad and painful time. I was a refugee, wounded, exiled from home and country, existing by charity in a foreign land. No, it was not gay. I did not know then that England would come to be my home and that I should find happiness here."

"I had forgotten that," I admitted.

"Precisely. You attribute always to others the sentiments that you yourself experience. Hastings was happy - everybody was happy!"

"No, no," I protested, laughing.

"And in any case it is not true," continued Poirot; "you look back, you say, the tears rising in your eyes, 'Oh, the happy days. Then I was young.' But indeed, my friend, you were not so happy as you think. You had recently been severely wounded, you were fretting at being no longer fit for active service, you had just been depressed beyond words by your sojourn in a dreary convalescent home, and as far as I remember, you proceeded to complicate matters by falling in love with two women at the same time."

I laughed and flushed.

"What a memory you have, Poirot."

"Ta ta ta - I remember now the melancholy sigh you heaved as you murmured fatuities about two lovely women."

"Do you remember what you said? You said, 'And neither of them is for you!

Never mind. Console yourself, mon ami. We may hunt together again and then - ' " I stopped. For Poirot and I had gone hunting again to France and it was there that I had met the one woman...

Gently my friend patted my arm.

"I know, Hastings, I know. The wound is still fresh. But do not dwell on it, do not look back. Instead look forward."

I made a gesture of disgust.

"Look forward? What is there to look forward to?"

"Eh bien, my friend, there is work to be done."

"Work? Where?"

"Here."

I stared at him.

"Just now," said Poirot, "you asked me why I had come here. You may not have observed that I gave you no answer. I will give you the answer now. I am here to hunt down a murderer."