Othello! It was Othello I had taken from the bookcase that night when Mrs. Franklin had died. Was that the clue?

Judith that night looking, so someone had said, like her namesake before she cut off the head of Holofernes. Judith - with death in her heart?

NINETEEN

I am writing this in Eastbourne.

I came to Eastbourne to see Georges, formerly Poirot's valet. Georges had been with Poirot many years. He was a competent, matter-of-fact man, with absolutely no imagination. He always stated things literally and took them at their face value.

Well, I went to see him. I told him about Poirot's death, and Georges reacted as Georges would react. He was distressed and grieved and managed very nearly to conceal the fact.

Then I said:

"He left with you, did he not, a message for me?" Georges said at once:

"For you, sir? No, not that I am aware of."

I was surprised. I pressed him, but he was quite definite. I said at last:

"My mistake, I suppose. Well, that's that. I wish you had been with him at the end."

"I wish so, too, sir."

"Still I suppose if your father was ill, you had to come to him." Georges looked at me in a very curious manner. He said:

"I beg your pardon, sir. I don't quite understand you."

"You had to leave in order to look after your father, isn't that right?"

"I didn't wish to leave, sir. M. Poirot sent me away."

"Sent you away?" I stared.

"I don't mean, sir, that he discharged me. The understanding was that I was to return to his service later. But I left by his wish, and he arranged for suitable remuneration while I was here with my old father."

"But why, Georges, why?"

"I really couldn't say, sir."

"Didn't you ask?"

"No, sir. I didn't think it was my place to do so. Mr. Poirot always had his ideas, sir. A very clever gentleman, I always understood, sir, and very much respected."

"Yes, yes," I murmured abstractedly.

"Very particular about his clothes, he was - though given to having them rather foreign and fancy, if you know what I mean. But that, of course, is understandable, as he was a foreign gentleman. His hair, too, and his moustache."

"Ah! Those famous moustaches." I felt a twinge of pain as I remembered his pride in them.

"Very particular about his moustache, he was," went on Georges. "Not very fashionable the way he wore it, but it suited him, sir, if you know what I mean." I said I did know. Then I murmured delicately:

"I suppose he dyed it as well as his hair?"

"He did - er - touch up his moustache a little - but not his hair - not of late years."

"Nonsense," I said. "It was as black as a raven - looked quite like a wig, it was so unnatural."

Georges coughed apologetically.

"Excuse me, sir, it was a wig. M. Poirot's hair came out a good deal lately, so he took to a wig."