‘Yes, he is. Not Harwell. Wales somewhere. Cardiff. Or Bristol, is it? It’s just a holiday cottage they have on the Helm. Yes, so, of course, I do know an atom scientist after all.’

‘And it was meeting him at Nasse House that probably put the idea of an atom scientist into your head? But his wife is not Yugoslavian.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘Sally is English as English. Surely you realize that?’

‘Then what put the idea of the Yugoslavian wife into your head?’

‘I really don’t know…Refugees perhaps? Students? All those foreign girls at the hostel trespassing through the woods and speaking broken English.’

‘I see…Yes, I see now a lot of things.’

‘It’s about time,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said it was about time,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘That you did see things, I mean. Up to now you don’t seem to have done anything.’ Her voice held reproach.

‘One cannot arrive at things all in a moment,’ said Poirot, defending himself. ‘The police,’ he added, ‘have been completely baffled.’

‘Oh, the police,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard…’

Recognizing this well-known phrase, Poirot hastened to interrupt.

‘The matter has been complex,’ he said. ‘Extremely complex. But now – I tell you this in confidence – but now I arrive!’

Mrs Oliver remained unimpressed.

‘I dare say,’ she said; ‘but in the meantime there have been two murders.’

‘Three,’ Poirot corrected her.

‘Three murders? Who’s the third?’

‘An old man called Merdell,’ said Hercule Poirot.

‘I haven’t heard of that one,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Will it be in the paper?’

‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘up to now no one has suspected that it was anything but an accident.’

‘And it wasn’t an accident?’

‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘it was not an accident.’

‘Well, tell me who did it – did them, I mean – or can’t you over the telephone?’

‘One does not say these things over the telephone,’ said Poirot.

‘Then I shall ring off,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Poirot, ‘there is something else I wanted to ask you. Now, what was it?’

‘That’s a sign of age,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I do that, too. Forget things –’

‘There was something, some little point – it worried me. I was in the boathouse…’

He cast his mind back. That pile of comics. Marlene’s phrases scrawled on the margin. ‘Albert goes with Doreen.’ He had had a feeling that there was something lacking – that there was something he must ask Mrs Oliver.

‘Are you still there, M. Poirot?’ demanded Mrs Oliver. At the same time the operator requested more money.

These formalities completed, Poirot spoke once more.

‘Are you still there, Madame?’

‘I’m still here,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Don’t let’s waste any more money asking each other if we’re there. What is it?’

‘It is something very important. You remember your Murder Hunt?’