‘I can’t think why I always drop things,’ said Mrs Oliver somewhat indistinctly, since her mouth was full of apple. ‘How are you, M. Poirot?’

‘Tre`s bien, che`re Madame,’ replied Poirot politely. ‘And you?’

Mrs Oliver was looking somewhat different from when Poirot had last seen her, and the reason lay, as she had already hinted over the telephone, in the fact that she had once more experimented with her coiffure. The last time Poirot had seen her, she had been adopting a windswept effect. Today, her hair, richly blued, was piled upward in a multiplicity of rather artificial little curls in a pseudo Marquise style. The Marquise effect ended at her neck; the rest of her could have been definitely labelled ‘country practical,’ consisting of a violent yolk-of-egg rough tweed coat and skirt and a rather bilious-looking mustard-coloured jumper.

‘I knew you’d come,’ said Mrs Oliver cheerfully.

‘You could not possibly have known,’ said Poirot severely.

‘Oh, yes, I did.’

‘I still ask myself why I am here.’

‘Well, I know the answer. Curiosity.’

Poirot looked at her and his eyes twinkled a little. ‘Your famous woman’s intuition,’ he said, ‘has, perhaps, for once not led you too far astray.’

‘Now, don’t laugh at my woman’s intuition. Haven’t I always spotted the murderer right away?’

Poirot was gallantly silent. Otherwise he might have replied, ‘At the fifth attempt, perhaps, and not always then!’

Instead he said, looking round him:

‘It is indeed a beautiful property that you have here.’

‘This? But it doesn’t belong to me, M. Poirot. Did you think it did? Oh, no, it belongs to some people called Stubbs.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Oh, nobody really,’ said Mrs Oliver vaguely. ‘Just rich. No, I’m down here professionally, doing a job.’

‘Ah, you are getting local colour for one of your chefs-d’oeuvre?’

‘No, no. Just what I said. I’m doing a job. I’ve been engaged to arrange a murder.’

Poirot stared at her.

‘Oh, not a real one,’ said Mrs Oliver reassuringly. ‘There’s a big fête thing on tomorrow, and as a kind of novelty there’s going to be a Murder Hunt. Arranged by me. Like a Treasure Hunt, you see; only they’ve had a Treasure Hunt so often that they thought this would be a novelty. So they offered me a very substantial fee to come down and think it up. Quite fun, really – rather a change from the usual grim routine.’

‘How does it work?’

‘Well, there’ll be a Victim, of course. And Clues. And Suspects. All rather conventional – you know, the Vamp and the Blackmailer and the Young Lovers and the Sinister Butler and so on. Half a crown to enter and you get shown the first Clue and you’ve got to find the Victim, and the Weapon and say Whodunnit and the Motive. And there are Prizes.’

‘Remarkable!’ said Hercule Poirot.