He picked up the letters by his plate and more or less threw them at her.

‘Answer them any way you like! I can’t be bothered.’ He went on more or less to himself, in an injured tone, ‘Doesn’t seem to be anything I can do…Don’t even know if that police chap’s any good. Very soft spoken and all that.’

‘The police are, I believe,’ said Miss Brewis, ‘very efficient. They have ample facilities for tracing the whereabouts of missing persons.’

‘They take days sometimes,’ said Sir George, ‘to find some miserable kid who’s run off and hidden himself in a haystack.’

‘I don’t think Lady Stubbs is likely to be in a haystack, Sir George.’

‘If only I could do something,’ repeated the unhappy husband. ‘I think, you know, I’ll put an advertisement in the papers. Take it down, Amanda, will you?’ He paused a moment in thought. ‘Hattie. Please come home. Desperate about you. George. All the papers, Amanda.’

Miss Brewis said acidly:

‘Lady Stubbs doesn’t often read the papers, Sir George. She’s no interest at all in current affairs or what’s going on in the world.’ She added, rather cattily, but Sir George was not in the mood to appreciate cattiness, ‘Of course you could put an advertisement in Vogue. That might catch her eye.’

Sir George said simply:

‘Anywhere you think but get on with it.’

He got up and walked towards the door. With his hand on the handle he paused and came back a few steps. He spoke directly to Poirot.

‘Look here, Poirot,’ he said, ‘you don’t think she’s dead, do you?’

Poirot fixed his eyes on his coffee-cup as he replied:

‘I should say it is far too soon, Sir George, to assume anything of that kind. There is no reason as yet to entertain such an idea.’

‘So you do think so,’ said Sir George, heavily. ‘Well,’ he added defiantly, ‘I don’t! I say she’s quite all right.’ He nodded his head several times with increasing defiance, and went out banging the door behind him.