‘I doubt if mine is,’ said Sally Legge.

She said the words lightly enough, but behind them Poirot heard an undertone of bitterness.

‘He’s so completely engrossed in his own affairs.’

‘All women complain of that in husbands,’ said Poirot. ‘Especially in English husbands,’ he added.

‘You foreigners are more gallant.’

‘We know,’ said Poirot, ‘that it is necessary to tell a woman at least once a week, and preferably three or four times, that we love her; and that it is also wise to bring her a few flowers, to pay her a few compliments, to tell her that she looks well in her new dress or new hat.’

‘Is that what you do?’

‘I, Madame, am not a husband,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Alas!’ he added.

‘I’m sure there’s no alas about it. I’m sure you’re quite delighted to be a carefree bachelor.’

‘No, no, Madame, it is terrible all that I have missed in life.’

‘I think one’s a fool to marry,’ said Sally Legge.

‘You regret the days when you painted in your studio in Chelsea?’

‘You seem to know all about me, M. Poirot?’

‘I am a gossip,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I like to hear all about people.’ He went on, ‘Do you really regret, Madame?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She sat down impatiently on the seat. Poirot sat beside her.

He witnessed once more the phenomenon to which he was becoming accustomed. This attractive, redhaired girl was about to say things to him that she would have thought twice about saying to an Englishman.

‘I hoped,’ she said, ‘that when we came down here for a holiday away from everything, that things would be the same again…But it hasn’t worked out like that.’ ‘No?’

‘No. Alec’s just as moody and – oh, I don’t know – wrapped up in himself. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He’s so nervy and on edge. People ring him up and leave queer messages for him and he won’t tell me anything. That’s what makes me mad. He won’t tell me anything! I thought at first it was some other woman, but I don’t think it is. Not really…’

But her voice held a certain doubt which Poirot was quick to notice.

‘Did you enjoy your tea yesterday afternoon, Madame?’ he asked.

‘Enjoy my tea?’ She frowned at him, her thoughts seeming to come back from a long way away. Then she said hastily, ‘Oh, yes. You’ve no idea how exhausting it was, sitting in that tent muffled up in all those veils. It was stifling.’

‘The tea tent also must have been somewhat stifling?’

‘Oh, yes, it was. However, there’s nothing like a cuppa, is there?’

‘You were searching for something just now, were you not, Madame? Would it, by any possibility, be this?’ He held out in his hand the little gold charm.