Poirot pursed his lips to a whistle. Japp said, "Lord, she didn't look it!

Let me see. What's the exchange? - that's - why, that must be well over a hundred thousand pounds! Whew!"

"Mademoiselle Anne Morisot will be a very wealthy young woman," said Poirot.

"Just as well she wasn't on that plane," said Japp dryly. "She might have been suspected of bumping off her mother to get the dibs. How old would she be?"

"I really cannot say. I should imagine about twenty-four or five."

"Well, there doesn't seem anything to connect her with the crime. We'll have to get down to this blackmailing business. Everyone on that plane denies knowing Madame Giselle. One of them is lying. We've got to find out which. An examination of her private papers might help, eh, Fournier?"

"My friend," said the Frenchman, "immediately the news came through, after I had conversed with Scotland Yard on the telephone, I went straight to her house. There was a safe there containing papers. All those papers had been burned."

"Burned? Who by? Why?"

"Madame Giselle had a confidential maid, Élise. Élise had instructions, in the event of anything happening to her mistress, to open the safe, the combination of which she knew, and burn the contents."

"What? But that's amazing!" Japp stared.

"You see," said Fournier, "Madame Giselle had her own code. She kept faith with those who kept faith with her. She gave her promise to her clients that she would deal honestly with them. She was ruthless, but she was also a woman of her word."

Japp shook his head dumbly. The four men were silent, ruminating on the strange character of the dead woman. Maоtre Thibault rose.

"I must leave you, messieurs. I have to keep an appointment. If there is any further information I can give you at any time, you know my address."

He shook hands with them ceremoniously and left the apartment.

Chapter 7

With the departure of Maоtre Thibault, the three men drew their chairs a little closer to the table.

"Now then," said Japp, "let's get down to it." He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen. "There were eleven passengers in that Plane - in rear car, I mean - the other doesn't come into it - eleven passengers and two stewards - that's thirteen people we've got. One of those thirteen did the old woman in. Some of the passengers were English, some were French. The latter I shall hand over to M. Fournier. The English ones I'll take on. Then there are inquiries to be made in Paris - that's your job, too, Fournier."

"And not only in Paris," said Fournier. "In the summer Giselle did a lot of business at the French watering places - Deasuville, Le Pinet, Wimereux. She went down south, too, to Antibes and Nice and all those places."

"A good point - one or two of the people in the 'Prometheus' mentioned Le Pinet, I remember. Well, that's one line. Then we've got to get down to the actual murder itself - prove who could possibly be in a position to use that blowpipe He unrolled a sketch plan of the aeroplane and placed it in the center of the table. "Now then, we're ready for the preliminary work. And to begin with, let's go through the people one by one, and decide on the probabilities and - even more important - the possibilities."