I am Hercule Poirot and I know. When my friend M. Fournier asked you if you were sure there was nothing you had omitted to mention, you were troubled. You answered, unconsciously, with an evasion. Again just now when I suggested that you might tell me something which you would not care to tell the police, you very obviously turned the suggestion over in your mind. There is, then, something. I want to know what that something is."

"It is nothing of importance."

"Possibly not. But all the same, will you not tell me what it is?

Remember," he went on as she hesitated, "I am not of the police."

"That is true," said Élise Grandier. She hesitated, and went on:

"Monsieur, I am in a difficulty. I do not know what madame herself would have wanted me to do."

"There is a saying that two heads are better than one. Will you not consult me? Let us examine the question together."

The woman still looked at him doubtfully. He said with a smile:

"You are a good watch dog, Élise. It is a question, I see, of loyalty to your dead mistress?"

"That is quite right, monsieur. Madame trusted me. Ever since I entered her service I have carried out her instructions faithfully."

"You were grateful, were you not, for some great service she had rendered you?"

"Monsieur is very quick. Yes, that is true. I do not mind admitting it. I had been deceived, monsieur, my savings stolen, and there was a child. Madame was good to me. She arranged for the baby to be brought up by some good people on a farm - a good farm, monsieur, and honest people. It was then, at that time, that she mentioned to me that she, too, was a mother."

"Did she tell you the age of her child, where it was, any details?"

"No, monsieur; she spoke as of a part of her life that was over and done with. It was best so, she said. The little girl was well provided for and would be brought up to a trade or profession. It would also inherit her money when she died."

"She told you nothing further about this child or about its father?"

"No, monsieur, but I have an idea -"

"Speak, Mademoiselle Élise."

"It is an idea only, you understand."

"Perfectly, perfectly."

"I have an idea that the father of the child was an Englishman."

"What, exactly, do you think gave you that impression?"

"Nothing definite. It is just that there was a bitterness in madame's voice when she spoke of the English. I think, too, that in her business transactions she enjoyed having anyone English in her power. It is an impression only."

"Yes, but it may be a very valuable one. It opens up possibilities... Your own child. Mademoiselle Élise? Was it a girl or a boy?"

"A girl, monsieur. But she is dead - dead these five years now."

"Ah, all my sympathy."