“Yes, it does. Marshall’s right out of it—though I did get some information that might have been useful if his alibi hadn’t been so good. Seems his firm is very near the rocks. Not his fault or his partner’s, just the general result of the crisis last year and the general state of trade and finance. And as far as he knew, he’d come into fifty thousand pounds if his wife died. And fifty thousand would have been a very useful sum.”

He sighed.

“Seems a pity when a man’s got two perfectly good motives for murder, that he can be proved to have had nothing to do with it!”

Weston smiled.

“Cheer up, Colgate. There’s still a chance we may distinguish ourselves. There’s the blackmail angle still and there’s the batty parson, but, personally, I think the dope solution is far the most likely.” He added: “And if it was one of the dope gang who put her out we’ll have been instrumental in helping Scotland Yard to solve the dope problem. In fact, take it all round, one way or another, we’ve done pretty well.”

An unwilling smile showed on Colgate’s face.

He said:

“Well, that’s the lot, sir. By the way, I checked up on the writer of that letter we found in her room. The one signed J.N. Nothing doing. He’s in China safe enough. Same chap as Miss Brewster was telling us about. Bit of a young scallywag. I’ve checked up on the rest of Mrs. Marshall’s friends. No leads there. Everything there is to get, we’ve got, sir.”

Weston said:

“So now it’s up to us.” He paused and then added: “Seen anything of our Belgian colleague? Does he know all you’ve told me?”

Colgate said with a grin:

“He’s a queer little cuss, isn’t he? D’you know what he asked me day before yesterday? He wanted particulars of any cases of strangulation in the last three years.”

Colonel Weston sat up.

“He did, did he? Now I wonder—” he paused a minute. “When did you say the Reverend Stephen Lane went into that mental home?”

“A year ago last Easter, sir.”

Colonel Weston was thinking deeply. He said:

“There was a case—body of a young woman found somewhere near Bagshot. Going to meet her husband somewhere and never turned up. And there was what the papers called the Lonely Copse Mystery. Both in Surrey if I remember rightly.”

His eyes met those of his Inspector. Colgate said:

“Surrey? My word, sir, it fits, doesn’t it? I wonder….”

II

Hercule Poirot sat on the turf on the summit of the island.