“Why, M. Poirot,” she said. “It’s just been too wonderful—hearing just exactly how you got your results. It’s every bit as fascinating as a lecture on criminology—in fact it is a lecture on criminology. And to think my magenta wool and that sunbathing conversation actually had something to do with it? That really makes me too excited for words, and I’m sure Mr. Gardener feels the same, don’t you, Odell?”

“Yes, darling,” said Mr. Gardener.

Hercule Poirot said:

“Mr. Gardener too was of assistance to me. I wanted the opinion of a sensible man about Mrs. Marshall. I asked Mr. Gardener what he thought of her.”

“Is that so,” said Mrs. Gardener. “And what did you say about her, Odell?”

Mr. Gardener coughed. He said:

“Well, darling, I never did think very much of her, you know.”

“That’s the kind of thing men always say to their wives,” said Mrs. Gardener. “And if you ask me, even M. Poirot here is what I should call a shade on the indulgent side about her, calling her a natural victim and all that. Of course it’s true that she wasn’t a cultured woman at all, and as Captain Marshall isn’t here I don’t mind saying that she always did seem to me kind of dumb. I said so to Mr. Gardener, didn’t I, Odell?”

“Yes, darling,” said Mr. Gardener.

II

Linda Marshall sat with Hercule Poirot on Gull Cove.

She said:

“Of course I’m glad I didn’t die after all. But you know, M. Poirot, it’s just the same as if I’d killed her, isn’t it? I meant to.”

Hercule Poirot said energetically:

“It is not at all the same thing. The wish to kill and the action of killing are two different things. If in your bedroom instead of a little wax figure you had had your stepmother bound and helpless and a dagger in your hand instead of a pin, you would not have pushed it into her heart! Something within you would have said ‘no.’ It is the same with me. I enrage myself at an imbecile. I say, ‘I would like to kick him.’ Instead, I kick the table. I say, ‘This table, it is the imbecile, I kick him so.’ And then, if I have not hurt my toe too much, I feel much better and the table it is not usually damaged. But if the imbecile himself was there I should not kick him. To make the wax figures and stick in the pins, it is silly, yes, it is childish, yes—but it does something useful too. You took the hate out of yourself and put it into that little figure. And with the pin and the fire you destroyed—not your stepmother—but the hate you bore her. Afterwards, even before you heard of her death, you felt cleansed, did you not—you felt lighter—happier?”