Darling Arlena,—God, I feel blue. To be going out to China—and perhaps not seeing you again for years and years. I didn’t know any man could go on feeling crazy about a woman like I feel about you. Thanks for the cheque. They won’t prosecute now. It was a near shave, though, and all because I wanted to make big money for you. Can you forgive me? I wanted to set diamonds in your ears—your lovely ears—and clasp great milk-white pearls round your throat, only they say pearls are no good nowadays. A fabulous emerald, then? Yes, that’s the thing. A great emerald, cool and green and full of hidden fire. Don’t forget me—but you won’t, I know. You’re mine—always.

Goodbye—goodbye—goodbye.

J.N.

Inspector Colgate said:

“Might be worth while to find out if J.N. really did go to China. Otherwise—well, he might be the person we’re looking for. Crazy about the woman, idealizing her, suddenly finding out he’d been played for a sucker. It sounds to me as though this is the boy Miss Brewster mentioned. Yes, I think this might be useful.”

Hercule Poirot nodded. He said: “Yes, that letter is important. I find it very important.”

He turned round and stared at the room—at the bottles on the dressing table—at the open wardrobe and at a big Pierrot doll that lolled insolently on the bed.

They went into Kenneth Marshall’s room.

It was next door to his wife’s but with no communicating door and no balcony. It faced the same way and had two windows, but it was much smaller. Between the two windows a gilt mirror hung on the wall. In the corner beyond the right-hand window was the dressing table. On it were two ivory brushes, a clothes brush and a bottle of hair lotion. In the corner by the left-hand window was a writing table. An open typewriter stood on it and papers were ranged in a stack beside it.

Colgate went through them rapidly.

He said:

“All seems straightforward enough. Ah, here’s the letter he mentioned this morning. Dated the 24th—that’s yesterday. And here’s the envelope postmarked Leathercombe Bay this morning. Seems all square. Now we’ll have an idea if he could have prepared that answer of his beforehand.

He sat down.

Colonel Weston said:

“We’ll leave you to it, for a moment. We’ll just glance through the rest of the rooms. Everyone’s been kept out of this corridor until now, and they’re getting a bit restive about it.”

They went next into Linda Marshall’s room. It faced east, looking out over the rocks down to the sea below.

Weston gave a glance round. He murmured: