as seeing girls from one station to another, had been delivered at Victoria to Miss Burshaw, Miss Pope's second-in-command, and had then, in company with eighteen other girls, left Victoria by the boat train.

Nineteen girls had crossed the channel,

had passed through the customs at Calais, had got into the Paris train, had lunched in the restaurant car. But when, on the

outskirts of Paris, Miss Burshaw had

counted heads, it was discovered that only eighteen girls could be found!

"Aha," Poirot nodded. "Did the train

stop anywhere ?"

"It stopped at Amiens, but at that time

329

the girls were in the restaurant car and they

all say positively that Winnie was with

them then. They lost her, so to speak, on

the return journey to their compartments.

That is to say, she did not enter her own

compartment with the other five girls who

were in it. They did not suspect anything

was wrong, merely thought she

was in one of the two other reserved

carriages."

Poirot nodded.

"So she was last seen --when exactly ?"

"About ten minutes after the train left

Amiens." Japp coughed modestly. "She

was last seen --er --entering the

Toilette."

Poirot murmured:

"Very natural." He went on: "There

is nothing else ?"

"Yes, one thing." Japp's face was grim.

"Her hat was found by the side of the line

--at a spot approximately fourteen miles

from Amiens."

"But no body ?"

"No body."

Poirot asked:

"What do you yourself think ?"

"Difficult to know what to think! As

330

r

there's no sign of her body—she can't

have fallen off the train."

"Did the train stop at all after leaving

Amiens ?"

"No. It slowed up once — for a signal,

but it didn't stop, and I doubt if it slowed

up enough for anyone to have jumped

off without injury. You're thinking that

the kid got a panic and tried to run away ?

It was her first term and she might have

been homesick, that's true enough, but

all the same she was fifteen and a half—

a sensible age, and she'd been in quite good

spirits all the journey, chattering away and

all that."

Poirot asked:

"Was the train searched ?"

"Oh yes, they went right through it

before it arrived at the Nord station. The

girl wasn't on the train, that's quite

certain."

Japp added in an exasperated manner:

"She just disappeared—into thin air!

It doesn't make sense, M. Poirot. It's

crazy!"

"What kind of a girl was she ?"

"Ordinary, normal type as far as I can

make out."

331

"I mean — what did she look like ?"

"I've got a snap of her here. She's not

exactly a budding beauty."

He proffered the snapshot to Poirot

who studied it in silence.

It represented a lanky girl with her hair

in two limp plaits. It was not a posed

photograph, the subject had clearly been

caught unawares. She was in the act of

eating an apple, her lips were parted,