‘I suppose when they killed poor Margery some of the blood must have spurted over Carol’s bathing suit, and being a red one they didn’t notice it, as Miss Marple says. But when they hung it over the balcony it dripped. Ugh!’ she gave a shiver. ‘I can see it still.’

‘Of course,’ said Sir Henry, ‘I remember very well now. Davis was the man’s real name. It had quite slipped my memory that one of his many aliases was Dacre. They were an extraordinarily cunning pair. It always seemed so amazing to me that no one spotted the change of identity. I suppose, as Miss Marple says, clothes are more easily identified than faces; but it was a very clever scheme, for although we suspected Davis it was not easy to bring the crime home to him as he always seemed to have an unimpeachable alibi.’

‘Aunt Jane,’ said Raymond, looking at her curiously, ‘how do you do it? You have lived such a peaceful life and yet nothing seems to surprise you.’

‘I always find one thing very like another in this world,’ said Miss Marple. ‘There was Mrs Green, you know, she buried five children—and every one of them insured. Well, naturally, one began to get suspicious.’

She shook her head.

‘There is a great deal of wickedness in village life. I hope you dear young people will never realize how very wicked the world is.’

The Double Clue

‘But above everything—no publicity,’ said Mr Marcus Hardman for perhaps the fourteenth time.

The word publicity occurred throughout his conversation with the regularity of a leitmotif. Mr Hardman was a small man, delicately plump, with exquisitely manicured hands and a plaintive tenor voice. In his way, he was somewhat of a celebrity and the fashionable life was his profession. He was rich, but not remarkably so, and he spent his money zealously in the pursuit of social pleasure. His hobby was collecting. He had the collector’s soul. Old lace, old fans, antique jewellery—nothing crude or modern for Marcus Hardman.

Poirot and I, obeying an urgent summons, had arrived to find the little man writhing in an agony of indecision. Under the circumstances, to call in the police was abhorrent to him. On the other hand, not to call them in was to acquiesce in the loss of some of the gems of his collection. He hit upon Poirot as a compromise.

‘My rubies, Monsieur Poirot, and the emerald necklace said to have belonged to Catherine de’ Medici. Oh, the emerald necklace!’

‘If you will recount to me the circumstances of their disappearance?’ suggested Poirot gently.