It was a plea—not a question.

Poirot bent his head gently.

‘No one shall know from me.’

Miss Lingard said quietly:

‘Thank you.’

III

Later, when the police had come and gone, Poirot found Ruth Lake with her husband in the garden.

She said challengingly:

‘Did you really think that I had done it, M. Poirot?’

‘I knew, madame, that you could not have done it—because of the michaelmas daisies.’

‘The michaelmas daisies? I don’t understand.’

‘Madame, there were four footprints and four footprints only in the border. But if you had been picking flowers there would have been many more. That meant that between your first visit and your second, someone had smoothed all those footsteps away. That could only have been done by the guilty person, and since your footprints had not been removed, you were not the guilty person. You were automatically cleared.’

Ruth’s face lightened.

‘Oh, I see. You know—I suppose it’s dreadful, but I feel rather sorry for that poor woman. After all, she did confess rather than let me be arrested—or at any rate, that is what she thought. That was—rather noble in a way. I hate to think of her going through a trial for murder.’

Poirot said gently:

‘Do not distress yourself. It will not come to that. The doctor, he tells me that she has serious heart trouble. She will not live many weeks.’

‘I’m glad of that.’ Ruth picked an autumn crocus and pressed it idly against her cheek.

‘Poor woman. I wonder why she did it…’

Triangle at Rhodes

Chapter 1

Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.

Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood beside her.

On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.

‘I’m so patchy still,’ she murmured regretfully. ‘M. Poirot—would you mind? Just below the right shoulder-blade—I can’t reach to rub it in properly.’

M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.

‘I was right about that woman—the one in the Chanel model—it is Valentine Dacres—Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.’