‘And then that devil Eustace turned up! You know the rest. He began to bleed her systematically, but it wasn’t till that last evening that she realised that she was exposing Charles too, to the risk of scandal. Once married to Charles, Eustace had got her where he wanted her—married to a rich man with a horror of any scandal! When Eustace had gone with the money she had got for him she sat thinking it over. Then she came up and wrote a letter to me. She said she loved Charles and couldn’t live without him, but that for his own sake she mustn’t marry him. She was taking the best way out, she said.’

Jane flung her head back.

‘Do you wonder I did what I did? And you stand there calling it murder!’

‘Because it is murder,’ Poirot’s voice was stern. ‘Murder can sometimes seem justified, but it is murder all the same. You are truthful and clear-minded—face the truth, mademoiselle! Your friend died, in the last resort, because she had not the courage to live. We may sympathize with her. We may pity her. But the fact remains—the act was hers—not another.’

He paused.

‘And you? That man is now in prison, he will serve a long sentence for other matters. Do you really wish, of your own volition, to destroy the life—the life, mind—of any human being?’

She stared at him. Her eyes darkened. Suddenly she muttered:

‘No. You’re right. I don’t.’

Then, turning on her heel, she went swiftly from the room. The outer door banged…

II

Japp gave a long—a very prolonged—whistle.

‘Well, I’m damned!’ he said.

Poirot sat down and smiled at him amiably. It was quite a long time before the silence was broken. Then Japp said:

‘Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to look like murder!’

‘Yes, and very cleverly done, too. Nothing overemphasized.’

Japp said suddenly:

‘But the attaché-case? Where did that come in?’

‘But, my dear, my very dear friend, I have already told you that it did not come in.’

‘Then why—’

‘The golf clubs. The golf clubs, Japp. They were the golf clubs of a left-handed person. Jane Plenderleith kept her clubs at Wentworth. Those were Barbara Allen’s clubs. No wonder the girl got, as you say, the wind up when we opened that cupboard. Her whole plan might have been ruined. But she is quick, she realized that she had, for one short moment, given herself away. She saw that we saw. So she does the best thing she can think of on the spur of the moment. She tries to focus our attention on the wrong object. She says of the attaché-case “That’s mine. I—it came back with me this morning. So there can’t be anything there.” And, as she hoped, away you go on the false trail. For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attaché-case as a—what is it—kippered herring?’