‘Oh, no.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘One can’t always foresee the future. Gervase, of course, was a very strange man, a very unusual man. He was quite unlike anyone else. He was one of the Great Ones born again. I’ve known that for some time. I think he knew it himself. He found it very hard to conform to the silly little standards of the everyday world.’ She added, looking over Major Riddle’s shoulder, ‘He’s smiling now. He’s thinking how foolish we all are. So we are really. Just like children. Pretending that life is real and that it matters…Life is only one of the Great Illusions.’

Feeling that he was fighting a losing battle, Major Riddle asked desperately:

‘You can’t help us at all as to why your husband should have taken his life?’

She shrugged her thin shoulders.

‘Forces move us—they move us…You cannot understand. You move only on the material plane.’

Poirot coughed.

‘Talking of the material plane, have you any idea, madame, as to how your husband has left his money?’

‘Money?’ she stared at him. ‘I never think of money.’

Her tone was disdainful.

Poirot switched to another point.

‘At what time did you come downstairs to dinner tonight?’

‘Time? What is Time? Infinite, that is the answer. Time is infinite.’

Poirot murmured:

‘But your husband, madame, was rather particular about time—especially, so I have been told, as regards the dinner hour.’

‘Dear Gervase,’ she smiled indulgently. ‘He was very foolish about that. But it made him happy. So we were never late.’

‘Were you in the drawing-room, madame, when the first gong went?’

‘No, I was in my room then.’

‘Do you remember who was in the drawing-room when you did come down?’

‘Nearly everybody, I think,’ said Lady Chevenix-Gore vaguely. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Possibly not,’ admitted Poirot. ‘Then there is something else. Did your husband ever tell you that he suspected he was being robbed?’

Lady Chevenix-Gore did not seem much interested in the question.

‘Robbed? No, I don’t think so.’

‘Robbed, swindled—victimized in some way—?’

‘No—no—I don’t think so…Gervase would have been very angry if anybody had dared to do anything like that.’

‘At any rate he said nothing about it to you?’

‘No—no.’ Lady Chevenix-Goreshook her head, still without much real interest. ‘I should have remembered…’

‘When did you last see your husband alive?’

‘He looked in, as usual, on his way downstairs before dinner. My maid was there. He just said he was going down.’

‘What has he talked about most in the last few weeks?’

‘Oh, the family history. He was getting on so well with it. He found that funny old thing, Miss Lingard, quite invaluable. She looked up things for him in the British Museum—all that sort of thing. She worked with Lord Mulcaster on his book, you know. And she was tactful—I mean, she didn’t look up the wrong things. After all, there are ancestors one doesn’t want raked up. Gervase was very sensitive. She helped me, too. She got a lot of information for me about Hatshepsut. I am a reincarnation of Hatshepsut, you know.’