‘I think, mademoiselle, you can answer that question. Monsieur suspected that there was something between you and that young man. To divert his mind from Captain Marshall, you had flirted shamelessly with Mr Keene. But yes, you need not deny! Mr Keene gets wind of my coming and acts promptly. The essence of his scheme is that the crime must seem to take place at 8:12, when he has an alibi. His one danger is the bullet, which must be lying somewhere near the gong and which he has not had time to retrieve. When we are all on our way to the study he picks that up. At such a tense moment he thinks no one will notice. But me, I notice everything! I question him. He reflects a little minute and then he plays the comedy! He insinuates that what he picked up was the silk rosebud, he plays the part of the young man in love shielding the lady he loves. Oh, it was very clever, and if you had not picked Michaelmas daisies–’

‘I don’t understand what they have to do with it.’

‘You do not? Listen–there were only four footprints in the bed, but when you were picking the flowers you must have made many more than that. So in between your picking the flowers and your coming to get the rosebud someone must have smoothed over the bed. Not a gardener–no gardener works after seven. Then it must be someone guilty–it must be the murderer–the murder was committed before the shot was heard.’

‘But why did nobody hear the real shot?’ asked Harry.

‘A silencer. They will find that and the revolver thrown into the shrubbery.’

‘What a risk!’

‘Why a risk? Everyone was upstairs dressing for dinner. It was a very good moment. The bullet was the only contretemps, and even that, as he thought, passed off well.’

Poirot picked it up. ‘He threw it under the mirror when I was examining the window with Mr Dalehouse.’

‘Oh!’ Diana wheeled on Marshall. ‘Marry me, John, and take me away.’

Barling coughed. ‘My dear Diana, under the terms of my friend’s will–’

‘I don’t care,’ the girl cried. ‘We can draw pictures on pavements.’

‘There’s no need to do that,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll go halves, Di. I’m not going to bag things because Uncle had a bee in his bonnet.’

Suddenly there was a cry. Mrs Lytcham Roche had sprung to her feet.

‘M. Poirot–the mirror–he–he must have deliberately smashed it.’

‘Yes, madame.’

‘Oh!’ She stared at him. ‘But it is unlucky to break a mirror.’

‘It has proved very unlucky for Mr Geoffrey Keene,’ said Poirot cheerfully.

Yellow Iris

Yellow Iris

I

Hercule Poirot stretched out his feet towards the electric radiator set in the wall. Its neat arrangement of red hot bars pleased his orderly mind.