As she followed the Superintendent she said in her soft voice: "You must think I'm a terrible coward. Superintendent. But when they've been all dead in the house - all dead but you - that awful night in London -"

He said gently: "I understand, Mrs Cloade. I know you went through a bad experience in the Blitz when your husband was killed. Really, it will be only a minute or two."

At a sign from Spence the sheet was turned back. Rosaleen Cloade stood looking down at the man who had called himself Enoch Arden. Spence, unobtrusively standing to one side, was actually watching her closely.

She looked at the dead man curiously and as though wondering - she gave no start, no sign of emotion or recognition, just looked long and wonderingly at him.

Then, very quietly, in an almost matter of fact way, she made the sign of the cross.

"God rest, his soul," she said. "I've never seen that man in my life. I don't know who he is."

Spence thought to himself:

"Either you're one of the finest actresses I've ever known or else you're speaking the truth."

Later, Spence rang up Rowley Cloade.

"I've had the widow down," he said. "She says definitely that he's not Robert Underhay, and that she's never seen him before. So that settles that!"

There was a pause. Then Rowley said slowly:

"Does it settle it?"

"I think a jury would believe her - in the absence of evidence to the contrary, of course."

"Ye-es," said Rowley and rang off.

Then, frowning, he picked up not the local telephone directory, but the London one. His forefingers ran methodically down the letter P. Presently he found what he wanted.

BOOK II

Chapter 1

Hercule Poirot carefully folded the last of the newspapers he had sent George out to purchase. The information they gave was somewhat meagre. Medical evidence was given that the man's skull was fractured by a series of heavy blows. The inquest had been adjourned for a fortnight. Anybody who could give information about a man named Enoch Arden believed to have lately arrived from Cape Town was asked to communicate with the Chief Constable of Oatshire.

Poirot laid the papers in a neat pile and gave himself up to meditation. He was interested. He might, perhaps, have passed the first small paragraph by without interest if it had not been for the recent visit of Mrs Lionel Cloade. But that visit had recalled to him very clearly the incidents of that day at the Club during that Air Raid. He remembered, very distinctly, Major Porter's voice saying, "Maybe a Mr Enoch Arden will turn up somewhere a thousand miles away and start life anew." He wanted now, rather badly, to know more about this man called Enoch Arden who had died by violence at Warmsley Vale.