"Good. Then I needn't explain. He married a few weeks before his death - a young widow called Underhay. Since his death she has been living at Warmsley Vale - she and a brother of hers. We all understood that her first husband had died of fever in Africa. But now it seems as though that mightn't be so."

"Ah," Poirot sat up. "And what has led you to that surmise?"

Rowley described the advent of Mr Enoch Arden in Warmsley Vale.

"Perhaps you have seen in the papers -"

"Yes, I have seen." Poirot was again helpful.

Rowley went on. He described his first impression of the man Arden, his visit to the Stag, the letter he had received from Beatrice Lippincott and finally the conversation that Beatrice had overheard.

"Of course," Rowley said, "one can't be sure just what she did hear. She may have exaggerated it all a bit - or even got it wrong."

"Has she told her story to the police?"

Rowley nodded. "I told her she'd better."

"I don't quite see - pardon me - why you come to me, Mr Cloade? Do you want me to investigate this - murder? For it is murder, I assume."

"Lord, no," said Rowley. "I don't want anything of that kind. That's a police job. He was bumped off all right. No, what I'm after is this. I want you to find out who the fellow was."

Poirot's eyes narrowed.

"Who do you think he was, Mr Cloade?"

"Well, I mean - Enoch Arden isn't a name. Dash it all, it's a quotation. Tennyson. I went and mugged it up. Fellow who comes back and finds out his wife has married another fellow."

"So you think," said Poirot quietly, "that Enoch Arden was Robert Underhay himself?"

Rowley said slowly:

"Well, he might have been - I mean, about the right age and appearance and all that. Of course I've gone over it all with Beatrice again and again. She can't naturally remember exactly what they both said. The chap said Robert Underhay had come down in the world and was in bad health and needed money. Well, he might have been talking about himself, mightn't he? He seems to have said something about it wouldn't suit David Hunter's book if Underhay turned up in Warmsley Vale - sounding a bit as though he was there under an assumed name."

"What evidence of identification was there at the Inquest?"

Rowley shook his head.

"Nothing definite. Only the Stag people saying he was the man who'd come there and registered as Enoch Arden."

"What about his papers?"

"He hadn't any."

"What?" Poirot sat up in surprise. "No papers of any kind?"

"Nothing at all. Some spare socks and a shirt and a toothbrush, etc. - but no papers."

"No passport? No letters? Not even a ration card?"

"Nothing at all."

"That," said Poirot, "is very interesting. Yes, very interesting."