‘What kind of ideas?’

‘The most extraordinary ideas! For instance, yesterday, a really most practical scheme for robbing a post office came into my head. I wasn’t thinking about it—it just came! And another very ingenious way for evading custom duties . . . I feel convinced—quite convinced—that it would work.’

‘It probably would,’ said Poirot drily. ‘That is the danger of your ideas.’

‘It has worried me, M. Poirot, very much. Having been brought up with strict principles, as I have been, it is most disturbing that such lawless—such really wicked—ideas should come to me. The trouble is partly, I think, that I have a good deal of leisure time now. I have left Lady Hoggin and I am engaged by an old lady to read to her and write her letters every day. The letters are soon done and the moment I begin reading she goes to sleep, so I am left just sitting there—with an idle mind—and we all know the use the devil has for idleness.’

‘Tcha, tcha,’ said Poirot.

‘Recently I have read a book—a very modern book, translated from the German. It throws a most interesting light on criminal tendencies. One must, so I understand, sublimate one’s impulses! That, really, is why I came to you.’

‘Yes?’ said Poirot.

‘You see, M. Poirot. I think that it is really not so much wickedness as a craving for excitement! My life has unfortunately been very humdrum. The—er—campaign of the Pekinese dogs, I sometimes feel, was the only time I really lived. Very reprehensible, of course, but, as my book says, one must not turn one’s back on the truth. I came to you, M. Poirot, because I hoped it might be possible to—to sublimate that craving for excitement by employing it, if I may put it that way, on the side of the angels.’

‘Aha,’ said Poirot. ‘It is then as a colleague that you present yourself?’

Miss Carnaby blushed.

‘It is very presumptuous of me, I know. But you were so kind—’

She stopped. Her eyes, faded blue eyes, had something in them of the pleading of a dog who hopes against hope that you will take him for a walk.

‘It is an idea,’ said Hercule Poirot slowly.

‘I am, of course, not at all clever,’ explained Miss Carnaby. ‘But my powers of—of dissimulation are good. They have to be—otherwise one would be discharged from the post of companion immediately. And I have always found that to appear even stupider than one is, occasionally has good results.’

Hercule Poirot laughed. He said:

‘You enchant me, Mademoiselle.’

‘Oh dear, M. Poirot, what a very kind man you are. Then you do encourage me to hope? As it happens, I have just received a small legacy—a very small one, but it enables my sister and myself to keep and feed ourselves in a frugal manner so that I am not absolutely dependent on what I earn.’

‘I must consider,’ said Poirot, ‘where your talents may best be employed. You have no idea yourself, I suppose?’