“I shall call upon Mr. and Mrs. Wallace immediately.”

“Actually,” said Nancy, “it’s Lord and Lady Wallace you’ll be calling on. Louisa wouldn’t care, but St. John won’t forgive you if you deprive him of his title.”

NOT LONG AFTERWARD, POIROT was standing by the side of Louisa Wallace as she stared, enraptured, at Nancy Ducane’s portrait of her that hung on the wall of her drawing room. “Isn’t it perfect?” she breathed. “Neither flattering nor insulting. With high color and a round face like mine, there is always a danger I shall end up looking like a farmer’s wife, but I don’t. I don’t look ravishing, but I do look quite nice, I think. St. John used the word ‘voluptuous,’ a word he has never used about me before—but the picture made him think of it.” She laughed. “Isn’t it wonderful that there are people in the world as talented as Nancy?”

Poirot was having trouble concentrating on the painting. Louisa Wallace’s equivalent of Nancy Ducane’s smartly starched maid Tabitha was a clumsy girl named Dorcas who had dropped Poirot’s coat twice so far, and once dropped and stood on his hat.

The Wallace home might have been beautiful under a different regime, but as Poirot found it that day, it left a lot to be desired. Apart from the heavier items of furniture that stood sensibly against walls, everything in the house looked as if it had been blown about by a strong wind before falling in a random and inconvenient place. Poirot couldn’t abide disorder; it prevented him from thinking clearly.

Eventually, having scooped up his coat and trodden-on hat, the maid Dorcas withdrew, and Poirot was left alone with Louisa Wallace. Stanley Beer had stayed at Nancy Ducane’s house to complete his search of the rooms, and His Lordship was not at home; he had apparently set off for the family’s country estate that morning. Poirot had spotted a few “dreary old leaves and chilly-eyed cods and haddocks” on the walls, as Nancy had called them, and he wondered if those pictures were the work of St. John Wallace.

“I’m so sorry about Dorcas,” Louisa said. “She’s very new and quite the most hopeless girl ever to inflict herself upon us, but I won’t admit defeat. It has only been three days. She will learn, with time and patience. If only she wouldn’t worry so! I know that’s what it is: she tells herself that she absolutely mustn’t drop the important gentleman’s hat and coat, and that puts the idea of dropping them into her mind, and then it happens. It’s maddening!”

“Quite so,” Poirot agreed. “Lady Wallace, about last Thursday . . .”

“Oh, yes, that’s where we’d got to—and then I brought you in here to show you the portrait. Yes, Nancy was here that evening.”

“From what time and until what time, madame?”