I don’t suppose this matters, but Patrick Ive never wore monogrammed cufflinks. He didn’t own a pair as far as I ever knew. Richard Negus ordered all the cufflinks to be specially made, to set the police on the right track. The leaving of the blood and my hat inside the fourth hotel room was also part of our plan, designed to make you believe I had been murdered in that room—that Nancy Ducane had avenged her dead love by killing all four of us. Richard was happy to leave it to Sammy to provide the blood. It came from a stray cat, if you want to know. It was also Sammy’s job to leave the note on the hotel’s front desk on the night of the killings: “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE” and then the three room numbers. He was to place it on the reception desk when no one was looking, shortly after eight o’clock. My task, meanwhile, was to stay alive and make sure that Nancy Ducane hanged for the three murders, and possibly four if the police believed that I too was dead.

How was I to accomplish this? Well, as the fourth person that Nancy would wish to kill—the fourth person responsible for what happened to Patrick—I was to let the police know that I feared for my life. This I did at Pleasant’s Coffee House, and you were my audience, Monsieur Poirot. You are quite right: I deceived you. You are right too that I had heard the waitresses at Pleasant’s discussing the detective from the Continent who comes in every Thursday evening at precisely half past seven, and who sometimes dines with his much younger friend from Scotland Yard. As soon as I heard the girls talking about you, I knew you would be perfect.

But Monsieur Poirot, one of the conclusions you have drawn is incorrect. You said that my saying, “Once I am dead, justice will have been done, finally” meant that I knew the other three were already dead, but I absolutely did not know whether Richard, Harriet and Ida were dead or alive, because by then I had ruined everything. I was merely thinking, when I spoke those words, that according to the plan Richard and I made, I would outlive them. So you see, they might well still have been alive when I uttered those words.