As Poirot spoke, I cast my eyes over the faces in the room. Was that . . . Oh, my goodness! It was! Fee Spring, the waitress from Pleasant’s, was sitting at the back of the room. Like Nancy Ducane, she had made an effort to cover her face—with a fancy sort of hat—and like Nancy she had failed. She winked at me as if to say that it served me and Poirot right for stopping in for a drink and telling her where we were going next. Confound it all, why couldn’t the little minx stay in the coffee house where she belonged?

“I must ask for your forbearance today,” said Poirot. “There is much that you need to know and understand that you do not at present.”

Yes, I thought, that summed up my position perfectly. I knew scarcely more than the Bloxham’s chambermaids and cooks did. Perhaps even Fee Spring had a stronger grasp on the facts than I; Poirot had probably invited her to this grand event he had arranged. I must say, I did not and never would understand why he required such a sizeable audience. It was not a theatrical production. When I solved a crime—and I had been lucky enough to do so several times without Poirot’s help—I simply presented my conclusions to my boss and then arrested the miscreant in question.

I wondered, too late, if I ought to have demanded that Poirot tell me everything first, before staging this spectacle. Here I was, supposedly in charge of the investigation, and I had no inkling of what solution to the mystery he was about to present.

“Whatever he is about to say, please let it be brilliant,” I prayed. “If he gets it right and I am standing by his side, no one will suspect that I was once, and so late in the day, as unenlightened as I am now.”

“The story is too long for me to tell it without help,” Poirot addressed the room. “My voice, I would wear it out. Therefore I must ask you to listen to two other speakers. First, Mrs. Nancy Ducane, the famous portrait painter who has done us the honor of joining us here today, will speak.”

This was a surprise—though not to Nancy herself, I noticed. From her face, it was apparent that she had known Poirot would call upon her. The two of them had arranged it in advance.

Awed whispers filled the room as Nancy, with her scarf wrapped round her face, came to stand beside me where everyone could see her. “You’ve blown her cover with the adoring fans,” I whispered to Poirot.

“Oui.” He smiled. “Yet still she keeps the scarf around her face as she speaks.”