I knew there was only one way that I could get through this ordeal, and that was by concentrating all my attention on questions of logic. Had Poirot solved the puzzle? He seemed to think he had, but I was still in the dark. Who, for instance, had killed Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, and why had they done so? I asked these questions of Poirot.

“Ah,” he said, smiling fondly, as if I had reminded him of a joke we had once shared. “I see your dilemma, mon ami. You listen to Poirot declaim at great length and then, a few minutes before the conclusion, there is the interruption of another murder, and you do not, after all, hear the answers that you have been waiting for. Dommage.”

“Please tell me at once, and let the dommage end here,” I said as forcefully as I could.

“It is quite simple. Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane, with the help of Samuel Kidd, conspired to murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. However, while collaborating with Nancy, Jennie pretended to be part of a quite different conspiracy. She allowed Richard Negus to believe that he was the one with whom she conspired.”

“That does not sound ‘quite simple’ to me,” I said. “It sounds inordinately complicated.”

“No, no, my friend. Vraiment, it is not at all. You are having trouble reconciling the different versions of the story that you have heard, but you must forget all that Jennie told us when we visited her at Samuel Kidd’s house—banish it from your mind completely. It was a lie from start to finish, though I do not doubt that it contained some elements of veracity. The best lies always do. In a moment, Jennie will tell us the whole truth, now that she has nothing to lose, but first, my friend, I must pay you the compliment that you deserve. It was you, in the end, who helped me to see clearly with your suggestion in the graveyard of Holy Saints Church.”

Poirot turned to Jennie. He said, “The lie you told to Harriet Sippel: that Patrick Ive took money from parishioners and, in return, conveyed to them messages from their dead loved ones; that Nancy Ducane had visited him in the vicarage at night for that reason—in the hope of communicating with her deceased husband, William. Ah, how often has Poirot heard about this terrible, wicked lie? Many, many times. You yourself admitted to us the other day, Miss Hobbs, that you told the lie in a moment of weakness, inspired by jealousy. But this was not the truth!