“Non, mon ami. Poirot, he will stay in London. I need only to move my mind, not my body, in order to make progress. No, you will go, and you will bring back to me the fullest account of your travels. That will be sufficient. Take with you two lists of names: guests at the Bloxham Hotel on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and employees of the Bloxham Hotel. Find out if anyone in this cursed village recognizes any of the names. Ask about Jennie and PIJ. Make sure not to return until you have discovered the story about this vicar and his wife and their tragic deaths in 1913.”

“Poirot, you’ve got to come with me,” I said rather desperately. “I’m out of my depth with this Bloxham business. I am relying on you.”

“You may continue to do so, mon ami. We will go to the house of Mrs. Blanche Unsworth and there we will assemble our thoughts so that you do not arrive in Great Holling unprepared.”

He always called it “the house of Mrs. Blanche Unsworth.” Every time he did, it reminded me that I too had once thought of it in those terms, before I started to call it “home.”

“ASSEMBLING OUR THOUGHTS” TURNED out to mean Poirot standing by the fire in the excessively lavender-fringed drawing room and dictating to me, while I sat in a chair nearby and wrote down every word he said. I have never, before or since, heard anyone speak in such a perfectly orderly way. I tried to protest that he was making me write down many things of which I was already fully aware, and I got the benefit of his long and earnest disquisition on the subject of “the importance of the method.” Apparently my pincushion brain cannot be expected to remember anything, so I need a written record to refer to.

After dictating a list of everything we knew, Poirot followed the same procedure for everything we didn’t know but were hoping to find out. (I considered reproducing these two lists here, but I do not wish to bore or infuriate others as I was bored and infuriated.)

To be fair to Poirot, once I had scribbled it all down and looked over what I had written, I did feel that I had a clearer view of things: clear, and inordinately discouraging. I put down my pen and said with a sigh, “I’m not sure I want to carry around with me an endless list of questions I can’t answer and probably have no hope of ever answering.”

“You lack the confidence, Catchpool.”

“Yes. What does one do about that?”

“I do not know. It is not a problem that I suffer from. I do not worry that I will meet a problem for which I will be unable to find the solution.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to find the solution for this one?”