“The likes of Jennie can’t be helped,” Flyaway Hair said. “All right, I’ll answer your questions, but I’ll ask you one first: where was it you were a policeman?”

Poirot did not point out that she had already asked him three questions. This was the fourth.

She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Somewhere they speak French—but not France, was it?” she said. “I’ve seen what you do with your face when the other girls say ‘the French chap.’ ”

Poirot smiled. Perhaps it would do no harm for her to know his name. “I am Hercule Poirot, mademoiselle. From Belgium. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” He extended his hand.

She shook it. “Fee Spring. Euphemia really, but everyone calls me Fee. If they used my whole name, they’d never get round to the rest of what they wanted to say to me, would they? Not that I’d be any the worse off for that.”

“Do you know the whole name of Mademoiselle Jennie?”

Fee nodded in the direction of Poirot’s table, where steam still rose from his heaped plate. “Eat your dinner. I’ll be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” She withdrew abruptly, closing the door in his face.

Poirot proceeded back to his seat. Perhaps he would take Fee Spring’s advice and make a further effort with the beef chop. How heartening it was to speak to somebody who observed details. Hercule Poirot did not encounter many such people.

Fee reappeared promptly with a cup in her hand, no saucer. She took a slurp from it as she sat down on the chair that Jennie had vacated. Poirot managed not to wince at the sound.

“I don’t know a lot about Jennie,” she said. “Just what I’ve picked up from odd things she’s said. She works for a lady with a big house. Lives in. That’s why she comes here regular, to collect Her Ladyship’s coffee and cakes, for her fancy dinners and parties and the like. Comes right across town—she said that once. Plenty of our regulars come quite a way. Jennie always stays for a drink. ‘My usual, please,’ she says when she arrives, like she’s a lady herself. That voice is her playing at being grand, I reckon. It’s not the one she was born with. Could be why she doesn’t say much, if she knows she can’t keep it up.”

“Pardon me,” said Poirot, “but how do you know that Mademoiselle Jennie has not always spoken in this way?”

“You ever heard a domestic talk all proper like that? Can’t say as I have.”

“Oui, mais . . . So it is the speculation and nothing more?”

Fee Spring grudgingly admitted that she did not know for certain. For as long as she had known her, Jennie had spoken “like a proper lady.”