“I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Bobak,” said Poirot warmly. “Your account is inordinately helpful. To know the very words that were spoken, and so many of them, is more than I could have hoped for.”

“I only wish I could remember the rest, sir.”

Poirot tried to persuade Bobak to stay and drink a cup of something, but the waiter was determined to return to the Bloxham Hotel as soon as he could, and not take advantage of Luca Lazzari’s good nature.

Refused another cup of coffee by Fee Spring, who cited his health in her defense, Poirot decided to return to Blanche Unsworth’s lodging house. He moved slowly, ambling through the busy London streets, while his mind raced ahead. As he walked, he turned over in his mind the words Rafal Bobak had repeated to him: “He’d hardly be interested in her now . . . She’s old enough to be his mother . . . His mind? I’d argue he has no mind . . . I dispute your old-enough-to-be-his-mother claim . . . Well, neither of us can prove we’re right . . .”

He was still murmuring these phrases to himself when he arrived at his temporary accommodation. Blanche Unsworth rushed toward him as he entered. “What are you saying to yourself, Mr. Poirot?” she asked cheerily. “It’s like having two of you!”

Poirot looked down at his body, the shape of which inclined toward rotundity. “I hope I have not eaten so much that I have doubled in size, madame,” he said.

“No, I meant two of you talking.” Blanche Unsworth lowered her voice to a whisper and came so close to Poirot that he felt obliged to pin himself against the wall in order to avoid physical contact with her. “There’s a chap come to call on you, and his voice is just like yours. He’s waiting in the drawing room. A visitor from your native Belgium, he must be. Raggedy fellow, but I let him in, since there was no bad smell coming from him, and . . . well, I didn’t want to turn away a relation of yours, Mr. Poirot. I expect customs with regard to clothing are different in every country. ’Course, it’s the French who likes to dress smart, isn’t it?”

“He is no relative of mine,” said Poirot stiffly. “His name is Samuel Kidd and he is as English as you are, madame.”

“He’s got cuts all over his face,” said Blanche Unsworth. “From shaving, he said. I don’t think he must know how to do it properly, poor lamb. I told him I’d something to put on the cuts to help them heal, but all he did was laugh!”

“All over his face?” Poirot frowned. “The Mr. Kidd I met last Friday at Pleasant’s Coffee House had only one cut on his face, on a patch of skin that he had shaved. Tell me, does this man in the drawing room have a beard?”