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By Root 596 0

Everybody inevitably looks at the speaker. Therefore, when Mrs. Leo felt something was ‘wrong,’ it must be that something was wrong with Cora Lansquenet. The other evening, after talk about mirror images and ‘seeing oneself ’ I think Mrs. Leo experimented before a looking glass. Her own face is not particularly asymmetrical. She probably thought of Cora, remembered how Cora used to incline her head to the right, did so, and looked in the glass—when, of course, the image seemed to her ‘wrong’ and she realized, in a flash, just what had been wrong on the day of the funeral. She puzzled it out—either Cora had taken to inclining her head in the opposite direction—most unlikely—or else Cora had not been Cora. Neither way seemed to her to make sense. But she was determined to tell Mr. Entwhistle of her discovery at once. Someone who was used to getting up early was already about, and followed her down, and fearful of what revelations she might be about to make struck her down with a heavy doorstop.”

Poirot paused and added:

“I may as well tell you now, Miss Gilchrist, that Mrs. Abernethie’s concussion is not serious. She will soon be able to tell us her own story.”

“I never did anything of the sort,” said Miss Gilchrist. “The whole thing is a wicked lie.”

“It was you that day,” said Michael Shane suddenly. He had been studying Miss Gilchrist’s face. “I ought to have seen it sooner— I felt in a vague kind of way I had seen you before somewhere—but of course one never looks much at—” he stopped.

“No, one doesn’t bother to look at a mere companion-help,” said Miss Gilchrist. Her voice shook a little. “A drudge, a domestic drudge! Almost a servant! But go on, M. Poirot. Go on with this fantastic piece of nonsense!”

“The suggestion of murder thrown out at the funeral was only the first step, of course,” said Poirot. “You had more in reserve. At any moment you were prepared to admit to having listened to a conversation between Richard and his sister. What he actually told her, no doubt, was the fact that he had not long to live, and that explains a cryptic phrase in the letter he wrote to her after getting home. The ‘nun’ was another of your suggestions. The nun—or rather nuns—who called at the cottage on the day of the inquest suggested to you a mention of a nun who was ‘following you round,’ and you used that when you were anxious to hear what Mrs. Timothy was saying to her sister-in-law at Enderby. And also because you wished to accompany her there and find out for yourself just how suspicions were going. Actually to poison yourself, badly but not fatally, with arsenic, is a very old device—and I may say that it served to awaken Inspector Morton’s suspicions of you.”

“But the picture?” said Rosamund. “What kind of a picture was it?”

Poirot slowly unfolded a telegram.

“This morning I rang up Mr. Entwhistle, a responsible person, to go to Stansfield Grange and, acting on authority from Mr. Abernethie himself” (here Poirot gave a hard stare at Timothy) “to look amongst the pictures in Miss Gilchrist’s room and select the one of Polflexan Harbour on pretext of having it reframed as a surprise for Miss Gilchrist. He was to take it back to London and call upon Mr. Guthrie whom I had warned by telegram. The hastily painted sketch of Polflexan Harbour was removed and the original picture exposed.”

He held up the telegram and read:

“Definitely a Vermeer. Guthrie.”

Suddenly, with electrifying effect, Miss Gilchrist burst into speech.

“I knew it was a Vermeer. I knew it! She didn’t know! Talking about Rembrandts and Italian Primitives and unable to recognize a Vermeer when it was under her nose! Always prating about Art—and really knowing nothing about it! She was a thoroughly stupid woman. Always maundering on about this place—about Enderby, and what they did there as children, and about Richard and Timothy and Laura and all the rest of them. Rolling in money always! Always the best of everything those children had. You don’t know how boring it is listening to somebody going on about the same things, hour after hour and day after