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is dead—but she remarks to Miss Pierce, “Very rude just to snort at us like that!” Miss Pierce accepts the suggestion—she has often heard Mrs Boynton receive a remark with a snort—she will swear quite sincerely if necessary that she actually heard it. Lady Westholme has sat on committees often enough with women of Miss Pierce’s type to know exactly how her own eminence and masterful personality can influence them. The only point where her plan went astray was the replacing of the syringe. Dr Gerard returning so soon upset her scheme. She hoped he might not have noticed its absence, or might think he had overlooked it, and she put it back during the night.’

He stopped.

Sarah said: ‘But why? Why should Lady Westholme want to kill old Mrs Boynton?’

‘Did you not tell me that Lady Westholme had been quite near you in Jerusalem when you spoke to Mrs Boynton? It was to Lady Westholme that Mrs Boynton’s words were addressed. “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” Put that with the fact that Mrs Boynton had been a wardress in a prison and you can get a very shrewd idea of the truth. Lord Westholme met his wife on a voyage back from America. Lady Westholme before her marriage had been a criminal and had served a prison sentence.

‘You see the terrible dilemma she was in? Her career, her ambitions, her social position—all at stake! What the crime was for which she served a sentence in prison we do not yet know (though we soon shall), but it must have been one that would effectually blast her political career if it was made public. And remember this, Mrs Boynton was not an ordinary blackmailer. She did not want money. She wanted the pleasure of torturing her victim for a while and then she would have enjoyed revealing the truth in the most spectacular fashion! No, while Mrs Boynton lived, Lady Westholme was not safe. She obeyed Mrs Boynton’s instructions to meet her at Petra (I thought it strange all along that a woman with such a sense of her own importance as Lady Westholme should have preferred to travel as a mere tourist), but in her own mind she was doubtless revolving ways and means of murder. She saw her chance and carried it out boldly. She only made two slips. One was to say a little too much—the description of the torn breeches—which first drew my attention to her, and the other was when she mistook Dr Gerard’s tent and looked first into the one where Ginevra was lying half asleep. Hence the girl’s story—half make-believe, half true—of a sheikh in disguise. She put it the wrong way round, obeying her instinct to distort the truth by making it more dramatic, but the indication was quite significant enough for me.’

He paused.

‘But we shall soon know. I obtained Lady Westholme’s fingerprints today without her being aware of the fact. If these are sent to the prison where Mrs Boynton was once a wardress, we shall soon know the truth when they are compared with the files.’

He stopped.

In the momentary stillness a sharp sound was heard.

‘What’s that?’ asked Dr Gerard.

‘Sounded like a shot to me,’ said Colonel Carbury, rising to his feet quickly. ‘In the next room. Who’s got that room, by the way?’

Poirot murmured: ‘I have a little idea—it is the room of Lady Westholme…’

Epilogue

Extract from the Evening Shout:

We regret to announce the death of Lady Westholme, M.P., the result of a tragic accident. Lady Westholme, who was fond of travelling in out-of-the-way countries, always took a small revolver with her. She was cleaning this when it went off accidentally and killed her. Death was instantaneous. The deepest sympathy will be felt for Lord Westholme, etc., etc.

On a warm June evening five years later Sarah Boynton and her husband sat in the stalls of a London theatre. The play was Hamlet. Sarah gripped Raymond’s arm as Ophelia’s words came floating over the footlights:

How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff,

And his sandal shoon.

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf;

At his heels a stone.