arouse suspicion at once. That sealed his death warrant. Lesley Ferrier, I soon decided, had had no arrangement or love affair with Olga. That was a suggestion made to me by Michael Garfield, but I think it was Michael who paid money to Lesley. It was Michael Garfield who was laying siege to the au pair girl’s affections, warning her to keep quiet about this and not tell her employer, speaking of possible marriage in the future but at the same time marking her down cold-bloodedly as the victim whom he and Rowena Drake would need if the money was to come to them. It was not necessary for Olga Seminoff to be accused of forgery, or prosecuted. She needed only to be suspected of it. The forgery appeared to benefit her. It could have been done by her very easily, there was evidence to the effect that she did copy her employer’s handwriting and if she was suddenly to disappear, it would be assumed that she had been not only a forger, but quite possibly might have assisted her employer to die suddenly. So on a suitable occasion Olga Seminoff died. Lesley Ferrier was killed in what is purported to have been a gang knifing or a knifing by a jealous woman. But the knife that was found in the well corresponds very closely with the knife wounds that he suffered. I knew that Olga’s body must be hidden somewhere in this neighbourhood, but I had no idea where until I heard Miranda one day inquiring about a wishing well, urging Michael Garfield to take her there. And he was refusing. Shortly afterwards when I was talking to Mrs Goodbody, I said I wondered where that girl had disappeared to, and she said “Ding dong dell, pussy’s in the well” and then I was quite sure the girl’s body was in the wishing well. I discovered it was in the wood, in the Quarry Wood, on an incline not far from Michael Garfield’s cottage and I thought that Miranda could have seen either the actual murder or the disposal of the body later. Mrs Drake and Michael feared that someone had been a witness—but they had no idea who it was—and as nothing happened they were lulled into security. They made their plans—they were in no hurry, but they set things in motion. She talked about buying land abroad—gave people the idea she wanted to get away from Woodleigh Common. Too many sad associations, referring always to her grief over her husband’s death. Everything was nicely in train and then came the shock of Hallowe’en and Joyce’s sudden assertion of having witnessed a murder. So now Rowena knew, or thought she knew, who it had been in the wood that day. So she acted quickly. But there was more to come. Young Leopold asked for money—there were things he wanted to buy, he said. What he guessed or knew is uncertain, but he was Joyce’s brother, and so they probably thought he knew far more than he really did. And so—he, too, died.’
‘You suspected her because of the water clue,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘How did you come to suspect Michael Garfield?’
‘He fitted,’ said Poirot simply. ‘And then—the last time I spoke to Michael Garfield, I was sure. He said to me, laughing—“Get thee beyond me, Satan. Go and join your police friends.” And I knew then, quite certainly. It was the other way round. I said to myself:
“I am leaving you behind me, Satan.” A Satan so young and beautiful as Lucifer can appear to mortals…’
There was another woman in the room—until now she had not spoken, but now she stirred in her chair.
‘Lucifer,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see now. He was always that.’
‘He was very beautiful,’ said Poirot, ‘and he loved beauty. The beauty that he made with his brain and his imagination and his hands. To it he would sacrifice everything. In his own way, I think, he loved the child Miranda—but he was ready to sacrifice her—to save himself. He planned her death very carefully—he made of it a ritual and, as one might put it, indoctrinated her with the idea. She was to let him know if she were leaving Woodleigh Common—he instructed her to meet him at the Inn where you and Mrs Oliver lunched. She was to have been found on Kilterbury Ring—there by the sign of the double axe, with