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By Root 487 0

handwriting—the same handwriting as the words “my mother” on the back of this photograph. Mrs McGinty saw the photograph and the writing on it when she was tidying your things away. She spoke to you about it after reading the Sunday Comet. Mrs McGinty assumed that it was a photograph of Mrs Upward when young, since she had no idea Mrs Upward was not your real mother. But you knew that if once she mentioned the matter so that it came to Mrs Upward’s ears, it would be the end. Mrs Upward had quite fanatical views on the subject of heredity. She would not tolerate for a moment an adopted son who was the son of a famous murderer. Nor would she forgive your lies on the subject.

‘So Mrs McGinty had at all costs to be silenced. You promised her a little present, perhaps, for being discreet. You called on her the next evening on your way to broadcast—and you killed her! Like this…’

With a sudden movement, Poirot seized the sugar hammer from the shelf and whirled it round and down as though to bring it crashing down on Robin’s head.

So menacing was the gesture that several of the circle cried out.

Robin Upward screamed. A high terrified scream.

He yelled: ‘Don’t…don’t…It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill her. I lost my head. I swear I did.’

‘You washed off the blood and put the sugar hammer back in this room where you had found it. But there are new scientific methods of determining blood stains—and of bringing up latent fingerprints.’

‘I tell you I never meant to kill her…It was all a mistake…And anyway it isn’t my fault…I’m not responsible. It’s in my blood. I can’t help it. You can’t hang me for something that isn’t my fault…’

Under his breath Spence muttered: ‘Can’t we? You see if we don’t!’

Aloud he spoke in a grave official voice:

‘I must warn you, Mr Upward, that anything you say…’

Chapter 26

‘I really don’t see, M. Poirot, how ever you came to suspect Robin Upward.’

Poirot looked complacently at the faces turned towards him.

He always enjoyed explanations.

‘I ought to have suspected him much sooner. The clue, such a simple clue, was the sentence uttered by Mrs Summerhayes at the cocktail party that day. She said to Robin Upward: “I don’t like being adopted, do you?” Those were the revealing two words. Do you? They meant—they could only mean—that Mrs Upward was not Robin’s own mother.

‘Mrs Upward was morbidly anxious herself that no one should know that Robin was not her own son. She had probably heard too many ribald comments on brilliant young men who live with and upon elderly women. And very few people did know—only the small theatrical coterie where she had first come across Robin. She had few intimate friends in this country, having lived abroad so long, and she chose in any case to come and settle down here far away from her own Yorkshire. Even when she met friends of the old days, she did not enlighten them when they assumed that this Robin was the same Robin they had known as a little boy.

‘But from the very first something had struck me as not quite natural in the household at Laburnums. Robin’s attitude to Mrs Upward was not that of either a spoiled child, or of a devoted son. It was the attitude of a protégé to a patron. The rather fanciful title of Madre had a theatrical touch. And Mrs Upward, though she was clearly very fond of Robin, nevertheless unconsciously treated him as a prized possession that she had bought and paid for.

‘So there is Robin Upward, comfortably established, with “Madre’s” purse to back his ventures, and then into his assured world comes Mrs McGinty who has recognized the photograph that he keeps in a drawer—the photograph with “my mother” written on the back of it. His mother, who he has told Mrs Upward was a talented young ballet dancer who died of tuberculosis! Mrs McGinty, of course, thinks that the photograph is of Mrs Upward when young, since she assumes as a matter of course that Mrs Upward is Robin’s own mother. I do not think that actual blackmail ever entered Mrs McGinty’s mind, but she did hope, perhaps, for a “nice little