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By Root 383 0

Fords at the station on the chance of its being required. Taking into consideration the further fact that nobody at the station had noticed the arrival of a stranger, black-bearded or otherwise, on the fatal evening, everything seemed to point to the conclusion that the murderer had come to the spot in a car, which had been waiting near at hand to aid his escape, and that the same car had brought the mysterious housekeeper to her new post. I may mention that inquiries at the Agency in London bore out Poirot’s prognostication. No such woman as ‘Mrs Middleton’ had ever been on their books. They had received the Hon. Mrs Havering’s application for a housekeeper, and had sent her various applicants for the post. When she sent them the engagement fee, she omitted to mention which woman she had selected.

Somewhat crestfallen, I returned to London. I found Poirot established in an armchair by the fire in a garish, silk dressing-gown. He greeted me with much affection.

‘Mon ami Hastings! But how glad I am to see you. Veritably I have for you a great affection! And you have enjoyed yourself ? You have run to and fro with the good Japp? You have interrogated and investigated to your heart’s content?’

‘Poirot,’ I cried, ‘the thing’s a dark mystery! It will never be solved.’

‘It is true that we are not likely to cover ourselves with glory over it.’

‘No, indeed. It’s a hard nut to crack.’

‘Oh, as far as that goes, I am very good at cracking the nuts! A veritable squirrel! It is not that which embarrasses me. I know well enough who killed Mr Harrington Pace.’

‘You know? How did you find out?’

‘Your illuminating answers to my wires supplied me with the truth. See here, Hastings, let us examine the facts methodically and in order. Mr Harrington Pace is a man with a considerable fortune which at his death will doubtless pass to his nephew. Point No 1. His nephew is known to be desperately hard up. Point No 2. His nephew is also known to be–shall we say a man of rather loose moral fibre? Point No 3.’

‘But Roger Havering is proved to have journeyed straight up to London.’

‘Précisément–and therefore, as Mr Havering left Elmer’s Dale at 6.15, and since Mr Pace cannot have been killed before he left, or the doctor would have spotted the time of the crime as being given wrongly when he examined the body, we conclude quite rightly, that Mr Havering did not shoot his uncle. But there is a Mrs Havering, Hastings.’

‘Impossible! The housekeeper was with her when the shot was fired.’

‘Ah, yes, the housekeeper. But she has disappeared.’

‘She will be found.’

‘I think not. There is something peculiarly elusive about that housekeeper, don’t you think so, Hastings? It struck me at once.’

‘She played her part, I suppose, and then got out in the nick of time.’

‘And what was her part?’

‘Well, presumably to admit her confederate, the black-bearded man.’

‘Oh, no, that was not her part! Her part was what you have just mentioned, to provide an alibi for Mrs Havering at the moment the shot was fired. And no one will ever find her, mon ami, because she does not exist! “There’s no such person,” as your so great Shakespeare says.’

‘It was Dickens,’ I murmured, unable to suppress a smile. ‘But what do you mean, Poirot?’

‘I mean that Zoe Havering was an actress before her marriage, that you and Japp only saw the housekeeper in a dark hall, a dim middle-aged figure in black with a faint subdued voice, and finally that neither you nor Japp, nor the local police whom the housekeeper fetched, ever saw Mrs Middleton and her mistress at one and the same time. It was child’s play for that clever and daring woman. On the pretext of summoning her mistress, she runs upstairs, slips on a bright jumper and a hat with black curls attached which she jams down over the grey transformation. A few deft touches, and the make-up is removed, a slight dusting of rouge, and the brilliant Zoe Havering comes down with her clear ringing voice. Nobody looks particularly at the housekeeper. Why should they? There is nothing to connect her with the crime. She, too, has an alibi.