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What her husband, Colonel Lacey, had actually said was: ‘Can’t think why you want one of these damned foreigners here cluttering up Christmas? Why can’t we have him some other time? Can’t stick foreigners! All right, all right, so Edwina Morecombe wished him on us. What’s it got to do with her, I should like to know? Why doesn’t she have him for Christmas?’

‘Because you know very well,’ Mrs Lacey had said, ‘that Edwina always goes to Claridge’s.’

Her husband had looked at her piercingly and said, ‘Not up to something, are you, Em?’

‘Up to something?’ said Em, opening very blue eyes. ‘Of course not. Why should I be?’

Old Colonel Lacey laughed, a deep, rumbling laugh. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you, Em,’ he said. ‘When you look your most innocent is when you are up to something.’

Revolving these things in her mind, Mrs Lacey went on: ‘Edwina said she thought perhaps you might help us . . . I’m sure I don’t know quite how, but she said that friends of yours had once found you very helpful in – in a case something like ours. I – well, perhaps you don’t know what I’m talking about?’

Poirot looked at her encouragingly. Mrs Lacey was close on seventy, as upright as a ramrod, with snow-white hair, pink cheeks, blue eyes, a ridiculous nose and a determined chin.

‘If there is anything I can do I shall only be too happy to do it,’ said Poirot. ‘It is, I understand, a rather unfortunate matter of a young girl’s infatuation.’

Mrs Lacey nodded. ‘Yes. It seems extraordinary that I should – well, want to talk to you about it. After all, you are a perfect stranger . . .’

‘And a foreigner,’ said Poirot, in an understanding manner.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Lacey, ‘but perhaps that makes it easier, in a way. Anyhow, Edwina seemed to think that you might perhaps know something – how shall I put it – something useful about this young Desmond Lee-Wortley.’

Poirot paused a moment to admire the ingenuity of Mr Jesmond and the ease with which he had made use of Lady Morecombe to further his own purposes.

‘He has not, I understand, a very good reputation, this young man?’ he began delicately.

‘No, indeed, he hasn’t! A very bad reputation! But that’s no help so far as Sarah is concerned. It’s never any good, is it, telling young girls that men have a bad reputation? It – it just spurs them on!’

‘You are so very right,’ said Poirot.

‘In my young day,’ went on Mrs Lacey. (‘Oh dear, that’s a very long time ago!) We used to be warned, you know, against certain young men, and of course it did heighten one’s interest in them, and if one could possibly manage to dance with them, or to be alone with them in a dark conservatory –’ She laughed. ‘That’s why I wouldn’t let Horace do any of the things he wanted to do.’

‘Tell me,’ said Poirot, ‘exactly what is it that troubles you?’

‘Our son was killed in the war,’ said Mrs Lacey. ‘My daughter-in-law died when Sarah was born so that she has always been with us, and we’ve brought her up. Perhaps we’ve brought her up unwisely – I don’t know. But we thought we ought always to leave her as free as possible.’

‘That is desirable, I think,’ said Poirot. ‘One cannot go against the spirit of the times.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Lacey, ‘that’s just what I felt about it. And, of course, girls nowadays do these sort of things.’

Poirot looked at her inquiringly.

‘I think the way one expresses it,’ said Mrs Lacey, ‘is that Sarah has got in with what they call the coffee-bar set. She won’t go to dances or come out properly or be a deb or anything of that kind. Instead she has two rather unpleasant rooms in Chelsea down by the river and wears these funny clothes that they like to wear, and black stockings or bright green ones. Very thick stockings. (So prickly, I always think!) And she goes about without washing or combing her hair.’

‘Ça, c’est tout à fait naturelle,’ said Poirot. ‘It is the fashion of the moment. They grow out of it.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs Lacey. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing. But you see she’s taken up