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, me, 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 number one. His nephew is known to be desperately hard up—point number two. His nephew is also known to be—shall we say a man of loose moral fiber? Point number three!”

“But Roger Havering is proved to have journeyed straight up to London.”

“Précisément! And therefore, as Mr. Havering left Elmer’s Dale at six-fifteen, 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? 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—I presume 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 sech person,’ as your so 

 Prev. P 10/12 next