Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/149

 “You know, of course, that he was here on the night of the murder?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied mechanically. “He told me.”

“It was unwise to have tried to conceal the fact,” ventured Poirot.

“Yes, yes,” she replied impatiently. “But we cannot waste time on regrets. We must find something to save him. He is innocent, of course, but that will not help him with a man like Giraud, who has his reputation to think of. He must arrest someone, and that someone will be Jack.”

“The facts will tell against him,” said Poirot. “You realize that?”

She faced him squarely, and used the words I had heard her say in her mother’s drawing-room.

“I am not a child, monsieur. I can be brave and look facts in the face. He is innocent, and we must save him.”

She spoke with a kind of desperate energy, then was silent, frowning as she thought.

“Mademoiselle,” said Poirot observing her keenly, “is there not something that you are keeping back that you could tell us?”

She nodded perplexedly.

“Yes, there is something, but I hardly know whether you will believe itit seems so absurd.”

“At any rate, tell us, mademoiselle.”

“It is this. M. Giraud sent for me, as an afterthought, to see if I could identify the man in there.” She signed with her head toward the shed. “I could not. At least I could not at the moment. But since, I have been thinking”

“Well?”

“It seems so queer, and yet I am almost sure. I will tell you. On the morning of the day M. Renauld was murdered, I was walking in the garden here, when I heard a sound of men’s voices quarreling. I pushed aside the bushes and looked through. One of the men was M. Renauld and the other was a tramp, a dreadful-looking creature in filthy rags. He was alternately whining and threatening. I gathered he was asking for money, but at that moment maman called me from the house, and I