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 murder? I went over the facts carefully. She must have left the train at Calais where I parted from her that day. No wonder I had been unable to find her on the boat. If she had dined in Calais, and then taken a train out to Merlinville, she would have arrived at the Villa Genevieve just about the time that Francoise said. What had she done when she left the house just after ten? Presumably either gone to a hotel, or returned to Calais. And then? The crime had been committed on Tuesday night. On Thursday morning she was once more in Merlinville. Had she ever left France at all? I doubted it very much. What kept her therethe hope of seeing Jack Renauld? I had told her (as at the time we believed) that he was on the high seas en route to Buenos Aires. Possibly she was aware that the Anzora had not sailed. But to know that she must have seen Jack. Was that what Poirot was after? Had Jack Renauld, returning to see Marthe Daubreuil, come face to face instead with Bella Duveen, the girl he had heartlessly thrown over?

I began to see daylight. If that was indeed the case, it might furnish Jack with the alibi he needed. Yet under those circumstances his silence seemed difficult to explain. Why could he not have spoken out boldly? Did he fear for this former entanglement of his to come to the ears of Marthe Daubreuil? I shook my head, dissatisfied. The thing had been harmless enough, a foolish boy and a girl affair, and I reflected cynically that the son of a millionaire was not likely to be thrown over by a penniless French girl, who moreover loved him devotedly, without a much graver cause.

Altogether I found the affair puzzling and unsatisfactory. I disliked intensely being associated with Poirot in hunting this girl down, but I could not see any way of avoiding it without revealing everything to him, and this, for some reason, I was loath to do.

Poirot reappeared, brisk and smiling, at Dover, and our journey to London was uneventful. It was past nine o’clock when we arrived, and I supposed that we should return straight away to our rooms and do nothing till the morning. But Poirot had other plans. “We must lose no time, mon ami.”