‘No one will ever know who the guilty person is…’
He added softly:
‘Unless you already know, madame?’
She cried out:
‘You have no business to say that! It’s not true! Oh! If only it could be a stranger—not a member of the family.’
Poirot said:
‘It might be both.’
She stared at him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It might be a member of the family—and, at the same time, a stranger…You do not see what I mean? Eh bien, it is an idea that has occurred to the mind of Hercule Poirot.’
He looked at her.
‘Well, madame, what am I to say to Mr Lee?’
Lydia raised her hands and let them fall in a sudden helpless gesture.
She said:
‘Of course—you must accept.’
IV
Pilar stood in the centre of the music-room. She stood very straight, her eyes darting from side to side like an animal who fears an attack.
She said:
‘I want to get away from here!’
Stephen Farr said gently:
‘You’re not the only one who feels like that. But they won’t let us go, my dear.’
‘You mean—the police?’
‘Yes.’
Pilar said very seriously:
‘It is not nice to be mixed up with the police. It is a thing that should not happen to respectable people.’
Stephen said with a faint smile:
‘Meaning yourself?’
Pilar said:
‘No, I mean Alfred and Lydia and David and George and Hilda and—yes—Magdalene too.’
Stephen lit a cigarette. He puffed at it for a moment or two before saying: