"Oh, at home. She'd come up from doing things in the garden one day, breathing rather heavily. She said she was very tired and she went to lie down on her bed. And to put it in one sentence, she never woke up.

Which is all very natural, it seems, medically speaking."

Poirot took out a little notebook. The page was already headed "Victims".

Under, he wrote.

"No. 1. suggested, Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe." On the next pages of his book he wrote down the other names that Spence had given him. He said, inquiringly:

"Charlotte Benfield?"

Spence replied promptly.

"Sixteenyear-old shop assistant. Multiple head injuries. Found on a footpath near the Quarry Wood. Two young men came under suspicion.

Both had walked out with her from time to time. No evidence."

"They assisted the police in their inquiries?" asked Poirot.

"As you say. It's the usual phrase. They didn't assist much. They were frightened.

Told a few lies, contradicted themselves.

They didn't carry conviction as likely murderers. But either of them might have been."

"What were they like?"

"Peter Gordon, twenty-one. Unemployed.

Had had one or two jobs but never kept them. Lazy. Quite good-looking. Had been on probation once or twice for minor pilferings, things of that kind. No record before of violence. Was in with a rather nasty lot of likely young criminals, but usually managed to keep out of serious trouble."

"And the other one?"

"Thomas Hudd. Twenty. Stammered.

Shy. Neurotic. Wanted to be a teacher, but couldn't make the grade.

Mother a widow. The doting mother type. Didn't encourage girl friends. Kept him as close to her apron-strings as she could. He had a job in a stationer's. Nothing criminal known against him, but a possibility psychologically, so it seems. The girl played him up a good deal. Jealousy a possible motive, but no evidence that we could prosecute on. Both of them had alibis. Hudd's was his mother's. She would have sworn to kingdom come that he was indoors with her all that evening, and nobody can say he wasn't or had seen him elsewhere or in the neighbourhood of the murder. Young Gordon was given an alibi by some of his less reputable friends.

Not worth much, but you couldn't disprove it."

"This happened when?"

"Eighteen months ago."

"And where?"

"In a footpath in a field not far from Woodleigh Common."

"Three quarters of a mile," said Elspeth.

"Near Joyce's house-the Reynolds' house?"

"No, it was on the other side of the village."

"It seems unlikely to have been the murder Joyce was talking about," said Poirot thoughtfully.

"If you see a girl being bashed on the head by a young man you'd be likely to think of murder straight away. Not to wait for a year before you began to think it was murder."

Poirot read another name.

"Lesley Ferrier."

Spence spoke again.

"Lawyer's clerk, twenty-eight, employed by Messrs.

Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter of Market Street, Medchester."

"Those were Mrs. LlewellynSmythe's solicitors, I think you said."

"Yes. Same ones."

"And what happened to Lesley Ferrier?"

"He was stabbed in the back. Not far from the Green Swan Pub. He was said to have been having an affair with the wife of the landlord. Harry Griffin. Handsome piece, she was, indeed still is. Getting perhaps a bit long in the tooth. Five or six years older than he was, but she liked them young."

"The weapon?"

"The knife wasn't found. Les was said to have broken with her and taken up with some other girl, but what girl was never satisfactorily discovered."

"Ah. And who was suspected in this case? The landlord or the wife?"

"Quite right," said Spence.

"Might have been either. The wife seemed the more likely. She was half gypsy and a temperamental piece. But there were other possibilities. Our Lesley hadn't led a blameless life. Got into trouble in his early twenties, falsifying his accounts somewhere.

With a spot of forgery. Was said to have come from a broken home and all the rest of it. Employers spoke up for him.

He got a short sentence and was taken on by Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter when he came out of prison."

"And after that he'd gone straight?"

"Well, nothing proved. He appeared to do so as far as his employers were concerned, but he had been mixed up in a few questionable transactions with his friends. He's what you might call a wrong 'un but a careful one."

"So the alternative was?"

"That he might have been stabbed by one of his less reputable associates. When you're in with a nasty crowd you've got it coming to you with a knife if you let them down."

"Anything else?"

"Well, he had a good lot of money in his bank account. Paid in in cash, it had been. Nothing to show where it came from. That was suspicious in itself."

"Possibly pinched from Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter?" suggested Poirot.

"They say not. They had a chartered accountant to work on it and look into things."

"And the police had no idea where else it might have come from?"

"No."

"Again," said Poirot, "not Joyce's murder, I should think."

He read the last name, "Janet White."

"Found strangled on a footpath which was a short cut from the schoolhouse to her home. She shared a flat there with another teacher, Nora Ambrose.

According to Nora Ambrose, Janet White had occasionally spoken of being nervous about some man with whom she'd broken off relations a year ago, but who had frequently sent her threatening letters.

Nothing was ever found out about this man. Nora Ambrose didn't know his name, didn't know exactly where he lived."

"Aha," said Poirot, "I like this better."

He made a good, thick black tick against Janet White's name.

"For what reason?" asked Spence.

"It is a more likely murder for a girl of Joyce's age to have witnessed. She could have recognised the victim, a schoolteacher whom she knew and who perhaps taught her. Possibly she did not know the attacker. She might have seen a struggle, heard a quarrel between a girl whom she knew and a strange man. But thought no more of it than that at that time. When was Janet White killed?"

"Two and a half years ago."

"That again," said Poirot, "is about the right time. Both for not realising that the man she may have seen with his hands round Janet White's neck was not merely necking her, but might have been killing her. But then as she grew more mature, the proper explanation came to her."

He looked at Elspeth.

"You agree with my reasoning?"

"I see what you mean," said Elspeth.

"But aren't you going at all this the wrong way round? Looking for a victim of a past murder instead of looking for a man who killed a child here in Woodleigh Common not more than three days ago?"

"We go from the past to the future," said Poirot.

"We arrive, shall we say, from two and a half years ago to three days ago.

And, therefore, we have to consider what you, no doubt, have already considered who was there in Woodleigh Common amongst the people who were at the party who might have been connected with an older crime?"

"One can narrow it down a bit more than that now," said Spence.

"That is if we are right in accepting your assumption that Joyce was killed because of what she claimed earlier in the day about seeing murder committed. She said those words during the time the preparations for the party were going on. Mind you, we may be wrong in believing that that was the motive for killing, but I don't think we are wrong. So let us say she claimed to have seen murder, and someone who was present during the preparations for the party that afternoon could have heard her and acted as soon as possible."

"Who was present?" said Poirot.