Mr. Fullerton had agreed that there was something wrong about it. He had said they would take expert opinion on this handwriting question.

The answer had been quite definite. Separate opinions had not varied.

The handwriting of the codicil was definitely not that of Louise Llewellyn-Smythe. If Olga had been less greedy, Mr. Fullerton thought, if she had, been content to write a codicil beginning as this one had done-"Because of her great care and attention to me and the affection and kindness she has shown me, I leave-" That was how it had begun, that was how it could have begun, and if it had gone on to specify a good round sum of money left to the devoted au pair girl, the relations might have considered it over-done, but they would have accepted it without questioning. But to cut out the relations altogether, the nephew who had been his aunt's residuary legatee in the last four wills she had made during a period of nearly twenty years, to leave everything to the stranger Olga Seminoff-that was not in Louise Llewellyn-Smythe's character.

In fact, a plea of undue influence could upset such a document anyway.

No. She had been greedy, this hot, passionate child. Possibly Mrs.

LlewellynSmythe had told her that some money would be I left her because of her kindness, because of her attention, because of a fondness the old lady was beginning to feel for this girl who fulfilled all her whims, who did whatever she asked her. And that had opened up a vista for Olga. She would have everything.

The old lady should leave everything to her, and she would have all the money. All the money and the house and the clothes and the jewels.

Everything. A greedy girl. And now retribution had caught up with her.

And Mr. Fullerton, against his will, against his legal instincts and against a good deal more, felt sorry for her. Very sorry for her. She had known suffering since she was a child, had known the rig ours of a police state, had lost her parents, lost a brother and sister and known injustice and fear, and it had developed in her a trait that she had no doubt been born with but which she had never been able so far to indulge. It had developed a childish passionate greed.

"Everyone is against me," said Olga.

"Everyone. You are all against me. You are not fair because I am a foreigner, because I do not belong to this country, because I do not know what to say, what to do. What can I do? Why do you not tell me what I can do?"

"Because I do not really think there is anything much you can do," said Mr.

Fullerton.

"Your best chance is to make a clean breast of things."

"If I say what you want me to say, it will be all lies and not true.

She made that Will. She wrote it down there. She told me to go out of the room while the others signed it."

"There is evidence against you, you know. There are people who will say that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe often did not know what she was signing. She had several documents of different kinds, and she did not always re-read what was put before her."

"Well, then she did not know what she was saying."

"My dear child," said Mr. Fullerton, "your best hope is the fact that you are a first offender, that you are a foreigner, that you understand the English language only in a rather rudimentary form. In that case you may get off with a minor sentence or you may, indeed, get put on probation."

"Oh, words. Nothing but words. I shall be put in prison and never let out again."

"Now you are talking nonsense," Mr.

Fullerton said.

"It would be better if I ran away, if I ran away and hid myself so that nobody could find me."

"Once there is a warrant out for your arrest, you would be found."

"Not if I did it quickly. Not if I went at once. Not if someone helped me. I could get away. Get away from England.

In a boat or a plane. I could find someone who forges passports or visas, or whatever you have to have. Someone who will do something for me. I have friends. I have people who are fond of me. Somebody could help me to disappear. That is what is needed. I could put on a wig. I could walk about on crutches."

"Listen," Mr. Fullerton had said, and he had spoken then with authority, "I am sorry for you. I will recommend you to a lawyer who will do his best for you. You can't hope to disappear. You are talking like a child."

"I have got enough money. I have saved money." And then she had said,

"You have tried to be kind. Yes, I believe that.

But you will not do anything because it is all the law the law. But someone will help me. Someone will. And I shall get away where nobody will ever find me."

Nobody, Mr. Fullerton thought, had found her. He wondered yes; he wondered very much where she was or could be now.

ADMITTED to Apple Trees, Hercule /\^ Poirot was shown into the drawing-ZA. room and told that Mrs. Drake would not be long.

In passing through the hall he heard a hum of female voices from behind what he took to be the dining-room door.

Poirot crossed to the drawing-room window and surveyed the neat and pleasant garden. Well laid out, kept studiously in control. Rampant autumn michaelmas daisies still survived, tied up severely to sticks; chrysanthemums had not yet relinquished life. There were still a persistent rose or two scorning the approach of winter.

Poirot could discern no sign as yet of the preliminary activities of a landscape gardener. All was care and convention. He wondered if Mrs.

Drake had been one too many for Michael Garfield. He had spread his lures in vain. It showed every sign of remaining a splendidly kept suburban garden.

The door opened.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Monsieur Poirot," said Mrs.

Drake.

Outside in the hall there was a diminishing hum of voices as various people took their leave and departed.

"It's our church Christmas fete," explained Mrs. Drake.

"A Committee Meeting for arrangements for it and all the rest of it.

These things always go on much longer than they ought to, of course.

Somebody always objects to something, or has a good idea-the good idea usually being a perfectly impossible one."

There was a slight acerbity in her tone.

Poirot could well imagine that Rowena Drake would put things down as quite absurd, firmly and definitely. He could understand well enough from remarks he had heard from Spence's sister, from hints of what other people had said and from various other sources, that Rowena Drake was that dominant type of personality whom everyone expects to run the show, and whom nobody has much affection for while she is doing it. He could imagine, too, that her conscientiousness had not been the kind to be appreciated by an elderly relative who was herself of the same type. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, he gathered, had come here to live so as to be near to her nephew and his wife, and that the wife had readily undertaken the supervision and care of her husband's aunt as far as she could do so without actually living in the house. Mrs. LlewellynSmythe had probably acknowledged in her own mind that she owed a great deal to Rowena, and had at the same time resented what she had no doubt thought of as her bossy ways.

"Well, they've all gone now," said Rowena Drake, hearing the final shutting of the hall door.

"Now what can I do for you? Something more about that dreadful party?

I wish I'd never had it here. But no other house really seemed suitable. Is Mrs.

Oliver still staying with Judith Butler?"

"Yes. She is, I believe, returning to London in a day or two. You had not met her before?"

"No. I love her books."

"She is, I believe, considered a very good writer," said Poirot.

"Oh well, she is a good writer. No doubt of that. She's a very amusing person too. Has she any ideas herself-I mean about who might have done this awful thing?"