Henrietta said quietly, but steadily:

"Meaning that you think they were mine … You are suggesting that I shot John and then left the revolver beside him so that Gerda could come along and pick it up and be left holding the baby-(that is what you are suggesting, isn't it?) But surely,if I did that, you will give me credit for enough intelligence to have wiped off my own fingerprints first!"

"But surely you are intelligent enough to see. Mademoiselle, that if you had done so and if the revolver had had no fingerprints on it but Mrs. Christow's, that would have been very remarkable! For you were all shooting with that revolver the day before.

Gerda Christow would hardly have wiped the revolver clean of finger-prints before using it-why should she?"

Henrietta said slowly:

"So you think I killed John?"

"When Dr. Christow was dying, he said, 'Henrietta.'"

"And you think that that was an accusation?

It was not."

"What was it then?"

Henrietta stretched out her foot and traced a pattern with the toe. She said in a low voice:

"Aren't you forgetting-what I told you not very long ago? I mean-the terms we were on?"

"Ah, yes-he was your lover-and so, as he is dying, he says Henrietta. That is very touching."

She turned blazing eyes upon him.

"Must you sneer?"

"I am not sneering. But I do not like being lied to-and that, I think, is what you are trying to do."

Henrietta said quietly:

"I have told you that I am not very truthful-but when John said Henrietta,' he was not accusing me of having murdered him. Can't you understand that people of my kind, who make things, are quite incapable of taking life? I don't kill people, M.

Poirot. I couldn't kill anyone. That's the plain stark truth. You suspect me simply because my name was murmured by a dying man who hardly knew what he was saying."

"Dr. Christow knew perfectly what he was saying. His voice was as alive and conscious as that of a doctor doing a vital operation who says sharply and urgently, 'Nurse, the forceps, please.'"

"But-" She seemed at a loss, taken aback. Hercule Poirot went on rapidly:

"And it is not just on account of what Dr.

Christow said when he was dying. I do not believe for one moment that you are capable of premeditated murder-that, no. But you might have fired that shot in a sudden moment of fierce resentment-and if so-if so, Mademoiselle, you have the creative imagination and ability to cover your tracks."

Henrietta got up. She stood for a moment, pale and shaken, looking at him. She said with a sudden rueful smile:

"And I thought you liked me."

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said sadly:

"That is what is so unfortunate for me. I do."