‘Yes.’

‘You’ve got an open and shut case?’

‘That, no.’

‘All you mean is that you have a hunch,’ I said, unkindly. 

‘I will not quarrel with you over a word,mon cher Colin. All I say is, Iknow!’

Hardcastle sighed.

‘But you see, M. Poirot,I have to have evidence.’

‘Naturally, but with the resources you have at your disposal, it will be possible for you, I think, to get that evidence.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘Come now, Inspector. If you know-reallyknow -is not that the first step? Can you not, nearly always, go on from there?’

‘Not always,’ said Hardcastle with a sigh. ‘There are men walking about today who ought to be in gaol. They know it and we know it.’

‘But that is a very small percentage, is it not-’

I interrupted.

‘All right. All right.You know…Now letus know too!’

‘I perceive you are still sceptical. But first let me say this: To besure means that when the right solution is reached, everything falls into place. You perceive thatin no other way could things have happened.’

‘For the love of Mike,’ I said, ‘get on with it! I grant you all the points you’ve made.’

Poirot arranged himself comfortably in his chair and motioned to the inspector to replenish his glass.

‘One thing,mes amis, must be clearly understood. To solve any problem one must have thefacts. For that one needs the dog, the dog who is a retriever, who brings the pieces one by one and lays them at-’

‘At the feet of the master,’ I said. ‘Admitted.’

‘One cannot from one’s seat in a chair solve a case solely from reading about it in a newspaper. For one’s facts must be accurate, and newspapers are seldom, if ever, accurate. They report something happened at four o’clock when it was a quarter past four, they say a man had a sister called Elizabeth when actually he had a sister-in-law called Alexandra. And so on. But in Colin here, I have a dog of remarkable ability-an ability, I may say, which has taken him far in his own career. He has always had a remarkable memory. He can repeat to you, even several days later, conversations that have taken place. He can repeat them accurately-that is, not transposing them, as nearly all of us do, to what the impression made onhim was. To explain roughly-he would not say, “And at twenty past eleven the post came” instead of describing what actually happened, namely a knock on the front door and someone coming into the room with letters in their hand. All this is very important. It means that he heard whatI would have heard if I had been there and seen what I would have seen.’

‘Only the poor dog hasn’t made the necessary deductions?’ 

‘So, as far as can be, I have the facts-I am “in the picture”. It is your war-time term, is it not? To “put one in the picture”. The thing that struck me first of all, when Colin recounted the story to me, was its highlyfantastic character. Four clocks, each roughly an hour ahead of the right time, and all introduced into the house without the knowledge of the owner, or so shesaid. For we must never, must we, believe what we are told, until such statements have been carefully checked?’

‘Your mind works the way that mine does,’ said Hardcastle approvingly.

‘On the floor lies a dead man-a respectable-looking elderly man. Nobody knows who he is (or again so theysay). In his pocket is a card bearing the name of Mr R. H. Curry, 7, Denvers Street. Metropolis Insurance Company. But there is no Metropolis Insurance Company. There is no Denvers Street and there seems to be no such person as Mr Curry. That is negative evidence, but itis evidence. We now proceed further. Apparently at about ten minutes to two a secretarial agency is rung up, a Miss Millicent Pebmarsh asks for a stenographer to be sent to 19, Wilbraham Crescent at three o’clock. It is particularly asked that a Miss Sheila Webb should be sent. Miss Webb is sent. She arrives there at a few minutes before three; goes, according to instructions, into the sitting-room, finds a dead man on the floor and rushes out of the house screaming. She rushes into the arms of a young man.’

Poirot paused and looked at me. I bowed.

‘Enter our young hero,’ I said.

‘You see,’ Poirot pointed out. ‘Even you cannot resist a farcical melodramatic tone when you speak of it. The whole thing is melodramatic, fantastic and completely unreal. It is the kind of thing that could occur in the writings of such people as Garry Gregson, for instance. I may mention that when my young friend arrived with this tale I was embarking on a course of thriller writers who had plied their craft over the last sixty years. Most interesting. One comes almost to regard actual crimes in the light of fiction. That is to say that if I observe that a dog has not barked when he should bark, I say to myself, “Ha! A Sherlock Holmes crime!” Similarly, if the corpse is found in a sealed room, naturally I say, “Ha! A Dickson Carr case!” Then there is my friend Mrs Oliver. If I were to find-but I will say no more. You catch my meaning? So here is the setting of a crime in such wildly improbable circumstances that one feels at once, “This book is not true to life. All this is quite unreal.” But alas, that will not do here, for thisis real. Ithappened. That gives one to think furiously, does it not?’

Hardcastle would not have put it like that, but he fully agreed with the sentiment, and nodded vigorously. Poirot went on:

‘It is, as it were, the opposite of Chesterton’s, “Where would you hide a leaf? In a forest. Where would you hide a pebble? On a beach.” Here there is excess, fantasy, melodrama! When I say to myself in imitation of Chesterton, “Where does a middle-aged woman hide her fading beauty?” I do not reply, “Amongst other faded middle-aged faces.” Not at all. She hides it under make-up, under rouge and mascara, with handsome furs wrapped round her and with jewels round her neck and hanging in her ears. You follow me?’

‘Well-’ said the inspector, disguising the fact that he didn’t.

‘Because then, you see, people will look at the furs and the jewels and thecoiffure and thehaute couture, and they will not observe what thewoman herself is like at all! So I say to myself-and I say to my friend Colin-Since this murder has so many fantastic trappings to distract one it must really be very simple. Did I not?’

‘You did,’ I said. ‘But I still don’t see how you can possibly be right.’

‘For that you must wait. So, then, we discard thetrappings of the crime and we go to theessentials. A man has been killed. Why has he been killed? And who is he? The answer to the first question will obviously depend on the answer to the second. And until you get the right answer to these two questions you cannot possibly proceed. He could be a blackmailer, or a confidence trickster, or somebody’s husband whose existence was obnoxious or dangerous to his wife. He could be one of a dozen things. The more I heard, the more everybody seems to agree that helooked a perfectly ordinary, well-to-do, reputable elderly man. And suddenly I think to myself, “You say this should be a simple crime? Very well, make it so. Let this man beexactly what he seems -a well-to-do respectable elderly man.” ’ He looked at the inspector. ‘You see?’

‘Well-’ said the inspector again, and paused politely.

‘So here is someone, an ordinary, pleasant, elderly man whose removal is necessary tosomeone. To whom? And here at last we can narrow the field a little. There is local knowledge-of Miss Pebmarsh and her habits, of the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau, of a girl working there called Sheila Webb. And so I say to my friend Colin: “The neighbours. Converse with them. Find out about them. Their backgrounds. But above all, engage in conversation. Because in conversation you do not get merely the answers to questions-in ordinary conversational prattle things slip out. People are on their guard when the subject may be dangerous to them, but the moment ordinary talk ensues they relax, they succumb to the relief of speaking the truth, which is always very much easier than lying. And so they let slip one little fact which unbeknown to them makes all the difference.’