‘And I am old, am I not? Older than you imagined?’

‘Yes, that too.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m being frank, you see. I want-I’ve got to have-the best.’

‘Rest assured,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Iam the best!’

Carla said: ‘You’re not modest…All the same, I’m inclined to take you at your word.’ 

Poirot said placidly:

‘One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair andthink. It is this’-he tapped his egg-shaped head-‘thisthat functions!’

‘I know,’ said Carla Lemarchant. ‘That’s why I’ve come to you. I want you, you see, to do something fantastic!’

‘That,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘promises well!’

He looked at her in encouragement.

Carla Lemarchant drew a deep breath.

‘My name,’ she said, ‘isn’t Carla. It’s Caroline. The same as my mother’s. I was called after her.’ She paused. ‘And though I’ve always gone by the name of Lemarchant-my real name is Crale.’

Hercule Poirot’s forehead creased a moment perplexedly. He murmured: ‘Crale-I seem to remember…’

She said:

‘My father was a painter-rather a well-known painter. Some people say he was a great painter.I think he was.’

Hercule Poirot said: ‘Amyas Crale?’

‘Yes.’ She paused, then she went on: ‘And my mother, Caroline Crale, was tried for murdering him!’

‘Aha,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I remember now-but only vaguely. I was abroad at the time. It was a long time ago.’

‘Sixteen years,’ said the girl.

Her face was very white now and her eyes two burning lights.

She said:

‘Do you understand?She was tried and convicted…She wasn’t hanged because they felt that there were extenuating circumstances-so the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. But she died only a year after the trial. You see? It’s all over-done-finished with…’