Poirot said quietly: ‘And so?’

The girl called Carla Lemarchant pressed her hands together. She spoke slowly and haltingly but with an odd, pointed emphasis.

She said:

‘You’ve got to understand-exactly-where I come in. I was five years old at the time it-happened. Too young to know anything about it. I remember my mother and my father, of course, and I remember leaving home suddenly-being taken to the country. I remember the pigs and a nice fat farmer’s wife-and everybody being very kind-and I remember, quite clearly, the funny way they used to look at me-everybody-a sort of furtive look. I knew, of course, children do, that there was something wrong-but I didn’t know what. 

‘And then I went on a ship-it was exciting-it went on for days, and then I was in Canada and Uncle Simon met me, and I lived in Montreal with him and with Aunt Louise, and when I asked about Mummy and Daddy they said they’d be coming soon. And then-and then I think I forgot-only I sort of knew that they were dead without remembering any one actually telling me so. Because by that time, you see, I didn’t think about them any more. I was very hapy, you know. Uncle Simon and Aunt Louise were sweet to me, and I went to school and had a lot of friends, and I’d quite forgotten that I’d ever had another name, not Lemarchant. Aunt Louise, you see, told me that that was my name in Canada and that seemed quite sensible to me at the time-it was just my Canadian name-but as I say I forgot in the end that I’d ever had any other.’

She flung up her defiant chin. She said:

‘Look at me. You’d say-wouldn’t you? if you met me: “There goes a girl who’s got nothing to worry about!” I’m well off, I’ve got splendid health, I’m sufficiently good to look at, I can enjoy life. At twenty, there wasn’t a girl anywhere I’d have changed places with.

‘But already, you know, I’d begun to ask questions. About my own mother and father. Who they were and what they did? I’d have been bound to find out in the end-