And then, just as I left the specialist, I saw Miss Meredith. I asked her to have tea with me."
She paused, then went on.
"I am not, after all, a wholly wicked woman. All the time we were having tea, I was thinking.
By my action the other evening I had not only deprived the man Shaitana of life, that was done and could not be undone, I had also to a varying degree affected unfavorably the lives of three other people.
Because of what I had done, Doctor Roberts, Major Despard, and Anne Meredith, none of whom had injured me in any way, were passing through a very grave ordeal and might even be in danger.
That, at least, I could undo.
I don't know that I felt particularly moved by the plight of either Doctor Roberts or Major Despard - although both of them had presumably a much longer span of life in front of them than I had.
They were men and could to a certain extent look after themselves.
But when I looked at Anne Meredith -"
She hesitated, then continued slowly,
"Anne Meredith was only a girl.
She has the whole of her life in front of her.
This miserable business might ruin that life.
I didn't like the thought of that.
And then, Monsieur Poirot, with these ideas growing in my mind, I realized that what you had hinted had come true.
I was not going to be able to keep silence.
This afternoon I rang you up -"
Minutes passed.
Hercule Poirot leaned forward.
He stared, deliberately stared through the gathering gloom at Mrs. Lorrimer.
She returned that intent gaze quietly and without any nervousness.
He said at last,
"Mrs. Lorrimer. Are you sure - are you positive, you will tell me the truth, will you not, that the murder of Mr. Shaitana was not premeditated?
Is it not a fact that you planned the crime beforehand? That you went to that dinner with the murder already all mapped out in your mind?"
Mrs. Lorrimer stared at him for a moment, then she shook her head sharply.
"No," she said.
"You did not plan the murder beforehand?"
"Certainly not."
"Then - then - Oh! you are lying to me - you must be lying -"
Mrs. Lorrimer's voice cut into the air like ice. "Really, Monsieur Poirot, you forget yourself."
The little man sprang to his feet.
He paced up and down the room, muttering to himself, uttering ejaculations.
Suddenly he said,
"Permit me?"
And going to the switch he turned on the electric lights.
He came back, sat down in his chair, placed both hands on his knees, and stared straight at his hostess.
"The question is," he said, "can Hercule Poirot possibly be wrong?"
"No one can always be right," said Mrs. Lorrimer coldly.
"I am," said Poirot. "Always I am right.
It is so invariable that it startles me.
But now, it looks, it very much looks as though I am wrong.
And that upsets me.
Presumably you know what you are saying.
It is your murder!
Fantastic, then, that Hercule Poirot should know better than you do how you committed it."
"Fantastic and very absurd," said Mrs. Lorrimer still more coldly.
"I am, then, mad.
Decidedly I am mad.
No - sacre nom d'un petit bonhomme - I am not mad!
I am right.