When it’s all over. When it’s behind us!’
Do you know to what those words referred?”
“I am sorry, M. Poirot, but I must refuse to answer that question.”
“Pourquoi?”
The Colonel said stiffly, “I suggest that you ask Miss Debenham herself for the meaning of those words.”
“I have done so.”
“And she refused to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I should think it would have been perfectly plain – even to you – that my lips are sealed.”
“You will not give away a lady’s secret?”
“You can put it that way, if you like.”
“Miss Debenham told me that they referred to a private matter of her own.”
“Then why not accept her word for it?”
“Because, Colonel Arbuthnot, Miss Debenham is what one might call a highly suspicious character.”
“Nonsense,” said the Colonel with warmth.
“It is not nonsense.”
“You have nothing whatever against her.”
“Not the fact that Miss Debenham was companion governess; in the Armstrong household at the time of the kidnapping of little Daisy Armstrong?”
There was a minute’s dead silence.
Poirot nodded his head gently.
“You see,” he said. “We know more than you think.
If Miss Debenham is innocent, why did she conceal that fact?
Why did she tell me that she had never been in America?”
The Colonel cleared his throat.
“Aren’t you possibly making a mistake?”
“I am making no mistake.
Why did Miss Debenham lie to me?”
Colonel Arbuthnot shrugged his shoulders.
“You had better ask her.
I still think that you are wrong.”
Poirot raised his voice and called.
One of the restaurant attendants came from the far end of the car.
“Go and ask the English lady in No. 11 if she will be good enough to come here.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
The man departed.
The four men sat in silence.
Colonel Arbuthnot’s face looked as though it were carved out of wood, rigid and impassive.
The man returned.
“The lady is just coming, Monsieur.”
“Thank you.”
A minute or two later Mary Debenham entered the dining-car.
7.
The Identity of Mary Debenham
She wore no hat. Her head was thrown back as though in defiance.
“The sweep of her hair back from her face, the curve of her nostril suggested the figure-head of a ship plunging gallantly into a rough sea.
In that moment she was beautiful.
Her eyes went to Arbuthnot for a minute – just a minute.
She said to Poirot, “You wished to see me?”
“I wished to ask you, Mademoiselle, why you lied to us this morning?”
“Lied to you?