actually in the deceased's room when the
alarm was given."

I shot a quick glance at Mary. She was very pale, but smiling.

"I proceeded to reason on that assumption. Mrs. Cavendish is in her
mother-in-law's room. We will say that she is seeking for something and
has not yet found it. Suddenly Mrs. Inglethorp awakens and is seized
with an alarming paroxysm. She flings out her arm, overturning the bed
table, and then pulls desperately at the bell. Mrs. Cavendish, startled,
drops her candle, scattering the grease on the carpet. She picks it up,
and retreats quickly to Mademoiselle Cynthia's room, closing the door
behind her. She hurries out into the passage, for the servants must not
find her where she is. But it is too late! Already footsteps are echoing
along the gallery which connects the two wings. What can she do? Quick
as thought, she hurries back to the young girl's room, and starts
shaking her awake. The hastily aroused household come trooping down the
passage. They are all busily battering at Mrs. Inglethorp's door. It
occurs to nobody that Mrs. Cavendish has not arrived with the rest,
but--and this is significant--I can find no one who saw her come from
the other wing." He looked at Mary Cavendish. "Am I right, madame?"

She bowed her head.

"Quite right, monsieur. You understand that, if I had thought I would do
my husband any good by revealing these facts, I would have done so.
But it did not seem to me to bear upon the question of his guilt or
innocence."

"In a sense, that is correct, madame. But it cleared my mind of many
misconceptions, and left me free to see other facts in their true
significance."

"The will!" cried Lawrence. "Then it was you, Mary, who destroyed the
will?"

She shook her head, and Poirot shook his also.

"No," he said quietly. "There is only one person who could possibly have
destroyed that will--Mrs. Inglethorp herself!"

"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "She had only made it out that very
afternoon!"

"Nevertheless, mon ami, it was Mrs. Inglethorp. Because, in no other
way can you account for the fact that, on one of the hottest days of the
year, Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire to be lighted in her room."

I gave a gasp. What idiots we had been never to think of that fire as
being incongruous! Poirot was continuing:

"The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade.
Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy
something, and cou