“Bad knee,” said Caroline. “Fiddlesticks! No more bad knee than you and I. She

was after something else.”

 

“What?” I asked.

 

Caroline had to admit that she didn’t know.

 

“But depend upon it, that was what he was trying to get at, M. Poirot, I mean.

There’s something fishy about that woman, and he knows it.”

 

“Precisely the remark Mrs. Ackroyd made to me yesterday,” I said. “That there

was something fishy about Miss Russell.”

 

“Ah!” said Caroline darkly, “Mrs. Ackroyd! There’s another!”

 

“Another what?”

 

Caroline refused to explain her remarks. She merely nodded her head several

times, rolled up her knitting, and went upstairs to don the high mauve silk

blouse and the gold locket which she calls dressing for dinner.

 

I stayed there staring into the fire and thinking over Caroline’s words. Had

Poirot really come to gain information about Miss Russell, or was it only

Caroline’s tortuous mind that interpreted everything according to her own ideas?