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“And he was lying there—dead. It’s true! I swear it’s true! Lying just as they said at the inquest. I couldn’t believe it at first. I stooped over him. But he was dead all right. His hand was stone cold and I saw the bullet hole in his head with a hard black crust of blood round it….”
At the memory of it, sweat broke out on his forehead again.
“I saw then I was in a jam. They’d go and say I’d done it. I hadn’t touched anything except his hand and the door handle. I wiped that with my handkerchief, both sides, as I went out, and I stole downstairs as quickly as I could. There was nobody in the hall and I let myself out and legged it away as fast as I could. No wonder I felt queer.”
He paused. His scared eyes went to Poirot.
“That’s the truth. I swear that’s the truth … He was dead already. You’ve got to believe me!”
Poirot got up. He said—and his voice was tired and sad—“I believe you.”
He moved towards the door.
Frank Carter cried out:
“They’ll hang me—they’ll hang me for a cert if they know I was in there.”
Poirot said:
“By telling the truth you have saved yourself from being hanged.”
“I don’t see it. They’ll say—”
Poirot interrupted him.
“Your story has confirmed what I knew to be the truth. You can leave it now to me.”
He went out.
He was not at all happy.
IV
He reached Mr. Barnes’ House at Ealing at 6:45. He remembered that Mr. Barnes had called that a good time of day.
Mr. Barnes was at work in his garden.
He said by way of greeting:
“We need rain, M. Poirot—need it badly.”
He looked thoughtfully at his guest. He said:
“You don’t look very well, M. Poirot?”
“Sometimes,” said Hercule Poirot, “I do not like the things I have to do.”
Mr. Barnes nodded his head sympathetically.
He said:
“I know.”
Hercule Poirot looked vaguely round at the neat arrangement of the small beds. He murmured:
“It is well-planned, this garden. Everything is to scale. It is small but exact.”
Mr. Barnes said:
