7 THE IDENTITY OF MARY DEBENHAM
She wore no hat. Her head was thrown back as though in defiance¹. “The sweep of her hair back from her face, the curve of her nostril² suggested the figure-head of a ship plunging³ gallantly⁴ 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? I don’t know what you mean.”
“You concealed⁵ the fact that at the time of the Armstrong tragedy you were actually living in the house. You told me that you had never been in America.”
He saw her flinch⁶ for a moment and then recover herself.
“Yes,” she said. “That is true.”
“No, Mademoiselle, it was false.”
“You misunderstood me. I mean that it is true that I lied to you.”
“Ah, you admit it?”
Her lips curved into a smile. “Certainly, since you have found me out.”
“You are at least frank, Mademoiselle.”
“There does not seem anything else for me to be.”
“Well, of course, that is true. And now, Mademoiselle, may I ask you the reason for these evasions⁷?”
“I should have thought the reason leapt to the eye, M. Poirot.”
“It does not leap to mine, Mademoiselle.”
She said in a quiet even voice with a trace of hardness in it, “I have my living to get.”
“You mean—?”
She raised her eyes and looked him full in the face. “How much do you know, M. Poirot, of the fight to get and keep decent employment? Do you think that a girl who had been detained in connection with a murder case, whose name and perhaps photograph were reproduced in the English papers—do you think that any nice ordinary middle-class woman would want to engage that girl as governess to her daughters?”

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