IV
When Poirot reached home, George said:
“Chief Inspector¹ Japp is here, sir.”
Japp grinned in a rueful way as Poirot came into the room.
“Here I am, old boy. Come round to say: ‘Aren’t you a marvel²? How do you do it? What makes
you think of these things?’”
“All this meaning—? But pardon, you will have some refreshment³? A sirop? Or perhaps the
whisky?”
“The whisky is good enough for me.”
A few minutes later he raised his glass, observing:
“Here’s to Hercule Poirot who is always right!”
“No, no, mon ami.”
“Here we had a lovely case of suicide. H.P. says it’s murder—wants it to be murder—and dash
it all, it is murder!”
“Ah? So you agree at last?”
“Well, nobody can say I’m pigheaded. I don’t fly in the face of evidence. The trouble was there
wasn’t any evidence before.”
“But there is now?”
“Yes, and I’ve come round to make the amend⁴ honourable⁵, as you call it, and present the titbit
to you on toast, as it were.”
“I am all agog⁶, my good Japp.”
“All right. Here goes. The pistol that Frank Carter tried to shoot Blunt with on Saturday is a
twin pistol to the one that killed Morley!”
Poirot stared: “But this is extraordinary!”
“Yes, it makes it look rather black for Master Frank.”
“It is not conclusive⁷.”
“No, but it’s enough to make us reconsider the suicide verdict. They’re a foreign make of pistol
and rather an uncommon⁸ one at that!”
Hercule Poirot stared. His

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