FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, MAIDS IN THE KITCHEN
I
The interview with Agnes Fletcher took place in Hertford, in a somewhat derelict teashop, for
Agnes had been anxious not to tell her story under Miss Morley’s critical eye.
The first quarter of an hour was taken up listening to exactly how particular Agnes’ mother had
always been. Also how Agnes’ father, though a proprietor¹ of licensed² premises³, had never once
had any friction⁴ with the police, closing time being strictly⁵ observed to the second, and indeed
Agnes’ father and mother were universally respected and looked up to in Little Darlingham,
Gloucestershire, and none of Mrs. Fletcher’s family of six (two having died in infancy) had ever
occasioned their parents the least anxiety. And if Agnes, now, were to get mixed up with the
police in any way, Mum and Dad would probably die of it, because as she’d been saying, they’d
always held their heads high, and never had no trouble of any kind with the police.
After this had been repeated, da capo, and with various embellishments, several times, Agnes
drew a little nearer to the subject of the interview.
“I wouldn’t like to say anything to Miss Morley, sir, because it might be, you see, that she’d say
as how I ought to have said something before, but me and cook, we talked it over and we didn’t
see as it was any business of ours, because we’d read quite clear and plain in the paper as how the
master had made a mistake in the drug he was giving and that he’d shot himself and the pistol was
in his hands and everything, so it did seem quite clear, didn’t it, sir?”
“When did you begin to feel differently?” Poirot hoped to get a little nearer the promised
revelation by an encouraging but not too direct question.
Agnes replied promptly⁶.
“Seeing it in the paper about that Frank Carter—Miss Nevill’s young man as was. When I read
as he’d shot at that gentleman where he was gardener, well, I thought, it looks as if he might be

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