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watched his face closely.
    ‘I had considered Norton –’
    Poirot’s face did not change.
    ‘Not,’ I said, ‘that I’ve anything to go upon. He just struck me as perhaps less unlikely than anyone else. And then he’s – well – inconspicuous. I should imagine the kind of murderer we’re after would have to be inconspicuous.’
    ‘That is true. But there are more ways than you think of being inconspicuous.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Supposing, to take a hypothetical case, that if a sinister stranger arrives there some weeks before the murder, for no apparent reason, he will be noticeable. It would be better, would it not, if the stranger were to be a negligible personality, engaged in some harmless sport like fishing.’
    ‘Or watching birds,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, but that’s just what I was saying.’
    ‘On the other hand,’ said Poirot, ‘it might be better still if the murderer were already a prominent personality – that is to say, he might be the butcher. That would have the further advantage that no one notices bloodstains on a butcher!’
    ‘You’re just being ridiculous. Everybody would know if the butcher had quarrelled with the baker.’
    ‘Not if the butcher had become a butcher simply in order to have a chance of murdering the baker . One must always look one step behind, my friend.’
    I looked at him closely, trying to decide if a hint lay concealed in those words. If they meant anything definite, they would seem to point to Colonel Luttrell. Had he deliberately opened a guest house in order to have an opportunity of murdering one of the guests?
    Poirot very gently shook his head. He said: ‘It is not from my face that you will get the answer.’
    ‘You really are a maddening fellow, Poirot,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Anyway, Norton isn’t my only suspect. What about this fellow Allerton?’
    Poirot, his face still impassive, enquired: ‘You do not like him?’
    ‘No, I don’t.’
    ‘Ah. What you call the nasty bit of goods. That is right, is it not?’
    ‘Definitely. Don’t you think so?’
    ‘Certainly. He is a man,’ said Poirot slowly, ‘very attractive to women.’
    I made an exclamation of contempt. ‘How women can be so foolish. What do they see in a fellow like that?’
    ‘Who can say? But it is always so. The mauvais sujet – always women are attracted to him.’
    ‘But why?’
    Poirot shrugged his shoulders. ‘They see something, perhaps, that we do not.’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘Danger, possibly . . . Everyone, my friend, demands a spice of danger in their lives. Some get it vicariously – as in bullfights. Some read about it. Some find it at the cinema. But I am sure of this – too much safety is abhorrent to the nature of a human being. Men find danger in many ways – women are reduced to finding their danger mostly in affairs of sex. That is why, perhaps, they welcome the hint of the tiger – the sheathed claws, the treacherous spring. The excellent fellow who will make a good and kind husband – they pass him by.’
    I considered this gloomily in silence for some minutes. Then I reverted to the previous theme.
    ‘You know, Poirot,’ I said. ‘It will be easy enough really for me to find out who X is. I’ve only got to poke about and find who was acquainted with all the people. I mean the people of your five cases.’
    I brought this out triumphantly, but Poirot merely gave me a look of scorn.
    ‘I have not demanded your presence here, Hastings, in order to watch you clumsily and laboriously following the way I have already trodden. And let me tell you it is not quite so simple as you think. Four of those cases took place in this county. The people assembled under this roof are not a collection of strangers who have arrived here independently. This is not a hotel in the usual sense of the word. The Luttrells come from this part of the world; they were badly off and bought this place and started it as a venture. The people who come here are their