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six clues. You go on from one to the other like a Treasure Hunt, and the weapons are concealed in suspicious places. Here’s the first clue. A snapshot. Everyone starts with one of these.”
    Poirot took the small print from him and studied it with a frown. Then he turned it upside down. He still looked puzzled. Warburton laughed.
    â€œIngenious bit of trick photography, isn’t it?” he said complacently. “Quite simple once you know what it is.”
    Poirot, who did not know what it was, felt a mounting annoyance.
    â€œSome kind of barred window?” he suggested.
    â€œLooks a bit like it, I admit. No, it’s a section of a tennis net.”
    â€œAh.” Poirot looked again at the snapshot. “Yes, it is as you say—quite obvious when you have been told what it is!”
    â€œSo much depends on how you look at a thing,” laughed Warburton.
    â€œThat is a very profound truth.”
    â€œThe second clue will be found in a box under the centre of the tennis net. In the box are this empty poison bottle—here, and a loose cork.”
    â€œOnly, you see,” said Mrs. Oliver rapidly, “it’s a screw-topped bottle, so the cork is really the clue.”
    â€œI know, Madame, that you are always full of ingenuity, but I do not quite see—”
    Mrs. Oliver interrupted him.
    â€œOh, but of course,” she said, “there’s a story. Like in a magazine serial—a synopsis.” She turned to Captain Warburton. “Have you got the leaflets?”
    â€œThey’ve not come from the printers yet.”
    â€œBut they promised! ”
    â€œI know. I know. Everyone always promises. They’ll be ready this evening at six. I’m going in to fetch them in the car.”
    â€œOh, good.”
    Mrs. Oliver gave a deep sigh and turned to Poirot.
    â€œWell, I’ll have to tell it you, then. Only I’m not very good at telling things. I mean if I write things, I get them perfectly clear, but if I talk, it always sounds the most frightful muddle; and that’s why I never discuss my plots with anyone. I’ve learnt not to, because if I do, they just look at me blankly and say ‘—er—yes, but—I don’t see what happened—and surely that can’t possibly make a book.’ So damping. And not true, because when I write it, it does!”
    Mrs. Oliver paused for breath, and then went on:
    â€œWell, it’s like this. There’s Peter Gaye who’s a young Atom Scientist and he’s suspected of being in the pay of the Communists, and he’s married to this girl, Joan Blunt, and his first wife’s dead, but she isn’t, and she turns up because she’s a secret agent, or perhaps not, I mean she may really be a hiker—and the wife’s having an affair, and this man Loyola turns up either to meet Maya, or to spy upon her, and there’s a blackmailing letter which might be from the housekeeper, or again it might be the butler, and the revolver’s missing, and as you don’t know who the blackmailing letter’s to, and the hypodermic syringe fell out at dinner, and after that it disappeared….”
    Mrs. Oliver came to a full stop, estimating correctly Poirot’s reaction.
    â€œI know,” she said sympathetically. “It sounds just a muddle, but it isn’t really—not in my head—and when you see the synopsis leaflet, you’ll find it’s quite clear.
    â€œAnd, anyway,” she ended, “the story doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, not to you. All you’ve got to do is to present the prizes—very nice prizes, the first’s a silver cigarette case shaped like a revolver—and say how remarkably clever the solver has been.”
    Poirot thought to himself that the solver would indeed have been clever. In fact, he doubted very much that there would be a solver. The whole plot and action of the Murder Hunt seemed to