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"You misunderstood me. I mean that it is true that I lied to you."

"Yes," she said. "That is true."

She wore no hat. Her head was thrown back as though in defiance. The sweep of her hair back from her face, the curve of her nostril suggested the figurehead of a ship plunging gallantly into a rough sea. In that moment she was beautiful.

"I wished to ask you, Mademoiselle, why you lied to us this morning?"

He saw her flinch for a moment and then recover herself.

"Well, of course, that is true. And now, Mademoiselle, may I ask you the reason for these evasions?"

"You are at least frank, Mademoiselle."

"You concealed 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."

Her eyes went to Arbuthnot for a minute -- just a minute. She said to Poirot: "You wished to see me?"

"Lied to you? I don't know what you mean."

"Ah, you admit it?"

Her lips curved into a smile. "Certainly. Since you have found me out."

"No, Mademoiselle, it was false."

"There does not seem anything else for me to be."

"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."

"I should have thought the reason leapt to the eye, M. Poirot?"

"I do not see why not -- if no blame attached to you."

"You mean --?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, blame -- it is not blame -- it is publicity! So far, M. Poirot, I have succeeded in life. I have had well-paid, pleasant posts. I was not going to risk the position I had attained when no good end could have been served."

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 photographs were reproduced in the English papers -- do you think that any nice ordinary middle-class Englishwoman would want to engage that girl as governess to her daughters?"

"I will venture to suggest, Mademoiselle, that I would have been the best judge of that, not you."

"Is it possible, Mademoiselle, that you did not recognize in the Countess Andrenyi Mrs. Armstrong's young sister whom you taught in New York?"

"For instance, you could have helped me in the matter of identification."

"What do you mean?"

"Countess Andrenyi? No." She shook her head. "It may seem extraordinary to you, but I did not recognize her. She was not grown up, you see, when I knew her. That was over three years ago. It is true that the Countess reminded me of someone -- it puzzled me. But she looks so foreign -- I never connected her with the little American schoolgirl. It is true that I only glanced at her casually when coming into the restaurant car. I noticed her clothes more than her face --" she smiled faintly --"women do! And then -- well, I had my own preoccupations."

She said in a low voice: "I can't -- I can't."

Poirot's voice was very gentle and persuasive.

"You will not tell me your secret, Mademoiselle?"

And suddenly, without warning she broke down, dropping her face down upon her outstretched arms and crying as though her heart would break.

"I -- look here --"

"Monsieur," protested M. Bouc.

The Colonel sprang up and stood awkwardly beside her.

"I'll break every bone in your damned body, you dirty little whippersnapper," he said.

He stopped and, turning round, scowled fiercely at Poirot.

She sprang up. "It's nothing. I'm all right. You don't need me any more, do you, M. Poirot? If you do, you must come and find me. Oh, what an idiot -- what an idiot I'm making of myself!" She hurried out of the car.

Arbuthnot had turned back to the girl. "Mary -- for God's sake --"

"I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language."

Arbuthnot, before following her, turned once more on Poirot. "Miss Debenham's got nothing to do with this business -- nothing, do you hear? And if she's worried and interfered with, you'll have me to deal with." He strode out.

But M. Bouc was not interested in the emotional reactions of Englishmen. He was overcome by admiration of his friend.

"Oh, I claim no credit this time. It was not a guess. Countess Andrenyi practically told me."

"Exactly. A tall, middle-aged woman with red hair -- in fact, the exact opposite in every respect of Miss Debenham, so much so as to be quite remarkable. But then she had to invent a name quickly, and there it was that the unconscious association of ideas gave her away. She said Miss Freebody, you remember."

"Possibly more loyalty. It makes things a little difficult."

"You remember I asked her about her governess or companion? I had already decided in my mind that if Mary Debenham were mixed up in the matter, she must have figured in the household in some such capacity."

"Yes, but the Countess Andrenyi described a totally different person."

"It is incredible how you think of these things," said Dr. Constantine admiringly.

"That is yet another lie. Why did she do it?"

"Eh bien, you may not know it, but there is a shop in London that was called, until recently, Debenham & Freebody. With the name Debenham running in her head, the Countess clutches at another name quickly, and the first that comes is Freebody. Naturally I understood immediately."

"Mon cher, vous êtes épatant," he cried. "Another miraculous guess. C'est formidable."

"Yes?"

"Ma foi," said M. Bouc with violence. "But does everybody on this train tell lies?"

"Comment? Surely not?"

"That," said Poirot, "is what we are about to find out."