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Thirty five explanations. Explanations, Puaro
smiled. He was sitting opposite the millionaire

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at a luncheon table in the latter's
private suite at the Negresco. Facing him

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was a relieved, but very puzzled
man. Puaro leant back in his chair,

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lit one of his tiny cigarettes and
stared reflectively at the ceiling. Yes,

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I will give you explanations. It
began with the one point that puzzled

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me. You know what. That
point was the disfigured face. It is

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not an uncommon thing to find when
investigating a crime, and it rouses an

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immediate question, the question of identity. That naturally was the first thing that

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occurred to me. Was the dead
woman really missus Kettering? But that line

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led me nowhere, For Miss Gray's
evidence was positive and very reliable, so

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I put that idea aside. The
dead woman was Ruth Kettering. When did

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you first begin to suspect the maid? Not for some time, But one

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peculiar little point drew my attention to
her. The cigarette case found in the

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railway carriage, and which she told
us was one which missus Kettering had given

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to her husband. Now that was
on the face of it, most improbable.

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Seeing the terms that they were on, it awakened a doubt in my

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mind as to the general veracity of
Adam Maason's statements. There was the rather

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suspicious fact to be taken into consideration
that she had only been with her mistress

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for two months. Certainly, it
did not seem as if she could have

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had anything to do with the crime, since she had been left behind in

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Paris, and missus Kettering had been
seen alive by several people afterwards. But

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Poirot leant forward. He raised an
emphatic forefinger and wagged it with intense emphasis

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at van Alden. But I am
a good detective. I suspect there is

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nobody and nothing that I do not
suspect. I believe nothing that I am

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told. I say to myself,
how do we know that Ada Mason was

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left behind in Paris? And at
first the answer to that question seemed completely

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satisfactory. There was the evidence of
your Secretary Major Knighton, a complete outsider

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whose testimony might be supposed to be
entirely impartial. And there was the dead

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woman's own words to the conductor on
the train. But I put the latter

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point aside for the moment, because
a very curious idea, an idea perhaps

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fantastic and impossible, was growing up
in my mind. If by any outside

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chance it happened to be true,
that particular piece of testimony was worthless,

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I concentrated on the chief stufre rumbling
block to my theory, Major Knighton's statement

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that he saw Ada Mason at the
Ritz after the Blue train had left Paris.

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That seemed conclusive enough. But yet, on examining the facts carefully,

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I noted two things. First that, by a curious coincidence, he too

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had been exactly two months in your
service. Secondly, his initial letter was

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the same k supposing, just supposing
that it was his cigarette case which had

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been found in the carriage, then
if Ada Mason and he were working together

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and she recognized it when we showed
it to her, would she not act

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precisely as she had done at first? Taken aback, she quickly evolved a

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plausible theory that would agree with mister
Kettering's guilt bien and tendu that was not

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the original idea. The Comte de
la roche was to be the scapegoat.

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Though Ada Mason would not make her
recognition of him too certain in case he

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should be able to prove an alibi. Now, if you will cast your

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mind back to that time, you
will remember a significant thing that happened.

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I suggested to Ada Mason that the
man she had seen was not the Comte

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de la Roche, but Derrick Kettering. She seemed uncertain at the time,

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But after I had got back to
my hotel, you rang me up and

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told me that she had come to
you, and said that on thinking it

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over, she was now quite convinced
that the man in question was mister Kettering.

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I had been expecting something of the
kind. There could be but one

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explanation of this sudden certainty on her
part. After my leaving your hotel,

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she had had time to consult with
somebody and had received instructions which she acted

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upon. Who had given her these
instructions Major Knighton? And there was another

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very small point which might mean nothing
or might mean a great deal. In

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casual conversation Knighton had talked of a
jewel robbery in Yorkshire in a house where

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he was staying, Perhaps a mere
coincidence, perhaps another small link in the

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chain. But there is one thing
I do not understand Monsieur Poirot, I

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guess I must be dense, or
I would have seen it before. Now,

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who was the man in the train
at Paris, Derrek Kettering or the

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Comte de la roche. That is
the simplicity of the whole thing. There

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was no man, Ah mil Toneris, do you not see the cleverness of

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it all? Whose word have we
for it that there ever was a man?

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There only Ada Mason's. And we
believe in Ada Mason because of Knighton's

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evidence that she was left behind in
Paris. But Ruth herself told the conductor

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that she had left her maid behind
there, demured van Alden. Ah,

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I am coming to that. We
have missus Kettering's own evancevidence there. But

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on the other hand, we have
not really got her evidence, because Monsieur

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van Alden, a dead woman cannot
give evidence. It is not her evidence,

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but the evidence of the conductor of
the train. A very different affair altogether,