The door opened and Magdalene came quickly in. She was breathing fast and had a bright spot of colour in each cheek. She came up to the table and said quietly:
‘My husband thinks I’m lying down. I slipped out of my room quietly. Colonel Johnson,’ she appealed to him with wide, distressed eyes, ‘if I tell you the truth you will keep quiet about it, won’t you? I mean you don’t have to make everything public?’
Colonel Johnson said:
‘You mean, I take it, Mrs Lee, something that has no connection with the crime?’
‘Yes, no connection at all. Just something in my—my private life.’
The chief constable said:
‘You’d better make a clean breast of it, Mrs Lee, and leave us to judge.’
Magdalene said, her eyes swimming:
‘Yes, I will trust you. I know I can. You look so kind. You see, it’s like this. There’s somebody—’ She stopped.
‘Yes, Mrs Lee?’
‘I wanted to telephone to somebody last night—a man—a friend of mine, and I didn’t want George to know about it. I know it was very wrong of me—but well, it was like that. So I went to telephone after dinner when I thought George would be safely in the dining-room. But when I got here I heard him telephoning, so I waited.’
‘Where did you wait, madame?’ asked Poirot.
‘There’s a place for coats and things behind the stairs. It’s dark there. I slipped back there, where I could see George come out from this room. But he didn’t come out, and then all the noise happened and Mr Lee screamed, and I ran upstairs.’
‘So your husband did not leave this room until the moment of the murder?’
‘No.’
The chief constable said:
‘And you yourself from nine o’clock to nine-fifteen were waiting in the recess behind the stairs?’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t say so, you see! They’d want to know what I was doing there. It’s been very, very awkward for me, you do see that, don’t you?’
Johnson said dryly:
‘It was certainly awkward.’
She smiled at him sweetly.
‘I’m so relieved to have told you the truth. And you won’t tell my husband, will you? No, I’m sure you won’t! I can trust you, all of you.’
She included them all in her final pleading look, then she slipped quickly out of the room.
Colonel Johnson drew a deep breath.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It might be like that! It’s a perfectly plausible story. On the other hand—’
‘It might not,’ finished Sugden. ‘That’s just it. We don’t know.’
III
Lydia Lee stood by the far window of the drawing-room looking out. Her figure was half hidden by the heavy window curtains. A sound in the room made her turn with a start to see Hercule Poirot standing by the door.
She said:
‘You startled me, M. Poirot.’