“Then you’ve nothing to keep me here for,” said Kent. “I was away from Fernly Park by twenty-five minutes past nine. You can ask at the Dog and Whistle. That’s a saloon about a mile out of Fernly on the road to Cranchester. I kicked up a bit of a row there, I remember. As near as nothing to quarter to ten, it was. How about that?”
Inspector Raglan wrote down something in his notebook.
“Well?” demanded Kent.
“Inquiries will be made,” said the inspector. “If you’ve spoken the truth, you won’t have anything to complain about. What were you doing at Fernly Park anyway?”
“Went there to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head, my man,” the superintendent warned him.
“To hell with a civil tongue. I went there on my own business, and that’s all there is to it. If I was clear away before the murder was done, that’s all that concerns the cops.”
“Your name, it is Charles Kent,” said Poirot. “Where were you born?”
The man stared at him, then he grinned. “I’m a full-blown Britisher all right,” he said.
“Yes,” said Poirot meditatively. “I think you are. I fancy you were born in Kent.”
The man stared. “Why’s that? Because of my name? What’s that to do with it? Is a man whose name is Kent bound to be born in that particular