“I got work. I managed to pay for his board and lodging. I never told him that I was his mother. But he turned out badly, he drank, then took to drugs. I managed to pay his passage out to Canada. I didn’t hear of him for a year or two. Then, somehow or other, he found out that I was his mother. He wrote asking me for money. Finally, I heard from him back in this country again. He was coming to see me at Fernly, he said. I dared not let him come to the house. I have always been considered so⁠—so very respectable. If anyone got an inkling⁠—it would have been all up with my post as housekeeper. So I wrote to him in the way I have just told you.”

“And in the morning you came to see Dr. Sheppard?”

“Yes. I wondered if something could be done. He was not a bad boy⁠—before he took to drugs.”

“I see,” said Poirot. “Now let us go on with the story. He came that night to the summerhouse?”