“In a sense, that is correct, madame. But it cleared my mind of many misconceptions, and left me free to see other facts in their true significance.”
“The will!” cried Lawrence. “Then it was you, Mary, who destroyed the will?”
She shook her head, and Poirot shook his also.
“No,” he said quietly. “There is only one person who could possibly have destroyed that will— Mrs. Inglethorp herself!”
“Impossible!” I exclaimed. “She had only made it out that very afternoon!”
“Nevertheless, mon ami , it was Mrs. Inglethorp. Because, in no other way can you account for the fact that, on one of the hottest days of the year, Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire to be lighted in her room.”
I gave a gasp. What idiots we had been never to think of that fire as being incongruous! Poirot was continuing:
“The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade. Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy something, and could think of no other way. You will remember that, in consequence of the War economics practiced at Styles, no waste paper was thrown away. There was therefore no means of destroying a thick document such as a will. The moment I heard of a fire being lighted in Mrs. Inglethorp’s room, I leaped to the conclusion that it was to destroy some important document—possibly a will. So the discovery of the charred fragment in the grate was no surprise to me. I did not, of course, know at the time that the will in question had only been made this