Cecilia Williams, to outward appearances, had no assets of which to boast. Nevertheless, to Poirot’s eye, there was no despondency there and no sense of failure. Miss Williams’s life had been interesting to her—she was still interested in people and events. She had that enormous mental and moral advantage of a strict Victorian upbringing denied to us in these days—she had done her duty in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call her, and that assurance encased her in an armour impregnable to