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might have forgotten. Especially if it wasn't really important.”
    “When do you mean?”
    “We don't know,” said Poirot. “That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeks ago - or three years. She said she had been 'quite young' at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational happening round here that you can recall?”
    “Oh, I don't think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. You know, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that. But nothing important that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.”
    “But if Joyce said positively she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?”
    “She wouldn't say so unless she really did think so, would she?” said Mrs Reynolds. “I think she must have got something mixed up really.”
    “Yes, it seems possible. I wonder,” he asked, “if I might speak to your two children who were also at the party?”
    “Well, of course, though I don't know what you can expect them to tell you. Ann's doing her work for her 'A' levels upstairs and Leopold's in the garden assembling a model aeroplane.”
    Leopold was a solid, pudgy faced boy entirely absorbed, it seemed, in mechanical construction. It was some few moments before he could pay attention to the questions he was being asked. “You were there, weren't you, Leopold? You heard what your sister said. What did she say?”
    “Oh, you mean about the murder?” He seemed bored.
    “Yes, that's what I mean,” said Poirot. “She said she saw a murder once. Did she really see such a thing?”
    “No, of course she didn't,” said Leopold. “It was just like Joyce, that.” “What do you mean?”
    “It was just like her, showing off,” said Leopold, winding round a piece of wire and breathing forceful through his nose as he concentrated.
    “She was an awfully stupid sort of girl,” he said. “She'd say anything, you know, for people to sit up and take notice.”
    “Do you really think she invented the whole thing?” Leopold shifted his gaze to Mrs Oliver.
    “I expect she wanted to impress you all,” he said. “You write detective stories, don't you? I think she was just putting it on so that you should take more notice of her than you did of the others.”
    “That would also be rather like her, would it?” said Poirot.
    “Oh, she'd say anything,” said Leopold. “I bet nobody believed her though.”
    “Were you listening? Do you think anyone believed it?”
    “Well, I heard her say it, but I didn't really listen. Beatrice laughed at her and so did Cathie. They said 'that's a tall story', or something.”
    There seemed little more to be got out of Leopold. They went upstairs to where Ann, looking rather more than her sixteen years, was bending over a table with various study books spread round her.
    “Yes, I was at the party,” she said.
    “You heard your sister say something about having seen a murder?”
    “Oh yes, I heard her. I didn't take any notice, though.”
    “You didn't think it was true?”
    “Of course it wasn't true. There haven't been any murders here for ages. I don't think there's been a proper murder for years.”
    “Then why do you think she said so?”
    “Oh, she likes showing off. I mean she used to like showing off. She had a wonderful story once about having travelled to India. My uncle had been on a voyage there and she pretended she went with him. Lots of girls at school actually believed her.”
    “So you don't remember any - what you call murders - taking place here in the last three or four years?”
    “No, only the usual kind,” said Ann. “I mean, the ones you read every day in the newspaper. And they weren't actually here in Woodleigh Common. They were mostly in Medchester, I think.”
    “Who do you think killed your sister, Ann? You must have known her friends, you would know any people who didn't like