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impression."
"One has to remember," said Rowena Drake, "that there are young people at an age when it is vital that
they should continue with their studies if they are to have the chance of doing well in life."
"The sacred cow of education," said Hercule Poirot. "That is a phrase I have heard uttered," he added
quickly, "by people - well, should I say - people who ought to know. People who themselves hold
academic posts of some seniority."
"They do not perhaps make enough allowances for youth, for a bad bringing up. Broken homes."
"So you think they need something other than gaol sentences?" "Proper remedial treatment," said
Rowena Drake firmly.
"And that will make (another old-fashioned proverb) a silk purse out of a sow's ear? You do not believe
in the maxim 'the fate of every man have we bound about his neck'?"
Mrs Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased. "An Islamic saying, I believe," said
Poirot. Mrs Drake looked unimpressed.
"I hope," she said, "we do not take our ideas - or perhaps I should say our ideals - from the Middle
East."
"One must accept facts," said Poirot, "and a fact that is expressed by modern biologists - Western
biologists," he hastened to add, "seems to suggest very strongly that the root of a person's actions lies in
his genetic make-up. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer in potential at two or three or four
years old. Or of course a mathematician or a musical genius."
"We are not discussing murderers," said Mrs Drake. "My husband died as a result of an accident. An
accident caused by a careless and badly adjusted personality. Whoever the boy or young man was, there
is always the hope of eventual adjustment to a belief and acceptance that it is a duty to consider others,
to feel an abhorrence if you have taken life unawares, simply out of what may be described as criminal
carelessness that was not really criminal in intent."
"You are quite sure, therefore, that it was not criminal intent?" "I should doubt it very much." Mrs
Drake looked slightly surprised.
"I do not think that the police ever seriously considered that possibility. I certainly did not. It was an
accident. A very tragic accident which altered the pattern of many lives, including my own."
"You say we're not discussing murderers," said Poirot. "But in the case of Joyce that is just what we are
discussing. There was no accident about that. Deliberate hands pushed that child's head down into
water, holding her there till death occurred. Deliberate intent."
"I know. I know. It's terrible. I don't like to think of it, to be reminded of it." She got up, moving about
restlessly. Poirot pushed on relentlessly.
"We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find the motive involved."
"It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless."
"You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent of enjoying killing someone?
Presumably killing someone young and immature."
"One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is difficult to find out. Even
psychiatrists do not agree."
"You refuse to accept a simpler explanation?"
She looked puzzled. "Simpler?"
"Someone not mentally disturbed, not a possible case for psychiatrists to disagree over. Somebody
perhaps who just wanted to be safe."
"Safe? Oh, you mean -"
"The girl had boasted that same day, some hours previously, that she had seen someone commit a
murder."
"Joyce," said Mrs Drake, with calm certainty, "was really a very silly little girl. Not, I am afraid, always
very truthful."
"So everyone has told me," said Hercule Poirot. "I am beginning to believe, you know, that what
everybody has told me must be right," he added with a sigh.
"It usually is."
He rose to his feet, adopting a different manner.
"I must apologise, Madame. I have talked of painful things to you, things that do not truly concern me
here. But it seemed from what Miss Whittaker told me -"
"Why don't you find out more from her?" "You mean -?"
"She is a teacher. She knows, much better than I can, what potentialities (as you have called them) exist
amongst the children she teached."
She paused and then said: "Miss Emlyn, too." "The head-mistress?" Poirot looked surprised.
"Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is a natural psychologist. You said I might have ideas - half-formed
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