return to Pat's flat. Inspector Rice questions them and tells them that Mrs Grant was shot with an automatic pistol some five hours earlier in the kitchen. They have found a note from someone signed "J.F." saying that he would be there at half-past-seven (the approximate time of death), the pistol with which she was shot and a silk handkerchief used to wipe the prints from the gun. Poirot is suspicious – why would the murderer wipe his prints and yet leave his own handkerchief as evidence behind. The police leave but the Inspector gives Poirot permission to inspect the flat. He goes down there with Donovan and Jimmy. Poirot searches in the kitchen bin and finds a small bottle. He sniffs the corked top carefully but says that he has a cold; Donovan impetuously pulls the stopper out and sniffs the contents for him. Donovan drops in a faint. Jimmy fetches his friend a drink and Donovan recovers and decides to go home. Jimmy remains and Poirot tells him the case is solved. There is no such person as John Fraser as the letter and handkerchief were put there to misdirect the police. The bottle in the bin was a ruse by Poirot; it contained ethyl chloride to knock Donovan briefly unconscious. While Jimmy was getting the drink for his friend, Poirot searched Donovan's pockets to find Pat's missing flat key which Donovan had abstracted earlier in the evening and a letter sent to Mrs Grant which arrived by the late evening post. Poirot thought it odd that the light switch in the kitchen did not work then did work minutes later. Donovan needed to get Jimmy out of the kitchen into the other room whilst he found the letter; the light not working was the ruse to gain him the few minutes he needed before the mistake of being in the wrong flat was obvious to Jimmy. The letter is from a firm of solicitors agreeing that the marriage between Donovan Bailey and Ernestine Grant some eight years before in Switzerland was entirely lawful. Donovan wanted to marry Pat but his previous marriage was stopping him. By chance his first wife moved into the same block as his proposed future wife and was threatening to tell Patricia about their marriage. To stop her, Donovan killed her earlier in the evening but had to return for the solicitor's letter.