from the cards on the bridge table. They return to Reedburn's house and in the curtained recess that leads to the drive they find a twin of the marble seat, again with lion's head arms but this one has a faint bloodstain on it. Reedburn was killed here and his body dragged to the recess facing the garden. Poirot has the missing king of clubs, having taken it from the card box before at the Oglander house. He returns there to assure Mrs Oglander that the police will not find out what happened. He returns the playing card to her, telling her it was their only slip-up. He tells Hastings what happened. The bridge game was set up after the event as an alibi for the four members of the family. By mistake one card was left in the box. The son of the family killed Reedburn when he went with Valerie to plead with the blackmailer, presumably when things escalated into violence. Valerie is the estranged daughter of the Oglander family. Despite the breach in the relationship, she turned to them in her moment of need. Her story of the tramp will stand and she is free to marry Prince Paul. This is one of the few cases (aside from Murder on the Orient Express) in which Poirot allows a guilty party to avoid punishment, particularly when there is a dead body involved. "The Lemesurier Inheritance" In the latter days of the First World War, Poirot and Hastings dine at the Carlton where they meet Captain Vincent Lemesurier and his uncle Hugo, a chemist. Cousin Roger rushes in with the news that Vincent's father has had a serious fall from a horse and is not expected to last the night. Vincent and Uncle Hugo leave. Vincent, the eldest and only of three sons to survive the war, was not close with his father. Roger tells them that Vincent's strong reaction to the bad news is partly due to the Lemesurier curse. No first-born son has lived to inherit the family estate since the Middle Ages. This family curse arose from an ancestor who erroneously suspected his wife of being unfaithful and his young son of not being his own. In a fit of rage he killed them both. His wife cursed him before she died that no first-born son of his descendants should ever inherit. Instead it passed to