has the last link to convict Hale but Tuppence senses that he is far from satisfied with this conclusion to the case. After he leaves, she notices that the dots in the masthead of the two pieces do not match. They invite Sir Arthur back round and confront him with the evidence. Tuppence puts it to him that he too was at the Ace of Spades, dressed in a nearly identical masked costume. Hale says that he was slipped a note asking him not to approach Vere and he complied. Sir Arthur took his place and killed his own wife. The man laughs at this suggestion and Tuppence recognises it as the same laugh she heard from the booth. Marriot is hidden in their flat listening in, but Sir Arthur Merivale throws himself from a window and falls to his death before he can be taken. Marriot tells them that the motive was not jealously but money. Vere Merivale was the one in the marriage with the money, and if she had left her husband he would have been destitute. The Case of the Missing Lady The International Detective Agency receives a visit from Gabriel Stavansson, the famous explorer, who has returned early from a two-year expedition to the North Pole. Tommy and Tuppence impress him with their initial display of observational and deductive powers (because they read of his return in the Daily Mirror earlier that day) and he entrusts his case to them. Stavansson explains that before he went on the expedition, he became engaged to the Hon Mrs Hermione Leigh Gordon, whose first husband was killed in World War I. His first thought on returning was to rush to London and see his fiancée who had been staying with her aunt, Lady Susan Clonray, in Pont Street. Lady Susan is surprised to see him and proves evasive about her niece's whereabouts, saying that she was moving between friends in the north of the country. Stavansson and Lady Susan had never really got on well, partially due to his dislike of fat women like her, and partially due to his perception that she disapproved of the engagement. He requests the names and addresses of the various people that Hermione was supposed to visit, and travels north to see them. None had had recent contact with his fiancée. Lady Susan seems genuinely upset when told this news, but a