ashore. Mrs Clapperton refuses, shouting to her husband from behind her locked cabin door that she has suffered a bad night and wants to be left alone. When everyone has returned later on, Mrs Clapperton is still not answering her door. A steward opens it for her worried husband and they find the lady dead – stabbed through the heart with a native dagger and money and jewellery stolen. Several bead sellers were allowed on the boat at the port and they are questioned, particularly as one of their wares was found on the floor of the cabin. Poirot though is puzzled: the door to the cabin was locked from within and he cannot see a reason why Mrs Clapperton would open it to a bead seller, nor why such a person would murder her and lay himself so open to suspicion. That evening, at Poirot's request, the other passengers are assembled in the lounge. Poirot addresses them and unwraps a ventriloquist's doll which speaks and repeats the words used by Mrs Clapperton from behind the locked cabin door to her husband. Colonel Clapperton jumps up and promptly collapses, dead of a heart attack. Poirot explains: Mrs Clapperton was already dead when her husband, witnessed by Poirot, Kitty and Pamela, heard her "speak" to him from inside the cabin but it was her husband using his music hall act. He showed his card trick to the others to divert attention away from his real skill. Poirot's use of the doll in the lounge was helped by a young girl (a fellow passenger and the owner of the doll) behind a curtain providing the voice. Poirot is not surprised that Clapperton died of a weak heart – digitalin would have produced symptoms of dilated pupils which he did not see in Mrs Clapperton but he did see in her husband; the prescription was for him. "How Does Your Garden Grow?" Poirot receives a strange letter for assistance from an elderly woman, Miss Amelia Barrowby, who lives at Rosebank in Charman's Green. She is extremely vague in defining the problem, but adds several times that discretion is paramount as family is involved. The letter intrigues Poirot who has his secretary Miss Felicity Lemon draft a reply saying that he is at the lady's service. Five days later Miss Lemon spots an announcement in the "personal column" of The Morning Post about the