You are at the telephone in the hall with the operations book open on the table under Edmund's torch, and the line to London is ringing. Major Reeve turns to tonight's operation and stops: the page is not there.

Hour Four: the missing page

Under Edmund's torch, Major Reeve opens the operations book at tonight's operation, and stops. The page is not there. It has been torn out, not cut: raggedly, in a hurry, close to the spine, and there is a black smudge on the stub.

Sergeant Hollis, who teaches the wireless, wrote tonight's stop-word on that page in the cellar at half past six. At a quarter to seven he left the book on the kitchen table, poured himself a cup of tea, and stepped out into the yard for a cigarette. At seven, when he came back for it, it was as you see it.

Mrs Christie has come down from the officers' room and taken charge of the matter, as if she had been waiting all her life to be asked. Poirot, she says, would gather everybody in the library. There is no time for that, so she has gathered what they say instead, in her notebook, in a small fast hand:

6.45 TO 7.00
Major Reeve  office, on the
             telephone
Mrs Reeve    upstairs, with
             her maid
Sgt Hollis   the yard
Mrs Pruett   larder, then
             kitchen
Mr Locke     kitchen, to see
             to the range
A.C.         officers' room

Mrs Pruett, the cook, says the range went out at half past six while she was in the larder, which it has not done in thirty years, and that when she came back at seven it was alight again and roaring, and she never lit it.

Mrs Christie closes her notebook. In her experience, she says, it is nearly always the person who was being helpful. She looks at the smudge on the stub, and then, for rather a long moment, at the kitchen door.

Tap the person who tore out the page.