While many of the girls are sent home, Julia investigates Jennifer's racquet, and finds the smuggled jewels within a hollow in the handle. When someone attempts to enter her room during the night, she quickly flees the school to tell her story to Hercule Poirot, a friend of a friend of her mother. Arriving at Meadowbank to investigate the murders, he learns that Blanche had been recently murdered with a sandbag - the police suspect she knew the killer's identity and attempted blackmail. Interviewing Bulstrode, he learns that she believed Julia's mother Mrs Upjohn, who had served in military intelligence, had noticed someone at the school on Parent's Day whom she recalled seeing from fifteen years ago. Poirot eventually reveals to all that the Shaista who attended Meadowbank was an imposter; the real Shaista was kidnapped by a group seeking Ali Yusuf's jewels. When the imposter couldn't find them, the group extracted her before the police presence at the school exposed her. Poirot then explains that the motive for the murders was the missing gems, whereupon he denounces Ann Shapland as the killer - she had been in Ramat three months ago and was the woman who had witnessed Rawlinson concealing the gems in Jennifer's racquet.