It was high tea. Gerry collected the twins at 4:45 and Madeleine came with her group to the tapas eating area. Kate went running. Amaral was correct - Madeleine was alive at 5:30pm on 3 May.
Why would Gerry (or any other parent collecting their own toddlers) have collected the twins from the crèche when the nannies were there to escort the toddlers to the Tapas, which was the standard end-of-afternoon meeting place?
However muddled some of the early statements are, I can find nothing to indicate that anyone had a doubt as to her potential absence from somewhere she should have been.
If someone (anyone who knew her or would have recognised her) had said "Well, that's odd. She was supposed to have been here with us at x time, but wasn't", then that might have been a red flag to check out. I can find no such doubts in the files.
Some of the initial statements are confusing and a bit muddled at times. The second round of interviews was more thorough with more potential misunderstandings clarified.
But some people insist on cherry-picking those initial statements as if they had been thorough interviews without any language barriers, but with officers trained to investigate child disappearances and with adequate resources. This wasn't the case.