弄假成真17
时间：2025-03-03 03:33:30
（单词翻译:单击）
Seventeen
After leaving Nasse, Poirot went to the village where, by inquiry, he found the cottage occupied
by the Tuckers. His knock at the door went unanswered for some moments as it was drowned by
the high-pitched tone of Mrs. Tucker’s voice from inside.
“—And what be yu thinking of, Jim Tucker, bringing them boots of yours on to my nice
linoleum? If I’ve tell ee once I’ve tell ee a thousand times. Been polishing it all the morning, I
have, and now look at it.”
A faint rumbling denoted Mr. Tucker’s reaction to these remarks. It was on the whole a
placatory rumble.
“Yu’ve no cause to go forgetting. ’Tis all this eagerness to get the sports news on the wireless.
Why, ’twouldn’t have took ee tu minutes to be off with them boots. And yu, Gary, do ee mind
what yu’m doing with that lollipop. Sticky fingers I will not have on my best silver teapot.
Marilyn, that be someone at the door, that be. Du ee go and see who ’tis.”
The door was opened gingerly and a child of about eleven or twelve years old peered out
suspiciously at Poirot. One cheek was bulged with a sweet. She was a fat child with small blue
eyes and a rather piggy kind of prettiness.
“’Tis a gentleman, Mum,” she shouted.
Mrs. Tucker, wisps of hair hanging over her somewhat hot face, came to the door.
“What is it?” she demanded sharply. “We don’t need…” She paused, a faint look of recognition
came across her face. “Why let me see, now, didn’t I see you with the police that day?”
“Alas, Madame, that I have brought back painful memories,” said Poirot, stepping firmly inside
the door.
Mrs. Tucker cast a swift agonized glance at his feet, but Poirot’s pointed patent leather shoes
had only trodden the high road. No mud was being deposited on Mrs. Tucker’s brightly polished
linoleum.
“Come in, won’t you, sir,” she said, backing before him, and throwing open the door of a room
on her right hand.
Poirot was ushered into a devastatingly neat little parlour. It smelt of furniture polish and Brasso
and contained a large Jacobean suite, a round table, two potted geraniums, an elaborate brass
fender, and a large variety of china ornaments.
“Sit down, sir, do. I can’t remember the name. Indeed, I don’t think as I ever heard it.”
“My name is Hercule Poirot,” said Poirot rapidly. “I found myself once more in this part of the
world and I called here to offer you my condolences and to ask you if there had been any
developments. I trust the murderer of your daughter has been discovered.”
“Not sight or sound of him,” said Mrs. Tucker, speaking with some bitterness. “And ’tis a
downright wicked shame if you ask me. ’Tis my opinion the police don’t disturb themselves when
it’s only the likes of us. What’s the police anyway? If they’m all like Bob Hoskins I wonder the
whole country isn’t a mass of crime. All that Bob Hoskins does is spend his time looking into
parked cars on the Common.”
At this point, Mr. Tucker, his boots removed, appeared through the doorway, walking on his
stockinged feet. He was a large, red-faced man with a pacific expression.
“Police be all right,” he said in a husky voice. “Got their troubles like anyone else. These here
maniacs ar’n’t so easy to find. Look the same as you or me, if you take my meaning,” he added,
speaking directly to Poirot.
The little girl who had opened the door to Poirot appeared behind her father, and a boy of about
eight poked his head round her shoulder. They all stared at Poirot with intense interest.
“This is your younger daughter, I suppose,” said Poirot.
“That’s Marilyn, that is,” said Mrs. Tucker. “And that’s Gary. Come and say how do you do,
Gary, and mind your manners.”
Gary backed away.
“Shy-like, he is,” said his mother.
“Very civil of you, I’m sure, sir,” said Mr. Tucker, “to come and ask about Marlene. Ah, that
was a terrible business, to be sure.”
“I have just called upon Mrs. Folliat,” said M. Poirot. “She, too, seems to feel this very deeply.”
“She’s been poorly-like ever since,” said Mrs. Tucker. “She’s an old lady an’t was a shock to
her, happening as it did at her own place.”
Poirot noted once more everybody’s unconscious assumption that Nasse House still belonged to
Mrs. Folliat.
“Makes her feel responsible-like in a way,” said Mr. Tucker, “not that ’twere anything to do
with her.”
“Who was it that actually suggested that Marlene should play the victim?” asked Poirot.
“The lady from London that writes the books,” said Mrs. Tucker promptly.
Poirot said mildly:
“But she was a stranger down here. She did not even know Marlene.”
“’Twas Mrs. Masterton what rounded the girls up,” said Mrs. Tucker, “and I suppose ’twas Mrs.
Masterton said Marlene was to do it. And Marlene, I must say, was pleased enough at the idea.”
Once again, Poirot felt, he came up against a blank wall. But he knew now what Mrs. Oliver
had felt when she first sent for him. Someone had been working in the dark, someone who had
pushed forward their own desires through other recognized personalities. Mrs. Oliver, Mrs.
Masterton. Those were the figureheads. He said:
“I have been wondering, Mrs. Tucker, whether Marlene was already acquainted with this—er—
homicidal maniac.”
“She wouldn’t know nobody like that,” said Mrs. Tucker virtuously.
“Ah,” said Poirot, “but as your husband has just observed, these maniacs are very difficult to
spot. They look the same as—er—you and me. Someone may have spoken to Marlene at the fête,
or even before it. Made friends with her in a perfectly harmless manner. Given her presents,
perhaps.”
“Oh, no, sir, nothing of that kind. Marlene wouldn’t take presents from a stranger. I brought her
up better than that.”
“But she might see no harm in it,” said Poirot, persisting. “Supposing it had been some nice
lady who had offered her things.”
“Someone, you mean, like young Mrs. Legge down at the Mill Cottage.”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “Someone like that.”
“Give Marlene a lipstick once, she did,” said Mrs. Tucker. “Ever so mad, I was. I won’t have
you putting that muck on your face, Marlene, I said. Think what your father would say. Well, she
says, perky as may be, ’tis the lady down at Lawder’s Cottage as give it me. Said as how it would
suit me, she did. Well, I said, don’t you listen to what no London ladies say. ’Tis all very well for
them, painting their faces and blacking their eyelashes and everything else. But you’re a decent
girl, I said, and you wash your face with soap and water until you’re a good deal older than what
you are now.”
“But she did not agree with you, I expect,” said Poirot, smiling.
“When I say a thing I mean it,” said Mrs. Tucker.
The fat Marilyn suddenly gave an amused giggle. Poirot shot her a keen glance.
“Did Mrs. Legge give Marlene anything else?” he asked.
“Believe she gave her a scarf or summat—one she hadn’t no more use for. A showy sort of
thing, but not much quality. I know quality when I see it,” said Mrs. Tucker, nodding her head.
“Used to work at Nasse House as a girl, I did. Proper stuff the ladies wore in those days. No gaudy
colours and all this nylon and rayon; real good silk. Why, some of their taffeta dresses would have
stood up by themselves.”
“Girls like a bit of finery,” said Mr. Tucker indulgently. “I don’t mind a few bright colours
myself, but I won’t have this ’ere mucky lipstick.”
“A bit sharp I was with her,” said Mrs. Tucker, her eyes suddenly misty, “and her gorn in that
terrible way. Wished afterwards I hadn’t spoken so sharp. Ah, nought but trouble and funerals
lately, it seems. Troubles never come singly, so they say, and ’tis true enough.”
“You have had other losses?” inquired Poirot politely.
“The wife’s father,” explained Mr. Tucker. “Come across the ferry in his boat from the Three
Dogs late at night, and must have missed his footing getting on to the quay and fallen in the river.
Of course he ought to have stayed quiet at home at his age. But there, yu can’t do anything with
the old ’uns. Always pottering about on the quay, he was.”
“Father was a great one for the boats always,” said Mrs. Tucker. “Used to look after them in the
old days for Mr. Folliat, years and years ago that was. Not,” she added brightly, “as Father’s much
loss, as you might say. Well over ninety, he was, and trying in many of his ways. Always babbling
some nonsense or other. ’Twas time he went. But, of course, us had to bury him nice—and two
funerals running costs a lot of money.”
These economic reflections passed Poirot by—a faint remembrance was stirring.
“An old man—on the quay? I remember talking to him. Was his name—?”
“Merdell, sir. That was my name before I married.”
“Your father, if I remember rightly, was head gardener at Nasse?”
“No, that was my eldest brother. I was the youngest of the family—eleven of us, there were.”
She added with some pride, “There’s been Merdells at Nasse for years, but they’re all scattered
now. Father was the last of us.”
Poirot said softly:
“There’ll always be Folliats at Nasse House.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I am repeating what your old father said to me on the quay.”
“Ah, talked a lot of nonsense, Father did. I had to shut him up pretty sharp now and then.”
“So Marlene was Merdell’s granddaughter,” said Poirot. “Yes, I begin to see.” He was silent for
a moment, an immense excitement was surging within him. “Your father was drowned, you say, in
the river?”
“Yes, sir. Took a drop too much, he did. And where he got the money from, I don’t know. Of
course he used to get tips now and again on the quay helping people with boats or with parking
their cars. Very cunning he was at hiding his money from me. Yes, I’m afraid as he’d had a drop
too much. Missed his footing, I’d say, getting off his boat on to the quay. So he fell in and was
drowned. His body was washed up down at Helmmouth the next day. ’Tis a wonder, as you might
say, that it never happened before, him being ninety-two and half-blinded anyway.”
“The fact remains that it did not happen before—”
“Ah, well, accidents happen, sooner or later—”
“Accident,” mused Poirot. “I wonder.”
He got up. He murmured:
“I should have guessed. Guessed long ago. The child practically told me—”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“It is nothing,” said Poirot. “Once more I tender you my condolences both on the death of your
daughter and on that of your father.”
He shook hands with them both and left the cottage. He said to himself:
“I have been foolish—very foolish. I have looked at everything the wrong way round.”
“Hi—mister.”
It was a cautious whisper. Poirot looked round. The fat child Marilyn was standing in the
shadow of the cottage wall. She beckoned him to her and spoke in a whisper.
“Mum don’t know everything,” she said. “Marlene didn’t get that scarf off of the lady down at
the cottage.”
“Where did she get it?”
“Bought it in Torquay. Bought some lipstick, too, and some scent—Newt in Paris—funny
name. And a jar of foundation cream, what she’d read about in an advertisement.” Marilyn
giggled. “Mum doesn’t know. Hid it at the back of her drawer, Marlene did, under her winter
vests. Used to go into the convenience at the bus stop and do herself up, when she went to the
pictures.”
Marilyn giggled again.
“Mum never knew.”
“Didn’t your mother find these things after your sister died?”
Marilyn shook her fair fluffy head.
“No,” she said. “I got ’em now—in my drawer. Mum doesn’t know.”
Poirot eyed her consideringly, and said:
“You seem a very clever girl, Marilyn.”
Marilyn grinned rather sheepishly.
“Miss Bird says it’s no good my trying for the grammar school.”
“Grammar school is not everything,” said Poirot. “Tell me, how did Marlene get the money to
buy these things?”
Marilyn looked with close attention at a drainpipe.
“Dunno,” she muttered.
“I think you do know,” said Poirot.
Shamelessly he drew out a half crown from his pocket and added another half crown to it.
“I believe,” he said, “there is a new, very attractive shade of lipstick called ‘Carmine Kiss.’”
“Sounds smashing,” said Marilyn, her hand advanced towards the five shillings. She spoke in a
rapid whisper. “She used to snoop about a bit, Marlene did. Used to see goings-on—you know
what. Marlene would promise not to tell and then they’d give her a present, see?”
Poirot relinquished the five shillings.
“I see,” he said.
He nodded to Marilyn and walked away. He murmured again under his breath, but this time
with intensified meaning:
“I see.”
So many things now fell into place. Not all of it. Not clear yet by any means—but he was on the
right track. A perfectly clear trail all the way if only he had had the wit to see it. That first
conversation with Mrs. Oliver, some casual words of Michael Weyman’s, the significant
conversation with old Merdell on the quay, an illuminating phrase spoken by Miss Brewis—the
arrival of Etienne de Sousa.
A public telephone box stood adjacent to the village post office. He entered it and rang up a
number. A few minutes later he was speaking to Inspector Bland.
“Well, M. Poirot, where are you?”
“I am here, in Nassecombe.”
“But you were in London yesterday afternoon?”
“It only takes three and a half hours to come here by a good train,” Poirot pointed out. “I have a
question for you.”
“Yes?”
“What kind of a yacht did Etienne de Sousa have?”
“Maybe I can guess what you’re thinking, M. Poirot, but I assure you there was nothing of that
kind. It wasn’t fitted up for smuggling if that’s what you mean. There were no fancy hidden
partitions or secret cubbyholes. We’d have found them if there had been. There was nowhere on it
you could have stowed away a body.”
“You are wrong, mon cher, that is not what I mean. I only asked what kind of yacht, big or
small?”
“Oh, it was very fancy. Must have cost the earth. All very smart, newly painted, luxury fittings.”
“Exactly,” said Poirot. He sounded so pleased that Inspector Bland felt quite surprised.
“What are you getting at, M. Poirot?” he asked.
“Etienne de Sousa,” said Poirot, “is a rich man. That, my friend, is very significant.”
“Why?” demanded Inspector Bland.
“It fits in with my latest idea,” said Poirot.
“You’ve got an idea, then?”
“Yes. At last I have an idea. Up to now I have been very stupid.”
“You mean we’ve all been very stupid.”
“No,” said Poirot, “I mean specially myself. I had the good fortune to have a perfectly clear trail
presented to me, and I did not see it.”
“But now you’re definitely on to something?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Look here, M. Poirot—”
But Poirot had rung off. After searching his pockets for available change, he put through a
personal call to Mrs. Oliver at her London number.
“But do not,” he hastened to add, when he made his demand, “disturb the lady to answer the
telephone if she is at work.”
He remembered how bitterly Mrs. Oliver had once reproached him for interrupting a train of
creative thought and how the world in consequence had been deprived of an intriguing mystery
centring round an old-fashioned long-sleeved woollen vest. The exchange, however, was unable to
appreciate his scruples.
“Well,” it demanded, “do you want a personal call or don’t you?”
“I do,” said Poirot, sacrificing Mrs. Oliver’s creative genius upon the altar of his own
impatience. He was relieved when Mrs. Oliver spoke. She interrupted his apologies.
“It’s splendid that you’ve rung me up,” she said. “I was just going out to give a talk on How I
Write My Books. Now I can get my secretary to ring up and say I am unavoidably detained.”
“But, Madame, you must not let me prevent—”
“It’s not a case of preventing,” said Mrs. Oliver joyfully. “I’d have made the most awful fool of
myself. I mean, what can you say about how you write books? What I mean is, first you’ve got to
think of something, and when you’ve thought of it you’ve got to force yourself to sit down and
write it. That’s all. It would have taken me just three minutes to explain that, and then the Talk
would have been ended and everyone would have been very fed up. I can’t imagine why
everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an
author’s business to write, not talk.”
“And yet it is about how you write that I want to ask you.”
“You can ask,” said Mrs. Oliver; “but I probably shan’t know the answer. I mean one just sits
down and writes. Half a minute, I’ve got a frightfully silly hat on for the Talk—and I must take it
off. It scratches my forehead.” There was a momentary pause and then the voice of Mrs. Oliver
resumed in a relieved voice, “Hats are really only a symbol, nowadays, aren’t they? I mean, one
doesn’t wear them for sensible reasons anymore; to keep one’s head warm, or shield one from the
sun, or hide one’s face from people one doesn’t want to meet. I beg your pardon, M. Poirot, did
you say something?”
“It was an ejaculation only. It is extraordinary,” said Poirot, and his voice was awed. “Always
you give me ideas. So also did my friend Hastings whom I have not seen for many, many years.
You have given me now the clue to yet another piece of my problem. But no more of all that. Let
me ask you instead my question. Do you know an atom scientist, Madame?”
“Do I know an atom scientist?” said Mrs. Oliver in a surprised voice. “I don’t know. I suppose I
may. I mean, I know some professors and things. I’m never quite sure what they actually do.”
“Yet you made an atom scientist one of the suspects in your Murder Hunt?”
“Oh, that! That was just to be up to date. I mean, when I went to buy presents for my nephews
last Christmas, there was nothing but science fiction and the stratosphere and supersonic toys, and
so I thought when I started on the Murder Hunt, ‘Better have an atom scientist as the chief suspect
and be modern.’ After all, if I’d needed a little technical jargon for it I could always have got it
from Alec Legge.”
“Alec Legge—the husband of Sally Legge? Is he an atom scientist?”
“Yes, he is. Not Harwell. Wales somewhere. Cardiff. Or Bristol, is it? It’s just a holiday cottage
they have on the Helm. Yes, so, of course, I do know an atom scientist after all.”
“And it was meeting him at Nasse House that probably put the idea of an atom scientist into
your head? But his wife is not Yugoslavian.”
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Oliver, “Sally is English as English. Surely you realize that?”
“Then what put the idea of the Yugoslavian wife into your head?”
“I really don’t know… Refugees perhaps? Students? All those foreign girls at the hostel
trespassing through the woods and speaking broken English.”
“I see…Yes, I see now a lot of things.”
“It’s about time,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Pardon?”
“I said it was about time,” said Mrs. Oliver. “That you did see things, I mean. Up to now you
don’t seem to have done anything.” Her voice held reproach.
“One cannot arrive at things all in a moment,” said Poirot, defending himself. “The police,” he
added, “have been completely baffled.”
“Oh, the police,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard….”
Recognizing this well-known phrase, Poirot hastened to interrupt.
“The matter has been complex,” he said. “Extremely complex. But now—I tell you this in
confidence—but now I arrive!”
Mrs. Oliver remained unimpressed.
“I daresay,” she said; “but in the meantime there have been two murders.”
“Three,” Poirot corrected her.
“Three murders? Who’s the third?”
“An old man called Merdell,” said Hercule Poirot.
“I haven’t heard of that one,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Will it be in the paper?”
“No,” said Poirot, “up to now no one has suspected that it was anything but an accident.”
“And it wasn’t an accident?”
“No,” said Poirot, “it was not an accident.”
“Well, tell me who did it—did them, I mean—or can’t you over the telephone?”
“One does not say these things over the telephone,” said Poirot.
“Then I shall ring off,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I can’t bear it.”
“Wait a moment,” said Poirot, “there is something else I wanted to ask you. Now, what was it?”
“That’s a sign of age,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I do that, too. Forget things—”
“There was something, some little point—it worried me. I was in the boathouse….”
He cast his mind back. That pile of comics. Marlene’s phrases scrawled on the margin. “Albert
goes with Doreen.” He had had a feeling that there was something lacking — that there was
something he must ask Mrs. Oliver.
“Are you still there, M. Poirot?” demanded Mrs. Oliver. At the same time the operator
requested more money.
These formalities completed, Poirot spoke once more.
“Are you still there, Madame?”
“I’m still here,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Don’t let’s waste any more money asking each other if we’re
there. What is it?”
“It is something very important. You remember your Murder Hunt?”
“Well, of course I remember it. It’s practically what we’ve just been talking about, isn’t it?”
“I made one grave mistake,” said Poirot. “I never read your synopsis for competitors. In the
gravity of discovering a murder it did not seem to matter. I was wrong. It did matter. You are a
sensitive person, Madame. You are affected by your atmosphere, by the personalities of the people
you meet. And these are translated into your work. Not recognizably so, but they are the
inspiration from which your fertile brain draws its creations.”
“That’s very nice flowery language,” said Mrs. Oliver. “But what exactly do you mean?”
“That you have always known more about this crime than you have realized yourself. Now for
the question I want to ask you—two questions actually; but the first is very important. Did you,
when you first began to plan your Murder Hunt, mean the body to be discovered in the
boathouse?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Where did you intend it to be?”
“In that funny little summerhouse tucked away in the rhododendrons near the house. I thought it
was just the place. But then someone, I can’t remember who exactly, began insisting that it should
be found in the Folly. Well, that, of course, was an absurd idea! I mean, anyone could have
strolled in there quite casually and come across it without having followed a single clue. People
are so stupid. Of course I couldn’t agree to that.”
“So, instead, you accepted the boathouse?”
“Yes, that’s just how it happened. There was really nothing against the boathouse though I still
thought the little summerhouse would have been better.”
“Yes, that is the technique you outlined to me that first day. There is one thing more. Do you
remember telling me that there was a final clue written on one of the ‘comics’ that Marlene was
given to amuse her?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Tell me, was it something like” (he forced his memory back to a moment when he had stood
reading various scrawled phrases): “Albert goes with Doreen; Georgie Porgie kisses hikers in the
wood; Peter pinches girls in the Cinema?”
“Good gracious me, no,” said Mrs. Oliver in a slightly shocked voice. “It wasn’t anything silly
like that. No, mine was a perfectly straightforward clue.” She lowered her voice and spoke in
mysterious tones. “Look in the hiker’s rucksack.”
“Epatant!” cried Poirot. “Epatant! Of course, the ‘comic’ with that on it would have to be taken
away. It might have given someone ideas!”
“The rucksack, of course, was on the floor by the body and—”
“Ah, but it is another rucksack of which I am thinking.”
“You’re confusing me with all these rucksacks,” Mrs. Oliver complained. “There was only one
in my murder story. Don’t you want to know what was in it?”
“Not in the least,” said Poirot. “That is to say,” he added politely, “I should be enchanted to
hear, of course, but—”
Mrs. Oliver swept over the “but.”
“Very ingenious, I think,” she said, the pride of authorship in her voice. “You see, in Marlene’s
haversack, which was supposed to be the Yugoslavian wife’s haversack, if you understand what I
mean—”
“Yes, yes,” said Poirot, preparing himself to be lost in fog once more.
“Well, in it was the bottle of medicine containing poison with which the country squire
poisoned his wife. You see, the Yugoslavian girl had been over here training as a nurse and she’d
been in the house when Colonel Blunt poisoned his first wife for her money. And she, the nurse,
had got hold of the bottle and taken it away, and then come back to blackmail him. That, of
course, is why he killed her. Does that fit in, M. Poirot?”
“Fit in with what?”
“With your ideas,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Not at all,” said Poirot, but added hastily, “All the same, my felicitations, Madame. I am sure
your Murder Hunt was so ingenious that nobody won the prize.”
“But they did,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Quite late, about seven o’clock. A very dogged old lady
supposed to be quite gaga. She got through all the clues and arrived at the boathouse triumphantly,
but of course the police were there. So then she heard about the murder, and she was the last
person at the whole fête to hear about it, I should imagine. Anyway, they gave her the prize.” She
added with satisfaction, “That horrid young man with the freckles who said I drank like a fish
never got farther than the camellia garden.”
“Some day, Madame,” said Poirot, “you shall tell me this story of yours.”
“Actually,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I’m thinking of turning it into a book. It would be a pity to waste
it.”
And it may here be mentioned that some three years later Hercule Poirot read The Woman in the
Wood, by Ariadne Oliver, and wondered whilst he read it why some of the persons and incidents
seemed to him vaguely familiar.
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