万圣节前夜的谋杀11

Eleven

Hercule Poirot looked up at the fa?ade of Quarry House. A solid, well-builtexample of mid-Victorian architecture. He had a vision of its interior—aheavy mahogany sideboard, a central rectangular table also of heavy ma-hogany, a billiard room, perhaps, a large kitchen with adjacent scullery,stone flags on the floor, a massive coal range now no doubt replaced byelectricity or gas.

He noted that most of the upper windows were still curtained. He rangthe front doorbell. It was answered by a thin, grey-haired woman whotold him that Colonel and Mrs. Weston were away in London and wouldnot be back until next week.

He asked about the Quarry Woods and was told that they were open tothe public without charge. The entrance was about five minutes’ walkalong the road. He would see a notice board on an iron gate.

He found his way there easily enough, and passing through the gatebegan to descend a path that led downwards through trees and shrubs.

Presently he came to a halt and stood there lost in thought. His mindwas not only on what he saw, on what lay around him. Instead he wasconning over one or two sentences, and reflecting over one or two factsthat had given him at the time, as he expressed it to himself, furiously tothink. A forged Will, a forged Will and a girl. A girl who had disappeared,the girl in whose favour the Will had been forged. A young artist who hadcome here professionally to make out of an abandoned quarry of roughstone a garden, a sunk garden. Here again, Poirot looked round him andnodded his head with approval of the phrase. A Quarry Garden was anugly term. It suggested the noise of blasting rock, the carrying away by lor-ries of vast masses of stone for road making. It had behind it industrial de-mand. But a Sunk Garden—that was different. It brought with it vague re-membrances in his own mind. So Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had gone on aNational Trust tour of gardens in Ireland. He himself, he remembered,had been in Ireland five or six years ago. He had gone there to investigatea robbery of old family silver. There had been some interesting pointsabout the case which had aroused his curiosity, and having (as usual)—Poirot added this bracket to his thoughts—solved his mission with full suc-cess, he had put in a few days travelling around and seeing the sights.

He could not remember now the particular garden he had been to see.

Somewhere, he thought, not very far from Cork. Killarney? No, not Killar-ney. Somewhere not far from Bantry Bay. And he remembered it becauseit had been a garden quite different from the gardens which he had so faracclaimed as the great successes of this age, the gardens of the Ch?teaux inFrance, the formal beauty of Versailles. Here, he remembered, he hadstarted with a little group of people in a boat. A boat difficult to get into iftwo strong and able boatmen had not practically lifted him in. They hadrowed towards a small island, not a very interesting island, Poirot hadthought, and began to wish that he had not come. His feet were wet andcold and the wind was blowing through the crevices of his mackintosh.

What beauty, he had thought, what formality, what symmetrical arrange-ment of great beauty could there be on this rocky island with its sparsetrees? A mistake—definitely a mistake.

They had landed at the little wharf. The fishermen had landed him withthe same adroitness they had shown before. The remaining members ofthe party had gone on ahead, talking and laughing. Poirot, readjusting hismackintosh in position and tying up his shoes again, had followed themup the rather dull path with shrubs and bushes and a few sparse treeseither side. A most uninteresting park, he thought.

And then, rather suddenly, they had come out from among the scrub onto a terrace with steps leading down from it. Below it he had looked downinto what struck him at once as something entirely magical. Something asit might have been if elemental beings such as he believed were commonin Irish poetry, had come out of their hollow hills and had created there,not so much by toil and hard labour as by waving a magic wand, a garden.

You looked down into the garden. Its beauty, the flowers and bushes, theartificial water below in the fountain, the path round it, enchanted, beauti-ful and entirely unexpected. He wondered how it had been originally. Itseemed too symmetrical to have been a quarry. A deep hollow here in theraised ground of the island, but beyond it you could see the waters of theBay and the hills rising the other side, their misty tops an enchantingscene. He thought perhaps that it might have been that particular gardenwhich had stirred Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe to possess such a garden of herown, to have the pleasure of taking an unkempt quarry set in this smug,tidy, elementary and essentially conventional countryside of that part ofEngland.

And so she had looked about for the proper kind of well-paid slave to doher bidding. And she had found the professionally qualified young mancalled Michael Garfield and had brought him here and had paid him nodoubt a large fee, and had in due course built a house for him. MichaelGarfield, thought Poirot, had not failed her.

He went and sat down on a bench, a bench which had been strategicallyplaced. He pictured to himself what the sunken quarry would look like inthe spring. There were young beech trees and birches with their whiteshivering barks. Bushes of thorn and white rose, little juniper trees. Butnow it was autumn, and autumn had been catered for also. The gold andred of acers, a parrotia or two, a path that led along a winding way tofresh delights. There were flowering bushes of gorse or Spanish broom—Poirot was not famous for knowing the names of either flowers or shrubs—only roses and tulips could he approve and recognize.

But everything that grew here had the appearance of having grown byits own will. It had not been arranged or forced into submission. And yet,thought Poirot, that is not really so. All has been arranged, all has beenplanned to this tiny little plant that grows here and to that large toweringbush that rises up so fiercely with its golden and red leaves. Oh yes. Allhas been planned here and arranged. What is more, I would say that ithad obeyed.

He wondered then whom it had obeyed. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe or Mi-chael Garfield? It makes a difference, said Poirot to himself, yes, it makes adifference. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe was knowledgeable, he felt sure. Shehad gardened for many years, she was no doubt a Fellow of the Royal Hor-ticultural Society, she went to shows, she consulted catalogues, she visitedgardens. She took journeys abroad, no doubt, for botanical reasons. Shewould know what she wanted, she would say what she wanted. Was thatenough? Poirot thought it was not quite enough. She could have given or-ders to gardeners and made sure her orders were carried out. But did sheknow—really know—see in her mind’s eye exactly what her orders wouldlook like when they had been carried out? Not in the first year of theirplanting, not even the second, but things that she would see two yearslater, three years later, perhaps, even six or seven years later. MichaelGarfield, thought Poirot, Michael Garfield knows what she wants becauseshe has told him what she wants, and he knows how to make this barequarry of stone and rock blossom as a desert can blossom. He plannedand he brought it about; he had no doubt the intense pleasure that comesto an artist who is commissioned by a client with plenty of money. Herewas his conception of a fairy- land tucked away in a conventional andrather dull hillside, and here it would grow up. Expensive shrubs forwhich large cheques would have to be written, and rare plants that per-haps would only be obtainable through the goodwill of a friend, and here,too, the humble things that were needed and which cost next to nothing atall. In spring on the bank just to his left there would be primroses, theirmodest green leaves all bunched together up the side of it told him that.

“In England,” said Poirot, “people show you their herbaceous bordersand they take you to see their roses and they talk at inordinate lengthabout their iris gardens, and to show they appreciate one of the greatbeauties of England, they take you on a day when the sun shines and thebeech trees are in leaf, and underneath them are all the bluebells. Yes, it isa very beautiful sight, but I have been shown it, I think, once too often. Iprefer—” the thought broke off in his mind as he thought back to what hehad preferred. A drive through Devon lanes. A winding road with greatbanks up each side of it, and on those banks a great carpet and showing ofprimroses. So pale, so subtly and timidly yellow, and coming from themthat sweet, faint, elusive smell that the primrose has in large quantities,which is the smell of spring almost more than any other smell. And so itwould not be all rare shrubs here. There would be spring and autumn,there would be little wild cyclamen and there would be autumn crocushere too. It was a beautiful place.

He wondered about the people who lived in Quarry House now. He hadtheir names, a retired elderly Colonel and his wife, but surely, he thought,Spence might have told him more about them. He had the feeling thatwhoever owned this now had not got the love of it that dead Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe had had. He got up and walked along the path a littleway. It was an easy path, carefully levelled, designed, he thought, to beeasy for an elderly person to walk where she would at will, without undueamount of steep steps, and at a convenient angle and convenient intervalsa seat that looked rustic but was much less rustic than it looked. In fact,the angle for the back and for one’s feet was remarkably comfortable.

Poirot thought to himself, I’d like to see this Michael Garfield. He made agood thing of this. He knew his job, he was a good planner and he got ex-perienced people to carry his plans out, and he managed, I think, to get hispatron’s plans so arranged that she would think that the whole planninghad been hers. But I don’t think it was only hers. It was mostly his. Yes, I’dlike to see him. If he’s still in the cottage—or the bungalow—that was builtfor him, I suppose—his thought broke off.

He stared. Stared across a hollow that lay at his feet where the path ranround the other side of it. Stared at one particular golden red branchingshrub which framed something that Poirot did not know for a momentwas really there or was a mere effect of shadow and sunshine and leaves.

What am I seeing? thought Poirot. Is this the result of enchantment? Itcould be. In this place here, it could be. Is it a human being I see, or is it—what could it be? His mind reverted to some adventures of his many yearsago which he had christened “The Labours of Hercules.” Somehow, hethought, this was not an English garden in which he was sitting. There wasan atmosphere here. He tried to pin it down. It had qualities of magic, ofenchantment, certainly of beauty, bashful beauty, yet wild. Here, if youwere staging a scene in the theatre, you would have your nymphs, yourfauns, you would have Greek beauty, you would have fear too. Yes, hethought, in this sunk garden there is fear. What did Spence’s sister say?

Something about a murder that took place in the original quarry yearsago? Blood had stained the rock there, and afterwards, death had beenforgotten, all had been covered over, Michael Garfield had come, hadplanned and had created a garden of great beauty, and an elderly womanwho had not many more years to live had paid out money for it.

He saw now it was a young man who stood on the other side of the hol-low, framed by golden red leaves, and a young man, so Poirot now recog-nized, of an unusual beauty. One didn’t think of young men that waynowadays. You said of a young man that he was sexy or madly attractive,and these evidences of praise are often quite justly made. A man with acraggy face, a man with wild greasy hair and whose features were farfrom regular. You didn’t say a young man was beautiful. If you did say it,you said it apologetically as though you were praising some quality thathad been long dead. The sexy girls didn’t want Orpheus with his lute, theywanted a pop singer with a raucous voice, expressive eyes and largemasses of unruly hair.

Poirot got up and walked round the path. As he got to the other side ofthe steep descent, the young man came out from the trees to meet him. Hisyouth seemed the most characteristic thing about him, yet, as Poirot saw,he was not really young. He was past thirty, perhaps nearer forty. Thesmile on his face was very, very faint. It was not quite a welcoming smile,it was just a smile of quiet recognition. He was tall, slender, with featuresof great perfection such as a classical sculptor might have produced. Hiseyes were dark, his hair was black and fitted him as a woven chain mailhelmet or cap might have done. For a moment Poirot wondered whetherhe and this young man might not be meeting in the course of some pa-geant that was being rehearsed. If so, thought Poirot, looking down at hisgaloshes, I, alas, shall have to go to the wardrobe mistress to get myselfbetter equipped. He said:

“I am perhaps trespassing here. If so, I must apologize. I am a strangerin this part of the world. I only arrived yesterday.”

“I don’t think one could call it trespassing.” The voice was very quiet; itwas polite yet in a curious way uninterested, as if this man’s thoughtswere really somewhere quite far away. “It’s not exactly open to the public,but people do walk round here. Old Colonel Weston and his wife don’tmind. They would mind if there was any damage done, but that’s notreally very likely.”

“No vandalism,” said Poirot, looking round him. “No litter that is notice-able. Not even a little basket. That is very unusual, is it not? And it seemsdeserted—strange. Here you would think,” he went on, “there would belovers walking.”

“Lovers don’t come here,” said the young man. “It’s supposed to be un-lucky for some reason.”

“Are you, I wonder, the architect? But perhaps I’m guessing wrong.”

“My name is Michael Garfield,” said the young man.

“I thought it might be,” said Poirot. He gesticulated with a hand aroundhim. “You made this?”

“Yes,” said Michael Garfield.

“It is beautiful,” said Poirot. “Somehow one feels it is always rather un-usual when something beautiful is made in—well, frankly, what is a dullpart of the English landscape.

“I congratulate you,” he said. “You must be satisfied with what you havedone here.”

“Is one ever satisfied? I wonder.”

“You made it, I think, for a Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe. No longer alive, I be-lieve. There is a Colonel and Mrs. Weston, I believe? Do they own it now?”

“Yes. They got it cheap. It’s a big, ungainly house—not easy to run—notwhat most people want. She left it in her Will to me.”

“And you sold it.”

“I sold the house.”

“And not the Quarry Garden?”

“Oh yes. The Quarry Garden went with it, practically thrown in, as onemight say.”

“Now why?” said Poirot. “It is interesting, that. You do not mind if I amperhaps a little curious?”

“Your questions are not quite the usual ones,” said Michael Garfield.

“I ask not so much for facts as for reasons. Why did A do so and so? Whydid B do something else? Why was C’s behaviour quite different from thatof A and B?”

“You should be talking to a scientist,” said Michael. “It is a matter—or sowe are told nowadays—of genes or chromosomes. The arrangement, thepattern, and so on.”

“You said just now you were not entirely satisfied because no one everwas. Was your employer, your patron, whatever you like to call her—wasshe satisfied? With this thing of beauty?”

“Up to a point,” said Michael. “I saw to that. She was easy to satisfy.”

“That seems most unlikely,” said Hercule Poirot. “She was, I havelearned, over sixty. Sixty-five at least. Are people of that age often satis-fied?”

“She was assured by me that what I had carried out was the exact carry-ing out of her instructions and imagination and ideas.”

“And was it?”

“Do you ask me that seriously?”

“No,” said Poirot. “No. Frankly I do not.”

“For success in life,” said Michael Garfield, “one has to pursue the careerone wants, one has to satisfy such artistic leanings as one has got, but onehas as well to be a tradesman. You have to sell your wares. Otherwise youare tied to carrying out other people’s ideas in a way which will not accordwith one’s own. I carried out mainly my own ideas and I sold them, mar-keted them perhaps is a better word, to the client who employed me, as adirect carrying out of her plans and schemes. It is not a very difficult art tolearn. There is no more to it than selling a child brown eggs rather thanwhite ones. The customer has to be assured they are the best ones, theright ones. The essence of the countryside. Shall we say, the hen’s ownpreference? Brown, farm, country eggs. One does not sell them if one says‘they are just eggs. There is only one difference in eggs. They are new laidor they are not.’”

“You are an unusual young man,” said Poirot. “Arrogant,” he saidthoughtfully.”

“Perhaps.”

“You have made here something very beautiful. You have added visionand planning to the rough material of stone hollowed out in the pursuit ofindustry, with no thought of beauty in that hacking out. You have addedimagination, a result seen in the mind’s eye, that you have managed toraise the money to fulfil. I congratulate you. I pay my tribute. The tributeof an old man who is approaching a time when the end of his own work iscome.”

“But at the moment you are still carrying it on?”

“You know who I am, then?”

Poirot was pleased indubitably. He liked people to know who he was.

Nowadays, he feared, most people did not.

“You follow the trail of blood…It is already known here. It is a smallcommunity, news travels. Another public success brought you here.”

“Ah, you mean Mrs. Oliver.”

“Ariadne Oliver. A best seller. People wish to interview her, to knowwhat she thinks about such subjects as student unrest, socialism, girls’

clothing, should sex be permissive, and many other things that are no con-cern of hers.”

“Yes, yes,” said Poirot, “deplorable, I think. They do not learn very much,I have noticed, from Mrs. Oliver. They learn only that she is fond ofapples. That has now been known for twenty years at least, I should think,but she still repeats it with a pleasant smile. Although now, I fear, she nolonger likes apples.”

“It was apples that brought you here, was it not?”

“Apples at a Hallowe’en party,” said Poirot. “You were at that party?”

“No.”

“You were fortunate.”

“Fortunate?” Michael Garfield repeated the word, something that soun-ded faintly like surprise in his voice.

“To have been one of the guests at a party where murder is committed isnot a pleasant experience. Perhaps you have not experienced it, but I tellyou, you are fortunate because—” Poirot became a little more foreign “—ily a des ennuis, vous comprenez? People ask you times, dates, impertinentquestions.” He went on, “You knew the child?”

“Oh yes. The Reynolds are well known here. I know most of the peopleliving round here. We all know each other in Woodleigh Common, thoughin varying degrees. There is some intimacy, some friendships, somepeople remain the merest acquaintances, and so on.”

“What was she like, the child Joyce?”

“She was—how can I put it?—not important. She had rather an uglyvoice. Shrill. Really, that’s about all I remember about her. I’m not particu-larly fond of children. Mostly they bore me. Joyce bored me. When shetalked, she talked about herself.”

“She was not interesting?”

Michael Garfield looked slightly surprised.

“I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “Does she have to be?”

“It is my view that people devoid of interest are unlikely to bemurdered. People are murdered for gain, for fear or for love. One takesone’s choice, but one has to have a starting point—”

He broke off and glanced at his watch.

“I must proceed. I have an engagement to fulfil. Once more, my felicita-tions.”

He went on down, following the path and picking his way carefully. Hewas glad that for once he was not wearing his tight patent leather shoes.

Michael Garfield was not the only person he was to meet in the sunkgarden that day. As he reached the bottom he noted that three paths ledfrom here in slightly different directions. At the entrance of the middlepath, sitting on a fallen trunk of a tree, a child was awaiting him. Shemade this clear at once.

“I expect you are Mr. Hercule Poirot, aren’t you?” she said.

Her voice was clear, almost bell-like in tone. She was a fragile creature.

Something about her matched the sunk garden. A dryad or some elf-likebeing.

“That is my name,” said Poirot.

“I came to meet you,” said the child. “You are coming to tea with us,aren’t you?”

“With Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Oliver? Yes.”

“That’s right. That’s Mummy and Aunt Ariadne.” She added with a noteof censure: “You’re rather late.”

“I am sorry. I stopped to speak to someone.”

“Yes, I saw you. You were talking to Michael, weren’t you?”

“You know him?”

“Of course. We’ve lived here quite a long time. I know everybody.”

Poirot wondered how old she was. He asked her. She said,“I’m twelve years old. I’m going to boarding school next year.”

“Will you be sorry or glad?”

“I don’t really know till I get there. I don’t think I like this place verymuch, not as much as I did.” She added, “I think you’d better come withme now, please.”

“But certainly. But certainly. I apologize for being late.”

“Oh, it doesn’t really matter.”

“What’s your name?”

“Miranda.”

“I think it suits you,” said Poirot.

“Are you thinking of Shakespeare?”

“Yes. Do you have it in lessons?”

“Yes. Miss Emlyn read us some of it. I asked Mummy to read some more.

I liked it. It has a wonderful sound. A brave new world. There isn’t anythingreally like that, is there?”

“You don’t believe in it?”

“Do you?”

“There is always a brave new world,” said Poirot, “but only, you know,for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making ofthat world within themselves.”

“Oh, I see,” said Miranda, with an air of apparently seeing with the ut-most ease, though what she saw Poirot rather wondered.

She turned, started along the path and said,

“We go this way. It’s not very far. You can go through the hedge of ourgarden.”

Then she looked back over her shoulder and pointed, saying:

“In the middle there, that’s where the fountain was.”

“A fountain?”

“Oh, years ago. I suppose it’s still there, underneath the shrubs and theazaleas and the other things. It was all broken up, you see. People took bitsof it away but nobody has put a new one there.”

“It seems a pity.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Do you like fountains very much?”

“Ca dépend,” said Poirot.

“I know some French,” said Miranda. “That’s it depends, isn’t it?”

“You are quite right. You seem very well-educated.”

“Everyone says Miss Emlyn is a very fine teacher. She’s our headmis-tress. She’s awfully strict and a bit stern, but she’s terribly interestingsometimes in the things she tells us.”

“Then she is certainly a good teacher,” said Hercule Poirot. “You knowthis place very well—you seem to know all the paths. Do you come hereoften?”

“Oh yes, it’s one of my favourite walks. Nobody knows where I am, yousee, when I come here. I sit in trees—on the branches, and watch things. Ilike that. Watching things happen.”

“What sort of things?”

“Mostly birds and squirrels. Birds are very quarrelsome, aren’t they?

Not like in the bit of poetry that says ‘birds in their little nests agree.’ Theydon’t really, do they? And I watch squirrels.”

“And you watch people?”

“Sometimes. But there aren’t many people who come here.”

“Why not, I wonder?”

“I suppose they are afraid.”

“Why should they be afraid?”

“Because someone was killed here long ago. Before it was a garden, Imean. It was a quarry once and then there was a gravel pile or a sand pileand that’s where they found her. In that. Do you think the old saying istrue—about you’re born to be hanged or born to be drowned?”

“Nobody is born to be hanged nowadays. You do not hang people anylonger in this country.”

“But they hang them in some other countries. They hang them in thestreets. I’ve read it in the papers.”

“Ah. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?”

Miranda’s response was not strictly in answer to the question, but Poirotfelt that it was perhaps meant to be.

“Joyce was drowned,” she said. “Mummy didn’t want to tell me, but thatwas rather silly, I think, don’t you? I mean, I’m twelve years old.”

“Was Joyce a friend of yours?”

“Yes. She was a great friend in a way. She told me very interestingthings sometimes. All about elephants and rajahs. She’d been to Indiaonce. I wish I’d been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all oursecrets. I haven’t so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy’s been to Greece,you know. That’s where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn’t take me.”

“Who told you about Joyce?”

“Mrs. Perring. That’s our cook. She was talking to Mrs. Minden whocomes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water.”

“Have you any idea who that someone was?”

“I shouldn’t think so. They didn’t seem to know, but then they’re bothrather stupid really.”

“Do you know, Miranda?”

“I wasn’t there. I had a sore throat and a temperature so Mummywouldn’t take me to the party. But I think I could know. Because she wasdrowned. That’s why I asked if you thought people were born to bedrowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes.”

Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from theQuarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with herelfin slimness—it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous forPoirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding backthe more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in thegarden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cu-cumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neatgarden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalowhouse. Miranda led the way through an open french window, announcingwith the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of arare beetle:

“I’ve got him all right.”

“Miranda, you didn’t bring him through the hedge, did you? You oughtto have gone round by the path at the side gate.”

“This is a better way,” said Miranda. “Quicker and shorter.”

“And much more painful, I suspect.”

“I forget,” said Mrs. Oliver—“I did introduce you, didn’t I, to my friendMrs. Butler?”

“Of course. In the post office.”

The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments whilethere had been a queue in front of the counter. Poirot was better able nowto study Mrs. Oliver’s friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matterof a slim woman in a disguising headscarf and a mackintosh. Judith Butlerwas a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled adryad or a wood nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water-spirit.

She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply onher shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintlyhollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea-green eyes fringed withlong eyelashes.

“I’m very glad to thank you properly, Monsieur Poirot,” said Mrs. Butler.

“It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you.”

“When my friend, Mrs. Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have todo it,” said Poirot.

“What nonsense,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all aboutthis beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen? You’ll findthe scones on the wire tray above the oven.”

Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile dir-ected at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say, “She’s gettingme out of the way for a short time.”

“I tried not to let her know,” said Miranda’s mother, “about this—thishorrible thing that happened. But I suppose that was a forlorn chancefrom the start.”

“Yes indeed,” said Poirot. “There’s nothing that goes round any residen-tial centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularlyan unpleasant disaster. And anyway,” he added, “one cannot go longthrough life without knowing what goes on around one. And childrenseem particularly apt at that sort of thing.”

“I don’t know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said ‘There’s a chielamong you taking notes,’” said Mrs. Oliver, “but he certainly knew whathe was talking about.”

“Joyce Reynolds certainly seems to have noticed such a thing as amurder,” said Mrs. Butler. “One can hardly believe it.”

“Believe that Joyce noticed it?”

“I meant believe that if she saw such a thing she never spoke about itearlier. That seems very unlike Joyce.”

“The first thing that everybody seems to tell me here,” said Poirot, in amild voice, “is that this girl, Joyce Reynolds, was a liar.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” said Judith Butler, “that a child might make upa thing and then it might turn out to be true?”

“That is certainly the focal point from which we start,” said Poirot.

“Joyce Reynolds was unquestionably murdered.”

“And you have started. Probably you know already all about it,” saidMrs. Oliver.

“Madame, do not ask impossibilities of me. You are always in such ahurry.”

“Why not?” said Mrs. Oliver. “Nobody would ever get anything donenowadays if they weren’t in a hurry.”

Miranda returned at this moment with a plateful of scones.

“Shall I put them down here?” she asked. “I expect you’ve finished talk-ing by now, haven’t you? Or is there anything else you would like me toget from the kitchen?”

There was a gentle malice in her voice. Mrs. Butler lowered the Geor-gian silver teapot to the fender, switched on an electric kettle which hadbeen turned off just before it came to the boil, duly filled the teapot andserved the tea. Miranda handed hot scones and cucumber sandwicheswith a serious elegance of manner.

“Ariadne and I met in Greece,” said Judith.

“I fell into the sea,” said Mrs. Oliver, “when we were coming back fromone of the islands. It had got rather rough and the sailors always say‘jump’ and, of course, they always say jump just when the thing’s at its fur-thest point which makes it come right for you, but you don’t think that canpossibly happen and so you dither and you lose your nerve and you jumpwhen it looks close and, of course, that’s the moment when it goes faraway.” She paused for breath. “Judith helped fish me out and it made akind of bond between us, didn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Butler. “Besides, I liked your Christian name,”

she added. “It seemed very appropriate, somehow.”

“Yes, I suppose it is a Greek name,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It’s my own, youknow. I didn’t just make it up for literary purposes. But nothing Ariadne-like has ever happened to me. I’ve never been deserted on a Greek islandby my own true love or anything like that.”

Poirot raised a hand to his moustache in order to hide the slight smilethat he could not help coming to his lips as he envisaged Mrs. Oliver in ther?le of a deserted Greek maiden.

“We can’t all live up to our names,” said Mrs. Butler.

“No, indeed. I can’t see you in the r?le of cutting off your lover’s head.

That is the way it happened, isn’t it, Judith and Holofernes, I mean?”

“It was her patriotic duty,” said Mrs. Butler, “for which, if I rememberrightly, she was highly commended and rewarded.”

“I’m not really very well up in Judith and Holofernes. It’s the Apocrypha,isn’t it? Still, if one comes to think of it, people do give other people—theirchildren, I mean—some very queer names, don’t they? Who was the onewho hammered some nails in someone’s head? Jael or Sisera. I never re-member which is the man or which is the woman there. Jael, I think. Idon’t think I remember any child having been christened Jael.”

“She laid butter before him in a lordly dish,” said Miranda unexpec-tedly, pausing as she was about to remove the tea tray.

“Don’t look at me,” said Judith Butler to her friend, “it wasn’t I who in-troduced Miranda to the Apocrypha. “That’s her school training.”

“Rather unusual for schools nowadays, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Oliver. “Theygive them ethical ideas instead, don’t they?”

“Not Miss Emlyn,” said Miranda. “She says that if we go to churchnowadays we only get the modern version of the Bible read to us in thelessons and things, and that it has no literary merit whatsoever. Weshould at least know the fine prose and blank verse sometimes of the Au-thorized Version. I enjoyed the story of Jael and Sisera very much,” she ad-ded. “It’s not a thing,” she said meditatively, “that I should ever havethought of doing myself. Hammering nails, I mean, into someone’s headwhen they were asleep.”

“I hope not indeed,” said her mother.

“And how would you dispose of your enemies, Miranda?” asked Poirot.

“I should be very kind,” said Miranda in a gently contemplative tone. “Itwould be more difficult, but I’d rather have it that way because I don’t likehurting things. I’d use a sort of drug that gives people euthanasia. Theywould go to sleep and have beautiful dreams and they just wouldn’t wakeup.” She lifted some tea cups and the bread and butter plate. “I’ll wash up,Mummy,” she said, “if you like to take Monsieur Poirot to look at thegarden. There are still some Queen Elizabeth roses at the back of the bor-der.”

She went out of the room carefully carrying the tea tray.

“She’s an astonishing child, Miranda,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“You have a very beautiful daughter, Madame,” said Poirot.

“Yes, I think she is beautiful now. One doesn’t know what they will looklike by the time they grow up. They acquire puppy fat and look like well-fattened pigs sometimes. But now—now she is like a wood nymph.”

“One does not wonder that she is fond of the Quarry Garden which ad-joins your house.”

“I wish she wasn’t so fond of it sometimes. One gets nervous aboutpeople wandering about in isolated places, even if they are quite nearpeople or a village. One’s — oh, one’s very frightened all the timenowadays. That’s why—why you’ve got to find out why this awful thinghappened to Joyce, Monsieur Poirot. Because until we know who that was,we shan’t feel safe for a minute—about our children, I mean. Take Mon-sieur Poirot out in the garden, will you, Ariadne? I’ll join you in a minuteor two.”

She took the remaining two cups and a plate and went into the kitchen.

Poirot and Mrs. Oliver went out through the french window. The smallgarden was like most autumn gardens. It retained a few candles of goldenrod and michaelmas daisies in a border, and some Queen Elizabeth rosesheld their pink statuesque heads up high. Mrs. Oliver walked rapidlydown to where there was a stone bench, sat down, and motioned Poirot tosit down beside her.

“You said you thought Miranda was like a wood nymph,” she said.

“What do you think of Judith?”

“I think Judith’s name ought to be Undine,” said Poirot.

“A water spirit, yes. Yes, she does look as though she’d just come out ofthe Rhine or the sea or a forest pool or something. Her hair looks asthough it had been dipped in water. Yet there’s nothing untidy or scattyabout her, is there?”

“She, too, is a very lovely woman,” said Poirot.

“What do you think about her?”

“I have not had time to think as yet. I just think that she is beautiful andattractive and that something is giving her great concern.”

“Well, of course, wouldn’t it?”

“What I would like, Madame, is for you to tell me what you know orthink about her.”

“Well, I got to know her very well on the cruise. You know, one doesmake quite intimate friends. Just one or two people. The rest of them, Imean, they like each other and all that, but you don’t really go to anytrouble to see them again. But one or two you do. Well, Judith was one ofthe ones I did want to see again.”

“You did not know her before the cruise?”

“No.”

“But you know something about her?”

“Well, just ordinary things. She’s a widow,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Her hus-band died a good many years ago—he was an air pilot. He was killed in acar accident. One of those pileup things, I think it was, coming off the Mwhat-is-it that runs near here on to the ordinary road one evening, orsomething of that kind. He left her rather badly off, I imagine. She wasvery broken up about it, I think. She doesn’t like talking about him.”

“Is Miranda her only child?”

“Yes. Judith does some part-time secretarial work in the neighbourhood,but she hasn’t got a fixed job.”

“Did she know the people who lived at the Quarry House?”

“You mean old Colonel and Mrs. Weston?”

“I mean the former owner, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, wasn’t it?”

“I think so. I think I’ve heard that name mentioned. But she died two orthree years ago, so of course one doesn’t hear about her much. Aren’t thepeople who are alive enough for you?” demanded Mrs. Oliver with someirritation.

“Certainly not,” said Poirot. “I have also to inquire into those who havedied or disappeared from the scene.”

“Who’s disappeared?”

“An au pair girl,” said Poirot.

“Oh well,” said Mrs. Oliver, “they’re always disappearing, aren’t they? Imean, they come over here and get their fare paid and then they gostraight into hospital because they’re pregnant and have a baby, and call itAuguste, or Hans or Boris, or some name like that. Or they’ve come over tomarry someone, or to follow up some young man they’re in love with. Youwouldn’t believe the things friends tell me! The thing about au pair girlsseems to be either they’re Heaven’s gift to overworked mothers and younever want to part with them, or they pinch your stockings—or get them-selves murdered—” She stopped. “Oh!” she said.

“Calm yourself, Madame,” said Poirot. “There seems no reason to be-lieve that an au pair girl has been murdered—quite the contrary.”

“What do you mean by quite the contrary? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Probably not. All the same—”

He took out his notebook and made an entry in it.

“What are you writing down there?”

“Certain things that have occurred in the past.”

“You seem to be very perturbed by the past altogether.”

“The past is the father of the present,” said Poirot sententiously.

He offered her the notebook.

“Do you wish to see what I have written?”

“Of course I do. I daresay it won’t mean anything to me. The things youthink important to write down, I never do.”

He held out the small black notebook.

“Deaths: e.g. Mrs. Llewellyn- Smythe (Wealthy). Janet White (School-teacher). Lawyer’s clerk—Knifed, Former prosecution for forgery.”

Below it was written “Opera girl disappears.”

“What opera girl?”

“It is the word my friend, Spence’s sister, uses for what you and I call anau pair girl.”

“Why should she disappear?”

“Because she was possibly about to get into some form of legal trouble.”

Poirot’s finger went down to the next entry. The word was simply “For-gery,” with two question marks after it.

“Forgery?” said Mrs. Oliver. “Why forgery?”

“That is what I asked. Why forgery?”

“What kind of forgery?”

“A Will was forged, or rather a codicil to a Will. A codicil in the au pairgirl’s favour.”

“Undue influence?” suggested Mrs. Oliver.

“Forgery is something rather more serious than undue influence,” saidPoirot.

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with the murder of poor Joyce.”

“Nor do I,” said Poirot. “But, therefore, it is interesting.”

“What is the next word? I can’t read it.”

“Elephants.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”

“It might have,” said Poirot, “believe me, it might have.”

He rose.

“I must leave you now,” he said. “Apologize, please, to my hostess for mynot saying good-bye to her. I much enjoyed meeting her and her lovelyand unusual daughter. Tell her to take care of that child.”

“‘My mother said I never should, play with the children in the wood,’”

quoted Mrs. Oliver. “Well, good-bye. If you like to be mysterious, I supposeyou will go on being mysterious. You don’t even say what you’re going todo next.”

“I have made an appointment for tomorrow morning with MessrsFullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter in Medchester.”

“Why?”

“To talk about forgery and other matters.”

“And after that?”

“I want to talk to certain people who were also present.”

“At the party?”

“No—at the preparation for the party.”

 

分享到：