万圣节前夜的谋杀12

Twelve

The premises of Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter were typical of an old-fashioned firm of the utmost respectability. The hand of time had made it-self felt. There were no more Harrisons and no more Leadbetters. Therewas a Mr. Atkinson and a young Mr. Cole, and there was still Mr. JeremyFullerton, senior partner.

A lean, elderly man, Mr. Fullerton, with an impassive face, a dry, legalvoice, and eyes that were unexpectedly shrewd. Beneath his hand rested asheet of notepaper, the few words on which he had just read. He readthem once again, assessing their meaning very exactly. Then he looked atthe man whom the note introduced to him.

“Monsieur Hercule Poirot?” He made his own assessment of the visitor.

An elderly man, a foreigner, very dapper in his dress, unsuitably attired asto the feet in patent leather shoes which were, so Mr. Fullerton guessedshrewdly, too tight for him. Faint lines of pain were already etching them-selves round the corners of his eyes. A dandy, a fop, a foreigner and re-commended to him by, of all people, Inspector Henry Raglan, C.I.D., andalso vouched for by Superintendent Spence (retired), formerly of ScotlandYard.

“Superintendent Spence, eh?” said Mr. Fullerton.

Fullerton knew Spence. A man who had done good work in his time, hadbeen highly thought of by his superiors. Faint memories flashed across hismind. Rather a celebrated case, more celebrated actually than it hadshowed any signs of being, a case that had seemed cut and dried. Ofcourse! It came to him that his nephew Robert had been connected with it,had been Junior Counsel. A psychopathic killer, it had seemed, a man whohad hardly bothered to try and defend himself, a man whom you mighthave thought really wanted to be hanged (because it had meant hanging atthat time). No fifteen years, or indefinite number of years in prison. No.

You paid the full penalty—and more’s the pity they’ve given it up, so Mr.

Fullerton thought in his dry mind. The young thugs nowadays thoughtthey didn’t risk much by prolonging assault to the point where it becamemortal. Once your man was dead, there’d be no witness to identify you.

Spence had been in charge of the case, a quiet, dogged man who had in-sisted all along that they’d got the wrong man. And they had got the wrongman, and the person who found the evidence that they’d got the wrongman was some sort of an amateurish foreigner. Some retired detectivechap from the Belgian police force. A good age then. And now—senile,probably, thought Mr. Fullerton, but all the same he himself would takethe prudent course. Information, that’s what was wanted from him. In-formation which, after all, could not be a mistake to give, since he couldnot see that he was likely to have any information that could be useful inthis particular matter. A case of child homicide.

Mr. Fullerton might think he had a fairly shrewd idea of who had com-mitted that homicide, but he was not so sure as he would like to be, be-cause there were at least three claimants in the matter. Any one of threeyoung ne’er-do-wells might have done it. Words floated through his head.

Mentally retarded. Psychiatrist’s report. That’s how the whole matterwould end, no doubt. All the same, to drown a child during a party—thatwas rather a different cup of tea from one of the innumerable school chil-dren who did not arrive home and who had accepted a lift in a car afterhaving been repeatedly warned not to do so, and who had been found in anearby copse or gravel pit. A gravel pit now. When was that? Many, manyyears ago now.

All this took about four minutes’ time and Mr. Fullerton then cleared histhroat in a slightly asthmatic fashion, and spoke.

“Monsieur Hercule Poirot,” he said again. “What can I do for you? I sup-pose it’s the business of this young girl, Joyce Reynolds. Nasty business,very nasty business. I can’t see actually where I can assist you. I knowvery little about it all.”

“But you are, I believe, the legal adviser to the Drake family?”

“Oh yes, yes. Hugo Drake, poor chap. Very nice fellow. I’ve known themfor years, ever since they bought Apple Trees and came here to live. Sadthing, polio—he contracted it when they were holidaying abroad one year.

Mentally, of course, his health was quite unimpaired. It’s sad when it hap-pens to a man who has been a good athlete all his life, a sportsman, goodat games and all the rest of it. Yes. Sad business to know you’re a cripplefor life.”

“You were also, I believe, in charge of the legal affairs of Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe?”

“The aunt, yes. Remarkable woman really. She came here to live afterher health broke down, so as to be near her nephew and his wife. Boughtthat white elephant of a place, Quarry House. Paid far more than it wasworth—but money was no object to her. She was very well off. She couldhave found a more attractive house, but it was the quarry itself that fas-cinated her. Got a landscape gardener on to it, fellow quite high up in hisprofession, I believe. One of those handsome, long-haired chaps, but hehad ability all right. He did well for himself in this quarry garden work.

Got himself quite a reputation over it, illustrated in Homes and Gardensand all the rest of it. Yes, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe knew how to pick people.

It wasn’t just a question of a handsome young man as a protégé. Some eld-erly women are foolish that way, but this chap had brains and was at thetop of his profession. But I’m wandering on a bit. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythedied nearly two years ago.”

“Quite suddenly.”

Fullerton looked at Poirot sharply.

“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. She had a heart condition and doctorstried to keep her from doing too much, but she was the sort of woman thatyou couldn’t dictate to. She wasn’t a hypochondriac type.” He coughed andsaid, “But I expect we are getting away from the subject about which youcame to talk to me.”

“Not really,” said Poirot, “although I would like, if I may, to ask you afew questions on a completely different matter. Some information aboutone of your employees, by name Lesley Ferrier.”

Mr. Fullerton looked somewhat surprised. “Lesley Ferrier?” he said.

“Lesley Ferrier. Let me see. Really you know, I’d nearly forgotten hisname. Yes, yes, of course. Got himself knifed, didn’t he?”

“That is the man I mean.”

“Well, I don’t really know that I can tell you much about him. It tookplace some years ago. Knifed near the Green Swan one night. No arrestwas ever made. I daresay the police had some idea who was responsible,but it was mainly, I think, a matter of getting evidence.”

“The motive was emotional?” inquired Poirot.

“Oh yes, I should think certainly so. Jealousy, you know. He’d been goingsteady with a married woman. Her husband had a pub. The Green Swanat Woodleigh Common. Unpretentious place. Then it seems young Lesleystarted playing around with another young woman—or more than one, itwas said. Quite a one for the girls, he was. There was a bit of trouble onceor twice.”

“You were satisfied with him as an employee?”

“I would rather describe it as not dissatisfied. He had his points. Hehandled clients well and was studying for his articles, and if only he’d paidmore attention to his position and keeping up a good standard of beha-viour, it would have been better instead of mixing himself up with one girlafter another, most of whom I am apt in my old-fashioned way to consideras considerably beneath him in station. There was a row one night at theGreen Swan, and Lesley Ferrier was knifed on his way home.”

“Was one of the girls responsible, or would it be Mrs. Green Swan, doyou think?”

“Really, it is not a case of knowing anything definite. I believe the policeconsidered it was a case of jealousy—but—” He shrugged his shoulders.

“But you are not sure?”

“Oh, it happens,” said Mr. Fullerton. “‘Hell hath no fury like a womanscorned.’ That is always being quoted in Court. Sometimes it’s true.”

“But I think I discern that you yourself are not at all sure that that wasthe case here.”

“Well, I should have preferred rather more evidence, shall we say. Thepolice would have preferred rather more evidence, too. Public prosecutorthrew it out, I believe.”

“It could have been something quite different?”

“Oh yes. One could propound several theories. Not a very stable charac-ter, young Ferrier. Well brought up. Nice mother—a widow. Father not sosatisfactory. Got himself out of several scrapes by the skin of his teeth.

Hard luck on his wife. Our young man in some ways resembled his father.

He was associated once or twice with rather a doubtful crowd. I gave himthe benefit of the doubt. He was still young. But I warned him that he wasgetting himself mixed up with the wrong lot. Too closely connected withfiddling transactions outside the law. Frankly, but for his mother, Iwouldn’t have kept him. He was young, and he had ability; I gave him awarning or two which I hoped might do the trick. But there’s a lot of cor-ruption about these days. It’s been on the increase for the last ten years.”

“Someone might have had it in for him, you think?”

“Quite possible. These associations — gangs is a rather melodramaticword—but you run a certain danger when you get tangled up with them.

Any idea that you may split on them, and a knife between your shoulderblades isn’t an uncommon thing to happen.”

“Nobody saw it happen?”

“No. Nobody saw it happen. They wouldn’t, of course. Whoever took thejob on would have all the arrangements nicely made. Alibi at the properplace and time, and so on and so on.”

“Yet somebody might have seen it happen. Somebody quite unlikely. Achild, for instance.”

“Late at night? In the neighbourhood of the Green Swan? Hardly a verycredible idea, Monsieur Poirot.”

“A child,” persisted Poirot, “who might remember. A child coming homefrom a friend’s house. At some short distance, perhaps, from her ownhome. She might have been coming by a footpath or seen something frombehind a hedge.”

“Really, Monsieur Poirot, what an imagination you have got. What youare saying seems to me most unlikely.”

“It does not seem so unlikely to me,” said Poirot. “Children do see things.

They are so often, you see, not expected to be where they are.”

“But surely when they go home and relate what they have seen?”

“They might not,” said Poirot. “They might not, you see, be sure of whatthey had seen. Especially if what they had seen had been faintly frighten-ing to them. Children do not always go home and report a street accidentthey have seen, or some unexpected violence. Children keep their secretsvery well. Keep them and think about them. Sometimes they like to feelthat they know a secret, a secret which they are keeping to themselves.”

“They’d tell their mothers,” said Mr. Fullerton.

“I am not so sure of that,” said Poirot. “In my experience the things thatchildren do not tell their mothers are quite numerous.”

“What interests you so much, may I know, about this case of Lesley Fer-rier? The regrettable death of a young man by a violence which is so lam-entably often amongst us nowadays?”

“I know nothing about him. But I wanted to know something about himbecause his is a violent death that occurred not many years ago. Thatmight be important to me.”

“You know, Mr. Poirot,” said Mr. Fullerton, with some slight acerbity. “Ireally cannot quite make out why you have come to me, and in what youare really interested. You cannot surely suspect any tie-up between thedeath of Joyce Reynolds and the death of a young man of promise butslightly criminal activities who has been dead for some years?”

“One can suspect anything,” said Poirot. “One has to find out more.”

“Excuse me, what one has to have in all matters dealing with crime, isevidence.”

“You have perhaps heard that the dead girl Joyce was heard by severalwitnesses to say that she had with her own eyes witnessed a murder.”

“In a place like this,” said Mr. Fullerton, “one usually hears any rumourthat may be going round. One usually hears it, too, if I may add thesewords, in a singularly exaggerated form not usually worthy of credence.”

“That also,” said Poirot, “is quite true. Joyce was, I gather, just thirteenyears of age. A child of nine could remember something she had seen—ahit-and-run accident, a fight or a struggle with knives on a dark evening,or a schoolteacher who was strangled, say—all these things might leave avery strong impression on a child’s mind about which she would notspeak, being uncertain, perhaps, of the actual facts she had seen, andmulling them over in her own mind. Forgetting about them even, possibly,until something happened to remind her. You agree that that is a possiblehappening?”

“Oh yes, yes, but I hardly—I think it is an extremely far-fetched supposi-tion.”

“You had, also, I believe, a disappearance here of a foreign girl. Hername, I believe, was Olga or Sonia—I am not sure of the surname.”

“Olga Seminoff. Yes, indeed.”

“Not, I fear, a very reliable character?”

“No.”

“She was companion or nurse attendant to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, wasshe not, whom you described to me just now? Mrs. Drake’s aunt—”

“Yes. She had had several girls in that position—two other foreign girls,I think, one of them with whom she quarrelled almost immediately, andanother one who was nice but painfully stupid. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythewas not one to suffer fools gladly. Olga, her last venture, seems to havesuited her very well. She was not, if I remember rightly, a particularly at-tractive girl,” said Mr. Fullerton. “She was short, rather stocky, had rathera dour manner, and people in the neighbourhood did not like her verymuch.”

“But Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe did like her,” suggested Poirot.

“She became very much attached to her—unwisely so, it seemed at onemoment.”

“Ah, indeed.”

“I have no doubt,” said Mr. Fullerton, “that I am not telling you anythingthat you have not heard already. These things, as I say, go round the placelike wildfire.”

“I understand that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe left a large sum of money tothe girl.”

“A most surprising thing to happen,” said Mr. Fullerton. “Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe had not changed her fundamental testamentary dispos-ition for many years, except for adding new charities or altering legaciesleft void by death. Perhaps I am telling you what you know already, if youare interested in this matter. Her money had always been left jointly toher nephew, Hugo Drake, and his wife, who was also his first cousin, andso also niece to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe. If either of them predeceased herthe money went to the survivor. A good many bequests were left to charit-ies and to old servants. But what was alleged to be her final disposal of herproperty was made about three weeks before her death, and not, as here-tofore, drawn up by our firm. It was a codicil written in her own hand-writing. It included one or two charities—not so many as before—the oldservants had no legacies at all, and the whole residue of her considerablefortune was left to Olga Seminoff in gratitude for the devoted service andaffection she had shown her. A most astonishing disposition, one thatseemed totally unlike anything Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had ever done be-fore.”

“And then?” said Poirot.

“You have presumably heard more or less the developments. From theevidence of handwriting experts, it became clear that the codicil was acomplete forgery. It bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s handwriting, no more than that. Mrs. Smythe had disliked thetypewriter and had frequently got Olga to write letters of a personalnature, as far as possible copying her employer’s handwriting — some-times, even, signing the letter with her employer’s signature. She had hadplenty of practice in doing this. It seems that when Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythedied the girl went one step further and thought that she was proficientenough to make the handwriting acceptable as that of her employer. Butthat sort of thing won’t do with experts. No, indeed it won’t.”

“Proceedings were about to be taken to contest the document?”

“Quite so. There was, of course, the usual legal delay before the proceed-ings actually came to court. During that period the young lady lost hernerve and well, as you said yourself just now, she—disappeared.”

 

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