万圣节前夜的谋杀13

Thirteen

When Hercule Poirot had taken his leave and departed, Jeremy Fullertonsat before his desk drumming gently with his fingertips. His eyes, how-ever, were far away—lost in thought.

He picked up a document in front of him and dropped his eyes down toit, but without focusing his glance. The discreet buzz of the house tele-phone caused him to pick up the receiver on his desk.

“Yes, Miss Miles?”

“Mr. Holden is here, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, his appointment, I believe was for nearly three quarters of anhour ago. Did he give any reason for having been so late?…Yes, yes. I quitesee. Rather the same excuse he gave last time. Will you tell him I’ve seenanother client, and I am now too short of time. Make an appointment withhim for next week, will you? We can’t have this sort of thing going on.”

“Yes, Mr. Fullerton.”

He replaced the receiver and sat looking thoughtfully down at the docu-ment in front of him. He was still not reading it. His mind was going overevents of the past. Two years—close on two years ago—and that strangelittle man this morning with his patent leather shoes and his big mous-taches, had brought it back to him, asking all those questions.

Now he was going over in his own mind a conversation of nearly twoyears ago.

He saw again, sitting in the chair opposite him, a girl, a short, stocky fig-ure — the olive brown skin, the dark red generous mouth, the heavycheekbones and the fierceness of the blue eyes that looked into his be-neath the heavy, beetling brows. A passionate face, a face full of vitality, aface that had known suffering—would probably always know suffering—but would never learn to accept suffering. The kind of woman who wouldfight and protest until the end. Where was she now, he wondered? Some-how or other she had managed—what had she managed exactly? Whohad helped her? Had anyone helped her? Somebody must have done so.

She was back again, he supposed, in some trouble-stricken spot in Cent-ral Europe where she had come from, where she belonged, where she hadhad to go back to because there was no other course for her to take unlessshe was content to lose her liberty.

Jeremy Fullerton was an upholder of the law. He believed in the law, hewas contemptuous of many of the magistrates of today with their weaksentences, their acceptance of scholastic needs. The students who stolebooks, the young married women who denuded the supermarkets, thegirls who filched money from their employers, the boys who wrecked tele-phone boxes, none of them in real need, none of them desperate, most ofthem had known nothing but overindulgence in bringing up and a ferventbelief that anything they could not afford to buy was theirs to take. Yetalong with his intrinsic belief in the administration of the law justly, Mr.

Fullerton was a man who had compassion. He could be sorry for people.

He could be sorry, and was sorry, for Olga Seminoff though he was quiteunaffected by the passionate arguments she advanced for herself.

“I came to you for help. I thought you would help me. You were kind lastyear. You helped me with forms so that I could remain another year inEngland. So they say to me: ‘You need not answer any questions you donot wish to. You can be represented by a lawyer.’ So I come to you.”

“The circumstances you have instanced —” and Mr. Fullerton re-membered how drily and coldly he had said that, all the more drily andcoldly because of the pity that lay behind the dryness of the statement “—do not apply. In this case I am not at liberty to act for you legally. I am rep-resenting already the Drake family. As you know, I was Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s solicitor.”

“But she is dead. She does not want a solicitor when she is dead.”

“She was fond of you,” said Mr. Fullerton.

“Yes, she was fond of me. That is what I am telling you. That is why shewanted to give me the money.”

“All her money?”

“Why not? Why not? She did not like her relations.”

“You are wrong. She was very fond of her niece and nephew.”

“Well, then, she may have liked Mr. Drake but she did not like Mrs.

Drake. She found her very tiresome. Mrs. Drake interfered. She would notlet Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe do always what she liked. She would not let hereat the food she liked.”

“She is a very conscientious woman, and she tried to get her aunt toobey the doctor’s orders as to diet and not too much exercise and manyother things.”

“People do not always want to obey a doctor’s orders. They do not wantto be interfered with by relations. They like living their own lives and do-ing what they want and having what they want. She had plenty of money.

She could have what she wanted! She could have as much as she liked ofeverything. She was rich—rich—rich, and she could do what she likedwith her money. They have already quite enough money, Mr. and Mrs.

Drake. They have a fine house and clothes and two cars. They are verywell-to-do. Why should they have any more?”

“They were her only living relations.”

“She wanted me to have the money. She was sorry for me. She knewwhat I had been through. She knew about my father, arrested by the po-lice and taken away. We never saw him again, my mother and I. And thenmy mother and how she died. All my family died. It is terrible, what I haveendured. You do not know what it is like to live in a police state, as I havelived in it. No, no. You are on the side of the police. You are not on myside.”

“No,” Mr. Fullerton said, “I am not on your side. I am very sorry forwhat has happened to you, but you’ve brought this trouble about your-self.”

“That is not true! It is not true that I have done anything I should not do.

What have I done? I was kind to her, I was nice to her. I brought her inlots of things that she was not supposed to eat. Chocolates and butter. Allthe time nothing but vegetable fats. She did not like vegetable fats. Shewanted butter. She wanted lots of butter.”

“It’s not just a question of butter,” said Mr. Fullerton.

“I looked after her, I was nice to her! And so she was grateful. And thenwhen she died and I find that in her kindness and her affection she hasleft a signed paper leaving all her money to me, then those Drakes comealong and say I shall not have it. They say all sorts of things. They say Ihad a bad influence. And then they say worse things than that. Muchworse. They say I wrote the Will myself. That is nonsense. She wrote it. Shewrote it. And then she sent me out of the room. She got the cleaning wo-man and Jim the gardener. She said they had to sign the paper, not me. Be-cause I was going to get the money. Why should not I have the money?

Why should I not have some good luck in my life, some happiness? Itseemed so wonderful. All the things I planned to do when I knew aboutit.”

“I have no doubt, yes, I have no doubt.”

“Why shouldn’t I have plans? Why should not I rejoice? I am going to behappy and rich and have all the things I want. What did I do wrong? Noth-ing. Nothing, I tell you. Nothing.”

“I have tried to explain to you,” said Mr. Fullerton.

“That is all lies. You say I tell lies. You say I wrote the paper myself. I didnot write it myself. She wrote it. Nobody can say anything different.”

“Certain people say a good many things,” said Mr. Fullerton. “Nowlisten. Stop protesting and listen to me. It is true, is it not, that Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe in the letters you wrote for her, often asked you to copyher handwriting as nearly as you could? That was because she had an old-fashioned idea that to write typewritten letters to people who are friendsor with whom you have a personal acquaintance, is an act of rudeness.

That is a survival from Victorian days. Nowadays nobody cares whetherthey receive handwritten letters or typewritten ones. But to Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe that was discourtesy. You understand what I am say-ing?”

“Yes, I understand. And so she asks me. She says, ‘Now, Olga,’ she says.

‘These four letters you will answer as I have told you and that you havetaken down in shorthand. But you will write them in handwriting and youwill make the handwriting as close to mine as possible.’ And she told me topractise writing her handwriting, to notice how she made her a’s, and herb’s and her l’s and all the different letters. ‘So long as it is reasonably likemy handwriting,’ she said, ‘that will do, and then you can sign my name.

But I do not want people to think that I am no longer able to write my ownletters. Although, as you know, the rheumatism in my wrist is gettingworse and I find it more difficult, but I don’t want my personal letterstypewritten.’”

“You could have written them in your ordinary handwriting,” said Mr.

Fullerton, “and put a note at the end saying ‘per secretary’ or per initials ifyou liked.”

“She did not want me to do that. She wanted it to be thought that shewrote the letters herself.”

And that, Mr. Fullerton thought, could be true enough. It was very likeLouise Llewellyn- Smythe. She was always passionately resentful of thefact that she could no longer do the things she used to do, that she couldno longer walk far or go up hills quickly or perform certain actions withher hands, her right hand especially. She wanted to be able to say “I’mperfectly well, perfectly all right and there’s nothing I can’t do if I set mymind to it.” Yes, what Olga was telling him now was perfectly true, and be-cause it was true it was one of the reasons why the codicil appended to thelast Will properly drawn out and signed by Louise Llewellyn-Smythe hadbeen accepted at first without suspicion. It was in his own office, Mr.

Fullerton reflected, that suspicions had arisen because both he and hisyounger partner knew Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s handwriting very well. Itwas young Cole who had first said,

“You know, I really can’t believe that Louise Llewellyn-Smythe wrotethat codicil. I know she had arthritis lately but look at these specimens ofher own writing that I’ve brought along from amongst her papers to showyou. There’s something wrong about that codicil.”

Mr. Fullerton had agreed that there was something wrong about it. Hehad said they would take expert opinion on this handwriting question.

The answer had been quite definite. Separate opinions had not varied.

The handwriting of the codicil was definitely not that of Louise Llewellyn-Smythe. If Olga had been less greedy, Mr. Fullerton thought, if she hadbeen content to write a codicil beginning as this one had done—“Becauseof her great care and attention to me and the affection and kindness shehas shown me, I leave—” That was how it had begun, that was how itcould have begun, and if it had gone on to specify a good round sum ofmoney left to the devoted au pair girl, the relations might have consideredit overdone, but they would have accepted it without questioning. But tocut out the relations altogether, the nephew who had been his aunt’s re-siduary legatee in the last four wills she had made during a period ofnearly twenty years, to leave everything to the stranger Olga Seminoff—that was not in Louise Llewellyn-Smythe’s character. In fact, a plea of un-due influence could upset such a document anyway. No. She had beengreedy, this hot, passionate child. Possibly Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had toldher that some money would be left to her because of her kindness, be-cause of her attention, because of a fondness the old lady was beginning tofeel for this girl who fulfilled all her whims, who did whatever she askedher. And that had opened up a vista for Olga. She would have everything.

The old lady should leave everything to her, and she would have all themoney. All the money and the house and the clothes and the jewels.

Everything. A greedy girl. And now retribution had caught up with her.

And Mr. Fullerton, against his will, against his legal instincts and againsta good deal more, felt sorry for her. Very sorry for her. She had knownsuffering since she was a child, had known the rigours of a police state,had lost her parents, lost a brother and a sister and known injustice andfear, and it had developed in her a trait that she had no doubt been bornwith but which she had never been able so far to indulge. It had deve-loped a childish passionate greed.

“Everyone is against me,” said Olga. “Everyone. You are all against me.

You are not fair because I am a foreigner, because I do not belong to thiscountry, because I do not know what to say, what to do. What can I do?

Why do you not tell me what I can do?”

“Because I do not really think there is anything much you can do,” saidMr. Fullerton. “Your best chance is to make a clean breast of things.”

“If I say what you want me to say, it will be all lies and not true. Shemade that Will. She wrote it down there. She told me to go out of the roomwhile the others signed it.”

“There is evidence against you, you know. There are people who will saythat Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe often did not know what she was signing. Shehad several documents of different kinds, and she did not always rereadwhat was put before her.”

“Well, then she did not know what she was saying.”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Fullerton, “your best hope is the fact that youare a first offender, that you are a foreigner, that you understand the Eng-lish language only in a rather rudimentary form. In that case you may getoff with a minor sentence—or you may, indeed, get put on probation.”

“Oh, words. Nothing but words. I shall be put in prison and never let outagain.”

“Now you are talking nonsense,” Mr. Fullerton said.

“It would be better if I ran away, if I ran away and hid myself so thatnobody could find me.”

“Once there is a warrant out for your arrest, you would be found.”

“Not if I did it quickly. Not if I went at once. Not if someone helped me. Icould get away. Get away from England. In a boat or a plane. I could findsomeone who forges passports or visas, or whatever you have to have.

Someone who will do something for me. I have friends. I have people whoare fond of me. Somebody could help me to disappear. That is what Ineeded. I could put on a wig. I could walk about on crutches.”

“Listen,” Mr. Fullerton had said, and he had spoken then with authority,“I am sorry for you. I will recommend you to a lawyer who will do his bestfor you. You can’t hope to disappear. You are talking like a child.”

“I have got enough money. I have saved money.” And then she had said,“You have tried to be kind. Yes, I believe that. But you will not do anythingbecause it is all the law—the law. But someone will help me. Someonewill. And I shall get away where nobody will ever find me.”

Nobody, Mr. Fullerton thought, had found her. He wondered—yes; hewondered very much—where she was or could be now.

 

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