万圣节前夜的谋杀14

Fourteen

IAdmitted to Apple Trees, Hercule Poirot was shown into the drawing roomand told that Mrs. Drake would not be long.

In passing through the hall he heard the hum of female voices behindwhat he took to be the dining room door.

Poirot crossed to the drawing room window and surveyed the neat andpleasant garden. Well laid out, kept studiously in control. Rampant au-tumn michaelmas daisies still survived, tied up severely to sticks; chrysan-themums had not yet relinquished life. There were still a persistent roseor two scorning the approach of winter.

Poirot could discern no sign as yet of the preliminary activities of a land-scape gardener. All was care and convention. He wondered if Mrs. Drakehad been one too many for Michael Garfield. He had spread his lures invain. It showed every sign of remaining a splendidly kept suburbangarden.

The door opened.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Monsieur Poirot,” said Mrs. Drake.

Outside in the hall there was a diminishing hum of voices as variouspeople took their leave and departed.

“It’s our church Christmas fête,” explained Mrs. Drake. “A CommitteeMeeting for arrangements for it and all the rest of it. These things alwaysgo on much longer than they ought to, of course. Somebody always objectsto something, or has a good idea—the good idea usually being a perfectlyimpossible one.”

There was a slight acerbity in her tone. Poirot could well imagine thatRowena Drake would put things down as quite absurd, firmly and defin-itely. He could understand well enough from remarks he had heard fromSpence’s sister, from hints of what other people had said and from variousother sources, that Rowena Drake was that dominant type of personalitywhom everyone expects to run the show, and whom nobody has much af-fection for while she is doing it. He could imagine, too, that her conscien-tiousness had not been the kind to be appreciated by an elderly relativewho was herself of the same type. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, he gathered,had come here to live so as to be near to her nephew and his wife, andthat the wife had readily undertaken the supervision and care of her hus-band’s aunt as far as she could do so without actually living in the house.

Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had probably acknowledged in her own mind thatshe owed a great deal to Rowena, and had at the same time resented whatshe had no doubt thought of as her bossy ways.

“Well, they’ve all gone now,” said Rowena Drake, hearing the final shut-ting of the hall door. “Now what can I do for you? Something more aboutthat dreadful party? I wish I’d never had it here. But no other house reallyseemed suitable. Is Mrs. Oliver still staying with Judith Butler?”

“Yes. She is, I believe, returning to London in a day or two. You had notmet her before?”

“No. I love her books.”

“She is, I believe, considered a very good writer,” said Poirot.

“Oh well, she is a good writer. No doubt of that. She’s a very amusingperson too. Has she any ideas herself—I mean about who might have donethis dreadful thing?”

“I think not. And you, Madame?”

“I’ve told you already. I’ve no idea whatever.”

“You would perhaps say so, and yet—you might, might you not, have,perhaps, what amounts to a very good idea, but only an idea. A half-formed idea. A possible idea.”

“Why should you think that?”

She looked at him curiously.

“You might have seen something—something quite small and unimport-ant but which on reflection might seem more significant to you, perhaps,than it had done at first.”

“You must have something in your mind, Monsieur Poirot, some definiteincident.”

“Well, I admit it. It is because of what someone said to me.”

“Indeed! And who was that?”

“A Miss Whittaker. A schoolteacher.”

“Oh yes, of course. Elizabeth Whittaker. She’s the mathematics mistress,isn’t she, at The Elms? She was at the party, I remember. Did she see some-thing?”

“It was not so much that she saw something as she had the idea that youmight have seen something.”

Mrs. Drake looked surprised and shook her head.

“I can’t think of anything I can possibly have seen,” said Rowena Drake,“but one never knows.”

“It had to do with a vase,” said Poirot. “A vase of flowers.”

“A vase of flowers?” Rowena Drake looked puzzled. Then her browcleared. “Oh, of course, I know. Yes, there was a big vase of autumn leavesand chrysanthemums on the table in the angle of the stairs. A very niceglass vase. One of my wedding presents. The leaves seemed to be droopingand so did one or two of the flowers. I remember noticing it as I passedthrough the hall—it was near the end of the party, I think, by then, but I’mnot sure—I wondered why it looked like that, and I went up and dippedmy fingers into it and found that some idiot must have forgotten to putany water into it after arranging it. It made me very angry. So I took it intothe bathroom and filled it up. But what could I have seen in that bath-room? There was nobody in it. I am quite sure of that. I think one or twoof the older girls and boys had done a little harmless, what the Americanscall ‘necking,’ there during the course of the party, but there was certainlynobody when I went into it with the vase.”

“No, no, I do not mean that,” said Poirot. “But I understood that therewas an accident. That the vase slipped out of your hand and it fell to thehall below and was shattered to pieces.”

“Oh yes,” said Rowena. “Broken to smithereens. I was rather upset aboutit because as I’ve said, it had been one of our wedding presents, and it wasreally a perfect flower vase, heavy enough to hold big autumn bouquetsand things like that. It was very stupid of me. My fingers just slipped. Itwent out of my hand and crashed on the hall floor below. Elizabeth Whit-taker was standing there. She helped me to pick up the pieces and sweepsome of the broken glass out of the way in case someone stepped on it. Wejust swept it into a corner by the Grandfather clock to be cleared up later.”

She looked inquiringly at Poirot.

“Is that the incident you mean?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Poirot. “Miss Whittaker wondered, I think, how you hadcome to drop the vase. She thought that something perhaps had startledyou.”

“Startled me?” Rowena Drake looked at him, then frowned as she triedto think again. “No, I don’t think I was startled, anyway. It was just one ofthose ways things do slip out of your hands. Sometimes when you’rewashing up. I think, really, it’s a result of being tired. I was pretty tired bythat time, what with the preparations for the party and running the partyand all the rest of it. It went very well, I must say. I think it was—oh, justone of those clumsy actions that you can’t help when you’re tired.”

“There was nothing—you are sure—that startled you? Something unex-pected that you saw?”

“Saw? Where? In the hall below? I didn’t see anything in the hall below.

It was empty at the moment because everyone was in at the Snapdragonexcepting, of course, for Miss Whittaker. And I don’t think I even noticedher until she came forward to help when I ran down.”

“Did you see someone, perhaps, leaving the library door?”

“The library door…I see what you mean. Yes, I could have seen that.”

She paused for quite a long time, then she looked at Poirot with a verystraight, firm glance. “I didn’t see anyone leave the library,” she said.

“Nobody at all….”

He wondered. The way in which she said it was what aroused the beliefin his mind that she was not speaking the truth, that instead she had seensomeone or something, perhaps the door just opening a little, a mereglance perhaps of a figure inside. But she was quite firm in her denial.

Why, he wondered, had she been so firm? Because the person she hadseen was a person she did not want to believe for one moment had hadanything to do with the crime committed on the other side of the door?

Someone she cared about, or someone—which seemed more likely, hethought—someone whom she wished to protect. Someone, perhaps, whohad not long passed beyond childhood, someone whom she might feel wasnot truly conscious of the awful thing they had just done.

He thought her a hard creature but a person of integrity. He thoughtthat she was, like many women of the same type, women who were oftenmagistrates, or who ran councils or charities, or interested themselves inwhat used to be called “good works.” Women who had an inordinate be-lief in extenuating circumstances, who were ready, strangely enough, tomake excuses for the young criminal. An adolescent boy, a mentally re-tarded girl. Someone perhaps who had already been—what is the phrase—“in care.” If that had been the type of person she had seen coming out ofthe library, then he thought it possible that Rowena Drake’s protective in-stinct might have come into play. It was not unknown in the present agefor children to commit crimes, quite young children. Children of seven, ofnine and so on, and it was often difficult to know how to dispose of thesenatural, it seemed, young criminals who came before the juvenile courts.

Excuses had to be brought for them. Broken homes. Negligent and unsuit-able parents. But the people who spoke the most vehemently for them, thepeople who sought to bring forth every excuse for them, were usually thetype of Rowena Drake. A stern and censorious woman, except in suchcases.

For himself, Poirot did not agree. He was a man who thought first al-ways of justice. He was suspicious, had always been suspicious, of mercy— too much mercy, that is to say. Too much mercy, as he knew fromformer experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted in fur-ther crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have beenvictims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

“I see,” said Poirot. “I see.”

“You don’t think it’s possible that Miss Whittaker might have seensomeone go into the library?” suggested Mrs. Drake.

Poirot was interested.

“Ah, you think that that might have been so?”

“It seemed to me merely a possibility. She might have caught sight ofsomeone going in through the library, say, perhaps five minutes or soearlier, and then, when I dropped the vase it might have suggested to herthat I could have caught a glimpse of the same person. That I might haveseen who it was. Perhaps she doesn’t like to say anything that might sug-gest, unfairly perhaps, some person whom she had perhaps only halfglimpsed—not enough to be sure of. Some back view perhaps of a child, ora young boy.”

“You think, do you not, Madame, that it was—shall we say, a child—aboy or girl, a mere child, or a young adolescent? You think it was not anydefinite one of these but, shall we say, you think that that is the most likelytype to have committed the crime we are discussing?”

She considered the point thoughtfully, turning it over in her mind.

“Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose I do. I haven’t thought it out. It seemsto me that crimes are so often associated nowadays with the young.

People who don’t really know quite what they are doing, who want sillyrevenges, who have an instinct for destruction. Even the people whowreck telephone boxes, or who slash the tyres of cars, do all sorts of thingsjust to hurt people, just because they hate—not anyone in particular, butthe whole world. It’s a sort of symptom of this age. So I suppose when onecomes across something like a child drowned at a party for no reasonreally, one does assume that it’s someone who is not yet fully responsiblefor their actions. Don’t you agree with me that—that—well, that that iscertainly the most likely possibility here?”

“The police, I think, share your point of view—or did share it.”

“Well, they should know. We have a very good class of policeman in thisdistrict. They’ve done well in several crimes. They are painstaking andthey never give up. I think probably they will solve this murder, though Idon’t think it will happen very quickly. These things seem to take a longtime. A long time of patient gathering of evidence.”

“The evidence in this case will not be very easy to gather, Madame.”

“No, I suppose it won’t. When my husband was killed—He was a cripple,you know. He was crossing the road and a car ran over him and knockedhim down. They never found the person who was responsible. As youknow, my husband—or perhaps you don’t know—my husband was a poliovictim. He was partially paralyzed as a result of polio, six years ago. Hiscondition had improved, but he was still crippled, and it would be difficultfor him to get out of the way if a car bore down upon him quickly. I almostfelt that I had been to blame, though he always insisted on going outwithout me or without anyone with him, because he would have resentedvery much being in the care of a nurse, or a wife who took the part of anurse, and he was always careful before crossing a road. Still, one doesblame oneself when accidents happen.”

“That came on top of the death of your aunt?”

“No. She died not long afterwards. Everything seems to come at once,doesn’t it?”

“That is very true,” said Hercule Poirot. He went on: “The police werenot able to trace the car that ran down your husband?”

“It was a Grasshopper Mark 7, I believe. Every third car you notice onthe road is a Grasshopper Mark 7—or was then. It’s the most popular caron the market, they tell me. They believe it was pinched from the MarketPlace in Medchester. A car park there. It belonged to a Mr. Waterhouse, anelderly seed merchant in Medchester. Mr. Waterhouse was a slow andcareful driver. It was certainly not he who caused the accident. It wasclearly one of those cases where irresponsible young men help themselvesto cars. Such careless, or should I say such callous young men, should betreated, one sometimes feels, more severely than they are now.”

“A long gaol sentence, perhaps. Merely to be fined, and the fine paid byindulgent relatives, makes little impression.”

“One has to remember,” said Rowena Drake, “that there are youngpeople at an age when it is vital that they should continue with their stud-ies if they are to have the chance of doing well in life.”

“The sacred cow of education,” said Hercule Poirot. “That is a phrase Ihave heard uttered,” he added quickly, “by people — well, should I saypeople who ought to know. People who themselves hold academic posts ofsome seniority.”

“They do not perhaps make enough allowances for youth, for a badbringing up. Broken homes.”

“So you think they need something other than gaol sentences?”

“Proper remedial treatment,” said Rowena Drake firmly.

“And that will make—(another old-fashioned proverb)—a silk purse outof a sow’s ear? You do not believe in the maxim ‘the fate of every manhave we bound about his neck?’”

Mrs. Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased.

“An Islamic saying, I believe,” said Poirot. Mrs. Drake looked unim-pressed.

“I hope,” she said, “we do not take our ideas—or perhaps I should sayour ideals—from the Middle East.”

“One must accept facts,” said Poirot, “and a fact that is expressed bymodern biologists—Western biologists—” he hastened to add, “—seems tosuggest very strongly that the root of a person’s actions lies in his geneticmakeup. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer in potential attwo or three or four years old. Or of course a mathematician or a musicalgenius.”

“We are not discussing murderers,” said Mrs. Drake. “My husband diedas a result of an accident. An accident caused by a careless and badly ad-justed personality. Whoever the boy or young man was, there is alwaysthe hope of eventual adjustment to a belief and acceptance that it is a dutyto consider others, to be taught to feel an abhorrence if you have taken lifeunawares, simply out of what may be described as criminal carelessnessthat was not really criminal in intent?”

“You are quite sure, therefore, that it was not criminal in intent?”

“I should doubt it very much.” Mrs. Drake looked slightly surprised. “Ido not think that the police ever seriously considered that possibility. Icertainly did not. It was an accident. A very tragic accident which alteredthe pattern of many lives, including my own.”

“You say we are not discussing murderers,” said Poirot. “But in the caseof Joyce that is just what we are discussing. There was no accident aboutthat. Deliberate hands pushed that child’s head down into water, holdingher there till death occurred. Deliberate intent.”

“I know. I know. It’s terrible. I don’t like to think of it, to be reminded ofit.”

She got up, moving about restlessly. Poirot pushed on relentlessly.

“We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find themotive involved.”

“It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless.”

“You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent ofenjoying killing someone? Presumably killing someone young and imma-ture.”

“One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is diffi-cult to find out. Even psychiatrists do not agree.”

“You refuse to accept a simpler explanation?”

She looked puzzled. “Simpler?”

“Someone not mentally disturbed, not a possible case for psychiatrists todisagree over. Somebody perhaps who just wanted to be safe.”

“Safe? Oh, you mean—”

“The girl had boasted that same day, some hours previously, that shehad seen someone commit a murder.”

“Joyce,” said Mrs. Drake, with calm certainty, “was really a very sillylittle girl. Not, I am afraid, always very truthful.”

“So everyone has told me,” said Hercule Poirot. “I am beginning to be-lieve, you know, that what everybody has told me must be right,” he ad-ded with a sigh. “It usually is.”

He rose to his feet, adopting a different manner.

“I must apologize, Madame. I have talked of painful things to you, thingsthat do not truly concern me here. But it seemed from what Miss Whit-taker told me—”

“Why don’t you find out more from her?”

“You mean—?”

“She is a teacher. She knows, much better than I can, what potentialities(as you have called them) exist amongst the children she teaches.”

She paused and then said:

“Miss Emlyn, too.”

“The headmistress?” Poirot looked surprised.

“Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is a natural psychologist. You said Imight have ideas—half-formed ones—as to who killed Joyce. I haven’t—but I think Miss Emlyn might.”

“This is interesting….”

“I don’t mean has evidence. I mean she just knows. She could tell you—but I don’t think she will.”

“I begin to see,” said Poirot, “that I have still a long way to go. Peopleknow things—but they will not tell them to me.” He looked thoughtfully atRowena Drake.

“Your aunt, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, had an au pair girl who looked afterher, a foreign girl.”

“You seem to have got hold of all the local gossip.” Rowena spoke dryly.

“Yes, that is so. She left here rather suddenly soon after my aunt’s death.”

“For good reasons, it would seem.”

“I don’t know whether it’s libel or slander to say so—but there seems nodoubt that she forged a codicil to my aunt’s Will—or that someone helpedher to do so.”

“Someone?”

“She was friendly with a young man who worked in a solicitor’s office inMedchester. He had been mixed up in a forgery case before. The casenever came to court because the girl disappeared. She realized the Willwould not be admitted to probate, and that there was going to be a courtcase. She left the neighbourhood and has never been heard of since.”

“She too came, I have heard, from a broken home,” said Poirot.

Rowena Drake looked at him sharply but he was smiling amiably.

“Thank you for all you have told me, Madame,” he said.

 

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