万圣节前夜的谋杀16

Fifteen

Two pairs of eyes looked at Poirot uneasily.

“I don’t see what else we can tell you. We’ve both been interviewed bythe police, M. Poirot.”

Poirot looked from one boy to the other. They would not have describedthemselves as boys; their manner was carefully adult. So much so that ifone shut one’s eyes, their conversation could have passed as that of eld-erly clubmen. Nicholas was eighteen. Desmond was sixteen.

“To oblige a friend, I make my inquiries of those present on a certain oc-casion. Not the Hallowe’en party itself—the preparations for that party.

You were both active in these.”

“Yes, we were.”

“So far,” Poirot said, “I have interviewed cleaning women, I have hadthe benefit of police views, of talks to a doctor—the doctor who examinedthe body first—have talked to a schoolteacher who was present, to theheadmistress of the school, to distraught relatives, have heard much of thevillage gossip—By the way, I understand you have a local witch here?”

The two young men confronting him both laughed.

“You mean Mother Goodbody. Yes, she came to the party and played thepart of the witch.”

“I have come now,” said Poirot, “to the younger generation, to those ofacute eyesight and acute hearing and who have up-to-date scientific know-ledge and shrewd philosophy. I am eager—very eager—to hear your viewson this matter.”

Eighteen and sixteen, he thought to himself, looking at the two boys con-fronting him. Youths to the police, boys to him, adolescents to newspaperreporters. Call them what you will. Products of today. Neither of them, hejudged, at all stupid, even if they were not quite of the high mentality thathe had just suggested to them by way of a flattering sop to start the con-versation. They had been at the party. They had also been there earlier inthe day to do helpful offices for Mrs. Drake.

They had climbed up stepladders, they had placed yellow pumpkins instrategic positions, they had done a little electrical work on fairy lights,one or other of them had produced some clever effects in a nice batch ofphoney photographs of possible husbands as imagined hopefully by teen-age girls. They were also, incidentally, of the right age to be in the fore-front of suspects in the mind of Inspector Raglan and, it seemed, in theview of an elderly gardener. The percentage of murders committed by thisgroup had been increasing in the last few years. Not that Poirot inclined tothat particular suspicion himself, but anything was possible. It was evenpossible that the killing which had occurred two or three years ago mighthave been committed by a boy, youth, or adolescent of fourteen or twelveyears of age. Such cases had occurred in recent newspaper reports.

Keeping all these possibilities in mind he pushed them, as it were, be-hind a curtain for the moment, and concentrated instead on his own ap-praisement of these two, their looks, their clothes, their manner, theirvoices and so on and so forth, in the Hercule Poirot manner, masked be-hind a foreign shield of flattering words and much increased foreign man-nerisms, so that they themselves should feel agreeably contemptuous ofhim, though hiding that under politeness and good manners. For both ofthem had excellent manners. Nicholas, the eighteen-year-old, was good-looking, wearing sideburns, hair that grew fairly far down his neck, and arather funereal outfit of black. Not as a mourning for the recent tragedy,but what was obviously his personal taste in modern clothes. The youngerone was wearing a rose-coloured velvet coat, mauve trousers and a kindof frilled shirting. They both obviously spent a good deal of money ontheir clothes which were certainly not purchased locally and were prob-ably paid for by themselves and not by their parents or guardians.

Desmond’s hair was ginger-coloured and there was a good deal of fluffyprofusion about it.

“You were there in the morning or afternoon of the party, I understand,helping with the preparations for it?”

“Early afternoon,” corrected Nicholas.

“What sort of preparations were you helping with? I have heard of pre-paration from several people, but I am not quite clear. They don’t allagree.”

“A good deal of the lighting, for one thing.”

“Getting up on steps for things that had to be put high up.”

“I understand there were some very good photographic results too.”

Desmond immediately dipped into his pocket and took out a folder fromwhich he proudly brought certain cards.

“We faked up these beforehand,” he said. “Husbands for the girls,” heexplained. “They’re all alike, birds are. They all want something up-to-date. Not a bad assortment, are they?”

He handed a few specimens to Poirot who looked with interest at arather fuzzy reproduction of a ginger-bearded young man and anotheryoung man with an aureole of hair, a third one whose hair came to hisknees almost, and there were a few assorted whiskers, and other facial ad-ornments.

“Made ’em pretty well all different. It wasn’t bad, was it?”

“You had models, I suppose?”

“Oh, they’re all ourselves. Just makeup, you know. Nick and I got ’emdone. Some Nick took of me and some I took of him. Just varied what youmight call the hair motif.”

“Very clever,” said Poirot.

“We kept ’em a bit out of focus, you know, so that they’d look more likespirit pictures, as you might say.”

The other boy said,

“Mrs. Drake was very pleased with them. She congratulated us. Theymade her laugh too. It was mostly electrical work we did at the house. Youknow, fitting up a light or two so that when the girls sat with the mirrorone or other of us could take up a position, you’d only to bob up over ascreen and the girl would see a face in the mirror with, mind you, theright kind of hair. Beard or whiskers or something or other.”

“Did they know it was you and your friend?”

“Oh, I don’t think so for a moment. Not at the party, they didn’t. Theyknew we had been helping at the house with some things, but I don’t thinkthey recognized us in the mirrors. Weren’t smart enough, I should say. Be-sides, we’d got sort of an instant makeup to change the image. First me,then Nicholas. The girls squeaked and shrieked. Damned funny.”

“And the people who were there in the afternoon? I do not ask you to re-member who was at the party.”

“At the party, there must have been about thirty, I suppose, knockingabout. In the afternoon there was Mrs. Drake, of course, and Mrs. Butler.

One of the schoolteachers, Whittaker I think her name is. Mrs. Flatterbutor some name like that. She’s the organist’s sister or wife. Dr. Ferguson’sdispenser, Miss Lee; it’s her afternoon off and she came along and helpedtoo and some of the kids came to make themselves useful if they could.

Not that I think they were very useful. The girls just hung about andgiggled.”

“Ah yes. Do you remember what girls there were there?”

“Well, the Reynolds were there. Poor old Joyce, of course. The one whogot done in and her elder sister Ann. Frightful girl. Puts no end of side on.

Thinks she’s terribly clever. Quite sure she’s going to pass all her ‘A’ levels.

And the small kid, Leopold, he’s awful,” said Desmond. “He’s a sneak. Heeavesdrops. Tells tales. Real nasty bit of goods. And there was Beatrice Ar-dley and Cathie Grant, who is dim as they make and a couple of useful wo-men, of course. Cleaning women, I mean. And the authoress woman—theone who brought you down here.”

“Any men?”

“Oh, the vicar looked in if you count him. Nice old boy, rather dim. Andthe new curate. He stammers when he’s nervous. Hasn’t been here long.

That’s all I can think of now.”

“And then I understand you heard this girl—Joyce Reynolds—sayingsomething about having seen a murder committed.”

“I never heard that,” said Desmond. “Did she?”

“Oh, they’re saying so,” said Nicholas. “I didn’t hear her, I suppose Iwasn’t in the room when she said it. Where was she—when she said that, Imean?”

“In the drawing room.”

“Yes, well, most of the people were in there unless they were doingsomething special. Of course Nick and I,” said Desmond, “were mostly inthe room where the girls were going to look for their true loves in mirrors.

Fixing up wires and various things like that. Or else we were out on thestairs fixing fairy lights. We were in the drawing room once or twice put-ting the pumpkins up and hanging up one or two that had been hollowedout to hold lights in them. But I didn’t hear anything of that kind when wewere there. What about you, Nick?”

“I didn’t,” said Nick. He added with some interest, “Did Joyce really saythat she’d seen a murder committed? Jolly interesting, you know, if shedid, isn’t it?”

“Why is it so interesting?” asked Desmond.

“Well, it’s E.S.P., isn’t it? I mean there you are. She saw a murder com-mitted and within an hour or two she herself was murdered. I supposeshe had a sort of vision of it. Makes you think a bit. You know these lastexperiments they’ve been having seems as though there is something youcan do to help it by getting an electrode, or something of that kind, fixedup to your jugular vein. I’ve read about it somewhere.”

“They’ve never got very far with this E.S.P. stuff,” said Desmond, scorn-fully. “People sit in different rooms looking at cards in a pack or wordswith squares and geometrical figures on them. But they never see theright things, or hardly ever.”

“Well, you’ve got to be pretty young to do it. Adolescents are much bet-ter than older people.”

Hercule Poirot, who had no wish to listen to this high-level scientific dis-cussion, broke in.

“As far as you can remember, nothing occurred during your presence inthe house which seemed to you sinister or significant in any way. Some-thing which probably nobody else would have noticed, but which mighthave come to your attention.”

Nicholas and Desmond frowned hard, obviously racking their brains toproduce some incident of importance.

“No, it was just a lot of clacking and arranging and doing things.”

“Have you any theories yourself?”

Poirot addressed himself to Nicholas.

“What, theories as to who did Joyce in?”

“Yes. I mean something that you might have noticed that could lead youto a suspicion on perhaps purely psychological grounds.”

“Yes, I can see what you mean. There might be something in that.”

“Whittaker for my money,” said Desmond, breaking into Nicholas’s ab-sorption in thought.

“The schoolmistress?” asked Poirot.

“Yes. Real old spinster, you know. Sex-starved. And all that teaching,bottled up among a lot of women. You remember, one of the teachers gotstrangled a year or two ago. She was a bit queer, they say.”

“Lesbian?” asked Nicholas, in a man of the world voice.

“I shouldn’t wonder. D’you remember Nora Ambrose, the girl she livedwith? She wasn’t a bad looker. She had a boy friend or two, so they said,and the girl she lived with got mad with her about it. Someone said shewas an unmarried mother. She was away for two terms with some illnessand then came back. They’d say anything in this nest of gossip.”

“Well, anyway, Whittaker was in the drawing room most of the morn-ing. She probably heard what Joyce said. Might have put it into her head,mightn’t it?”

“Look here,” said Nicholas, “supposing Whittaker—what age is she, doyou think? Forty odd? Getting on for fifty—Women do go a bit queer atthat age.”

They both looked at Poirot with the air of contented dogs who have re-trieved something useful which master has asked for.

“I bet Miss Emlyn knows if it is so. There’s not much she doesn’t know,about what goes on in her school.”

“Wouldn’t she say?”

“Perhaps she feels she has to be loyal and shield her.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’d do that. If she thought Elizabeth Whittaker wasgoing off her head, well then, I mean, a lot of the pupils at the school mightget done in.”

“What about the curate?” said Desmond hopefully. “He might be a bit offhis nut. You know, original sin perhaps, and all that, and the water andthe apples and the things and then—look here, I’ve got a good idea now.

Suppose he is a bit barmy. Not been here very long. Nobody knows muchabout him. Supposing it’s the Snapdragon put it into his head. Hell fire! Allthose flames going up! Then, you see, he took hold of Joyce and he said‘come along with me and I’ll show you something,’ and he took her to theapple room and he said ‘kneel down.’ He said ‘This is baptism,’ andpushed her head in. See? It would all fit. Adam and Eve and the apple andhell fire and the Snapdragon and being baptised again to cure you of sin.”

“Perhaps he exposed himself to her first,” said Nicholas hopefully. “Imean, there’s always got to be a sex background to all these things.”

They both looked with satisfied faces to Poirot.

“Well,” said Poirot, “you’ve certainly given me something to thinkabout.”

 

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