万圣节前夜的谋杀19

Eighteen

Poirot sat down, stretched out his legs and said: “Ah! that is better.”

“Take your shoes off,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and rest your feet.”

“No, no, I could not do that.” Poirot sounded shocked at the possibility.

“Well, we’re old friends together,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and Judith wouldn’tmind if she came out of the house. You know, if you’ll excuse me saying so,you oughtn’t to wear patent leather shoes in the country. Why don’t youget yourself a nice pair of suède shoes? Or the things all the hippy-lookingboys wear nowadays? You know, the sort of shoes that slip on, and younever have to clean them—apparently they clean themselves by some ex-traordinary process or other. One of these laboursaving gimmicks.”

“I would not care for that at all,” said Poirot severely. “No, indeed!”

“The trouble with you is,” said Mrs. Oliver, beginning to unwrap a pack-age on the table which she had obviously recently purchased, “the troublewith you is that you insist on being smart. You mind more about yourclothes and your moustaches and how you look and what you wear thancomfort. Now comfort is really the great thing. Once you’ve passed, say,fifty, comfort is the only thing that matters.”

“Madame, chère Madame, I do not know that I agree with you.”

“Well, you’d better,” said Mrs. Oliver. “If not, you will suffer a great deal,and it will be worse year after year.”

Mrs. Oliver fished a gaily covered box from its paper bag. Removing thelid of this, she picked up a small portion of its contents and transferred itto her mouth. She then licked her fingers, wiped them on a handkerchief,and murmured, rather indistinctly:

“Sticky.”

“Do you no longer eat apples? I have always seen you with a bag ofapples in your hand, or eating them, or on occasions the bag breaks andthey tumble out on the road.”

“I told you,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I told you that I never want to see anapple again. No. I hate apples. I suppose I shall get over it some day andeat them again, but—well, I don’t like the associations of apples.”

“And what is it that you eat now?” Poirot picked up the gaily colouredlid decorated with a picture of a palm tree. “Tunis dates,” he read. “Ah,dates now.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Dates.”

She took another date and put it in her mouth, removed a stone whichshe threw into a bush and continued to munch.

“Dates,” said Poirot. “It is extraordinary.”

“What is extraordinary about eating dates? People do.”

“No, no, I did not mean that. Not eating them. It is extraordinary thatyou should say to me like that—dates.”

“Why?” asked Mrs. Oliver.

“Because,” said Poirot, “again and again you indicate to me the path, thehow do you say, the chemin that I should take or that I should havealready taken. You show me the way that I should go. Dates. Till this mo-ment I did not realize how important dates were.”

“I can’t see that dates have anything to do with what’s happened here. Imean, there’s no real time involved. The whole thing took place what—only five days ago.”

“The event took place four days ago. Yes, that is very true. But toeverything that happens there has to be a past. A past which is by now in-corporated in today, but which existed yesterday or last month or lastyear. The present is nearly always rooted in the past. A year, two years,perhaps even three years ago, a murder was committed. A child saw thatmurder. Because that child saw that murder on a certain date now longgone by, that child died four days ago. Is not that so?”

“Yes. That’s so. At least, I suppose it is. It mightn’t have been at all. Itmight be just some mentally disturbed nut who liked killing people andwhose idea of playing with water is to push somebody’s head under it andhold it there. It might have been described as a mental delinquent’s bit offun at a party.”

“It was not that belief that brought you to me, Madame.”

“No,” said Mrs. Oliver, “no, it wasn’t. I didn’t like the feel of things. I stilldon’t like the feel of things.”

“And I agree with you. I think you are quite right. If one does not likethe feel of things, one must learn why. I am trying very hard, though youmay not think so, to learn why.”

“By going around and talking to people, finding out if they are nice ornot and then asking them questions?”

“Exactly.”

“And what have you learnt?”

“Facts,” said Poirot. “Facts which will have in due course to be anchoredin their place by dates, shall we say.”

“Is that all? What else have you learnt?”

“That nobody believes in the veracity of Joyce Reynolds.”

“When she said she saw someone killed? But I heard her.”

“Yes, she said it. But nobody believes it is true. The probability is, there-fore, that it was not true. That she saw no such thing.”

“It seems to me,” said Mrs. Oliver, “as though your facts were leadingyou backwards instead of remaining on the spot or going forward.”

“Things have to be made to accord. Take forgery, for instance. The factof forgery. Everybody says that a foreign girl, the au pair girl, so endearedherself to an elderly and very rich widow that that rich widow left a Will,or a codicil to a Will, leaving all her money to this girl. Did the girl forgethat Will or did somebody else forge it?”

“Who else could have forged it?”

“There was another forger in this village. Someone, that is, who hadonce been accused of forgery but had got off lightly as a first offender andwith extenuating circumstances.”

“Is this a new character? One I know?”

“No, you do not know him. He is dead.”

“Oh? When did he die?”

“About two years ago. The exact date I do not as yet know. But I shallhave to know. He is someone who had practised forgery and who lived inthis place. And because of a little what you might call girl trouble arousingjealousy and various emotions, he was knifed one night and died. I havethe idea, you see, that a lot of separated incidents might tie up moreclosely than anyone has thought. Not any of them. Probably not all ofthem, but several of them.”

“It sounds interesting,” said Mrs. Oliver, “but I can’t see—”

“Nor can I as yet,” said Poirot. “But I think dates might help. Dates ofcertain happenings, where people were, what happened to them, whatthey were doing. Everybody thinks that the foreign girl forged the Willand probably,” said Poirot, “everybody was right. She was the one to gainby it, was she not? Wait—wait—”

“Wait for what?” said Mrs. Oliver.

“An idea that passed through my head,” said Poirot.

Mrs. Oliver sighed and took another date.

“You return to London, Madame? Or are you making a long stay here?”

“Day after tomorrow,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I can’t stay any longer. I’ve gota good many things cropping up.”

“Tell me, now—in your flat, your house, I cannot remember which it isnow, you have moved so many times lately, there is room there to haveguests?”

“I never admit that there is,” said Mrs. Oliver. “If you ever admit thatyou’ve got a free guest room in London, you’ve asked for it. All yourfriends, and not only your friends, your acquaintances or indeed your ac-quaintances’ third cousins sometimes, write you letters and say would youmind just putting them up for a night. Well, I do mind. What with sheetsand laundry, pillow cases and wanting early morning tea and very oftenexpecting meals served to them, people come. So I don’t let on that I havegot an available spare room. My friends come and stay with me. Thepeople I really want to see, but the others—no, I’m not helpful. I don’t likejust being made use of.”

“Who does?” said Hercule Poirot. “You are very wise.”

“And anyway, what’s all this about?”

“You could put up one or two guests, if need arose?”

“I could,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Who do you want me to put up? Not youyourself. You’ve got a splendid flat of your own. Ultra modern, very ab-stract, all squares and cubes.”

“It is just that there might be a wise precaution to take.”

“For whom? Somebody else going to be killed?”

“I trust and pray not, but it might be within the bound of possibility.”

“But who? Who? I can’t understand.”

“How well do you know your friend?”

“Know her? Not well. I mean, we liked each other on a cruise and got inthe habit of pairing off together. There was something—what shall I say?

—exciting about her. Different.”

“Did you think you might put her in a book some day?”

“I do hate that phrase being used. People are always saying it to me andit’s not true. Not really. I don’t put people in books. People I meet, people Iknow.”

“Is it perhaps not true to say, Madame, that you do put people in bookssometimes? People that you meet, but not, I agree, people that you know.

There would be no fun in that.”

“You’re quite right,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’re really rather good atguessing things sometimes. It does happen that way. I mean, you see a fatwoman sitting in a bus eating a currant bun and her lips are moving aswell as eating, and you can see she’s either saying something to someoneor thinking up a telephone call that she’s going to make, or perhaps a let-ter she’s going to write. And you look at her and you study her shoes andthe skirt she’s got on and her hat and guess her age and whether she’s gota wedding ring on and a few other things. And then you get out of the bus.

You don’t want ever to see her again, but you’ve got a story in your mindabout somebody called Mrs. Carnaby who is going home in a bus, havinghad a very strange interview somewhere where she saw someone in apastry cook’s and was reminded of someone she’d only met once and whoshe had heard was dead and apparently isn’t dead. Dear me,” said Mrs.

Oliver, pausing for breath. “You know, it’s quite true. I did sit across fromsomeone in a bus just before I left London, and here it is all working outbeautifully inside my head. I shall have the whole story soon. The wholesequence, what she’s going back to say, whether it’ll run her into dangeror somebody else into danger. I think I even know her name. Her name’sConstance. Constance Carnaby. There’s only one thing would ruin it.”

“And what is that?”

“Well, I mean, if I met her again in another bus, or spoke to her or shetalked to me or I began to know something about her. That would ruineverything, of course.”

“Yes, yes. The story must be yours, the character is yours. She is yourchild. You have made her, you begin to understand her, you know howshe feels, you know where she lives and you know what she does. But thatall started with a real, live human being and if you found out what thereal live human being was like—well then, there would be no story, wouldthere?”

“Right again,” said Mrs. Oliver. “As to what you were saying about Ju-dith, I think that is true. I mean, we were together a lot on the cruise, andwe went to see the places but I didn’t really get to know her particularlywell. She’s a widow, and her husband died and she was left badly off withone child, Miranda, whom you’ve seen. And it’s true that I’ve got rather afunny feeling about them. A feeling as though they mattered, as thoughthey’re mixed up in some interesting drama. I don’t want to know whatthe drama is. I don’t want them to tell me. I want to think of the sort ofdrama I would like them to be in.”

“Yes. Yes, I can see that they are—well, candidates for inclusion for an-other best seller by Ariadne Oliver.”

“You really are a beast sometimes,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You make it allsound so vulgar.” She paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is.”

“No, no, it is not vulgar. It is just human.”

“And you want me to invite Judith and Miranda to my flat or house inLondon?”

“Not yet,” said Poirot. “Not yet until I am sure that one of my little ideasmight be right.”

“You and your little ideas! Now I’ve got a piece of news for you.”

“Madame, you delight me.”

“Don’t be too sure. It will probably upset your ideas. Supposing I tell youthat the forgery you have been so busy talking about wasn’t a forgery atall.”

“What is that you say?”

“Mrs. Ap Jones Smythe, or whatever her name is, did make a codicil toher Will leaving all her money to the au pair girl and two witnesses sawher sign it, and signed it also in the presence of each other. Put that inyour moustache and smoke it.”

 

分享到：