万圣节前夜的谋杀21

Twenty

When he left Mrs. Butler’s house, Poirot took the same way as had beenshown him by Miranda. The aperture in the hedge, it seemed to him, hadbeen slightly enlarged since last time. Somebody, perhaps, with slightlymore bulk than Miranda, had used it also. He ascended the path in thequarry, noticing once more the beauty of the scene. A lovely spot, and yetin some way, Poirot felt as he had felt before, that it could be a hauntedspot. There was a kind of pagan ruthlessness about it. It could be alongthese winding paths that the fairies hunted their victims down or a coldgoddess decreed that sacrifices would have to be offered.

He could understand why it had not become a picnic spot. One wouldnot want for some reason to bring your hard-boiled eggs and your lettuceand your oranges and sit down here and crack jokes and have a jollifica-tion. It was different, quite different. It would have been better, perhaps,he thought suddenly, if Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had not wanted this fairy-like transformation. Quite a modest sunk garden could have been madeout of a quarry without the atmosphere, but she had been an ambitiouswoman, ambitious and a very rich woman. He thought for a moment ortwo about Wills, the kind of Wills made by rich women, the kind of liestold about Wills made by rich women, the places in which the Wills of richwidows were sometimes hidden, and he tried to put himself back into themind of a forger. Undoubtably the Will offered for probate had been a for-gery. Mr. Fullerton was a careful and competent lawyer. He was sure ofthat. The kind of lawyer, too, who would never advise a client to bring acase or to take legal proceedings unless there was very good evidence andjustification for so doing.

He turned a corner of the pathway feeling for the moment that his feetwere much more important than his speculations. Was he taking a shortcut to Superintendent Spence’s dwelling or was he not? As the crow flies,perhaps, but the main road might have been more good to his feet. Thispath was not a grassy or mossy one, it had the quarry hardness of stone.

Then he paused.

In front of him were two figures. Sitting on an outcrop of rock was Mi-chael Garfield. He had a sketching block on his knees and he was drawing,his attention fully on what he was doing. A little way away from him,standing close beside a minute but musical stream that flowed down fromabove, Miranda Butler was standing. Hercule Poirot forgot his feet, forgotthe pains and ills of the human body, and concentrated again on thebeauty that human beings could attain. There was no doubt that MichaelGarfield was a very beautiful young man. He found it difficult to knowwhether he himself liked Michael Garfield or not. It is always difficult toknow if you like anyone beautiful. You like beauty to look at, at the sametime you dislike beauty almost on principle. Women could be beautiful,but Hercule Poirot was not at all sure that he liked beauty in men. Hewould not have liked to be a beautiful young man himself, not that therehad ever been the least chance of that. There was only one thing about hisown appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was theprofusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to groomingand treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobodyelse who had any moustache half as good. He had never been handsomeor good-looking. Certainly never beautiful.

And Miranda? He thought again, as he had thought before, that it washer gravity that was so attractive. He wondered what passed through hermind. It was the sort of thing one would never know. She would not saywhat she was thinking easily. He doubted if she would tell you what shewas thinking, if you asked her. She had an original mind, he thought, a re-flective mind. He thought too she was vulnerable. Very vulnerable. Therewere other things about her that he knew, or thought he knew. It was onlythinking so far, but yet he was almost sure.

Michael Garfield looked up and said,

“Ha! Se?or Moustachios. A very good afternoon to you, sir.”

“Can I look at what you are doing or would it incommode you? I do notwant to be intrusive.”

“You can look,” said Michael Garfield, “it makes no difference to me.” Headded gently, “I’m enjoying myself very much.”

Poirot came to stand behind his shoulder. He nodded. It was a very del-icate pencil drawing, the lines almost invisible. The man could draw,Poirot thought. Not only design gardens. He said, almost under his breath:

“Exquisite!”

“I think so too,” said Michael Garfield.

He let it be left doubtful whether he referred to the drawing he wasmaking, or to the sitter.

“Why?” asked Poirot.

“Why am I doing it? Do you think I have a reason?”

“You might have.”

“You’re quite right. If I go away from here, there are one or two things Iwant to remember. Miranda is one of them.”

“Would you forget her easily?”

“Very easily. I am like that. But to have forgotten something or someone,to be unable to bring a face, a turn of a shoulder, a gesture, a tree, aflower, a contour of landscape, to know what it was like to see it but not tobe able to bring that image in front of one’s eyes, that sometimes causes—what shall I say—almost agony. You see, you record—and it all passesaway.”

“Not the Quarry Garden or park. That has not passed away.”

“Don’t you think so? It soon will. It soon will if no one is here. Naturetakes over, you know. It needs love and attention and care and skill. If aCouncil takes it over—and that’s what happens very often nowadays—then it will be what they call ‘kept up.’ The latest sort of shrubs may be putin, extra paths will be made, seats will be put at certain distances. Litterbins even may be erected. Oh, they are so careful, so kind at preserving.

You can’t preserve this. It’s wild. To keep something wild is far more diffi-cult than to preserve it.”

“Monsieur Poirot.” Miranda’s voice came across the stream.

Poirot moved forward, so that he came within earshot of her.

“So I find you here. So you came to sit for your portrait, did you?”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t come for that. That just happened.”

“Yes,” said Michael Garfield, “yes, it just happened. A piece of luck some-times comes one’s way.”

“You were just walking in your favourite garden?”

“I was looking for the well, really,” said Miranda.

“A well?”

“There was a wishing well once in this wood.”

“In a former quarry? I didn’t know they kept wells in quarries.”

“There was always a wood round the quarry. Well, there were alwaystrees here. Michael knows where the well is but he won’t tell me.”

“It will be much more fun for you,” said Michael Garfield, “to go on look-ing for it. Especially when you’re not at all sure it really exists.”

“Old Mrs. Goodbody knows all about it.”

And added:

“She’s a witch.”

“Quite right,” said Michael. “She’s the local witch, Monsieur Poirot.

There’s always a local witch, you know, in most places. They don’t alwayscall themselves witches, but everyone knows. They tell a fortune or put aspell on your begonias or shrivel up your peonies or stop a farmer’s cowfrom giving milk and probably give love potions as well.”

“It was a wishing well,” said Miranda. “People used to come here andwish. They had to go round it three times backwards and it was on theside of the hill, so it wasn’t always very easy to do.”

She looked past Poirot at Michael Garfield. “I shall find it one day,” shesaid, “even if you won’t tell me. It’s here somewhere, but it was sealed up,Mrs. Goodbody said. Oh! years ago. Sealed up because it was said to bedangerous. A child fell into it years ago—Kitty Somebody. Someone elsemight have fallen into it.”

“Well, go on thinking so,” said Michael Garfield. “It’s a good local story,but there is a wishing well over at Little Belling.”

“Of course,” said Miranda. “I know all about that one. It’s a very com-mon one,” she said. “Everybody knows about it, and it’s very silly. Peoplethrow pennies into it and there’s not any water in it any more so there’snot even a splash.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll tell you when I find it,” said Miranda.

“You mustn’t always believe everything a witch says. I don’t believe anychild ever fell into it. I expect a cat fell into it once and got drowned.”

“Ding dong dell, pussy’s in the well,” said Miranda. She got up. “I mustgo now,” she said. “Mummy will be expecting me.”

She moved carefully from the knob of rock, smiled at both the men andwent off down an even more intransigent path that ran the other side ofthe water.

“‘Ding dong dell,’” said Poirot, thoughtfully. “One believes what onewants to believe, Michael Garfield. Was she right or was she not right?”

Michael Garfield looked at him thoughtfully, then he smiled.

“She is quite right,” he said. “There is a well, and it is as she says sealedup. I suppose it may have been dangerous. I don’t think it was ever a wish-ing well. I think that’s Mrs. Goodbody’s own bit of fancy talk. There’s awishing tree, or there was once. A beech tree halfway up the hillside that Ibelieve people did go round three times backwards and wished.”

“What’s happened to that? Don’t they go round it any more?”

“No. I believe it was struck by lightning about six years ago. Split in two.

So that pretty story’s gone west.”

“Have you told Miranda about that?”

“No. I thought I’d rather leave her with her well. A blasted beechwouldn’t be much fun for her, would it?”

“I must go on my way,” said Poirot.

“Going back to your police friend?”

“Yes.”

“You look tired.”

“I am tired,” said Hercule Poirot. “I am extremely tired.”

“You’d be more comfortable in canvas shoes or sandals.”

“Ah, ?a, non.”

“I see. You are sartorially ambitious.” He looked at Poirot. “The tout en-semble, it is very good and especially, if I may mention it, your superbmoustache.”

“I am gratified,” said Poirot, “that you have noticed it.”

“The point is rather, could anyone not notice it?”

Poirot put his head on one side. Then he said:

“You spoke of the drawing you are doing because you wish to rememberthe young Miranda. Does that mean you’re going away from here?”

“I have thought of it, yes.”

“Yet you are, it seems to me, bien placé ici.”

“Oh yes, eminently so. I have a house to live in, a house small but de-signed by myself, and I have my work, but that is less satisfactory than itused to be. So restlessness is coming over me.”

“Why is your work less satisfactory?”

“Because people wish me to do the most atrocious things. People whowant to improve their gardens, people who bought some land and they’rebuilding a house and want the garden designed.”

“Are you not doing her garden for Mrs. Drake?”

“She wants me to, yes. I made suggestions for it and she seemed to agreewith them. I don’t think, though,” he added thoughtfully, “that I reallytrust her.”

“You mean that she would not let you have what you wanted?”

“I mean that she would certainly have what she wanted herself and thatthough she is attracted by the ideas I have set out, she would suddenly de-mand something quite different. Something utilitarian, expensive andshowy, perhaps. She would bully me, I think. She would insist on her ideasbeing carried out. I would not agree, and we should quarrel. So on thewhole it is better I leave here before I quarrel. And not only with Mrs.

Drake but many other neighbours. I am quite well-known. I don’t need tostay in one spot. I could go and find some other corner of England, or itcould be some corner of Normandy or Brittany.”

“Somewhere where you can improve, or help, nature? Somewherewhere you can experiment or you can put strange things where they havenever grown before, where neither sun will blister nor frost destroy?

Some good stretch of barren land where you can have the fun of playingat being Adam all over again? Have you always been restless?”

“I never stayed anywhere very long.”

“You have been to Greece?”

“Yes. I should like to go to Greece again. Yes, you have something there.

A garden on a Greek hillside. There may be cypresses there, not muchelse. A barren rock. But if you wished, what could there not be?”

“A garden for gods to walk—”

“Yes. You’re quite a mind reader, aren’t you, Mr. Poirot?”

“I wish I were. There are so many things I would like to know and donot know.”

“You are talking now of something quite prosaic, are you not?”

“Unfortunately so.”

“Arson, murder and sudden death?”

“More or less. I do not know that I was considering arson. Tell me, Mr.

Garfield, you have been here some considerable time, did you know ayoung man called Lesley Ferrier?”

“Yes, I remember him. He was in a Medchester solicitor’s office, wasn’the? Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter. Junior clerk, something of thatkind. Good-looking chap.”

“He came to a sudden end, did he not?”

“Yes. Got himself knifed one evening. Woman trouble, I gather. Every-one seems to think that the police know quite well who did it, but theycan’t get the evidence they want. He was more or less tied up with a wo-man called Sandra—can’t remember her name for the moment—SandraSomebody, yes. Her husband kept the local pub. She and young Lesleywere running an affair, and then Lesley took up with another girl. Or thatwas the story.”

“And Sandra did not like it?”

“No, she did not like it at all. Mind you, he was a great one for the girls.

There were two or three that he went around with.”

“Were they all English girls?”

“Why do you ask that, I wonder? No, I don’t think he confined himself toEnglish girls, so long as they could speak enough English to understandmore or less what he said to them, and he could understand what theysaid to him.”

“There are doubtless from time to time foreign girls in this neighbour-hood?”

“Of course there are. Is there any neighbourhood where there aren’t?

Au pair girls—they’re a part of daily life. Ugly ones, pretty ones, honestones, dishonest ones, ones that do some good to distracted mothers andsome who are no use at all and some who walk out of the house.”

“Like the girl Olga did?”

“As you say, like the girl Olga did.”

“Was Lesley a friend of Olga’s?”

“Oh, that’s the way your mind is running. Yes, he was. I don’t think Mrs.

Llewellyn-Smythe knew much about it. Olga was rather careful, I think.

She spoke gravely of someone she hoped to marry some day in her owncountry. I don’t know whether that was true or whether she made it up.

Young Lesley was an attractive young man, as I said. I don’t know what hesaw in Olga—she wasn’t very beautiful. Still—” he considered a minute ortwo “—she had a kind of intensity about her. A young Englishman mighthave found that attractive, I think. Anyway, Lesley did all right, and hisother girl friends weren’t pleased.”

“That is very interesting,” said Poirot. “I thought you might give me in-formation that I wanted.”

Michael Garfield looked at him curiously.

“Why? What’s it all about? Where does Lesley come in? Why this rakingup of the past?”

“Well, there are things one wants to know. One wants to know howthings come into being. I am even looking farther back still. Before thetime that those two, Olga Seminoff and Lesley Ferrier, met secretlywithout Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe knowing about it.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that. That’s only my—well, it’s only my idea. Idid come across them fairly frequently but Olga never confided in me. Asfor Lesley Ferrier, I hardly knew him.”

“I want to go back behind that. He had, I gather, certain disadvantagesin his past.”

“I believe so. Yes, well, anyway it’s been said here locally. Mr. Fullertontook him on and hoped to make an honest man of him. He’s a good chap,old Fullerton.”

“His offence had been, I believe, forgery?”

“Yes.”

“It was a first offence, and there were said to be extenuating circum-stances. He had a sick mother or drunken father or something of thatkind. Anyway, he got off lightly.”

“I never heard any of the details. It was something that he seemed tohave got away with to begin with, then accountants came along and foundhim out. I’m very vague. It’s only hearsay. Forgery. Yes, that was thecharge. Forgery.”

“And when Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe died and her Will was to be admittedto probate, it was found the Will was forged.”

“Yes, I see the way your mind’s working. You’re fitting those two thingsas having a connection with each other.”

“A man who was up to a point successful in forging. A man who becamefriends with the girl, a girl who, if a Will had been accepted when submit-ted to probate, would have inherited the larger part of a vast fortune.”

“Yes, yes, that’s the way it goes.”

“And this girl and the man who had committed forgery were greatfriends. He had given up his own girl and he’d tied up with the foreign girlinstead.”

“What you’re suggesting is that that forged Will was forged by LesleyFerrier.”

“There seems a likelihood of it, does there not?”

“Olga was supposed to have been able to copy Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’shandwriting fairly well, but it seemed to me always that that was rather adoubtful point. She wrote handwritten letters for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythebut I don’t suppose that they were really particularly similar. Not enoughto pass muster. But if she and Lesley were in it together, that’s different. Idaresay he could pass off a good enough job and he was probably quitecocksure that it would go through. But then he must have been sure ofthat when he committed his original offence, and he was wrong there, andI suppose he was wrong this time. I suppose that when the balloon wentup, when the lawyers began making trouble and difficulties, and expertswere called in to examine things and started asking questions, it could bethat she lost her nerve, and had a row with Lesley. And then she clearedout, hoping he’d carry the can.”

He gave his head a sharp shake. “Why do you come and talk to me aboutthings like that here, in my beautiful wood?”

“I wanted to know.”

“It’s better not to know. It’s better never to know. Better to leave thingsas they are. Not push and pry and poke.”

“You want beauty,” said Hercule Poirot. “Beauty at any price. For me, itis truth I want. Always truth.”

Michael Garfield laughed. “Go on home to your police friends and leaveme here in my local paradise. Get thee beyond me, Satan.”

 

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