大象的证词9

Chapter 9

Results of Elephantine Research

‘A telephone call for you,’ said Hercule Poirot’s man- servant, George.

‘From Mrs Oliver.’

‘Ah yes, George. And what had she to say?’

‘She wondered if she could come and see you this evening, sir, after din-ner.’

‘That would be admirable,’ said Poirot. ‘Admirable. I have had a tiringday. It will be a stimulating experience to see Mrs Oliver. She is always en-tertaining as well as being highly unexpected in the things she says. Didshe mention elephants, by the way?’

‘Elephants, sir? No, I do not think so.’

‘Ah. Then it would seem perhaps that the elephants have been disap-pointing.’

George looked at his master rather doubtfully. There were times whenhe did not quite understand the relevance of Poirot’s remarks.

‘Ring her back,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘tell her I shall be delighted to re-ceive her.’

George went away to carry out this order, and returned to say that MrsOliver would be there about quarter to nine.

‘Coffee,’ said Poirot. ‘Let coffee be prepared and some petit- fours. Irather think I ordered some in lately from Fortnum and Mason.’

‘A liqueur of any kind, sir?’

‘No, I think not. I myself will have some Sirop deCassis.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mrs Oliver arrived exactly on time. Poirot greeted her with every sign ofpleasure.

‘And how are you, chère madame?’

‘Exhausted,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She sank down into the armchair that Poirot indicated.

‘Completely exhausted.’

‘Ah. Qui va à la chasse – oh, I cannot remember the saying.’

‘I remember it,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I learnt it as a child. “Qui va à la chasseperd sa place.”’

‘That, I am sure, is not applicable to the chase you have been conduct-ing. I am referring to the pursuit of elephants, unless that was merely afigure of speech.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I have been pursuing elephants madly.

Here, there and everywhere. The amount of petrol I have used, theamount of trains I have taken, the amount of letters I’ve written, theamount of telegrams I’ve sent – you wouldn’t believe how exhausting it allis.’

‘Then repose yourself. Have some coffee.’

‘Nice, strong, black coffee – yes, I will. Just what I want.’

‘Did you, may I ask, get any results?’

‘Plenty of results,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know whetherany of them are any use.’

‘You learn facts, however?’

‘No. Not really. I learnt things that people told me were facts, but Istrongly doubt myself whether any of them were facts.’

‘They were hearsay?’

‘No. They were what I said they would be. They were memories. Lots ofpeople who had memories. The trouble is, when you remember things youdon’t always remember them right, do you?’

‘No. But they are still what you might describe perhaps as results. Is notthat so?’

‘And what have you done?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You are always so stern,madame,’ said Poirot. ‘You demand that I run about, that I also do things.’

‘Well, have you run about?’

‘I have not run about, but I have had a few consultations with others ofmy own profession.’

‘It sounds far more peaceful than what I have been doing,’ said MrsOliver. ‘Oh, this coffee is nice. It’s really strong. You wouldn’t believe howtired I am. And how muddled.’

‘Come, come. Let us have good expectancy. You have got things. Youhave got something, I think.’

‘I’ve got a lot of different suggestions and stories. I don’t know whetherany of them are true.’

‘They could be not true, but still be of use,’ said Poirot.

‘Well, I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and that’s what I think,too. I mean, that’s what Ithought when I went about it. When people re-member something and tell you about it – I mean, it’s often not quite actu-ally what occurred, but it’s what they themselves thought occurred.’

‘But they must have had something on which to base it,’ said Poirot.

‘I’ve brought you a list of a kind,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I don’t need to go intodetails of where I went or what I said or why, I went out deliberately for –well, information one couldn’t perhaps get from anybody in this countrynow. But it’s all from people who knew something about the Ravenscrofts,even if they hadn’t known them very well.’

‘News from foreign places, do you mean?’

‘Quite a lot of them were from foreign places. Other people who knewthem here rather slightly or from people whose aunts or cousins orfriends knew them long ago.’

‘And each one that you’ve noted down had some story to tell – some ref-erence to the tragedy or to people involved?’

‘That’s the idea,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I’ll tell you roughly, shall I?’

‘Yes. Have a petit-four.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She took a particularly sweet and rather bilious- looking one andchamped it with energy.

‘Sweet things,’ she said, ‘really give you a lot of vitality, I always think.

Well now, I’ve got the following suggestions. These things have usuallybeen said to me starting by: – “Oh yes, of course!” “How sad it was, thatwhole story!” “Of course, I think everyone knows really what happened.”

That’s the sort of thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘These people thought they knew what happened. But there weren’treally any very good reasons. It was just something someone had toldthem, or they’d heard either from friends or servants or relations orthings like that. The suggestions, of course, are all the kind that you mightthink they were. A. That General Ravenscroft was writing his memoirs ofhis Malayan days and that he had a young woman who acted as his secret-ary and took dictation and typed things for him and was helping him, thatshe was a nice-looking girl and no doubt there was something there. Theresult being – well, there seemed to be two schools of thought. One schoolof thought was that he shot his wife because he hoped to marry the girl,and then when he had shot her, immediately was horror-stricken at whathe’d done and shot himself …’

‘Exactly,’ said Poirot. ‘A romantic explanation.’

‘The other idea was that there had been a tutor who came to give les-sons to the son who had been ill and away from his prep school for sixmonths or so – a good-looking young man.’

‘Ah yes. And the wife had fallen in love with the young man. Perhapshad an affair with him?’

‘That was the idea,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘No kind of evidence. Just romanticsuggestion again.’

‘And therefore?’

‘Therefore I think the idea was that the General probably shot his wifeand then in a fit of remorse shot himself. There was another story that theGeneral had had an affair, and his wife found out about it, that she shothim and then herself. It’s always been slightly different every time. Butnobody really knew anything. I mean, it’s always just a likely story everytime. I mean, the General may have had an affair with a girl or lots of girlsor just another married woman, or it might have been the wife who hadan affair with someone. It’s been a different someone in each story I’vebeen told. There was nothing definite about it or any evidence for it. It’sjust the gossip that went around about twelve or thirteen years ago, whichpeople have rather forgotten about now. But they remember enoughabout it to tell one a few names and get things only moderately wrongabout what happened. There was an angry gardener who happened to liveon the place, there was a nice elderly cook-housekeeper, who was ratherblind and rather deaf, but nobody seems to suspect that she had anythingto do with it. And so on. I’ve got all the names and possibilities writtendown. The names of some of them wrong and some of them right. It’s allvery difficult. His wife had been ill, I gather, for some short time, I think itwas some kind of fever that she had. A lot of her hair must have fallen outbecause she bought four wigs. There were at least four new wigs foundamong her things.’

‘Yes. I, too, heard that,’ said Poirot.

‘Who did you hear it from?’

‘A friend of mine in the police. He went back over the accounts of the in-quest and the various things in the house. Four wigs! I would like to haveyour opinion on that, madame. Do you think that four wigs seems some-what excessive?’

‘Well, I do really,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I had an aunt who had a wig, and shehad an extra wig, but she sent one back to be redressed and wore thesecond one. I never heard of anyone who had four wigs.’

Mrs Oliver extracted a small notebook from her bag, ruffled the pages ofit, searching for extracts.

‘Mrs Carstairs, she’s seventy-seven and rather gaga. Quote from her: “Ido remember the Ravenscrofts quite well. Yes, yes, a very nice couple. It’svery sad, I think. Yes. Cancer it was!” I asked her which of them had can-cer,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but Mrs Carstairs had rather forgotten about that.

She said she thought the wife came to London and consulted a doctor andhad an operation and then came home and was very miserable, and herhusband was very upset about her. So of course he shot her and himself.’

‘Was that her theory or did she have an exact knowledge?’

‘I think it was entirely theory. As far as I can see and hear in the courseof my investigations,’ said Mrs Oliver, making rather a point of this lastword, ‘when anybody has heard that any of their friends whom they don’thappen to know very well have sudden illness or consult doctors, they al-ways think it’s cancer. And so do the people themselves, I think. Somebodyelse – I can’t read her name here, I’ve forgotten, I think it began with T –she said that it was the husband who had cancer. He was very unhappy,and so was his wife. And they talked it over together and they couldn’tbear the thought of it all, so they decided to commit suicide.’

‘Sad and romantic,’ said Poirot.

‘Yes, and I don’t think really true,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It is worrying, isn’tit? I mean, the people remembering so much and that they really mostlyseem to have made it up themselves.’

‘They have made up the solution of something they knew about,’ saidPoirot. ‘That is to say, they know that somebody comes to London, say, toconsult a doctor, or that somebody has been in hospital for two or threemonths. That is a fact that they know.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and then when they come to talk about it a longtime afterwards, they’ve got the solution for it which they’ve made upthemselves. That isn’t awfully helpful, is it?’

‘It is helpful,’ said Poirot. ‘You are quite right, you know, in what yousaid to me.’

‘About elephants?’ said Mrs Oliver, rather doubtfully.

‘About elephants,’ said Poirot. ‘It is important to know certain factswhich have lingered in people’s memories although they may not knowexactly what the fact was, why it happened or what led to it. But theymight easily know something that we do not know and that we have nomeans of learning. So there have been memories leading to theories – the-ories of infidelity, of illness, of suicide pacts, of jealousy, all these thingshave been suggested to you. Further search could be made as to points ifthey seem in any way probable.’

‘People like talking about the past,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘They like talkingabout the past really much more than they like talking about what’s hap-pening now, or what happened last year. It brings things back to them.

They tell you, of course, first about a lot of other people that you don’twant to hear about and then you hear what the other people that they’veremembered knew about somebody else that they didn’t know but theyheard about. You know, so that the General and Lady Ravenscroft youhear about is at one remove, as it were. It’s like family relationships,’ shesaid. ‘You know, first cousin once removed, second cousin twice removed,all the rest of it. I don’t think I’ve been really very helpful, though.’

‘You must not think that,’ said Poirot. ‘I am pretty sure that you will findthat some of these things in your agreeable little purple-coloured note-book will have something to do with the past tragedy. I can tell you frommy own enquiries into the official accounts of these two deaths, that theyhave remained a mystery. That is, from the police point of view. Theywere an affectionate couple, there was no gossip or hearsay much aboutthem of any sex trouble, there was no illness discovered such as wouldhave caused anyone to take their own lives. I talk now only of the time,you understand, immediately preceding the tragedy. But there was a timebefore that, further back.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and I’ve got something aboutthat from an old Nanny. An old Nanny who is now – I don’t know, shemight be a hundred, but I think she’s only about eighty. I remember herfrom my childhood days. She used to tell me stories about people in theServices abroad – India, Egypt, Siam and Hong Kong and the rest.’

‘Anything that interested you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘there was some tragedy that she talked about. Sheseemed a bit uncertain about what it was. I’m not sure that it had any-thing to do with the Ravenscrofts, it might have been to do with someother people out there because she doesn’t remember surnames andthings very well. It was a mental case in one family. Someone’s sister-in-law. Either General Whoever-it-was’s sister or Mrs Who-ever-it-was’ss-ister. Somebody who’d been in a mental home for years. I gathered she’dkilled her own children or tried to kill her own children long ago, andthen she’d been supposed to be cured or paroled or something and cameout to Egypt, or Malaya or wherever it was. She came out to stay with thepeople. And then it seems there was some other tragedy, connected again,I think, with children or something of that kind. Anyway, it was somethingthat was hushed up. But I wondered. I mean, if there was something men-tal in the family, either Lady Ravenscroft’s family or General Ravenscroft’sfamily. I don’t think it need have been as near as a sister. It could havebeen a cousin or something like that. But – well, it seemed to me a possibleline of enquiry.’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘there’s always possibility and something that waits formany years and then comes home to roost from somewhere in the past.

That is what someone said to me. Old sins have long shadows.’

‘It seemed to me,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘not that it was likely or even that oldNanny Matcham remembered it right or even really about it being thepeople she thought it was. But it might have fitted in with what that awfulwoman at the literary luncheon said to me.’

‘You mean when she wanted to know …’

‘Yes. When she wanted me to find out from the daughter, my godchild,whether her mother had killed her father or whether her father had killedher mother.’

‘And she thought the girl might know?’

‘Well, it’s likely enough that the girl would know. I mean, not at the time– it might have been shielded from her – but she might know things aboutit which would make her be aware what the circumstances were in theirlives and who was likely to have killed whom, though she would probablynever mention it or say anything about it or talk to anyone about it.’

‘And you say that woman – this Mrs –’

‘Yes. I’ve forgotten her name now. Mrs Burton something. A name likethat. She said something about her son had this girlfriend and that theywere thinking of getting married. And I can quite see you might want toknow, if so, whether her mother or father had criminal relations in theirfamily – or a loony strain. She probably thought that if it was the motherwho killed the father it would be very unwise for the boy to marry her,whereas if the father had killed the mother, she probably wouldn’t mindas much,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘You mean that she would think that the inheritance would go in the fe-male line?’

‘Well, she wasn’t a very clever type of woman. Bossy,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Thinks she knows a lot, but no. I think you might think that way if youwere a woman.’

‘An interesting point of view, but possible,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, I realizethat.’ He sighed. ‘We have a lot to do still.’

‘I’ve got another side light on things, too. Same thing, but second hand, ifyou know what I mean. You know. Someone says “The Ravenscrofts?

Weren’t they that couple who adopted a child? Then it seems, after it wasall arranged, and they were absolutely stuck on it – very, very keen on it,one of their children had died in Malaya, I think – but at any rate they hadadopted this child and then its own mother wanted it back and they had acourt case or something. But the court gave them the custody of the childand the mother came and tried to kidnap it back.”’

‘There are simpler points,’ said Poirot, ‘arising out of your report, pointsthat I prefer.’

‘Such as?’

‘Wigs. Four wigs.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I thought that was interesting you but I don’tknow why. It doesn’t seem to mean anything. The other story was justsomebody mental. There are mental people who are in homes or loony-bins because they have killed their children or some other child, for someabsolutely batty reason, no sense to it at all. I don’t see why that wouldmake General and Lady Ravenscroft want to kill themselves.’

‘Unless one of them was implicated,’ said Poirot.

‘You mean that General Ravenscroft may have killed someone, a boy –an illigitimate child, perhaps, of his wife’s or of his own? No, I think we’regetting a bit too melodramatic there. Or she might have killed her hus-band’s child or her own.’

‘And yet,’ said Poirot, ‘what people seem to be, they usually are.’

‘You mean –?’

‘They seemed an affectionate couple, a couple who lived together hap-pily without disputes. They seem to have had no case history of illnessbeyond a suggestion of an operation, of someone coming to London toconsult some medical authority, a possiblility of cancer, of leukaemia,something of that kind, some future that they could not face. And yet,somehow we do not seem to get at something beyond what is possible, butnot yet what is probable. If there was anyone else in the house, anyoneelse at the time, the police, my friends that is to say, who have known theinvestigation at the time, say that nothing told was really compatible withanything else but with the facts. For some reason, those two didn’t want togo on living. Why?’

‘I knew a couple,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘in the war – the second war, I mean –they thought that the Germans would land in England and they had de-cided if that happened they would kill themselves. I said it was very stu-pid. They said it would be impossible to go on living. It still seems to mestupid. You’ve got to have enough courage to live through something. Imean, it’s not as though your death was going to do any good to anybodyelse. I wonder –’

‘Yes, what do you wonder?’

‘Well, when I said that I wondered suddenly if General and LadyRavenscroft’s deaths did any good to anyone else.’

‘You mean somebody inherited money from them?’

‘Yes. Not quite as blatant as that. Perhaps somebody would have a betterchance of doing well in life. Something there was in their life that theydidn’t want either of their two children ever to hear about or to knowabout.’

Poirot sighed.

‘The trouble with you, is,’ he said, ‘you think so often of something thatwell might have occurred, that might have been. You give me ideas. Pos-sible ideas. If only they were probable ideas also. Why? Why were thedeaths of those two necessary? Why is it – they were not in pain, theywere not in illness, they were not deeply unhappy from what one can see.

Then why, in the evening of a beautiful day, did they go for a walk to acliff and taking the dog with them …’

‘What’s the dog got to do with it?’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Well, I wondered for a moment. Did they take the dog, or did the dogfollow them? Where does the dog come in?’

‘I suppose it comes in like the wigs,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Just one more thingthat you can’t explain and doesn’t seem to make sense. One of my ele-phants said the dog was devoted to Lady Ravenscroft, but another one saidthe dog bit her.’

‘One always comes back to the same thing,’ said Poirot. ‘One wants toknow more.’ He sighed. ‘One wants to know more about the people, andhow can you know people separated from you by a gulf of years.’

‘Well, you’ve done it once or twice, haven’t you?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Youknow – something about where a painter was shot or poisoned. That wasnear the sea on a sort of fortification or something. You found out who didthat, although you didn’t know any of the people.’

‘No. I didn’t know any of the people, but I learnt about them from theother people who were there.’ 1

‘Well, that’s what I’m trying to do,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘only I can’t get nearenough. I can’t get to anyone who really knew anything, who was reallyinvolved. Do you think really we ought to give it up?’

‘I think it would be very wise to give it up,’ said Poirot, ‘but there is amoment when one no longer wants to be wise. One wants to find outmore. I have an interest now in that couple of kindly people, with two nicechildren. I presume they are nice children?’

‘I don’t know the boy,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I don’tthink I’ve ever met him.

Do you want to see my goddaughter? I could send her to see you, if youlike.’

‘Yes, I think I would like to see her, meet her some way. Perhaps shewould not wish to come and see me, but a meeting could be broughtabout. It might, I think, be interesting. And there is someone else I wouldlike to see.’

‘Oh! Who is that?’

‘The woman at the party. The bossy woman. Your bossy friend.’

‘She’s no friend of mine,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘She just came up and spoke tome, that’s all.’

‘You could resume acquaintance with her?’

‘Oh yes, quite easily. I would think she’d probably jump at it.’

‘I would like to see her. I would like to know why she wants to knowthese things.’

‘Yes. I suppose that might be useful. Anyway –’ Mrs Oliver sighed – ‘Ishall be glad to have a rest from elephants. Nanny – you know, the oldNanny I talked about – she mentioned elephants and that elephants didn’tforget. That sort of silly sentence is beginning to haunt me. Ah well, youmust look for more elephants. It’s your turn.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Perhaps I could look for swans.’

‘Mon dieu, where do swans come in?’

‘It is only what I remember, which Nanny reminded me of. That therewere little boys I used to play with and one used to call me Lady Elephantand the other one used to call me Lady Swan. When I was Lady Swan Ipretended to be swimming about on the floor. When I was Lady Elephantthey rode on my back. There are no swans in this.’

‘That is a good thing,’ said Poirot. ‘Elephants are quite enough.’

 

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