大象的证词14

Chapter 14

Dr Willoughby

Hercule Poirot got out of the taxi, paid the fare and a tip, verified the factthat the address he had come to was the address corresponding to thatwritten down in his little notebook, took carefully a letter from his pocketaddressed to Dr Willoughby, mounted the steps to the house and pressedthe bell. The door was opened by a manservant. On reception of Poirot’sname he was told that Dr Willoughby was expecting him.

He was shown into a small, comfortable room with bookshelves up theside of it, there were two armchairs drawn to the fire and a tray withglasses on it and two decanters. Dr Willoughby rose to greet him. He was aman between fifty and sixty with a lean, thin body, a high forehead, dark-haired and with very piercing grey eyes. He shook hands and motionedhim to a seat. Poirot produced the letter from his pocket.

‘Ah, yes.’

The doctor took it from him, opened it, read it and then, placing it besidehim, looked at Poirot with some interest.

‘I had already heard,’ he said, ‘from Superintendent Garroway and also,I may say, from a friend of mine in the Home Office, who also begged meto do what I can for you in the matter that interests you.’

‘It is a rather serious favour to ask, I know,’ said Poirot, ‘but there arereasons which make it important for me.’

‘Important for you after this number of years?’

‘Yes. Of course I shall quite understand if those particular events havepassed out of your mind altogether.’

‘I can’t say they’ve done that. I am interested, as you may have heard, inspecial branches of my profession, and have been for many years.’

‘Your father, I know, was a very celebrated authority on them.’

‘Yes, he was. It was a great interest in his life. He had a lot of theories,some of them triumphantly proved right and some of them which proveddisappointing. It is, I gather, a mental case you are interested in?’

‘A woman. Her name was Dorothea Preston-Grey.’

‘Yes. I was quite a young man at the time. I was already interested in myfather’s line of thought although my theories and his did not always agree.

The work he did was interesting and the work I did in collaboration inter-ested me very much. I don’t know what your particular interest was inDorothea Preston-Grey, as she was at the time, Mrs Jarrow later.’

‘She was one of twins, I gather,’ said Poirot.

‘Yes. That was at that moment, I may say, my father’s particular field ofstudy. There was a project on hand at that time, to follow up the generallives of selected pairs of identical twins. Those who were brought up inthe same environment, those who through various chances of life werebrought up in entirely different environments. To see how alike they re-mained, how similar the things were that happened to them. Two sisters,perhaps, or two brothers who had hardly spent any of their life togetherand yet in an extraordinary way the same things seemed to happen tothem at the same time. It was all – indeed it has been all – extremely inter-esting. However, that is not your interest in the matter, I gather.’

‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘it is a case, I think – the part of it that is to say that I’minterested in – of an accident to a child.’

‘That is so. It was in Surrey, I think. Yes, a very pleasant area, that, inwhich people lived. Not very far from Camberley, I think. Mrs Jarrow wasa young widow at that time and she had two small children. Her husbandhad recently died in an accident. She was, as a result –’

‘Mentally disturbed?’ asked Poirot.

‘No, she was not thought to be so. She was deeply shocked by her hus-band’s death and had a great sense of loss, but she was not recoveringvery satisfactorily in the impression of her own doctor. He did not quitelike the way her convalescence was tending, and she did not seem to begetting over her bereavement in the way that he would have liked. Itseemed to be causing her rather peculiar reactions. Anyway, he wanted aconsultation and my father was asked by him to come and see what hecould make of it. He found her condition interesting, and at the same timehe thought it held very decided dangers, and he seemed to think that itwould be as well if she was put under observation in some nursing homewhere particular care could be taken. Things like that. Even more so afterthe case when this accident to the child happened. There were two chil-dren, and according to Mrs Jarrow’s account of what happened, it was theolder child, a girl who attacked the little boy who was four or five yearsyounger than she was, hitting him with a garden spade or hoe, so that hefell into an ornamental pond they had in the garden and was drowned.

Well, these things, as you know, happen quite often among children. Chil-dren are pushed in a perambulator into a pond sometimes because anolder child, being jealous, thinks that “Mummy will have so much lesstrouble if only Edward or Donald, or whatever his name is, wasn’t here,”

or, “It would be much nicer for her.” It all results from jealousy. There didnot seem to be any particular cause or evidence of jealousy in this case,though. The child had not resented the birth of her brother. On the otherhand, Mrs Jarrow had not wanted this second child. Although her hus-band had been pleased to have this second child coming, Mrs Jarrow didnot want it. She had tried two doctors with the idea of having an abortionbut did not succeed in finding one who would perform what was then anillegal operation. It was said by one of the servants, and also by a boy whowas bringing a telegram, I believe, to the house, that it was a woman whoattacked the boy, not the other child. And one of the servants said verydefinitely she had been looking out of the window and that it was her mis-tress. She said, “I don’t think the poor thing knows what she is doingnowadays. You know, just since the master died she’s been in, oh, such astate as never was.” Well, as I say, I don’t know exactly what you want toknow about the case. A verdict was brought in of accident, it was con-sidered to be an accident, and the children had been said to be playing to-gether, pushing each other, etcetera, and that therefore it was un-doubtedly a very unfortunate accident. It was left at that, but my fatherwhen consulted, and after a conversation with Mrs Jarrow and certaintests, questionnaires, sympathetic remarks to her and questions, he wasquite sure she had been responsible for what happened. According to hisadvice it would be advisable for her to have mental treatment.’

‘But your father was quite sure that she had been responsible?’

‘Yes. There was a school of treatment at the time which was very popu-lar and which my father believed in. That school’s belief was that aftersufficient treatment, lasting sometimes quite a long time, a year or longer,people could resume a normal everyday life, and it was to their advantageto do so. They could be returned to live at home and with a suitableamount of attention, both medical and from those, usually near relatives,who were with them and could observe them living a normal life,everything would go well. This, I may say, did meet with success at first inmany cases, but later there was a difference. Several cases had most un-fortunate results. Patients who appeared to be cured came home to theirnatural surroundings, to a family, a husband, their mothers and fathers,and slowly relapsed, so that very often tragedies or near tragedies oc-curred. One case my father was bitterly disappointed in – also a very im-portant case in his knowledge – was a woman who came back to live withthe same friend she lived with before. All seemed to be going happily butafter about five or six months she sent urgently for a doctor and when hecame said, “I must take you upstairs because you will be angry at what Ihave done, and you will have to send for the police, I am afraid. I knowthat must happen. But you see, I was commanded to do this. I saw theDevil looking out of Hilda’s eyes. I saw the Devil there so I knew what Ihad to do. I knew I had to kill her.” The woman was lying dead in a chair,strangled, and after her death her eyes had been attacked. The killer diedin a mental home with never any feeling about her crime except that ithad been a necessary command laid upon her because it was her duty todestroy the Devil.’

Poirot shook his head sadly –

The doctor went on: ‘Yes. Well, I consider that in a mild way DorotheaPreston-Grey suffered from a form of mental disorder that was dangerousand that she could only be considered safe if she lived under supervision.

This was not generally accepted, I may say, at the time, and my father didconsider it most inadvisable. Once she had been committed to a verypleasant nursing home a very good treatment was given. And again, aftera period of years she appeared to be completely sane, left the establish-ment, lived in an ordinary life with a very pleasant nurse more or less incharge of her, though considered in the household as a lady’s maid. Shewent about, made friends and sooner or later went abroad.’

‘To Malaya,’ said Poirot.

‘Yes. I see you’ve been correctly informed. She went to Malaya to staywith her twin sister.’

‘And there another tragedy happened?’

‘Yes. A child of a neighbour was attacked. It was thought at first by anamah, and afterwards I believe one of the native servants, a bearer, wassuspected. But there again there seemed no doubt that Mrs Jarrow had, forone of those mental reasons known only to her, been guilty of the attack.

There was no definite evidence, I understand, which could be broughtagainst her. I think General – I forget his name now –’

‘Ravenscroft?’ said Poirot.

‘Yes, yes, General Ravenscroft agreed to arrange for her to go back toEngland and again undergo medical treatment. Is that what you wanted toknow?’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘that is what I have partly heard already, but mainly Imay say, by hearsay, which is not dependable. What I want to ask youwas, this was a case concerned with identical twins. What about the othertwin? Margaret Preston-Grey. Afterwards the wife of General Ravenscroft.

Was she likely to be affected by the same malady?’

‘There was never any medical case about her. She was perfectly sane.

My father was interested, visited her once or twice and talked to her be-cause he had so often seen cases of almost identical illnesses or mentaldisturbances happen between identical twins who hadz started life verydevoted to each other.’

‘Only started life, you said?’

‘Yes. On certain occasions a state of animosity can arise betweenidentical twins. It follows on a first keen protective love one for the other,but it can degenerate into something which is nearer hatred, if there issome emotional strain that could trigger it off or could arouse it, or anyemotional crisis to account for animosity arising between two sisters.

‘I think there might have been that here. General Ravenscroft as ayoung subaltern or captain or whatever he was, fell deeply in love, I think,with Dorothea Preston-Grey, who was a very beautiful girl. Actually themore beautiful of the two – she also fell in love with him. They were notofficially engaged, but General Ravenscroft transferred his affectionsfairly soon to the other sister, Margaret. Or Molly as she was called. He fellin love with her, and asked her to marry him. She returned his affectionand they were married as soon as it became feasible in his career. Myfather had no doubt that the other twin, Dolly, was bitterly jealous of hersister’s marriage and that she continued to be in love with AlistairRavenscroft and to resent his marriage. However, she got over it all, mar-ried another man in due course – a thoroughly happy marriage, it seemed,and later she used frequently to go to visit the Ravenscrofts, not only onthat one occasion in Malaya, but later when they were in another stationabroad and after they returned home. She was by that time apparentlycured again, was no longer in any kind of mental dejection and lived witha very reliable nurse companion and staff of servants. I believe, or so myfather had always told me, that Lady Ravenscroft, Molly, remained verydevoted to her sister. She felt very protective towards her and loved herdearly. She wanted often, I think, to see more of her than she did, but Gen-eral Ravenscroft was not so keen on her doing so. I think it possible thatthe slightly unbalanced Dolly – Mrs Jarrow – continued to feel a verystrong attachment to General Ravenscroft, which I think may have beenembarrassing and difficult for him, though I believe that his wife wasquite convinced that her sister had got over any feelings of jealousy or an-ger.’

‘I understand Mrs Jarrow was staying with the Ravenscrofts about threeweeks or so before the tragedy of their suicide happened.’

‘Yes, that was quite true. Her own tragic death happened then. She wasquite frequently a sleep-walker. She went out one night walking in hersleep and had an accident, falling down a portion of the cliff to which apathway which had been discarded appeared to lead. She was found thenext day and I believe died in hospital without recovering consciousness.

Her sister Molly was extremely upset and bitterly unhappy about this, butI would like to say, which you probably want to know, I do not think thatthis can in any way be held responsible for the subsequent suicide of themarried couple who were living so happily together. Grief for a sister’s ora sister-in-law’s death would hardly lead you to commit suicide. Certainlynot to a double suicide.’

‘Unless, perhaps,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘Margaret Ravenscroft had beenresponsible for her sister’s death.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Dr Willoughby – ‘surely you are not suggesting –’

‘That it was Margaret who followed her sleepwalking sister, and that itwas Margaret’s hand that was stretched out to push Dorothea over thecliff edge?’

‘I refuse absolutely,’ said Dr Willoughby, ‘to accept any such idea.’

‘With people,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘one never knows.’

 

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