‘Then it was true, then, what she said?’ ‘Oh yes, that part of it was true. It happened years ago. Well, but I mean – why come to me?’
‘All because you were a crime writer,’ said Poirot. ‘She no doubt said you knew all about crime. This was a real thing that happened?’
‘Oh yes. It wasn’t something like what would A do – or what would be the proper procedure if your mother had killed your father or your father had killed yourmother. No, it was something that really happened. I suppose really I’d better tell you all about it. I mean, I can’t remember all about it but it was quite well known at the time. It was about – oh, I should think it was about twelve years ago at least. And, as I say, I can remember the names of the people because I did know them. The wife had been at school with me and I’d known her quite well. We’d been friends. It was a well-known case – you know, it was in all the papers and things like that. Sir Alistair Ravenscroft and Lady Ravenscroft. A very happy couple and he was a colonel or a general and she’d been with him and they’d been all over the world. Then they bought this house somewhere – I think it was abroad but I can’t remember. And then there were suddenly accounts of this case in the papers. Whether somebody else had killed them or whether they’d been assassinated or something, or whether they killed each other. I think it was a revolver that had been in the house for ages and – well, I’d better tell you as much as I can remember.’
Pulling herself slightly together, Mrs Oliver managed to give Poirot a more or less clear résumé of what she had been told. Poirot from time to time checked on a point here or there.
‘But why?’ he said finally, ‘why should this woman want to know this?’
‘Well, that’s what I want to find out,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I could get hold of Celia, I think. I mean, she still lives in London. Or perhaps it’s Cambridge she lives in, or Oxford – I think she’s got a degree and either lectures here or teaches somewhere, or does something like that. And – very modern, you know. Goes about with long-haired people in queer clothes. I don’t think she takes drugs. She’s quite all right and – just very occasionally I hear from her. I mean, she sends a card at Christmas and things like that. Well, one doesn’t think of one’s god-children all the time, and she’s quite twenty-five or -six.’
‘Not married?’
‘No. Apparently she is going to marry – or that is the idea – Mrs – What’s the name of that woman again? – oh yes, Mrs Brittle – no – Burton-Cox’s son.’
‘And Mrs Burton-Cox does not want her son to marry this girl because her father killed her mother or her mother killed her father?’
‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It’s the only thing I can think. But what does it matter which? If one of your parents killed the other, would it really matter to the mother of the boy you were going to marry, which way round it was?’
‘That is a thing one might have to think about,’ said Poirot. ‘It is – yes, you know it is quite interesting. I do not mean it is very interesting about Sir Alistair Ravenscroft or Lady Ravenscroft. I seem to remember vaguely – oh, some case like this one, or it might not have been the same one. But it is very strange about Mrs Burton-Cox. Perhaps she is a bit touched in the head. Is she very fond of her son?’
‘Probably,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Probably she doesn’t want him to marry this girl at all.’
‘Because she may have inherited a predisposition to murder the man she marries – or something of that kind?’
‘How do I know?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘She seems to think that I can tell her, and she’s really not told me enough, has she? But why, do you think? What’s behind it all? What does it mean?’
‘It would be almost interesting to find out,’ said Poirot.
‘Well, that’s why I’ve come to you,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You like finding out things. Things that you can’t see the reason for at first. I mean, that nobody can see the reason for.’
‘Do you think Mrs Burton-Cox has any preference?’ said Poirot.
‘You mean that she’d rather the husband killed the wife, or the wife killed the husband? I don’t think so.’
‘Well,’ said Poirot, ‘I see your dilemma. It is very intriguing. You come home from a party. You’ve been asked to do something that is very difficult, almost impossible, and – you wonder what is the proper way to deal with such a thing.’
‘Well, what would you think is the proper way?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘It is not easy for me to say,’ said Poirot. ‘I’m not a woman. A woman whom you do not really know, whom you had met at a party, has put this problem to you, asked you to do it, giving no discernible reason.’
‘Right,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Now what does Ariadne do? What does A do, in other words, if you were reading this as a problem in a newspaper?’
‘Well, I suppose,’ said Poirot, ‘there are three things that A could do. A could write a note to Mrs Burton-Cox and say, “I’m very sorry but I really feel I cannot oblige you in this matter,” or whatever words you like to put. B. You get into touch with your goddaughter and you tell her what has been asked of you by the mother of the boy, or the young man, or whatever he is, whom she is thinking of marrying. You will find out from her if she is really thinking of marrying this young man. If so, whether she has any idea or whether the young man has said anything to her about what his mother has got in her head. And there will be other interesting points, like finding out what this girl thinks of the mother of the young man she wants to marry. The third thing you could do,’ said Poirot, ‘and this really is what I firmly advise you to do, is . . .’
‘I know,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘one word.’
‘Nothing,’ said Poirot. ‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I know that is the simple and proper thing to do. Nothing. It’s darned cheek to go and tell a girl who’s my goddaughter what her future mother-in-law is going about saying, and asking people. But –’
‘I know,’ said Poirot, ‘it is human curiosity.’
‘I want to know why that odious woman came and said what she did to me,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Once I know that I could relax and forget all about it. But until I know that . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘you won’t sleep. You’ll wake up in the night and, if I know you, you will have the most extraordinary and extravagant ideas which presently, probably, you will be able to make into a most attractive crime story. A whodunit – a thriller. All sorts of things.’
‘Well, I suppose I could if I thought of it that way,’ said Mrs Oliver. Her eyes flashed slightly.
‘Leave it alone,’ said Poirot. ‘It will be a very difficult plot to undertake. It seems as though there could be no good reason for this.’
‘But I’d like to make sure that there is no good reason.’
‘Human curiosity,’ said Poirot. ‘Such a very interesting thing.’ He sighed. ‘To think what we owe to it throughout history. Curiosity. I don’t know who invented curiosity. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity. They wanted to know. Before them, as far as I can see, nobody wanted to know much. They just wanted to know what the rules of the country they were living in were, and how they could avoid having their heads cut off or being impaled on spikes or something disagreeable happening to them. But they either obeyed or disobeyed. They didn’t want to know why. But since then a lot of people have wanted to know why and all sorts of things have happened because of that. Boats, trains, flying machines and atom bombs and penicillin and cures for various illnesses. A little boy watches his mother’s kettle raising its lid because of the steam. And the next thing we know is we have railway trains, leading on in due course to railway strikes and all that. And so on and so on.’
‘Just tell me,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘do you think I’m a terrible nosey-parker?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Poirot. ‘On the whole I don’t think you are a woman of great curiosity. But I can qu
ite see you getting in a het-up state at a literary party, busy defending yourself against too much kindness, too much praise. You ran yourself instead into a very awkward dilemma, and took a very strong dislike to the person who ran you into it.’
‘Yes. She’s a very tiresome woman, a very disagreeable woman.’
‘This murder in the past of this husband and wife who were supposed to get on well together and no apparent signs of a quarrel was known. One never really read about any cause for it, according to you?’
‘They were shot. Yes, they were shot. It could have been a suicide pact. I think the police thought it was at first. Of course, one can’t find out about things all those years afterwards.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Poirot, ‘I think I could find out something about it.’
‘You mean – through the exciting friends you’ve got?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say the exciting friends, perhaps. Certainly there are knowledgeable friends, friends who could get certain records, look up the accounts that were given of the crime at the time, some access I could get to certain records.’
‘You could find out things,’ said Mrs Oliver hopefully, ‘and then tell me.’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘I think I could help you to know at any rate the full facts of the case. It’ll take a little time, though.’
‘I can see that if you do that, which is what I want you to do, I’ve got to do something myself. I’ll have to see the girl. I’ve got to see whether she knows anything about all this, ask her if she’d like me to give her mother-in-law-to-be a raspberry or whether there is any other way in which I can help her. And I’d like to see the boy she’s going to marry, too.’
‘Quite right,’ said Poirot. ‘Excellent.’
‘And I suppose,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘there might be people –’ She broke off, frowning.
‘I don’t suppose people will be very much good,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘This is an affair of the past. A cause célèbre perhaps at the time. But what is a cause célèbre when you come to think of it? Unless it comes to an astonishing dénouement, which this one didn’t. Nobody remembers it.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘that is quite true. There was a lot about it in the papers and mentions of it for some time, and then it just – faded out. Well, like things do now. Like that girl, the other day. You know, who left her home and they couldn’t find her anywhere. Well, I mean, that was five or six years ago and then suddenly a little boy, playing about in a sand heap or a gravel pit or something, suddenly came across her dead body. Five or six years later.’
‘That is true,’ said Poirot. ‘And it is true that knowing from that body how long it is since death and what happened on the particular day and going back over various events of which there is a written record, one may in the end turn up a murderer. But it will be more difficult in your problem since it seems the answer must be one of two things: that the husband disliked his wife and wanted to get rid of her, or that the wife hated her husband or else had a lover. Therefore, it might have been a passionate crime or something quite different. Anyway, there would be nothing, as it were, to find out about it. If the police could not find out at the time, then the motive must have been a difficult one, not easy to see. Therefore it has remained a nine days’ wonder, that is all.’
‘I suppose I can go to the daughter. Perhaps that is what that odious woman was getting me to do – wanted me to do. She thought the daughter knew – well, the daughter might have known,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Children do, you know. They know the most extraordinary things.’
‘Have you any idea how old this goddaughter of yours would have been at the time?’
‘Well, I have if I reckon it up, but I can’t say off-hand. I think she might have been nine or ten, but perhaps older, I don’t know. I think that she was away at school at the time. But that may be just my fancy, remembering back what I read.’
‘But you think Mrs Burton-Cox’s wish was to make you get information from the daughter? Perhaps the daughter knows something, perhaps she said something to the son, and the son said something to his mother. I expect Mrs Burton-Cox tried to question the girl herself and got rebuffed, but thought the famous Mrs Oliver, being both a godmother and also full of criminal knowledge, might obtain information. Though why it should matter to her, I still don’t see,’ said Poirot. ‘And it does not seem to me that what you call vaguely “people” can help after all this time.’ He added. ‘Would anybody remember?’
‘Well, that’s where I think they might,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘You surprise me,’ said Poirot, looking at her with a somewhat puzzled face. ‘Do people remember?’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I was really thinking of elephants.’
‘Elephants?’
As he had thought often before, Poirot thought that really Mrs Oliver was the most unaccountable woman. Why suddenly elephants?
‘I was thinking of elephants at the lunch yesterday,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Why were you thinking of elephants?’ said Poirot, with some curiosity.
‘Well, I was really thinking of teeth. You know, things one tries to eat, and if you’ve got some sort of false teeth – well, you can’t do it very well. You know, you’ve got to know what you can eat and what you can’t.’
‘Ah!’ said Poirot, with a deep sigh. ‘Yes, yes. The dentists, they can do much for you, but not everything.’
‘Quite so. And then I thought of – you know – our teeth being only bone and so not awfully good, and how nice it would be to be a dog, who has real ivory teeth. And then I thought of anyone else who has ivory teeth, and I thought about walruses and – oh, other things like that. And I thought about elephants. Of course when you think of ivory you do think of elephants, don’t you? Great big elephant tusks.’
‘That is very true,’ said Poirot, still not seeing the point of what Mrs Oliver was saying.
‘So I thought that what we’ve really got to do is to get at the people who are like elephants. Because elephants, so they say, don’t forget.’
‘I have heard the phrase, yes,’ said Poirot.
‘Elephants don’t forget,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You know, a story children get brought up on? How someone, an Indian tailor, stuck a needle or something in an elephant’s tusk. No. Not a tusk, his trunk, of course, an elephant’s trunk. And the next time the elephant came past he had a great mouthful of water and he splashed it out all over the tailor though he hadn’t seen him for several years. He hadn’t forgotten. He remembered. That’s the point, you see. Elephants remember. What I’ve got to do is – I’ve got to get in touch with some elephants.’
‘I do not know yet if I quite see what you mean,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Who are you classifying as elephants? You sound as though you were going for information to the Zoo.’
‘Well, it’s not exactly like that,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Not elephants, as elephants, but the way people up to a point would resemble elephants. There are some people who do remember. In fact, one does remember queer things, I mean there are a lot of things that I remember very well. They happened – I remember a birthday party I had when I was five, and a pink cake – a lovely pink cake. It had a sugar bird on it. And I remember the day my canary flew away and I cried. And I remember another day when I went into a field and there was a bull there and somebody said it would gore me, and I was terrified and wanted to run out of the field. Well, I remember that quite well. It was a Tuesday too. I don’t know why I should remember it was a Tuesday, but it was a Tuesday. And I remember a wonderful picnic with blackberries. I remember getting pricked terribly, but getting more blackberries than anyone else. It was wonderful! By that time I was nine, I think. But one needn’t go back as far as that. I mean, I’ve been to hundreds of weddings in my life, but when I look back on a wedding there are only two that I remember particularly. One where I was a bridesmaid. It took place in the New Forest, I remember, and I can’t remember who was there actually. I think it was a cousin of mi
ne getting married. I didn’t know her very well but she wanted a good many bridesmaids and, well, I came in handy, I suppose. But I know another wedding. That was a friend of mine in the Navy. He was nearly drowned in a submarine, and then he was saved, and then the girl he was engaged to, her people didn’t want her to marry him but then he did marry her after that and I was one of her bridesmaids at the marriage. Well, I mean, there’s always things you do remember.’
‘I see your point,’ said Poirot. ‘I find it interesting. So you will go à la recherche des éléphants?’
‘That’s right. I’d have to get the date right.’ ‘There,’ said Poirot, ‘I hope I may be able to help you.’
‘And then I’ll think of people I knew about at that time, people that I may have known who also knew the same friends that I did, who probably knew General What-not. People who may have known them abroad, but whom I also knew although I mayn’t have seen them for a good many years. You can look up people, you know, that you haven’t seen for a long time. Because people are always quite pleased to see someone coming up out of the past, even if they can’t remember very much about you. And then you naturally will talk about the things that were happening at that date, that you remember about.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Poirot. ‘I think you are very well equipped for what you propose to do. People who knew the Ravenscrofts either well or not very well; people who lived in the same part of the world where the things happened or who might have been staying there. More difficult, but I think one could get at it. And so, somehow or other one would try different things. Start a little talk going about what happened, what they think happened, what anyone else has ever told you about what might have happened. About any love-affairs the husband or wife had, about any money that somebody might have inherited. I think you could scratch up a lot of things.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I’m afraid really I’m just a nosey-parker.’
‘You’ve been given an assignment,’ said Poirot, ‘not by someone you like, not by someone you wish to oblige, but someone you entirely dislike. That does not matter. You are still on a quest, a quest of knowledge. You take your own path. It is the path of the elephants. The elephants may remember. Bon voyage,’ said Poirot.