“Ah yes. Do you remember what girls there were there?”
“Well, the Reynolds were there. Poor old Joyce, of course. The one who got done in and her elder sister Ann. Frightful girl. Puts no end of side on. Thinks she’s terribly clever. Quite sure she’s going to pass all her ‘A’ levels. And the small kid, Leopold, he’s awful,” said Desmond. “He’s a sneak. He eavesdrops. Tells tales. Real nasty bit of goods. And there was Beatrice Ardley and Cathie Grant, who is dim as they make and a couple of useful women, of course. Cleaning women, I mean. And the authoress woman—the one who brought you down here.”
“Any men?”
“Oh, the vicar looked in if you count him. Nice old boy, rather dim. And the new curate. He stammers when he’s nervous. Hasn’t been here long. That’s all I can think of now.”
“And then I understand you heard this girl—Joyce Reynolds—saying something about having seen a murder committed.”
“I never heard that,” said Desmond. “Did she?”
“Oh, they’re saying so,” said Nicholas. “I didn’t hear her, I suppose I wasn’t in the room when she said it. Where was she—when she said that, I mean?”
“In the drawing room.”
“Yes, well, most of the people were in there unless they were doing something special. Of course Nick and I,” said Desmond, “were mostly in the room where the girls were going to look for their true loves in mirrors. Fixing up wires and various things like that. Or else we were out on the stairs fixing fairy lights. We were in the drawing room once or twice putting the pumpkins up and hanging up one or two that had been hollowed out to hold lights in them. But I didn’t hear anything of that kind when we were there. What about you, Nick?”
“I didn’t,” said Nick. He added with some interest, “Did Joyce really say that she’d seen a murder committed? Jolly interesting, you know, if she did, isn’t it?”
“Why is it so interesting?” asked Desmond.
“Well, it’s E.S.P., isn’t it? I mean there you are. She saw a murder committed and within an hour or two she herself was murdered. I suppose she had a sort of vision of it. Makes you think a bit. You know these last experiments they’ve been having seems as though there is something you can do to help it by getting an electrode, or something of that kind, fixed up to your jugular vein. I’ve read about it somewhere.”
“They’ve never got very far with this E.S.P. stuff,” said Desmond, scornfully. “People sit in different rooms looking at cards in a pack or words with squares and geometrical figures on them. But they never see the right things, or hardly ever.”
“Well, you’ve got to be pretty young to do it. Adolescents are much better than older people.”
Hercule Poirot, who had no wish to listen to this high-level scientific discussion, broke in.
“As far as you can remember, nothing occurred during your presence in the house which seemed to you sinister or significant in any way. Something which probably nobody else would have noticed, but which might have come to your attention.”
Nicholas and Desmond frowned hard, obviously racking their brains to produce some incident of importance.
“No, it was just a lot of clacking and arranging and doing things.”
“Have you any theories yourself?”
Poirot addressed himself to Nicholas.
“What, theories as to who did Joyce in?”
“Yes. I mean something that you might have noticed that could lead you to a suspicion on perhaps purely psychological grounds.”
“Yes, I can see what you mean. There might be something in that.”
“Whittaker for my money,” said Desmond, breaking into Nicholas’s absorption in thought.
“The schoolmistress?” asked Poirot.
“Yes. Real old spinster, you know. Sex-starved. And all that teaching, bottled up among a lot of women. You remember, one of the teachers got strangled a year or two ago. She was a bit queer, they say.”
“Lesbian?” asked Nicholas, in a man of the world voice.
“I shouldn’t wonder. D’you remember Nora Ambrose, the girl she lived with? She wasn’t a bad looker. She had a boy friend or two, so they said, and the girl she lived with got mad with her about it. Someone said she was an unmarried mother. She was away for two terms with some illness and then came back. They’d say anything in this nest of gossip.”
“Well, anyway, Whittaker was in the drawing room most of the morning. She probably heard what Joyce said. Might have put it into her head, mightn’t it?”
“Look here,” said Nicholas, “supposing Whittaker—what age is she, do you think? Forty odd? Getting on for fifty—Women do go a bit queer at that age.”
They both looked at Poirot with the air of contented dogs who have retrieved something useful which master has asked for.
“I bet Miss Emlyn knows if it is so. There’s not much she doesn’t know, about what goes on in her school.”
“Wouldn’t she say?”
“Perhaps she feels she has to be loyal and shield her.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’d do that. If she thought Elizabeth Whittaker was going off her head, well then, I mean, a lot of the pupils at the school might get done in.”
“What about the curate?” said Desmond hopefully. “He might be a bit off his nut. You know, original sin perhaps, and all that, and the water and the apples and the things and then—look here, I’ve got a good idea now. Suppose he is a bit barmy. Not been here very long. Nobody knows much about him. Supposing it’s the Snapdragon put it into his head. Hell fire! All those flames going up! Then, you see, he took hold of Joyce and he said ‘come along with me and I’ll show you something,’ and he took her to the apple room and he said ‘kneel down.’ He said ‘This is baptism,’ and pushed her head in. See? It would all fit. Adam and Eve and the apple and hell fire and the Snapdragon and being baptised again to cure you of sin.”
“Perhaps he exposed himself to her first,” said Nicholas hopefully. “I mean, there’s always got to be a sex background to all these things.”
They both looked with satisfied faces to Poirot.
“Well,” said Poirot, “you’ve certainly given me something to think about.”
Sixteen
Hercule Poirot looked with interest at Mrs. Goodbody’s face. It was indeed perfect as a model for a witch. The fact that it almost undoubtedly went with extreme amiability of character did not dispel the illusion. She talked with relish and pleasure.
“Yes, I was up there right enough, I was. I always does the witches round here. Vicar he complimented me last year and he said as I’d done such a good job in the pageant as he’d give me a new steeple hat. A witch’s hat wears out just like anything else does. Yes, I was right up there that day. I does the rhymes, you know. I mean the rhymes for the girls, using their own Christian name. One for Beatrice, one for Ann and all the rest of it. And I gives them to whoever is doing the spirit voice and they recite it out to the girl in the mirror, and the boys, Master Nicholas and young Desmond, they send the phoney photographs floating down. Make me die of laughing, some of it does. See those boys sticking hair all over their faces and photographing each other. And what they dress up in! I saw Master Desmond the other day, and what he was wearing you’d hardly believe. Rose-coloured coat and fawn breeches. Beat the girls hollow, they do. All the girls can think of is to push their skirts higher and higher, and that’s not much good to them because they’ve got to put on more underneath. I mean what with the things they call body stockings and tights, which used to be for chorus girls in my day and none other—they spend all their money on that. But the boys—my word, they look like kingfishers and peacocks or birds of paradise. Well, I like to see a bit of colour and I always think it must have been fun in those old historical days as you see on the pictures. You know, everybody with lace and curls and cavalier hats and all the rest of it. Gave the girls something to look at, they did. And doublet and hose. All the girls could think of in historical times, as far as I can see,
was to put great balloon skirts on, crinolines they called them later, and great ruffles around their necks! My grandmother, she used to tell me that her young ladies—she was in service, you know, in a good Victorian family—and her young ladies (before the time of Victoria I think it was)—it was the time the King what had a head like a pear was on the throne—Silly Billy, wasn’t it, William IVth—well then, her young ladies, I mean my grandmother’s young ladies, they used to have muslin gowns very long down to their ankles, very prim but they used to damp their muslins with water so they stuck to them. You know, stuck to them so it showed everything there was to show. Went about looking ever so modest, but it tickled up the gentlemen, all right, it did.
“I lent Mrs. Drake my witch ball for the party. Bought that witch ball at a jumble sale somewhere. There it is hanging up there now by the chimney, you see? Nice bright dark blue. I keep it over my door.”
“Do you tell fortunes?”
“Mustn’t say I do, must I?” she chuckled. “The police don’t like that. Not that they mind the kind of fortunes I tell. Nothing to it, as you might say. Place like this you always know who’s going with who, and so that makes it easy.”
“Can you look in your witch ball, look in there, see who killed that little girl, Joyce?”
“You got mixed up, you have,” said Mrs. Goodbody. “It’s a crystal ball you look in to see things, not a witch ball. If I told you who I thought it was did it, you wouldn’t like it. Say it was against nature, you would. But lots of things go on that are against nature.”
“You may have something there.”
“This is a good place to live, on the whole. I mean, people are decent, most of them, but wherever you go, the devil’s always got some of his own. Born and bred to it.”
“You mean—black magic?”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Mrs. Goodbody was scornful. “That’s nonsense, that is. That’s for people who like to dress up and do a lot of tomfoolery. Sex and all that. No, I mean those that the devil has touched with his hand. They’re born that way. The sons of Lucifer. They’re born so that killing don’t mean nothing to them, not if they profit by it. When they want a thing, they want it. And they’re ruthless to get it. Beautiful as angels, they can look like. Knew a little girl once. Seven years old. Killed her little brother and sister. Twins they were. Five or six months old, no more. Stifled them in their prams.”
“That took place here in Woodleigh Common?”
“No, no, it wasn’t in Woodleigh Common. I came across that up in Yorkshire, far as I remember. Nasty case. Beautiful little creature she was, too. You could have fastened a pair of wings on her, let her go on a platform and sing Christmas hymns, and she’d have looked right for the part. But she wasn’t. She was rotten inside. You’ll know what I mean. You’re not a young man. You know what wickedness there is about in the world.”
“Alas!” said Poirot. “You are right. I do know only too well. If Joyce really saw a murder committed—”
“Who says she did?” said Mrs. Goodbody.
“She said so herself.”
“That’s no reason for believing. She’s always been a little liar.” She gave him a sharp glance. “You won’t believe that, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “I do believe it. Too many people have told me so, for me to continue disbelieving it.”
“Odd things crop up in families,” said Mrs. Goodbody. “You take the Reynolds, for example. There’s Mr. Reynolds. In the estate business he is. Never cut much ice at it and never will. Never got on much, as you’d say. And Mrs. Reynolds, always getting worried and upset about things. None of their three children take after their parents. There’s Ann, now, she’s got brains. She’s going to do well with her schooling, she is. She’ll go to college, I shouldn’t wonder, maybe get herself trained as a teacher. Mind you, she’s pleased with herself. She’s so pleased with herself that nobody can stick her. None of the boys look at her twice. And then there was Joyce. She wasn’t clever like Ann, nor as clever as her little brother Leopold, either, but she wanted to be. She wanted always to know more than other people and to have done better than other people and she’d say anything to make people sit up and take notice. But don’t you believe any single word she ever said was true. Because nine times out of ten it wasn’t.”
“And the boy?”
“Leopold? Well, he’s only nine or ten, I think, but he’s clever all right. Clever with his fingers and other ways, too. He wants to study things like physics. He’s good at mathematics, too. Quite surprised about it they were, in school. Yes, he’s clever. He’ll be one of these scientists, I expect. If you ask me, the things he does when he’s a scientist and the things he’ll think of—they’ll be nasty, like atom bombs! He’s one of the kind that studies and are ever so clever and think up something that’ll destroy half the globe, and all us poor folk with it. You beware of Leopold. He plays tricks on people, you know, and eavesdrops. Finds out all their secrets. Where he gets all his pocket money from I’d like to know. It isn’t from his mother or his father. They can’t afford to give him much. He’s got lots of money always. Keeps it in a drawer under his socks. He buys things. Quite a lot of expensive gadgets. Where does he get the money from? That’s what I’d like to know. Finds people’s secrets out, I’d say, and makes them pay him for holding his tongue.”
She paused for breath.
“Well, I can’t help you, I’m afraid, in any way.”
“You have helped me a great deal,” said Poirot. “What happened to the foreign girl who is said to have run away?”
“Didn’t go far, in my opinion. ‘Ding dong dell, pussy’s in the well.’ That’s what I’ve always thought, anyway.”
Seventeen
“Excuse me, Ma’am, I wonder if I might speak to you a minute.”
Mrs. Oliver, who was standing on the verandah of her friend’s house looking out to see if there were any signs of Hercule Poirot approaching—he had notified her by telephone that he would be coming round to see her about now—looked round.
A neatly attired woman of middle age was standing, twisting her hands nervously in their neat cotton gloves.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Oliver, adding an interrogation point by her intonation.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, I’m sure, Madam, but I thought—well, I thought….”
Mrs. Oliver listened but did not attempt to prompt her. She wondered what was worrying the woman so much.
“I take it rightly as you’re the lady who writes stories, don’t I? Stories about crimes and murders and things of that kind.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I’m the one.”
Her curiosity was now aroused. Was this a preface for a demand for an autograph or even a signed photograph? One never knew. The most unlikely things happened.
“I thought as you’d be the right one to tell me,” said the woman.
“You’d better sit down,” said Mrs. Oliver.
She foresaw that Mrs. Whoever-it-was—she was wearing a wedding ring so she was a Mrs.—was the type who takes some time in getting to the point. The woman sat down and went on twisting her hands in their gloves.
“Something you’re worried about?” said Mrs. Oliver, doing her best to start the flow.
“Well, I’d like advice, and it’s true. It’s about something that happened a good while ago and I wasn’t really worried at the time. But you know how it is. You think things over and you wish you knew someone you could go and ask about it.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Oliver, hoping to inspire confidence by this entirely meretricious statement.
“Seeing the things what have happened lately, you never do know, do you?”
“You mean—?”
“I mean what happened at the Hallowe’en party, or whatever they called it. I mean it shows you there’s people who aren’t dependable here, doesn’t it? And it shows you things before that weren’t as you thought they were. I mean, they mightn’t have been what you thought they were,
if you understand what I mean.”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Oliver, adding an even greater tinge of interrogation to the monosyllable. “I don’t think I know your name,” she added.
“Leaman. Mrs. Leaman. I go out and do cleaning to oblige ladies here. Ever since my husband died, and that was five years ago. I used to work for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, the lady who lived up at the Quarry House, before Colonel and Mrs. Weston came. I don’t know if you ever knew her.”
“No,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I never knew her. This is the first time I have been down to Woodleigh Common.”
“I see. Well, you wouldn’t know much about what was going on perhaps at that time, and what was said at that time.”
“I’ve heard a certain amount about it since I’ve been down here this time,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“You see, I don’t know anything about the law, and I’m worried always when it’s a question of law. Lawyers, I mean. They might tangle it up and I wouldn’t like to go to the police. It wouldn’t be anything to do with the police, being a legal matter, would it?”
“Perhaps not,” said Mrs. Oliver, cautiously.
“You know perhaps what they said at the time about the codi—I don’t know, some word like codi. Like the fish I mean.”
“A codicil to the Will?” suggested Mrs. Oliver.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s what I’m meaning. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, you see, made one of these cod—codicils and she left all her money to the foreign girl what looked after her. And it was a surprise, that, because she’d got relations living here, and she’d come here anyway to live near them. She was very devoted to them, Mr. Drake, in particular. And it struck people as pretty queer, really. And then the lawyers, you see, they began saying things. They said as Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe hadn’t written the codicil at all. That the foreign pair girl had done it, seeing as she got all the money left to her. And they said as they were going to law about it. That Mrs. Drake was going to counterset the Will—if that is the right word.”