“I still live in London. I involved myself here at the request of a friend, Mrs. Oliver. You remember Mrs. Oliver?”
Spence raised his head, closed his eyes and appeared to reflect.
“Mrs. Oliver? Can’t say that I do.”
“She writes books. Detective stories. You met her, if you will throw your mind back, during the time that you persuaded me to investigate the murder of Mrs. McGinty. You will not have forgotten Mrs. McGinty?”
“Good lord, no. But it was a long time ago. You did me a good turn there, Poirot, a very good turn. I went to you for help and you didn’t let me down.”
“I was honoured—flattered—that you should come to consult me,” said Poirot. “I must say that I despaired once or twice. The man we had to save—to save his neck in those days I believe, it is long ago enough for that—was a man who was excessively difficult to do anything for. The kind of standard example of how not to do anything useful for himself.”
“Married that girl, didn’t he? The wet one. Not the bright one with the peroxide hair. Wonder how they got on together. Have you ever heard about it?”
“No,” said Poirot. “I presume all goes well with them.”
“Can’t see what she saw in him.”
“It is difficult,” said Poirot, “but it is one of the great consolations in nature that a man, however unattractive, will find that he is attractive—to some woman. One can only say or hope that they married and lived happily ever afterwards.”
“Shouldn’t think they lived happily ever afterwards if they had to have Mother to live with them.”
“No, indeed,” said Poirot. “Or Stepfather,” he added.
“Well,” said Spence, “here we are talking of old days again. All that’s over. I always thought that man, can’t remember his name now, ought to have run an undertaking parlour. Had just the face and manner for it. Perhaps he did. The girl had some money, didn’t she? Yes, he’d have made a very good undertaker. I can see him, all in black, calling for orders for the funeral. Perhaps he can even have been enthusiastic over the right kind of elm or teak or whatever they use for coffins. But he’d never have made good selling insurance or real estate. Anyway, don’t let’s harp back.” Then he said suddenly, “Mrs. Oliver. Ariadne Oliver. Apples. Is that how she’s got herself mixed up in this? That poor child got her head shoved under water in a bucket of floating apples, didn’t she, at a party? Is that what interested Mrs. Oliver?”
“I don’t think she was particularly attracted because of the apples,” said Poirot, “but she was at the party.”
“Do you say she lived here?”
“No, she does not live here. She was staying with a friend, a Mrs. Butler.”
“Butler? Yes, I know her. Lives down not far from the church. Widow. Husband was an airline pilot. Has a daughter. Rather nice-looking girl. Pretty manners. Mrs. Butler’s rather an attractive woman, don’t you think so?”
“I have as yet barely met her, but, yes, I thought she was very attractive.”
“And how does this concern you, Poirot? You weren’t here when it happened?”
“No. Mrs. Oliver came to me in London. She was upset, very upset. She wanted me to do something.”
A faint smile showed on Superintendent Spence’s face.
“I see. Same old story. I came up to you, too, because I wanted you to do something.”
“And I have carried things one step further,” said Poirot. “I have come to you.”
“Because you want me to do something? I tell you, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Oh yes there is. You can tell me all about the people. The people who live here. The people who went to that party. The fathers and mothers of the children who were at the party. The school, the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors. Somebody, during a party, induced a child to kneel down, and perhaps, laughing, saying: ‘I’ll show you the best way to get hold of an apple with your teeth. I know the trick of it.’ And then he or she—whoever it was—put a hand on that girl’s head. There wouldn’t have been much struggle or noise or anything of that kind.”
“A nasty business,” said Spence. “I thought so when I heard about it. What do you want to know? I’ve been here a year. My sister’s been here longer—two or three years. It’s not a big community. It’s not a particularly settled one either. People come and go. The husband has a job in either Medchester or Great Canning, or one of the other places round about. Their children go to school here. Then perhaps the husband changes his job and they go somewhere else. It’s not a fixed community. Some of the people have been here a long time, Miss Emlyn, the schoolmistress, has, Dr. Ferguson has. But on the whole, it fluctuates a bit.”
“One supposes,” said Hercule Poirot, “that having agreed with you that this was a nasty business, I might hope that you would know who are the nasty people here.”
“Yes,” said Spence. “It’s the first thing one looks for, isn’t it? And the next thing one looks for is a nasty adolescent in a thing of this kind. Who wants to strangle or drown or get rid of a lump of a girl of thirteen? There doesn’t seem to have been any evidence of a sexual assault or anything of that kind, which would be the first thing one looks for. Plenty of that sort of thing in every small town or village nowadays. There again, I think there’s more of it than there used to be in my young day. We had our mentally disturbed, or whatever they call them, but not so many as we have now. I expect there are more of them let out of the place they ought to be kept safe in. All our mental homes are too full; overcrowded, so doctors say ‘Let him or her lead a normal life. Go back and live with his relatives,’ etc. And then the nasty bit of goods, or the poor afflicted fellow, whichever way you like to look at it, gets the urge again and another young woman goes out walking and is found in a gravel pit, or is silly enough to take lifts in a car. Children don’t come home from school because they’ve accepted a lift from a stranger, although they’ve been warned not to. Yes, there’s a lot of that nowadays.”
“Does that quite fit the pattern we have here?”
“Well, it’s the first thing one thinks of,” said Spence. “Somebody was at the party who had the urge, shall we say. Perhaps he’d done it before, perhaps he’d only wanted to do it. I’d say roughly that there might be some past history of assaulting a child somewhere. As far as I know, nobody’s come up with anything of that kind. Not officially, I mean. There were two in the right age group at the party. Nicholas Ransom, nice looking lad, seventeen or eighteen. He’d be the right age. Comes from the East Coast or somewhere like that, I think. Seems all right. Looks normal enough, but who knows? And there’s Desmond, remanded once for a psychiatric report, but I wouldn’t say there was much to it. It’s got to be someone at the party, though of course I suppose anyone could have come in from outside. A house isn’t usually locked up during a party. There’s a side door open, or a side window. One of our half-baked people, I suppose could have come along to see what was on and sneaked in. A pretty big risk to take. Would a child agree, a child who’d gone to a party, to go playing apple games with anyone she didn’t know? Anyway, you haven’t explained yet, Poirot, what brings you into it. You said it was Mrs. Oliver. Some wild idea of hers?”
“Not exactly a wild idea,” said Poirot. “It is true that writers are prone to wild ideas. Ideas, perhaps, which are on the far side of probability. But this was simply something that she heard the girl say.”
“What, the child Joyce?”
“Yes.”
Spence leant forward and looked at Poirot inquiringly.
“I will tell you,” said Poirot.
Quietly and succinctly he recounted the story as Mrs. Oliver had told it to him.
“I see,” said Spence. He rubbed his moustache. “The girl said that, did she? Said she’d seen a murder committed. Did she say when or how?”
“No,” said Poirot.
“What led up to it?”
“Some remark, I think, about the murders in Mrs. Oliver’s books. Somebod
y said something about it to Mrs. Oliver. One of the children, I think, to the effect that there wasn’t enough blood in her books or enough bodies. And then Joyce spoke up and said she’d seen a murder once.”
“Boasted of it? That’s the impression you’re giving me.”
“That’s the impression Mrs. Oliver got. Yes, she boasted of it.”
“It mightn’t have been true.”
“No, it might not have been true at all,” said Poirot.
“Children often make these extravagant statements when they wish to call attention to themselves or to make an effect. On the other hand, it might have been true. Is that what you think?”
“I do not know,” said Poirot. “A child boasts of having witnessed a murder. Only a few hours later, that child is dead. You must admit that there are grounds for believing that it might—it’s a far-fetched idea perhaps—but it might have been cause and effect. If so, somebody lost no time.”
“Definitely,” said Spence. “How many were present at the time the girl made her statement re murder, do you know exactly?”
“All that Mrs. Oliver said was that she thought there were about fourteen or fifteen people, perhaps more. Five or six children, five or six grown-ups who were running the show. But for exact information I must rely on you.”
“Well, that will be easy enough,” said Spence. “I don’t say I know offhand at the moment, but it’s easily obtained from the locals. As to the party itself, I know pretty well already. A preponderance of women, on the whole. Fathers don’t turn up much at children’s parties. But they look in, sometimes, or come to take their children home. Dr. Ferguson was there, the vicar was there. Otherwise, mothers, aunts, social workers, two teachers from the school. Oh, I can give you a list—and roughly about fourteen children. The youngest not more than ten—running on into teenagers.”
“And I suppose you would know the list of probables amongst them?” said Poirot.
“Well, it won’t be so easy now if what you think is true.”
“You mean you are no longer looking for a sexually disturbed personality. You are looking instead for somebody who has committed a murder and got away with it, someone who never expected it to be found out and who suddenly got a nasty shock.”
“Blest if I can think who it could have been, all the same,” said Spence. “I shouldn’t have said we had any likely murderers round here. And certainly nothing spectacular in the way of murders.”
“One can have likely murderers anywhere,” said Poirot, “or shall I say unlikely murderers, but nevertheless murderers. Because unlikely murderers are not so prone to be suspected. There is probably not very much evidence against them, and it would be a rude shock to such a murderer to find that there had actually been an eyewitness to his or her crime.”
“Why didn’t Joyce say anything at the time? That’s what I’d like to know. Was she bribed to silence by someone, do you think? Too risky surely.”
“No,” said Poirot. “I gather from what Mrs. Oliver mentioned that she didn’t recognize that it was a murder she was looking at at the time.”
“Oh, surely that’s most unlikely,” said Spence.
“Not necessarily,” said Poirot. “A child of thirteen was speaking. She was remembering something she’d seen in the past. We don’t know exactly when. It might have been three or even four years previously. She saw something but she didn’t realize its true significance. That might apply to a lot of things you know, mon cher. Some rather peculiar car accident. A car where it appeared that the driver drove straight at the person who was injured or perhaps killed. A child might not realize it was deliberate at the time. But something someone said, or something she saw or heard a year or two later might awaken her memory and she’d think perhaps: ‘A or B or X did it on purpose.’ ‘Perhaps it was really a murder, not just an accident.’ And there are plenty of other possibilities. Some of them I will admit suggested by my friend, Mrs. Oliver, who can easily come up with about twelve different solutions to everything, most of them not very probable but all of them faintly possible. Tablets added to a cup of tea administered to someone. Roughly that sort of thing. A push perhaps on a dangerous spot. You have no cliffs here, which is rather a pity from the point of view of likely theories. Yes, I think there could be plenty of possibilities. Perhaps it is some murder story that the girl reads which recalls to her an incident. It may have been an incident that puzzled her at the time, and she might, when she reads the story, say: ‘Well, that might have been so-and-so and so-and-so. I wonder if he or she did it on purpose?’ Yes, there are a lot of possibilities.”
“And you have come here to inquire into them?”
“It would be in the public interest, I think, don’t you?” said Poirot.
“Ah, we’re to be public spirited, are we, you and I?”
“You can at least give me information,” said Poirot. “You know the people here.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Spence. “And I’ll rope in Elspeth. There’s not much about people she doesn’t know.”
Six
Satisfied with what he had achieved, Poirot took leave of his friend.
The information he wanted would be forthcoming—he had no doubt as to that. He had got Spence interested. And Spence, once set upon a trail, was not one to relinquish it. His reputation as a retired high-ranking officer of the C.I.D. would have won him friends in the local police departments concerned.
And next—Poirot consulted his watch—he was to meet Mrs. Oliver in exactly ten minutes’ time outside a house called Apple Trees. Really, the name seemed uncannily appropriate.
Really, thought Poirot, one didn’t seem able to get away from apples. Nothing could be more agreeable than a juicy English apple—And yet here were apples mixed up with broomsticks, and witches, and old-fashioned folklore, and a murdered child.
Following the route indicated to him, Poirot arrived to the minute outside a red brick Georgian style house with a neat beech hedge enclosing it, and a pleasant garden showing beyond.
He put his hand out, raised the latch and entered through the wrought iron gate which bore a painted board labelled “Apple Trees.” A path led up to the front door. Looking rather like one of those Swiss clocks where figures come out automatically of a door above the clock face, the front door opened and Mrs. Oliver emerged on the steps.
“You’re absolutely punctual,” she said breathlessly. “I was watching for you from the window.”
Poirot turned and closed the gate carefully behind him. Practically on every occasion that he had met Mrs. Oliver, whether by appointment or by accident, a motif of apples seemed to be introduced almost immediately. She was either eating an apple or had been eating an apple—witness an apple core nestling on her broad chest—or was carrying a bag of apples. But today there was no apple in evidence at all. Very correct, Poirot thought approvingly. It would have been in very bad taste to be gnawing an apple here, on the scene of what had been not only a crime but a tragedy. For what else can it be but that? thought Poirot. The sudden death of a child of only thirteen years old. He did not like to think of it, and because he did not like to think of it he was all the more decided in his mind that that was exactly what he was going to think of until by some means or other, light should shine out of the darkness and he should see clearly what he had come here to see.
“I can’t think why you wouldn’t come and stay with Judith Butler,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Instead of going to a fifth-class guest house.”
“Because it is better that I should survey things with a certain degree of aloofness,” said Poirot. “One must not get involved, you comprehend.”
“I don’t see how you can avoid getting involved,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’ve got to see everyone and talk to them, haven’t you?”
“That most decidedly,” said Poirot.
“Who have you seen so far?”
“My friend, Superintendent Spence.”
“What’s he like nowadays?” said Mrs. Oliver.
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“A good deal older than he was,” said Poirot.
“Naturally,” said Mrs. Oliver, “what else would you expect? Is he deafer or blinder or fatter or thinner?”
Poirot considered.
“He has lost a little weight. He wears spectacles for reading the paper. I do not think he is deaf, not to any noticeable extent.”
“And what does he think about it all?”
“You go too quickly,” said Poirot.
“And what exactly are you and he going to do?”
“I have planned my programme,” said Poirot. “First I have seen and consulted with my old friend. I asked him to get me, perhaps, some information that would not be easy to get otherwise.”
“You mean the police here will be his buddies and he’ll get a lot of inside stuff from them?”
“Well, I should not put it exactly like that, but yes, those are the lines along which I have been thinking.”
“And after that?”
“I come to meet you here, Madame. I have to see just where this thing happened.”
Mrs. Oliver turned her head and looked up at the house.
“It doesn’t look the sort of house there’d be a murder in, does it?” she said.
Poirot thought again: What an unerring instinct she has!
“No,” he said, “it does not look at all that sort of a house. After I have seen where, then I go with you to see the mother of the dead child. I hear what she can tell me. This afternoon my friend Spence is making an appointment for me to talk with the local inspector at a suitable hour. I should also like a talk with the doctor here. And possibly the headmistress at the school. At six o’clock I drink tea and eat sausages with my friend Spence and his sister again in their house and we discuss.”