“How could I have any idea? I shouldn’t have thought there was anyone, anyone living here, I mean. This is such a nice place. And the people living here are such nice people. I suppose it was just someone—some awful man who came in through one of the windows. Perhaps he’d taken drugs or something. He saw the light and that it was a party, so he gate-crashed.”
“You are quite sure that the assailant was male?”
“Oh, it must have been.” Mrs. Reynolds sounded shocked. “I’m sure it was. It couldn’t have been a woman, could it?”
“A woman might have been strong enough.”
“Well, I suppose in a way I know what you mean. You mean women are much more athletic nowadays and all that. But they wouldn’t do a thing like this, I’m sure. Joyce was only a child—thirteen years old.”
“I don’t want to distress you by staying here too long, Madame, or to ask you difficult questions. That already, I am sure, the police are doing elsewhere, and I don’t want to upset you by dwelling on painful facts. It was just concerning a remark that your daughter made at the party. You were not there yourself, I think?”
“Well, no, I wasn’t. I haven’t been very well lately and children’s parties can be very tiring. I drove them there, and then later I came back to fetch them. The three children went together, you know. Ann, that’s the older one, she is sixteen, and Leopold who is nearly eleven. What was it Joyce said that you wanted to know about?”
“Mrs. Oliver, who was there, will tell you what your daughter’s words were exactly. She said, I believe, that she had once seen a murder committed.”
“Joyce? Oh, she couldn’t have said a thing like that. What murder could she possibly have seen committed?”
“Well, everyone seems to think it was rather unlikely,” said Poirot. “I just wondered if you thought it likely. Did she ever speak to you about such a thing?”
“Seeing a murder? Joyce?”
“You must remember,” said Poirot, “that the term murder might have been used by someone of Joyce’s age in a rather loose way. It might have been just a question of somebody being run over by a car, or of children fighting together perhaps and one pushing another into a stream or over a bridge. Something that was not meant seriously, but which had an unfortunate result.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything like that happening here that Joyce could have seen, and she certainly never said anything about it to me. She must have been joking.”
“She was very positive,” said Mrs. Oliver. “She kept on saying that it was true and that she’d seen it.”
“Did anyone believe her?” asked Mrs. Reynolds.
“I don’t know,” said Poirot.
“I don’t think they did,” said Mrs. Oliver, “or perhaps they didn’t want to—er—well, encourage her by saying they believed it.”
“They were inclined to jeer at her and say she was making it all up,” said Poirot, less kindhearted than Mrs. Oliver.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice of them,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “As though Joyce would tell a lot of lies about things like that.” She looked flushed and indignant.
“I know. It seems unlikely,” said Poirot. “It was more possible, was it not, that she might have made a mistake, that she might have seen something she did think could have been described as a murder. Some accident, perhaps.”
“She’d have said something about it to me, if so, wouldn’t she?” said Mrs. Reynolds, still indignant.
“One would think so,” said Poirot. “She did not say so at any time in the past? You might have forgotten. Especially if it wasn’t really important.”
“When do you mean?”
“We don’t know,” said Poirot. “That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeks ago—or three years. She said she had been ‘quite young’ at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational happening round here that you can recall?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. You know, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that. But nothing important that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.”
“But if Joyce said positively she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?”
“She wouldn’t say so unless she really did think so, would she?” said Mrs. Reynolds. “I think she must have got something mixed up really.”
“Yes, it seems possible. I wonder,” he asked, “if I might speak to your two children who were also at the party?”
“Well, of course, though I don’t know what you can expect them to tell you. Ann’s doing her work for her ‘A’ levels upstairs and Leopold’s in the garden assembling a model aeroplane.”
Leopold was a solid, pudgy-faced boy entirely absorbed, it seemed, in mechanical construction. It was some few moments before he could pay attention to the questions he was being asked.
“You were there, weren’t you, Leopold? You heard what your sister said. What did she say?”
“Oh, you mean about the murder?” He sounded bored.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Poirot. “She said she saw a murder once. Did she really see such a thing?”
“No, of course she didn’t,” said Leopold. “Who on earth would she see murdered? It was just like Joyce, that.”
“How do you mean, it was just like her?”
“Showing off,” said Leopold, winding round a piece of wire and breathing forcefully through his nose as he concentrated. “She was an awfully stupid sort of girl,” he added. “She’d say anything, you know, to make people sit up and take notice.”
“So you really think she invented the whole thing?”
Leopold shifted his gaze to Mrs. Oliver.
“I expect she wanted to impress you a bit,” he said. “You write detective stories, don’t you? I think she was just putting it on so that you should take more notice of her than you did of the others.”
“That would also be rather like her, would it?” said Poirot.
“Oh, she’d say anything,” said Leopold. “I bet nobody believed her though.”
“Were you listening? Do you think anyone believed it?”
“Well, I heard her say it, but I didn’t really listen. Beatrice laughed at her and so did Cathie. They said ‘that’s a tall story,’ or something.”
There seemed little more to be got out of Leopold. They went upstairs to where Ann, looking rather more than her sixteen years, was bending over a table with various study books spread round her.
“Yes, I was at the party,” she said.
“You heard your sister say something about having seen a murder?”
“Oh yes, I heard her. I didn’t take any notice, though.”
“You didn’t think it was true?”
“Of course it wasn’t true. There haven’t been any murders here for ages. I don’t think there’s been a proper murder for years.”
“Then why do you think she said so?”
“Oh, she likes showing off. I mean she used to like showing off. She had a wonderful story once about having travelled to India. My uncle had been on a voyage there and she pretended she went with him. Lots of girls at school actually believed her.”
“So you don’t remember any what you call murders taking place here in the last three or four years?”
“No, only the usual kind,” said Ann. “I mean, the ones you read every day in the newspaper. And they weren’t actually here in Woodleigh Common. They were mostly in Medchester, I think.”
“Who do you think killed your sister, Ann? You must have known her friends, you would know any people who didn’t like her.”
“I can’t imagine who’d want to kill her. I suppose someone who was just batty. Nobody else would, would they?”
“There was no one who had—quarrelled with her or who did not get on with her?”
“You mean, did she have an enemy? I think that??
?s silly. People don’t have enemies really. There are just people you don’t like.”
As they departed from the room, Ann said:
“I don’t want to be nasty about Joyce, because she’s dead, and it wouldn’t be kind, but she really was the most awful liar, you know. I mean, I’m sorry to say things about my sister, but it’s quite true.”
“Are we making any progress?” said Mrs. Oliver as they left the house.
“None whatever,” said Hercule Poirot. “That is interesting,” he said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Oliver looked as though she didn’t agree with him.
Eight
It was six o’clock at Pine Crest. Hercule Poirot put a piece of sausage into his mouth and followed it up with a sip of tea. The tea was strong and to Poirot singularly unpalatable. The sausage, on the other hand, was delicious. Cooked to perfection. He looked with appreciation across the table to where Mrs. McKay presided over the large brown teapot.
Elspeth McKay was as unlike her brother, Superintendent Spence, as she could be in every way. Where he was broad, she was angular. Her sharp, thin face looked out on the world with shrewd appraisal. She was thin as a thread, yet there was a certain likeness between them. Mainly the eyes and the strongly marked line of the jaw. Either of them, Poirot thought, could be relied upon for judgement and good sense. They would express themselves differently, but that was all. Superintendent Spence would express himself slowly and carefully as the result of due thought and deliberation. Mrs. McKay would pounce, quick and sharp, like a cat upon a mouse.
“A lot depends,” said Poirot, “upon the character of this child. Joyce Reynolds. This is what puzzles me most.”
He looked inquiringly at Spence.
“You can’t go by me,” said Spence, “I’ve not lived here long enough. Better ask Elspeth.”
Poirot looked across the table, his eyebrows raised inquiringly. Mrs. McKay was sharp as usual in response.
“I’d say she was a proper little liar,” she said.
“Not a girl whom you’d trust and believe what she said?”
Elspeth shook her head decidedly.
“No, indeed. Tell a tall tale, she would, and tell it well, mind you. But I’d never believe her.”
“Tell it with the object of showing off?”
“That’s right. They told you the Indian story, didn’t they? There’s many as believed that, you know. Been away for the holidays, the family had. Gone abroad somewhere. I don’t know if it was her father and mother or her uncle and aunt, but they went to India and she came back from those holidays with tall tales of how she’d been taken there with them. Made a good story of it, she did. A Maharajah and a tiger shoot and elephants—ah, it was fine hearing and a lot of those around her here believed it. But I said straight along, she’s telling more than ever happened. Could be, I thought at first, she was just exaggerating. But the story got added to every time. There were more tigers, if you know what I mean. Far more tigers than could possibly happen. And elephants, too, for that matter. I’d known her before, too, telling tall stories.”
“Always to get attention?”
“Aye, you’re right there. She was a great one for getting attention.”
“Because a child told a tall story about a travel trip she never took,” said Superintendent Spence, “you can’t say that every tall tale she told was a lie.”
“It might not be,” said Elspeth, “but I’d say the likelihood was that it usually would be.”
“So you think that if Joyce Reynolds came out with a tale that she’d seen a murder committed, you’d say she was probably lying and you wouldn’t believe the story was true?”
“That’s what I’d think,” said Mrs. McKay.
“You might be wrong,” said her brother.
“Yes,” said Mrs. McKay. “Anyone may be wrong. It’s like the old story of the boy who cried ‘Wolf, wolf,’ and he cried it once too often, when it was a real wolf, and nobody believed him, and so the wolf got him.”
“So you’d sum it up—”
“I’d still say the probabilities are that she wasn’t speaking the truth. But I’m a fair woman. She may have been. She may have seen something. Not quite so much as she said she saw, but something.”
“And so she got herself killed,” said Superintendent Spence. “You’ve got to mind that, Elspeth. She got herself killed.”
“That’s true enough,” said Mrs. McKay. “And that’s why I’m saying maybe I’ve misjudged her. And if so, I’m sorry. But ask anyone who knew her and they’ll tell you that lies came natural to her. It was a party she was at, remember, and she was excited. She’d want to make an effect.”
“Indeed, they didn’t believe her,” said Poirot.
Elspeth McKay shook her head doubtfully.
“Who could she have seen murdered?” asked Poirot.
He looked from brother to sister.
“Nobody,” said Mrs. McKay with decision.
“There must have been deaths here, say, over the last three years.”
“Oh that, naturally,” said Spence. “Just the usual—old folks or invalids or what you’d expect—or maybe a hit-and-run motorist—”
“No unusual or unexpected deaths?”
“Well—” Elspeth hesitated. “I mean—”
Spence took over.
“I’ve jotted a few names down here.” He pushed the paper over to Poirot. “Save you a bit of trouble, asking questions around.”
“Are these suggested victims?”
“Hardly as much as that. Say within the range of possibility.”
Poirot read aloud.
“Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe. Charlotte Benfield. Janet White. Lesley Ferrier—” He broke off, looked across the table and repeated the first name. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe.
“Could be,” said Mrs. McKay. “Yes, you might have something there.” She added a word that sounded like “opera.”
“Opera?” Poirot looked puzzled. He had heard of no opera.
“Went off one night, she did,” said Elspeth, “was never heard of again.”
“Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe?”
“No, no. The opera girl. She could have put something in the medicine easily enough. And she came into all the money, didn’t she—or so she thought at the time?”
Poirot looked at Spence for enlightenment.
“And never been heard of since,” said Mrs. McKay. “These foreign girls are all the same.”
The significance of the word “opera” came to Poirot.
“An au pair girl,” he said.
“That’s right. Lived with the old lady, and a week or two after the old lady died, the au pair girl just disappeared.”
“Went off with some man, I’d say,” said Spence.
“Well, nobody knew of him if so,” said Elspeth. “And there’s usually plenty to talk about here. Usually know just who’s going with who.”
“Did anybody think there had been anything wrong about Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s death?” asked Poirot.
“No. She’d got heart trouble. Doctor attended her regularly.”
“But you headed your list of possible victims with her, my friend?”
“Well, she was a rich woman, a very rich woman. Her death was not unexpected but it was sudden. I’d say offhand that Dr. Ferguson was surprised, even if only slightly surprised. I think he expected her to live longer. But doctors do have these surprises. She wasn’t one to do as the doctor ordered. She’d been told not to overdo things, but she did exactly as she liked. For one thing, she was a passionate gardener, and that doesn’t do heart cases any good.”
Elspeth McKay took up the tale.
“She came here when her health failed. She was living abroad before. She came here to be near her nephew and niece, Mr. and Mrs. Drake, and she bought the Quarry House. A big Victorian house which included a disused quarry which attracted her as having possibilities. She spent thousands of pounds on turning that quarry into a sunk garden or whatever they call the thing. Ha
d a landscape gardener down from Wisley or one of these places to design it. Oh, I can tell you, it’s something to look at.”
“I shall go and look at it,” said Poirot. “Who knows—it might give me ideas.”
“Yes, I would go if I were you. It’s worth seeing.”
“And she was rich, you say?” said Poirot.
“Widow of a big shipbuilder. She had packets of money.”
“Her death was not unexpected because she had a heart condition, but it was sudden,” said Spence. “No doubts arose that it was due to anything but natural causes. Cardiac failure, or whatever the longer name is that doctors use. Coronary something.”
“No question of an inquest ever arose?”
Spence shook his head.
“It has happened before,” said Poirot. “An elderly woman told to be careful, not to run up and down stairs, not to do any intensive gardening, and so on and so on. But if you get an energetic woman who’s been an enthusiastic gardener all her life and done as she liked in most ways, then she doesn’t always treat these recommendations with due respect.”
“That’s true enough. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe made a wonderful thing of the quarry—or rather, the landscape artist did. Three or four years they worked at it, he and his employer. She’d seen some garden, in Ireland I think it was, when she went on a National Trust tour visiting gardens. With that in mind, they fairly transformed the place. Oh yes, it has to be seen to be believed.”
“Here is a natural death, then,” said Poirot, “certified as such by the local doctor. Is that the same doctor who is here now? And whom I am shortly going to see?”
“Dr. Ferguson—yes. He’s a man of about sixty, good at his job and well-liked here.”
“But you suspect that her death might have been murder? For any other reason than those that you’ve already given me?”
“The opera girl, for one thing,” said Elspeth.
“Why?”
“Well, she must have forged the Will. Who forged the Will if she didn’t?”
“You must have more to tell me,” said Poirot. “What is all this about a forged Will?”