Quot;PLEASE BRING MRS. BUTLER 10 page

"Mrs. Drake? I wouldn't say I exactly like her. She's a good woman.

Does her duty to her neighbour and all that-but she'll always need a power of neighbours to do her duty to-and if you ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty. Tells me how to prune my roses which I know well enough myself. Always at me to grow some newfangled kind of vegetable. Cabbage is good enough for me, and I'm sticking to cabbage."

Poirot smiled. He said, "I must be on my way. Can you tell me where Nicholas Ransome and Desmond Holland live?"

"Past the church, third house on the left. They board with Mrs. Brand, go into Medchester Technical every day to study.

They'll be home by now."

He gave Poirot an interested glance.

"So that's the way your mind is working, is it? There's some already as thinks the same."

"No, I think nothing as yet. But they were among those present that is all."

As he took leave and walked away, he mused, "Among those present I have come nearly to the end of my list." r | iWO pairs of eyes looked at Poirot | uneasily.

AL "I don't see what else we can tell you. We've both been interviewed by the police, M. Poirot."

Poirot looked from one boy to the other.

They would not have described themselves as boys; their manner was carefully adult.

So much so that if one shut one's eyes, their conversation could have passed as that of elderly club men Nicholas was eighteen. Desmond was sixteen.

"To oblige a friend, I make my inquiries of those present on a certain occasion. Not the Hallowe'en party itself-the preparations for that party. You were both active in these."

"Yes, we were."

"So far," Poirot said, "I have interviewed cleaning women, I have had the benefit of police views, of talks to a doctor -the doctor who examined the body first -have talked to a school-teacher who was present, to the headmistress of the school, to distraught relatives, have heard much of the village gossip-By the way, I understand you have a local witch here?"

The two young men confronting him both laughed.

"You mean Mother Goodbody. Yes, she came to the party and played the part of the witch." «I have come now," said Poirot, "to the younger generation, to those of acute eyesight and acute hearing and who have up-to-date scientific knowledge and shrewd philosophy. I am eager-very eager-to hear your views on this matter."

Eighteen and sixteen, he thought to himself, looking at the two boys confronting him. Youths to the police, boys to him, adolescents to newspaper reporters. Call them what you will. Products of to-day.

Neither of them, he judged, at all stupid, even if they were not quite of the high mentality that he had just suggested to them by way of a flattering sop to start the conversation. They had been at the party.

They had also been there earlier in the day to do helpful offices for Mrs. Drake.

They had climbed up step-ladders, they had placed yellow pumpkins in strategic positions, they had done a little electrical work on fairy lights, one or other of them had produced some clever effects in a nice batch of phoney photographs of possible husbands as imagined hopefully by teenage girls. They were also, incidentally, of the right age to be in the forefront of suspects in the mind of Inspector Raglan and, it seemed, in the view of an elderly gardener.

The percentage of murders committed by this age group had been increasing in the last few years. Not that Poirot inclined to that particular suspicion himself, but anything was possible. It was even possible that the killing which had occurred two or three years ago might have been committed by a boy, youth, or adolescent of fourteen or twelve years of age. Such cases had occurred in recent newspaper reports.

Keeping all these possibilities in mind he pushed them, as it were, behind a curtain for the moment, and concentrated instead on his own appraisement of these two, their looks, their clothes, their manner, their voices and so on and so forth in the Hercule Poirot manner, masked behind a foreign shield of nattering words and much increased foreign mannerisms, so that they themselves should feel agreeably contemptuous of him, though hiding that under politeness and good manners. For both of them had excellent manners. Nicholas, the eighteen-year-old, was good-looking, wearing side-burns, hair that grew fairly far down his neck, and a rather funereal outfit of black. Not as a mourning for the recent tragedy, but what was obviously his personal taste in modern clothes. The younger one was wearing a rose-coloured velvet coat, mauve trousers and a kind of frilled shirting. They both obviously spent a good deal of money on their clothes which were certainly not purchased locally and were probably paid for by themselves and not by their parents or guardians.

Desmond^s hair was ginger coloured and there was a good deal of fluffy profusion about it.

"You were there in the morning or afternoon of the party, I understand, helping with the preparations for it?"

"Early afternoon," corrected Nicholas.

"What sort of preparations were you helping with? I have heard of preparation from several people, but I am not quite clear. They don't all agree."

"A good deal of the lighting, for one thing."

"Getting up on steps for things that had to be put high up."

"I understand there were some very good photographic results too."

Desmond immediately dipped into his pocket and took out a folder from which he proudly brought certain cards.

"We faked up these beforehand," he said.

"Husbands for the girls," he explained.

"They're all alike, birds are.

They all want something up-to-date. Not a bad assortment, are they?"

He handed a few specimens to Poirot who looked with interest at a rather fuzzy reproduction of a ginger-bearded young man and another young man with an aureole of hair, a third one whose hair came to his knees almost, and there were a few assorted whiskers, and other facial adornments.

"Made "em pretty well all different. It wasn't bad, was it?"

"You had models, I suppose?"

"Oh, they're all ourselves. Just make-up, you know. Nick and I got 'em done. Some Nick took of me and some I took of him. Just varied what you might call the hair motif."

"Very clever," said Poirot.

"We kept 'em a bit out of focus, you know, so that they'd look more like spirit pictures, as you might say."

The other boy said, "Mrs. Drake was very pleased with them.

She congratulated us. They made her laugh too. It was mostly electrical work we did at the house. You know, fitting up a light or two so that when the girls sat with the mirror one or other of us could take up a position, you'd only to bob up over a screen and the girl would see a face in the mirror with, mind you, the right kind of hair.

Beard or whiskers or something or other."

"Did they know it was you and your friend?"

"Oh, I don't think so for a moment. Not at the party, they didn't.

They knew we had been helping at the house with some things, but I don't think they recognised us in the mirrors. Weren't smart enough, I should say. Besides, we'd got sort of an instant make-up to change the image. First me, then Nicholas. The girls squeaked and shrieked.

Damned funny."

"And the people who were there in the afternoon? I do not ask you to remember who was at the party."

"At the party, there must have been about thirty, I suppose, knocking about.

In the afternoon there was Mrs. Drake, of course, and Mrs. Butler.

One of the school-teachers, Whittaker I think her name is. Mrs.

Flatterbut or some name like that. She's the organist's sister or wife.

Dr. Ferguson's dispenser. Miss Lee; it's her afternoon off and she came along and helped too and some of the kids came to make themselves useful if they could. Not that I think they were very useful. The girls just hung about and giggled."

"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 Arm.

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 ESP, 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 ESP stuff," said Nicholas, 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 school-mistress?" 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 Ernlyn 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."

HERCULE POI ROT 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 Arm 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 round 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 crops 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 Arm, 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 Arm, 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 anyway."

"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.9 That's what I've always thought, anyway."

"I ^ XCUSE me, Ma'am, I wonder if r"^ I might speak to you a minute." * J 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. lear nan Mrs. lear nan 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. LlewellynSmythe, 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 that 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 counter set the Will, if that is the right word."

"The lawyers were going to contest the Will. Yes, I believe I did hear something about that," said Mrs. Oliver encouragingly.

"And you know something about it, perhaps?"

"I didn't mean no harm," said Mrs. lear nan A slight whine came into her voice, a whine with which Mrs.

Oliver had been acquainted several times in the past.

Mrs. lear nan she thought, was presumably an unreliable woman in some ways, a snooper perhaps, a listener at doors.

"I didn't say nothing at the time," said Mrs. lear nan "because you see I didn't rightly know. But you see I thought it was queer and I'll admit to a lady like you, who knows what these things are, that I did want to know the truth about it. I'd worked for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe for some time, I had, and one wants to know how things happened."

"Quite," said Mrs. Oliver.

"If I thought I'd done what I oughtn't to have done, well, of course, I'd have owned up to it. But I didn't think as I'd done anything really wrong, you see. Not at the time, if you understand," she added.

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Oliver, "I'm sure I shall understand. Go on. It was about this codicil."

"Yes, you see one day Mrs. LlewellynSmythe-she hadn't felt too good that day and so she asked us to come in. Me that was, and young Jim who helps down in the garden and brings the sticks in and the coals, and things like that. So we went into her room, where she was, and she'd got papers before her there on the desk. And she turns to this foreign girl-Miss Olga we all called her-and said "You go out of the room now, dear, because you mustn't be mixed up in this part of it," or something like that. So Miss Olga, she goes out of the room and Mrs.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 527