Hallowe'en Party hp-36

by Agatha Christie

  He came to a halt to read a tablet erected on a grave contemporary with several others near it, all dating within two or three years back. It bore a simple inscription, "Sacred to the Memory of Hugo Edmund Drake, beloved husband of Rowena Arabella Drake, who departed this life March the 20th 19- He giveth his beloved sleep."

  It occurred to Poirot, fresh from the impact of the dynamic Rowena Drake, that perhaps sleep might have come in welcome guise to the late Mr. Drake.

  An alabaster urn had been fixed in position there and contained the remains of flowers. An elderly gardener, obviously employed to tend the graves of good citizens departed this life, approached Poirot in the pleasurable hopes of a few minutes' conversation while he laid his hoe and his broom aside.

  "Stranger in these parts, I think," he said, "aren't you, sir?"

  "It is very true," said Poirot. "I am a stranger with you as were my fathers before me."

  "Ah, aye. We've got that text somewhere or sum mat very like it. Over down the other corner, it is." He went on, "He was a nice gentleman, he were, Mr. Drake. A cripple, you know. He had that infant paralysis, as they call it, though as often as not it isn't infants as suffer from it.

  It's grown-ups. Men and women too.

  My wife, she had an aunt, who caught it in Spain, she did. Went there with a tour, she did, and bathed somewhere in some river. And they said afterwards as it was the water infection, but I don't think they know much. Doctors don't, if you ask me. Still, it's made a lot of difference nowadays. All this inoculation they give the children, and that. Not nearly as many cases as there were. Yes, he were a nice gentleman and didn't complain, though he took it hard, being a cripple, I mean. He'd been a good sportsman, he had, in his time. Used to bat for us here in the village team. Many a six he's hit to the boundary.

  Yes, he were a nice gentleman."

  "He died of an accident, did he not?"

  "That's right. Crossing the road, towards twilight this was. One of these cars come along, a couple of these young thugs in it with beards growing up to their ears. That's what they say. Didn't stop either.

  Went on. Never looked to see.

  Abandoned the car somewhere in a car park twenty miles away. Wasn't their own car either. Pinched from a car park somewhere.

  Ah, it's terrible, a lot of those accidents nowadays. And the police often can't do anything about them. Very devoted to him, his wife was.

  Took it very hard, she did. She comes here, nearly every week, brings flowers and puts them here. Yes, they were a very devoted couple. If you ask me, she won't stay here much longer."

  "Really? But she has a very nice house here."

  "Yes, oh yes. And she does a lot in the village, you know. All these things women's institutes and teas and various societies and all the rest of it. Runs a lot of things, she does. Runs a bit too many for some people. Bossy, you know. Bossy and interfering, some people say.

  But the vicar relies on her. She starts things.

  Women's activities and all the rest of it.

  Gets up tours and outings. Ah yes. Often thought myself, though I wouldn't like to say it to my wife, that all these good works as ladies does, doesn't make you any fonder of the ladies themselves. Always know best, they do. Always telling you what you should do and what you shouldn't do. No freedom. Not much freedom anywhere nowadays."

  "Yet you think Mrs. Drake may leave here?"

  "I shouldn't wonder if she didn't go away and live somewhere abroad.

  They liked being abroad, used to go there for holidays."

  "Why do you think she wants to leave here?"

  A sudden rather roguish smile appeared on the old man's face.

  "Well, I'd say, you know, that's she's done all she can do here. To put it scriptural, she needs another vineyard to work in. She needs more good works. Aren't no more good works to be done round here.

  She's done all there is, and even more than there need be, so some think. Yes."

  "She needs a new field in which to labour?" suggested Poirot.

  "You've hit it. Better settle somewhere else where she can put a lot of things right and bully a lot of other people. She's got us where she wants us here and there's not much more for her to do."

  "It may be," said Poirot.

  "Hasn't even got her husband to look after. She looked after him a good few years. That gave her a kind of object in life, as you might say. What with that and a lot of outside activities, she could be busy all the time. She's the type likes being busy all the time. And she's no children, more's the pity. So it's my view as she'll start all over again somewhere else."

  "You may have something there. Where would she go?"

  "I couldn't say as to that. One of these Riviery places, maybe-or there's them as goes to Spain or Portugal. Or Greece-I've heard her speak of Greece-Islands. Mrs. Butler, she's been to Greece on one of them tours. Hellenic, they call them, which sounds more like fire and brimstone to me."

  Poirot smiled.

  "The isles of Greece," he murmured.

  Then he asked: "Do you like her?"

  "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."

  TWO pairs of eyes looked at Poirot uneasily.

  "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 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 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.