Hallowe'en Party hp-36

by Agatha Christie

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

  "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 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. Leaman. A slight whine came into her voice, a whine with which Mrs. Oliver had been acquainted several times in the past.

  Mrs. Leaman, 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. Llewellyn-Smythe-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. Llewellyn-Smythe, she tells us to come close and she says 'This is my Will, this is.' She's got a bit of blotting paper over the top part of it but the bottom of it's quite clear. She said 'I'm writing something here on this piece of paper and I want you to be a witness of what I've written and of my signature at the end of it.' So she starts writing along the page. Scratchy pen she always used, she wouldn't use Biros or anything like that. And she writes two or three lines of writing and then she signed her name, and then she says to me, 'Now, Mrs. Leaman you write your name there. Your name and your address' and then she says to Jim 'And now you write your name underneath there, and your address too. There. That'll do. Now you've seen me write that and you've seen my signature and you've written your names, both of you, to say that's that.' And then she says 'That's all. Thank you very much.' So we goes out of the room. Well, I didn't think nothing more of it at the time, but I wondered a bit. And it happened as I turns my head just as I was going out of the room. You see the door doesn't always latch properly. You have to give it a pull, to make it click. And so I was doing that-I wasn't really looking, if you know what I mean-"

  "I know what you mean," said Mrs. Oliver, in a non-committal voice.

  "And so I sees Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe pull herself up from the chair-she'd got arthritis and had pain moving about sometimes-and go over to the bookcase and she pulled out a book and she puts that piece of paper she'd just signed-in an envelope it was-in one of the books.

  A big tall book it was in the bottom shelf.

  And she sticks it back in the bookcase.

  Well, I never thought of it again, as you might say. No, really I didn't. But when all this fuss came up, well, of course I felt -at least, I-" She came to a stop.

  Mrs. Oliver had one of her useful intuitions.

  "But surely," she said, "you didn't wait as long as all that-"

  "Well, I'll tell you the truth, I will. I'll admit I was curious. After all, I mean, you want to know when you've signed anything, what you've signed, don't you? I mean, it's only human nature."

 
; "Yes," said Mrs. Oliver, "it's only human nature."

  Curiosity, she thought, was a highly component part in Mrs. Leaman human nature.

  "So I will admit that next day, when Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had driven into Medchester and I was doing her bedroom as usual-a bed sitting room she had because she had to rest a lot. And I thinks "Well, one ought really to know when you've signed a thing, what it is you've signed." I mean they always say with these hire purchase things, you should read the small print."

  "Or in this case, the handwriting," suggested Mrs. Oliver.

  "So I thought, well, there's no harm-it's not as though I was taking anything. I mean to say I'd had to sign my name there, and I thought I really ought to know what I'd signed. So I had a look along the bookshelves. They needed dusting anyway.

  And I found the one. It was on the bottom shelf. It was an old book, a sort of Queen Victoria's kind of book. And I found this envelope with a folded paper in it and the title of the book said Enquire Within upon Everything. And it seemed then as though it was, sort of meant, if you know what I mean?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "It was clearly meant. And so you took out the paper and looked at it."

  "That's right. Madam. And whether I did wrong or not I don't know.

  But anyway, there it was. It was a legal document all right. On the last page there was the writing what she'd made the morning before. New writing with a new scratchy pen she was using. It was clear enough to read, though, although she had a rather spiky handwriting."

  "And what did it say?" said Mrs. Oliver, her curiosity now having joined itself to that previously felt by Mrs. Leaman.

  "Well, it said something like, as far as I remember-the exact words I'm not quite sure of-something about a codicil and that after the legacies mentioned in her Will, she bequeathed her entire fortune to Olga-I'm not sure of the surname, it began with an S. Seminoff, or something like that-in consideration of her great kindness and attention to her during her illness. And there it was written down and she'd signed it and I'd signed it, and Jim had signed it. So I put it back where it was because I shouldn't like Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe to know that I'd been poking about in her things.