by Mark Place
"And are you going to marry her son?"
"Well, we've considered the question. I don't know. You knew what she was talking about?"
"Well, I know what I suppose anyone would know who was acquainted with your family."
"That my father and mother, after he had retired from India, bought a house in the country, that they went out one day for a walk together, a walk along the cliff path. That they were found there, both of them shot. There was a revolver lying there. It belonged to my father. He had had two revolvers in the house, it seems. There was nothing to say whether it was a suicide pact or whether my father killed my mother and then shot himself, or my mother shot my father and then killed herself. But perhaps you know all this already."
"I know it after a fashion," said Mrs. Oliver. "It happened I think about twelve - fifteen years ago."
"About that, yes."
"And you were about twelve or fourteen at the time."
"Yes..."
"I don't know much about it," said Mrs. Oliver. "I wasn't even in England myself. At the time - I was on a lecture tour in America. I simply read it in the paper. It was given a lot of space in the press because it was difficult to know the real facts - there did not seem to be any motive. Your father and mother had always been happy together and lived on good terms. I remember that being mentioned. I was interested because I had known your father and mother when we were all much younger, especially your mother. I was at school with her. After that our ways led apart. I married and went somewhere and she married and went out, as far as I remember, to India or someplace like that, with her soldier husband. But she did ask me to be godmother to one of her children. You. Since your mother and father were living abroad, I saw very little of them for many years. I saw you occasionally."
"Yes. You used to take me out from school. I remember that. Gave me some specially good feeds, too. Lovely food you gave me."
"You were an unusual child. You liked caviar."
"I still do," said Celia, "though I don't get it offered to me very often."
"I was shocked to read this mention of things in the paper. Very little was said. I gathered it was a kind of open verdict. No particular motive. Nothing to show. No accounts of quarrel, there was no suggestion of there having been an attack from outside. I was shocked by it," said Mrs. Oliver, "and then I forgot it. I wondered once or twice what could have led to it, but as I was not in the country - I was doing a tour at the time, in America as I've said - the whole thing passed out of my mind. It was some years later when I next saw you and naturally I did not speak of it to you."
"No," said Celia, "I appreciate that."
"All through life," Mrs. Oliver said, "one comes across very curious things that happen to friends or to acquaintances. With friends, of course, very often you have some idea of what led to - whatever the incident might be. But if it's a long time since you've heard them discussed or talked to them, you are quite in the dark and there is nobody that you can show too much curiosity to about the occasion."
"You were always very nice to me," said Celia. "You sent me nice presents, a particularly nice present when I was twenty-one, I remember."
"That's the time when girls need some extra cash in hand," said Mrs. Oliver,
"because there are so many things they want to do and have just then."
"Yes, I always thought you were an understanding person and not - well, you know what some people are like. Always questioning, and asking things and wanting to know all about you. You never asked questions. You used to take me out to shows, or give me nice meals, and talk to me as though, well, as though everything was all right and you were just a distant relation of the family. I've appreciated that. I've known so many nosey-parkers in my life."
"Yes. Everyone comes up against that sooner or later," said Mrs. Oliver. "But you see now what upset me at this particular party. It seems an extraordinary thing to be asked to do by a complete stranger like Mrs. Burton-Cox. I couldn't imagine why she should want to know. It was no business of hers, surely. Unless -"
"You thought it was, unless it was something to do with my marrying Desmond. Desmond is her son."
"Yes, I suppose it could have been, but I couldn't see how, or what business it was of hers."
"Everything's her business. She's nosey - in fact she's what you said she was, an odious woman."
"But I gather Desmond isn't odious."
"No. No, I'm very fond of Desmond and Desmond is fond of me. I don't like his mother."
"Does he like his mother?"
"I don't really know," said Celia. "I suppose he might like her - anything's possible, isn't it? Anyway, I don't want to get married at present. I don't feel like it. And there are a lot of - oh, well, difficulties, you know there are a lot of fors and againsts. It must have made you feel rather curious," said Celia. "I mean, why Mrs. Nosey Cox should have asked you to try and worm things out of me and then run along and spill it all to her - Are you asking me that particular question, by the way?"
"You mean, am I asking you whether you think or know that your mother killed your father or your father killed your mother, or whether it was a double suicide? Is that what you mean?"
"Well, I suppose it is, in a way. But I think I have to ask you also, if you were wanting to ask me that, whether you were doing so with the idea of giving Mrs. Burton-Cox the information you obtained, in case you did receive any information from me."
"No," said Mrs. Oliver. "Quite decidedly no. I shouldn't dream of telling the odious woman anything of the sort. I shall tell her quite firmly that it is not any business of hers or of mine, and that I have no intention of obtaining information from you and retailing it to her."
"Well, that's what I thought," said Celia. "I thought I could trust you to that extent. I don't mind telling you what I do know. Such as it is."
"You needn't. I'm not asking you for it."
"No. I can quite see that. But I'll give you the answer all the same. The answer is - nothing."
"Nothing," said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully.
"No. I wasn't there at the time. I mean, I wasn't in the house at the time. I can't remember now quite where I was. I think I was at school in Switzerland, or else I was staying with a school friend during the school holidays. You see, it's all rather mixed up in my mind by now."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Oliver doubtfully, "it wouldn't be likely that you would know. Considering your age at the time."
"I'd be interested," said Celia, "to know just what you feel about that. Do you think it would be likely for me to know all about it? Or not to know?"
"Well, you said you weren't in the house. If you'd been in the house at the time then, yes, I think it would be quite likely that you might know something. Children do. Teen-agers do. People of that age know a lot, they see a lot, they don't talk about it very often. But they do know things that the outside world wouldn't know, and they do know things that they wouldn't be willing, shall we say, to tell to police inquirers."
"No. You're being quite sensible. I wouldn't've known. I don't think I did know. I don't think I had any idea. What did the police think? You don't mind my asking you that, I hope, because I should be interested. You see, I never read any account of the inquest or anything like that or the inquiry into it."
"I think they thought it was a double suicide, but I don't think they ever had any inkling as to the reason for it."
"Do you want to know what I think?"
"Not if you don't want me to know," said Mrs. Oliver.
"But I expect you are interested. After all, you write crime stories about people who kill themselves or kill each other, or who have reasons for things. I should think you would be interested."
"Yes, I'll admit that," said Mrs. Oliver. "But the last thing I want to do is to offend you by seeking for information which is no business of mine to know."
"Well, I wondered," said Celia. "I've often wondered from time to time why, and how, but I knew very little about things. I mean, about
how things were going on at home. The holidays before that I had been away on exchange on the continent, so I hadn't seen my mother and father really very recently. I mean, they'd come out to Switzerland and taken me out from school once or twice, but that was all. They seemed much as usual, but they seemed older. My father, I think, was ailing. I mean, getting feebler. I don't know if it was heart or what it was. One doesn't really think about that. My mother, too, she was going rather nervy. Not hypochondriac, but a little inclined to fuss over her health. They were on good terms, quite friendly. There wasn't anything that I noticed. Only sometimes one would, well, sometimes one gets ideas. One doesn't think they're true or necessarily right at all, but one just wonders if"
"I don't think we'd better talk about it anymore," said Mrs. Oliver. "We don't need to know or find out. The whole thing's over and done with. The verdict was quite satisfactory. No means to show, or motive, or anything like that. But there was no question of your father having deliberately killed your mother or of your mother having deliberately killed your father."
"If I thought which was most likely," said Celia, "I would think my father killed my mother. Because, you see, it's more natural for a man to shoot anyone, I think. To shoot a woman for whatever reason it was. I don't think a woman, or a woman like my mother, would be so likely to shoot my father. If she wanted him dead, I should think she might have chosen some other method. But I don't think either of them wanted the other one dead."
"So it could have been an outsider."
"Yes, but what does one mean by an outsider?" said Celia.
"Who else was there living in the house?"
"A housekeeper, elderly, rather blind and rather deaf, a foreign girl, an au pair girl, she'd been my governess once - she was awfully nice - she came back to look after my mother, who had been in hospital - And there was an aunt whom I never loved much. I don't think any of them could have been likely to have any grudge against my parents. There was nobody who profited by their deaths, except, I suppose, myself and my brother Edward, who was four years younger than I was. We inherited what money there was, but it wasn't very much. My father had his pension, of course. My mother had a small income of her own. No. There was nothing there of any importance."
"I'm sorry," said Mrs. Oliver. "I'm sorry if I've distressed you by asking all this."
"You haven't distressed me. You've brought it up in my mind a little and it has interested me. Because, you see, I am of an age now that I wish I did know. I knew and was fond of them, as one is fond of parents. Not passionately, just normally, but I realize I don't know what they were really like. What their life was like. What mattered to them. I don't know anything about it all. I wish I did know. It's like a burr, something sticking into you, and you can't leave it alone. Yes. I would like to know. Because then, you see, I shouldn't have to think about it anymore."
"So you do? Think about it?"
Celia looked at her for a moment. She seemed to be trying to come to a decision.
"Yes," she said, "I think about it nearly all the time. I'm getting to have a thing about it, if you know what I mean. And Desmond feels the same."
Chapter 5
OLD SINS HAVE LONG SHADOWS
Hercule Poirot let the revolving door wind him round. Arresting the swing of it with one hand, he stepped forward into the small restaurant. There were not many people there. It was an unfashionable time of day, but his eyes soon saw the man he had come to meet. The square, solid bulk of Superintendent Spence rose from the table in one corner. "Good," he said. "You have arrived here. You had no difficulty in finding it?"
"None at all. Your instructions were most adequate."
"Let me introduce you now. This is Chief Superintendent Garroway. Monsieur Hercule Poirot."
Garroway was a tall, thin man with a lean, ascetic face, grey hair which left a small round spot like a tonsure, so that he had a faint resemblance to an ecclesiastic. "This is wonderful," said Poirot.
"I am retired now, of course," said Garroway, "but one remembers. Yes, certain things one remembers, although they are past and gone, and the general public probably remembers nothing about them. But yes."
Hercule Poirot very nearly said "Elephants do remember," but checked himself in time. That phrase was so associated in his mind now with Mrs. Ariadne Oliver that he found it difficult to restrain it from his tongue in many clearly unsuitable categories.
"I hope you have not been getting impatient," said Superintendent Spence. He pulled forward a chair, and the three men sat down. A menu was brought. Superintendent Spence, who was clearly addicted to this particular restaurant, offered tentative words of advice. Garroway and Poirot made their choice. Then, leaning back a little in their chairs and sipping glasses of sherry, they contemplated each other for some minutes in silence before speaking. "I must apologize to you," said Poirot, "I really must apologize to you for coming to you with my demands about an affair which is over and done with."
"What interests me," said Spence, "is what has interested you. I thought first that it was unlike you to have this wish to delve in the past. Is it connected with something that has occurred nowadays, or is it sudden curiosity about a rather inexplicable, perhaps, case? Do you agree with that?" He looked across the table.
"Inspector Garroway," he said, "as he was at that time, was the officer in charge of the investigations into the Ravenscroft shooting. He was an old friend of mine and so I had no difficulty in getting in touch with him."
"And he was kind enough to come here today," said Poirot, "simply because I must admit to a curiosity which I am sure I have no right to feel about an affair that is past and done with."
"Well, I wouldn't say that," said Garroway. "We all have interests in certain cases that are past. Did Lizzie Borden really kill her father and mother with an axe? There are people who still do not think so. Who killed Charles Bravo and why? There are several different ideas, mostly not very well founded. But still people try to find alternative explanations."
His keen, shrewd eyes looked across at Poirot. "And Monsieur Poirot, if I am not mistaken, has occasionally shown a leaning towards looking into cases, going back, shall we say, for murder, back into the past, twice, perhaps three times."
"Three times, certainly," said Superintendent Spence. "Once, I think I am right, by request of a Canadian girl."
"That is so," said Poirot. "A Canadian girl, very vehement, very passionate, very forceful, who had come here to investigate a murder for which her mother had been condemned to death, although she died before sentence was carried out. Her daughter was convinced that her mother had been innocent."
"And you agreed?" said Garroway.
"I did not agree," said Poirot, "when she first told me of the matter. But she was very vehement and very sure."
"It was natural for a daughter to wish her mother to have been innocent and to try and prove against all appearances that she was innocent," said Spence.
"It was just a little more than that," said Poirot. "She convinced me of the type of woman her mother was."
"A woman incapable of murder?"
"No," said Poirot, "it would be very difficult, and I am sure both of you agree with me, to think there is anyone quite incapable of murder if one knows what kind of person they are, what led up to it. But in that particular case, the mother never protested her innocence. She appeared to be quite content to be sentenced. That was curious to begin with. Was she a defeatist? It did not seem so. When I began to inquire, it became clear that she was not a defeatist. She was, one would say, almost the opposite of it."
Garroway looked interested. He leaned across the table, twisting a bit of bread off the roll on his plate. "And was she innocent?"
"Yes," said Poirot. "She was innocent."
"And that surprised you?"
"Not by the time I realized it," said Poirot. "There were one or two things - one thing in particular - that showed she could not have been guilty. One fact that nobody had appreciated at the time. Knowing
that, one had only to look at what there was, shall we say, on the menu in the way of looking elsewhere." Grilled trout was put in front of them at this point.
"There was another case, too, where you looked into the past, not quite in the same way," continued Spence. "A girl who said at a party that she had once seen a murder committed."
"There again one had to - how shall I put it? - step backward instead of forward," said Poirot. "Yes, that is very true."
"And had the girl seen the murder committed?"
"No," said Poirot, "because it was the wrong girl. This trout is delicious," he added with appreciation.
"They do all fish dishes very well here," said Superintendent Spence. He helped himself from the sauce boat proffered to him.
"A most delicious sauce," he added.
Silent appreciation of food filled the next three minutes.
"When Spence came along to me," said Superintendent Garroway, "asking if I remembered anything about the Ravenscroft case, I was intrigued and delighted at once."
"You haven't forgotten all about it?"
"Not the Ravenscroft case. It wasn't an easy case to forget about."
"You agree," said Poirot, "that there were discrepancies about it? Lack of proof, alternative solutions?"
"No," said Garroway, "nothing of that kind. All the evidence recorded the visible facts. Deaths of which there were several former examples, yes, all plain sailing. And yet -"
"Well?" said Poirot.
"And yet it was all wrong," said Garroway.
"Ah," said Spence. He looked interested.
"That's what you felt once, isn't it?" said Poirot, turning to him.
"In the case of Mrs. McGinty. Yes."
"You weren't satisfied," said Poirot, "when that extremely difficult young man was arrested. He had every reason for doing it, he looked as though he had done it, everyone thought he had done it. But you knew he hadn't done it. You were so sure of it that you came to me and told me to go along to see what I could find out."
"See if you could help - and you did help, didn't you?" said Spence. Poirot sighed. "Fortunately, yes. But what a tiresome young man he was. If ever a young man deserved to be hung, not because he had done a murder but because he wouldn't help anyone to prove that he hadn't. Now we have the Ravenscroft case. You say, Superintendent Garroway, something was wrong?"
