Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  "Oh, no," said Zélie Meauhourat, "she loved her sister. She loved her with a very deep and protective love. That I do know. It was she who always asked that her sister should come and make her home with her. She wanted to save her sister from unhappiness, from danger too, because her sister would often relapse into fits of rather dangerous rages. She was frightened sometimes. Well, you know enough. You have already said that there was a strange dislike of children from which Dolly suffered."

  "You mean that she disliked Celia?"

  "No, no, not Celia. The other one. Edward. The younger one. Twice Edward had dangers of an accident. Once some kind of tinkering with a car and once some outburst of violent annoyance. I know Molly was glad when Edward went back to school. He was very young, remember - much younger than Celia. He was only eight or nine at preparatory school. He was vulnerable. Molly was frightened about him."

  "Yes," said Poirot, "I can understand that. Now, if I may, I will talk of wigs. Wigs, the wearing of wigs. Four wigs. That is a lot for one woman to possess at one time. I know what they were like, what they looked like. I know that when more were needed, a French lady went to the shop in London and spoke about them and ordered them. There was a dog, too. A dog who went for a walk on the day of the tragedy with General Ravenscroft and his wife. Earlier that dog, some little time earlier, had bitten his mistress, Molly Ravenscroft."

  "Dogs are like that," said Zélie Meauhourat. "They are never quite to be trusted. Yes, I know that."

  "And I will tell you what I think happened on that day, and what happened before that. Some little time before that."

  "And if I will not listen to you?"

  "You will listen to me. You may say that what I have imagined is false. Yes, you might even do that, but I do not think you will. I am telling you and I believe it with all my heart, that what is needed here is the truth. It is not just imagining, it is not just wondering. There is a girl and a boy who care for each other and who are frightened of the future because of what may have happened and what there might be handed down from the father or the mother to the child. I am thinking of the girl, Celia. A rebellious girl, spirited, difficult perhaps to manage but with brains, a good mind, capable of happiness, capable of courage, but needing - there are people who need - truth. Because they can face truth without dismay. They can face it with that brave acceptance that you have to have in life if life is to be any good to you. And the boy that she loves, he wants that for her, too. Will you listen to me?"

  "Yes," said Zélie Meauhourat, "I am listening. You understand a great deal, I think, and I think you know more than I could have imagined you would know. Speak and I will listen."

  Chapter 20

  COURT OF INQUIRY

  Once more Hercule Poirot stood on the cliff overlooking the rocks below and the sea breaking against them. Here where he stood the bodies of a husband and wife had been found. Here, three weeks before that a woman had walked in her sleep and fallen to her death.

  "Why had these things happened?" That had been Superintendent Garroway's question. Why? What had led to it? An accident first - and three weeks later a double suicide. Old sins that had left long shadows. A beginning that had led years later to a tragic end. Today there would be people meeting here. A boy and a girl who sought the truth. Two people who knew the truth. Hercule Poirot turned away from the sea and back along the narrow path that led to a house once called Overcliffe. It was not very far. He saw cars parked against a wall. He saw the outline of a house against the sky. A house that was clearly empty, that needed repainting. A house agent's board hung there, announcing that "this desirable property" was for sale. On the gate the word Overcliffe had a line drawn over it and the name Down House replaced it. He went to meet two people who were walking towards him. One was Desmond Burton-Cox and the other was Celia Ravenscroft.

  "I got an order from the house agent," said Desmond, "saying we wanted to view it or however they put it. I've got the key in case we want to go inside. It's changed hands twice in the last five years. But there wouldn't be anything to see there now, would there?"

  "I shouldn't think so," said Celia. "After all, it's belonged to lots of people already. Some people called Archer who first bought it, and then somebody called Fallowfield, I think. They said it was too lonely. And now these last people are selling it, too. Perhaps they were haunted."

  "Do you really believe in haunted houses?" said Desmond.

  "Well now, of course I don't think so really," said Celia, "but this might be, mightn't it? I mean, the sort of things that happened, the sort of place it is and everything..."

  "I do not think so," said Poirot. "There was sorrow here and death, but there was also love."

  A taxi came along the road. "I expect that's Mrs. Oliver," said Celia. "She said she'd come by train and take a taxi from the station." Two women got out of the taxi. One was Mrs. Oliver and with her was a tall, elegantly dressed woman. Since Poirot knew she was coming, he was not taken by surprise. He watched Celia to see if she had any reactions. "Oh!" Celia sprang forward. She went towards the woman and her face had lit up. "Zélie!" she said. "It is Zélie? It is really Zélie! Oh, I am so pleased. I didn't know you were coming."

  "Monsieur Hercule Poirot asked me to come."

  "I see," said Celia. "Yes, yes, I suppose I see. But I - I didn't - " she stopped. She turned her head and looked at the handsome boy standing beside her. "Desmond, was it - was it you?"

  "Yes. I wrote to Mademoiselle Meauhourat - to Zélie, if I may still call her that."

  "You can always call me that, both of you," said Zélie. "I was not sure I wanted to come. I did not know if I was wise to come. That I still do not know, but I hope so."

  "I want to know," said Celia. "We both want to know. Desmond thought you could tell us something."

  "Monsieur Poirot came to see me," said Zélie. "He persuaded me to come today."

  Celia linked her arm in Mrs. Oliver's. "I wanted you to come, too, because you put this in hand, didn't you? You got Monsieur Poirot and you found out some things yourself, didn't you?"

  "People told me things," said Mrs. Oliver; "people whom I thought might remember things. Some of them did remember things. Some of them remembered them right and some of them remembered them wrong. That was confusing. Monsieur Poirot says that that does not really matter."

  "No," said Poirot, "it is just as important to know what is hearsay and what is certain knowledge. Because from one you can learn facts even if they are not quite the right facts or had not got the explanation that you think they had. With the knowledge that you got for me, madame, from the people whom you designated elephants - " He smiled a little. "Elephants?" said Mademoiselle Zélie.

  "It is what she called them," said Poirot.

  "Elephants can remember," explained Mrs. Oliver. "That was the idea I started on. And people can remember things that happened a long time ago just like elephants can. Not all people, of course, but they can usually remember something. There were a lot of people who did. I turned a lot of the things I heard over to Monsieur Poirot and he - he has made a sort of - oh, if he was a doctor I should call it a sort of diagnosis, I suppose."

  "I made a list," said Poirot. "A list of things that seemed to be pointers to the truth of what happened all those years ago. I shall read the various items to you to see perhaps if you who were concerned in all this feel that they have any significance. You may not see their significance or you may see it plainly."

  "One wants to know," said Celia. "Was it suicide, or was it murder? Did somebody - some outside person - kill both my father and my mother, shoot them for some reason we don't know about, some motive. I shall always think there was something of that kind or something else. It's difficult, but"

  "We will stay here, I think," said Poirot. "We will not go into the house as yet. Other people have lived in it and it has a different atmosphere. We will perhaps go in if we wish when we have finished our court of inquiry here."

  "It's a court of inquiry,
is it?" said Desmond.

  "Yes. A court of inquiry into what happened."

  He moved towards some iron seats which stood near the shelter of a large magnolia near the house. Poirot took from the case he carried a sheet of paper with writing on it. He said to Celia: "To you, it has got to be that way? A definite choice. Suicide or murder."

  "One of them must be true," said Celia.

  "I shall say to you that both are true, and more than those two. According to my ideas, we have here not only a murder and also a suicide, but we have as well what I shall call an execution, and we have a tragedy also. A tragedy of two people who loved each other and who died for love. A tragedy of love may not always belong to Romeo and Juliet. It is not necessarily only the young who suffer the pains of love and are ready to die for love. No. There is more to it than that."

  "I don't understand," said Celia.

  "Not yet."

  "Shall I understand?" said Celia.

  "I think so," said Poirot. "I will tell you what I think happened and I will tell you how I came to think so. The first things that struck me were the things that were not explained by the evidence that the police examined. Some things were very commonplace, were not evidence at all, you'd think. Among the possessions of the dead Margaret Ravenscroft, were four wigs."

  He repeated with emphasis, "Four wigs." He looked at Zélie.

  "She did not use a wig all the time," said Zélie. "Only occasionally. If she traveled or if she'd been out and got very dishevelled and wanted to tidy herself in a hurry, or sometimes she'd use one that was suitable for evening wear."

  "Yes," said Poirot, "it was quite the fashion at that particular date. People certainly when they traveled abroad usually had a wig or two wigs. But in her possession were four wigs. Four wigs seemed to me rather a lot. I wondered why she needed four. According to the police whom I asked, it was not that she had any tendency to baldness. She had the ordinary hair a woman of her age would have and in good condition. All the same, I wondered about those. One of the wigs had a grey streak in it, I learned later. It was her hairdresser who told me that. And one of the wigs had little curls. It was the latter wig she was wearing the day she died."

  "Is that significant in any way?" asked Celia. "She might have been wearing any of them."

  "She might. I also learned the housekeeper told the police that she had been wearing that particular wig almost all the time for the last few weeks before she died. It appeared to be her favorite one."

  "I can't see -"

  "There was also a saying that Superintendent Garroway quoted to me, 'Same man - different hat.' It gave me furiously to think."

  Celia repeated, "I don't see"

  Poirot said, "There was also the evidence of the dog -"

  "The dog - what did the dog do?"

  "The dog bit her. The dog was said to be devoted to its mistress, but in the last few weeks of her life, the dog turned on her more than once and bit her quite severely."

  "Do you mean it knew she was going to commit suicide?" Desmond stared. "No, something much simpler than that"

  "I don't"

  Poirot went on - "No, it knew what no one else seemed to know. It knew she was not its mistress. She looked like its mistress. The housekeeper who was slightly blind and also deaf saw a woman who wore Molly Ravenscroft's clothes and the most recognizable of Molly Ravenscroft's wigs - the one with little curls all over the head. The housekeeper said only that her mistress had been rather different in her manner the last few weeks of her life. 'Same man - different hat,' had been Garroway's phrase. And the thought - the conviction - came to me then. Same wig - different woman. The dog knew - he knew by what his nose told him. A different woman, not the woman he loved - a woman whom he disliked and feared. And I thought, suppose that woman was not Molly Ravenscroft - but who could she be? Could she be Dolly - the twin sister?"

  "But that's impossible," said Celia.

  "No, it was not impossible. After all, remember, they were twins. I must come now to the things that were brought to my notice by Mrs. Oliver. The things people told her or suggested to her. The knowledge that Lady Ravenscroft had recently been in hospital or in a nursing home and that she perhaps had known that she suffered from cancer, or thought that she did. Medical evidence was against that, however. She still might have thought she did, but it was not the case. Then I learned little by little the early history of her and her twin sister, who loved each other very devotedly as twins do, did everything alike, wore clothes alike, the same things seemed to happen to them, they had illnesses at the same time, they married about the same time or not very far removed in time. And eventually, as many twins do, instead of wanting to do everything in the same fashion and the same way, they wanted to do the opposite. To be as unlike each other as they could. And even between them grew a certain amount of dislike. More than that. There was a reason in the past for that. Alistair Ravenscroft as a young man fell in love with Dorothea Preston-Grey, the elder twin of the two. But his affection shifted to the other sister, Margaret, whom he married. There was jealousy then, no doubt, which led to an estrangement between the sisters. Margaret continued to be deeply attached to her twin, but Dorothea no longer was devoted in any way to Margaret. That seemed to me to be the explanation of a great many things. Dorothea was a tragic figure. By no fault of her own but by some accident of genes, of birth, of hereditary characteristics, she was always mentally unstable. At quite an early age she had, for some reason which has never been made clear, a dislike of children.

  There is every reason to believe that a child came to its death through her action. The evidence was not definite, but it was definite enough for a doctor to advise that she should have mental treatment, and she was for some years treated in a mental home. When reported cured by doctors, she resumed normal life, came often to stay with her sister and went out to India, at a time when they were stationed out there, to join them there. And there, again, an accident happened. A child of a neighbour. And again, although perhaps there was no very definite proof, it seems again Dorothea might have been responsible for it.

  General Ravenscroft took her home to England and she was placed once more in medical care. Once again she appeared to be cured, and after psychiatric care it was again said that she could go once more and resume a normal life. Margaret believed this time that all would be well, and thought that she ought to live with them so that they could watch closely for any signs of any further mental disability. I don't think that General Ravenscroft approved. I think he had a very strong belief that just as someone can be born deformed, spastic or crippled in some way, she had a deformity of the brain which would recur from time to time and that she would have to be constantly watched and saved from herself in case some other tragedy happened."

  "Are you saying," asked Desmond, "that it was she who shot both the Ravenscrofts?"

  "No," said Poirot, "that is not my solution. I think what happened was that Dorothea killed her sister, Margaret. They walked together on the cliff one day and Dorothea pushed Margaret over. The dormant obsession of hatred and resentment of the sister who though so like herself, was sane and healthy, was too much for her. Hate, jealousy, the desire to kill all rose to the surface and dominated her. I think that there was one outsider who knew, who was here at the time that this happened. I think you knew. Mademoiselle Zélie."

  "Yes," said Zélie Meauhourat, "I knew. I was here at the time. The Ravenscrofts had been worried about her. That is when they saw her attempt to injure their small son, Edward. Edward was sent back to school and I and Celia went to my pensionnat. I came back here - after seeing Celia settled in. Once the house was empty except for myself, General Ravenscroft and Dorothea and Margaret, nobody had any anxiety. And then one day it happened. The two sisters went out together. Dolly returned alone. She seemed in a very queer and nervous state. She came in and sat down at the tea table. It was then General Ravenscroft noticed that her right hand was covered with blood. He asked her if she had had a fall. S
he said, 'Oh, no, it was nothing. Nothing at all. I got scratched by a rosebush.' But there were no rosebushes on the Downs. It was a purely foolish remark and we were worried. If she had said a gorse bush, we might have accepted the remark. General Ravenscroft went out and I went after him. He kept saying as he walked, 'Something has happened to Margaret. I'm sure something has happened to Molly.' We found her on a ledge a little way down the cliff. She had been battered with a rock and stones. She was not dead, but she had bled heavily. For a moment we hardly knew what we could do. We dared not move her. We must get a doctor, we felt, at once, but before we could do that, she clung to her husband.

  She said, gasping for breath, 'Yes, it was Dolly. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know, Alistair. You mustn't let her suffer for it. She's never known the things she does or why. She can't help it. She's never been able to help it. You must promise me, Alistair. I think I'm dying now. No - no, we won't have time to get a doctor and a doctor couldn't do anything. I've been lying here bleeding to death - and I'm very close to death. I know that, but promise me. Promise me you'll save her. Promise me you won't let the police arrest her.

  Promise me that she'll not be tried for killing me, not shut up for life as a criminal. Hide me somewhere so that my body won't be found. Please, please, it's the last thing I ask you. You whom I love more than anything in the world. If I could live for you I would, but I'm not going to live. I can feel that. I crawled a little way, but that was all I could do. Promise me. And you, Zélie, you love me, too. I know. You've loved me and been good to me and looked after me always. And you loved the children, so you must save Dolly. You must save poor Dolly. Please, please. For all the love we have for each other, Dolly must be saved.'"