by Mark Place
"All that Mrs Oliver said was that she thought there were about fourteen or fifteen people, perhaps more. Five or six children, five or six grown-ups who were running the show. But for exact information I must rely on you."
"Well, that will be easy enough," said Spence. "I don't say I know off-hand at the moment, but it's easily obtained from the locals. As to the party itself, I know pretty well already. A preponderance of women, on the whole. Fathers don't turn up much at children's parties. But they look in, sometimes, or come to take their children home. Dr Ferguson was there, the vicar was there. Otherwise, mothers, aunts, social workers, two teachers from the school. Oh, I can give you a list of roughly about fourteen children. The youngest not more than ten running on into teenagers."
"And I suppose you would know the list of probables amongst them?" said Poirot.
"Well, it won't be so easy now if what you think is true."
"You mean you are no longer looking for a sexually disturbed personality. You are looking instead for somebody who has committed a murder and got away with it, someone who never expected it to be found out and who suddenly got a nasty shock."
"Blest if I can think who it could have been, all the same," said Spence. "I shouldn't have said we had any likely murderers round here. And certainly nothing spectacular in the way of murders."
"One can have likely murderers anywhere," said Poirot, "or shall I say unlikely murderers, but nevertheless murderers. Because unlikely murderers are not so prone to be suspected. There is probably not very much evidence against them, and it would be a rude shock to such a murderer to find that there had actually been an eyewitness to his or her crime."
"Why didn't Joyce say anything at the time? That's what I'd like to know. Was she bribed to silence by someone, do you think? Too risky surely."
"No," said Poirot. "I gather from what Mrs Oliver mentioned that she didn't recognise that it was a murder she was looking at at the time."
"Oh, surely that's most unlikely," said Spence.
"Not necessarily," said Poirot. "A child of thirteen was speaking. She was remembering something she'd seen in the past. We don't know exactly when. It might have been three or even four years previously. She saw something but she didn't realise its true significance. That might apply to a lot of things you know, mon cher. Some rather peculiar car accident. A car where it appeared that the driver drove straight at the person who was injured or perhaps killed. A child might not realise it was deliberate at the time. But something someone said, or something she saw or heard a year or two later might awaken her memory and she'd think perhaps: 'A or B or X did it on purpose.' Perhaps it was really a murder, not just an accident." And there are plenty of other possibilities.
Some of them I will admit suggested by my friend, Mrs Oliver, who can easily come up with about twelve different solutions to everything, most of them not very probable but all of them faintly possible. Tablets added to a cup of tea administered to someone. Roughly that sort of thing. A push perhaps on a dangerous spot. You have no cliffs here, which is rather a pity from the point of view of likely theories. Yes, I think there could be plenty of possibilities. Perhaps it is some murder story that the girl reads which recalls to her an incident. It may have been an incident that puzzled her at the time, and she might, when she reads the story, say: 'Well, that might have been so-and-so and so-and-so. I wonder if he or she did it on purpose?' Yes, there are a lot of possibilities."
"And you have come here to inquire into them?"
"It would be in the public interest, I think, don't you?" said Poirot.
"Ah, we're to be public spirited, are we, you and I?"
"You can at least give me information," said Poirot. "You know the people here."
"I'll do what I can," said Spence. "And I'll rope in Elspeth. There's not much about people she doesn't know."
Chapter 6
Satisfied with what he had achieved, Poirot took leave of his friend. The information he wanted would be forthcoming - he had no doubt as to that. He had got Spence interested. And Spence, once set upon a trail, was not one to relinquish it. His reputation as a retired high-ranking officer of the CID would have won him friends in the local police departments concerned.
And next - Poirot consulted his watch - he was to meet Mrs Oliver in exactly ten minutes' time outside a house called Apple Trees. Really, the name seemed uncannily appropriate. Really, thought Poirot, one didn't seem able to get away from apples. Nothing could be more agreeable than a juicy English apple - And yet here were apples mixed up with broomsticks, and witches, and old-fashioned folklore, and a murdered child. Following the route indicated to him, Poirot arrived to the minute outside a red brick Georgian style house with a neat beech hedge enclosing it, and a pleasant garden showing beyond.
He put his hand out, raised the latch and entered through the wrought iron gate which bore a painted board labelled "Apple Trees". A path led up to the front door. Looking rather like one of those Swiss clocks where figures come out automatically of a door above the clock face, the front door opened and Mrs Oliver emerged on the steps.
"You're absolutely punctual," she said breathlessly. "I was watching for you from the window."
Poirot turned and closed the gate carefully behind him. Practically on every occasion that he had met Mrs Oliver, whether by appointment or by accident, a motif of apples seemed to be introduced almost immediately. She was either eating an apple or had been eating an apple - witness an apple core nestling on her broad chest - or was carrying a bag of apples. But today there was no apple in evidence at all. Very correct, Poirot thought approvingly. It would have been in very bad taste to be gnawing an apple here, on the scene of what had been not only a crime but a tragedy. For what else can it be but that? thought Poirot.
The sudden death of a child of only thirteen years old. He did not like to think of it, and because he did not like to think of it he was all the more decided in his mind that that was exactly what he was going to think of until by some means or other, light should shine out of the darkness and he should see clearly what he had come here to see.
"I can't think why you wouldn't come and stay with Judith Butler," said Mrs Oliver. "Instead of going to a fifth-class guest house."
"Because it is better that I should survey things with a certain degree of aloofness," said Poirot. "One must not get involved, you comprehend."
"I don't see how you can avoid getting involved," said Mrs Oliver. "You've got to see everyone and talk to them, haven't you?"
"That most decidedly," said Poirot.
"Who have you seen so far?"
"My friend, Superintendent Spence."
"What's he like nowadays?" said Mrs Oliver.
"A good deal older than he was," said Poirot.
"Naturally," said Mrs Oliver, "what else would you expect? Is he deafer or blinder or fatter or thinner?" Poirot considered.
"He has lost a little weight. He wears spectacles for reading the paper. I do not think he is deaf, not to any noticeable extent."
"And what does he think about it all?"
"You go too quickly," said Poirot.
"And what exactly are you and he going to do?"
"I have planned my programme," said Poirot. "First I have seen and consulted with my old friend. I asked him to get me, perhaps, some information that would not be easy to get otherwise."
"You mean the police here will be his buddies and he'll get a lot of inside stuff from them?"
"Well, I should not put it exactly like that, but yes, those are the lines along which I have been thinking."
"And after that?"
"I come to meet you here, Madame. I have to see just where this thing happened."
Mrs Oliver turned her head and looked up at the house.
"It doesn't look the sort of house there'd be a murder in, does it?" she said.
Poirot thought again: What an unerring instinct she has! "No," he said, "it does not look at all that sort of a house. After I have seen whe
re, then I go with you to see the mother of the dead child. I hear what she can tell me. This afternoon my friend Spence is making an appointment for me to talk with the local inspector at a suitable hour. I should also like a talk with the doctor here. And possibly the headmistress at the school. At six o'clock I drink tea and eat sausages with my friend Spence and his sister again in their house and we discuss."
"What more do you think he'll be able to tell you?"
"I want to meet his sister. She has lived here longer than he has. He came here to join her when her husband died. She will know, perhaps, the people here fairly well."
"Do you know what you sound like?" said Mrs Oliver. "A computer. You know. You're programming yourself. That's what they call it, isn't it? I mean you're feeding all these things into yourself all day and then you're going to see what comes out."
"It is certainly an idea you have there," said Poirot, with some interest. "Yes, yes, I play the part of the computer. One feeds in the information -"
"And supposing you come up with all the wrong answers?" said Mrs Oliver.
"That would be impossible," said Hercule Poirot. "Computers do not do that sort of a thing."
"They're not supposed to," said Mrs Oliver, "but you'd be surprised at the things that happen sometimes. My last electric light bill, for instance. I know there's a proverb which says 'To err is human', but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries. Come on in and meet Mrs Drake."
Mrs Drake was certainly something, Poirot thought. She was a tall, handsome woman of forty-odd, her golden hair was lightly tinged with grey, her eyes were brilliantly blue, she oozed competence from the fingertips downwards. Any party she had arranged would have been a successful one. In the drawing-room a tray of morning coffee with two sugared biscuits was awaiting them.
Apple Trees, he saw, was a most admirably kept house. It was well furnished, it had carpets of excellent quality, everything was scrupulously polished and cleaned, and the fact that it had hardly any outstanding object of interest in it was not readily noticeable. One would not have expected it. The colours of the curtains and the covers were pleasant but conventional. It could have been let furnished at any moment for a high rent to a desirable tenant, without having to put away any treasures or make any alterations to the arrangement of the furniture. Mrs Drake greeted Mrs Oliver and Poirot and concealed almost entirely what Poirot could not help suspecting was a feeling of vigorously suppressed annoyance at the position in which she found herself as the hostess at a social occasion at which something as anti-social as murder had occurred. As a prominent member of the community of Woodleigh Common, he suspected that she felt an unhappy sense of having herself in some way proved inadequate. What had occurred should not have occurred. To someone else in someone else's house - yes. But at a party for children, arranged by her, given by her, organised by her, nothing like this ought to have happened. Somehow or other she ought to have seen to it that it did not happen. And Poirot also had a suspicion that she was seeking round irritably in the back of her mind for a reason.
Not so much a reason for murder having taken place, but to find out and pin down some inadequacy on the part of someone who had been helping her and who had by some mismanagement or some lack of perception failed to realise that something like this could happen.
"Monsieur Poirot," said Mrs Drake, in her fine speaking voice, which Poirot thought would come over excellently in a small lecture room or the village hall,
"I am so pleased you could come down here. Mrs Oliver has been telling me how invaluable your help will be to us in this terrible crisis."
"Rest assured, Madame, I shall do what I can, but as you no doubt realise from your experience of life, it is going to be a difficult business."
"Difficult?" said Mrs Drake. "Of course it's going to be difficult. It seems incredible, absolutely incredible, that such an awful thing should have happened. I suppose," she added, "the police may know something? Inspector Raglan has a very good reputation locally, I believe. Whether or not they ought to call Scotland Yard in, I don't know. The idea seems to be that this poor child's death must have had a local significance. I needn't tell you, Monsieur Poirot after all, you read the papers as much as I do that there have been very many sad fatalities with children all over the countryside. They seem to be getting more and more frequent. Mental instability seems to be on the increase, though I must say that mothers and families generally are not looking after their children properly, as they used to do. Children are sent home from school alone, on dark evenings, go alone on dark early mornings. And children, however much you warn them, are unfortunately very foolish when it comes to being offered a lift in a smart-looking car. They believe what they're told. I suppose one cannot help that."
"But what happened here, Madame, was of an entirely different nature."
"Oh, I know - I know. That is why I used the term incredible. I still cannot quite believe it," said Mrs Drake. "Everything was entirely under control. All the arrangements were made. Everything was going perfectly, all according to plan. It just seems - seems incredible. Personally I consider myself that there must be what I call an outside significance to this. Someone walked into the house - not a difficult thing to do under the circumstances - someone of highly disturbed mentality, I suppose, the kind of people who are let out of mental homes simply because there is no room for them there, as far as I can see.
Nowadays, room has to be made for fresh patients all the time. Anyone peeping in through a window could see a children's party was going on, and this poor wretch - if one can really feel pity for these people, which I really must say I find it very hard to do myself sometimes - enticed this child away somehow and killed her. You can't think such a thing could happen, but it did happen."
"Perhaps you would show me where -"
"Of course. No more coffee?"
"I thank you, no."
Mrs Drake got up.
"The police seem to think it took place while the Snapdragon was going on. That was taking place in the dining-room."
She walked across the hall, opened the door and, rather in the manner of someone doing the honours of a stately home to a party of charabanc goers, indicated the large dining-table and the heavy velvet curtains. "It was dark here, of course, except for the blazing dish. And now -" She led them across the hall and opened the door of a small room with armchairs, sporting prints and bookshelves.
"The library," said Mrs Drake, and shivered a little. "The bucket was here. On a plastic sheet, of course -"
Mrs Oliver had not accompanied them into the room. She was standing outside in the hall. "I can't come in," she said to Poirot. "It makes me think of it too much."
"There's nothing to see now," said Mrs Drake. "I mean, I'm just showing you where, as you asked."
"I suppose," said Poirot, "there was water - a good deal of water."
"There was water in the bucket, of course," said Mrs Drake.
She looked at Poirot as though she thought that he was not quite all there.
"And there was water on the sheet. I mean, if the child's head was pushed under water, there would be a lot of water splashed about."
"Oh yes. Even while the bobbing was going on, the bucket had to be filled up once or twice."
"So the person who did it? That person also would have got wet, one would think."
"Yes, yes, I suppose so."
"That was not specially noticed?"
"No, no, the Inspector asked me about that. You see, by the end of the evening nearly everyone was a bit dishevelled or damp or floury. There doesn't seem to be any useful clues there at all. I mean, the police didn't think so."
"No," said Poirot. "I suppose the only clue was the child herself. I hope you will tell me all you know about her."
"About Joyce?"
Mrs Drake looked slightly taken aback.
It was as though Joyce in her mind had by now retreated so far out of things that she was quite surprised to be reminded of he
r.
"The victim is always important," said Poirot. "The victim, you see, is so often the cause of the crime."
"Well, I suppose, yes, I see what you mean," said Mrs Drake, who quite plainly did not. "Shall we come back to the drawing-room?"
"And then you will tell me all about Joyce," said Poirot.
They settled themselves once more in the drawing-room.
Mrs Drake was looking uncomfortable. "I don't know really what you expect me to say, Monsieur Poirot," she said.
"Surely all information can be obtained quite easily from the police or from Joyce's mother. Poor woman, it will be painful for her, no doubt, but"
"But what I want," said Poirot, "is not a mother's estimate of a dead daughter. It is a clear, unbiased opinion from someone who has a good knowledge of human nature. I should say, Madame, that you yourself have been an active worker in many welfare and social fields here. Nobody, I am sure, could sum up more aptly the character and disposition of someone whom you know."
"Well it is a little difficult. I mean, children of that age - she was thirteen, I think, twelve or thirteen - are very much alike at a certain age."
"Ah no, surely not," said Poirot. "There are very great differences in character, in disposition. Did you like her?"
Mrs Drake seemed to find the question embarrassing.
"Well of course I - I liked her. I mean, well, I like all children. Most people do."
"Ah, there I do not agree with you," said Poirot. "Some children I consider are most unattractive."
"Well, I agree, they're not brought up very well nowadays. Everything seems left to the school, and of course they lead very permissive lives. Have their own choice of friends and - er - oh, really, Monsieur Poirot."
"Was she a nice child or not a nice child?" said Poirot insistently. Mrs Drake looked at him and registered censure. "You must realise, Monsieur Poirot, that the poor child is dead -"
"Dead or alive, it matters. Perhaps if she was a nice child, nobody would have wanted to kill her, but if she was not a nice child, somebody might have wanted to kill her, and did so -"
