Elephants Can Remember

by Agatha Christie

  ‘It was a very tragic thing to happen.’

  ‘Yes, it was, indeed.’

  ‘Were you still working for them at that time?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact, I’d given up going there. I had my old Aunt Emma come to live with me and she was rather blind and not very well, and I couldn’t really spare the time any more to go out doing things for people. But I’d been with them up to about a month or two before that.’

  ‘It seemed such a terrible thing to happen,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I understand that they thought it was a suicide pact.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Mrs Buckle. ‘I’m sure they’d never have committed suicide together. Not people like that. And living so pleasantly together as they did. Of course, they hadn’t lived there very long.’

  ‘No, I suppose they hadn’t,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘They lived somewhere near Bournemouth, didn’t they, when they first came to England?’

  ‘Yes, but they found it was a bit too far for getting to London from there, and so that’s why they came to Chipping Bartram. Very nice house it was, and a nice garden.’

  ‘Were they both in good health when you were working for them last?’

  ‘Well, he felt his age a bit as most people do. The General, he’d had some kind of heart trouble or a slight stroke. Something of that kind, you know. They’d take pills, you know, and lie up a bit from time to time.’

  ‘And Lady Ravenscroft?’

  ‘Well, I think she missed the life she’d had abroad, you know. They didn’t know so very many people there, although they got to know a good many families, of course, being the sort of class they were. But I suppose it wasn’t like Malaya or those places. You know, where you have a lot of servants. I suppose gay parties and that sort of thing.’

  ‘You think she missed her gay parties?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that exactly.’

  ‘Somebody told me she’d taken to wearing a wig.’

  ‘Oh, she’d got several wigs,’ said Mrs Buckle, smiling slightly. ‘Very smart ones and very expensive. You know, from time to time she’d send one back to the place she’d got it from in London, and they’d re-dress it for her again and send it. There were all kinds. You know, there was one with auburn hair, and one with little grey curls all over her head. Really, she looked very nice in that one. And two – well, not so attractive really but useful for – you know – windy days when you wanted something to put on when it might be raining. Thought a lot about her appearance, you know and spent a lot of her money on clothes.’

  ‘What do you think was the cause of the tragedy?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You see, not being anywhere near here and not seeing any of my friends at that time because I was in America, I missed hearing anything about it and, well, one doesn’t like to ask questions or write letters about things of that kind. I suppose there must have been some cause. I mean, it was General Ravenscroft’s own revolver that was used, I understand.’

  ‘Oh yes, he had two of those in the house because he said that no house was safe without. Perhaps he was right there, you know. Not that they’d had any trouble beforehand as far as I know. One afternoon a rather nasty sort of fellow came along to the door. Didn’t like the look of him, I didn’t. Wanted to see the General. Said he’d been in the General’s regiment when he was a young fellow. The General asked him a few questions and I think thought as how he didn’t – well, thought he wasn’t very reliable. So he sent him off.’

  ‘You think then that it was someone outside that did it?’

  ‘Well, I think it must have been because I can’t see any other thing. Mind you, I didn’t like the man who came and did the gardening for them very much. He hadn’t got a very good reputation and I gather he’d had a few jail sentences earlier in his life. But of course the General took up his references and he wanted to give him a chance.’

  ‘So you think the gardener might have killed them?’

  ‘Well, I – I always thought that. But then I’m probably wrong. But it doesn’t seem to me – I mean, the people who said there was some scandalous story or something about either her or him and that either he’d shot her or she’d shot him, that’s all nonsense, I’d say. No, it was some outsider. One of these people that – well, it’s not as bad as it is nowadays because that, you must remember, was before people began getting all this violence idea. But look at what you read in the papers every day now. Young men, practically only boys still, taking a lot of drugs and going wild and rushing about, shooting a lot of people for nothing at all, asking a girl in a pub to have a drink with them and then they see her home and next day her body’s found in a ditch. Stealing children out of prams from their mothers, taking a girl to a dance and murdering her or strangling her on the way back. If anything, you feel as anyone can do anything. And anyway, there’s that nice couple, the General and his wife, out for a nice walk in the evening, and there they were, both shot through the head.’

  ‘Was it through the head?’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember exactly now and of course I never saw anything myself. But anyway, just went for a walk as they often did.’

  ‘And they’d not been on bad terms with each other?’

  ‘Well, they had words now and again, but who doesn’t?’

  ‘No boyfriend or girlfriend?’

  ‘Well, if you can use that term of people of that age, oh, I mean there was a bit of talk here and there, but it was all nonsense. Nothing to it at all. People always want to say something of that kind.’

  ‘Perhaps one of them was – ill.’

  ‘Well, Lady Ravenscroft had been up to London once or twice consulting a doctor about something and I rather think she was going into hospital, or planning to go into hospital for an operation of some kind though she never told me exactly what it was. But I think they managed to put her right – she was in this hospital for a short time. No operation, I think. And when she came back she looked very much younger. Altogether, she’d had a lot of face treatment and you know, she looked so pretty in these wigs with curls on them. Rather as though she’d got a new lease of life.’

  ‘And General Ravenscroft?’

  ‘He was a very nice gentleman and I never heard or knew of any scandal about him and I don’t think there was any. People say things, but then they want to say something when there’s been a tragedy of any kind. It seems to me perhaps as he might have had a blow on the head in Malaya or something like that. I had an uncle or a great-uncle, you know, who fell off his horse there once. Hit it on a cannon or something and he was very queer afterwards. All right for about six months and then they had to put him into an asylum because he wanted to take his wife’s life the whole time. He said she was persecuting him and following him and that she was a spy for another nation. Ah, there’s no saying what things happen or can happen in families.’

  ‘Anyway, you don’t think there was any truth in some of the stories about them that I have happened to hear of, bad feeling between them so that one of them shot the other and then shot himself or herself.’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t.’

  ‘Were her children at home at the time?’

  ‘No. Miss – er – oh what was her name now, Rosie? No. Penelope?’

  ‘Celia,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘She’s my goddaughter.’

  ‘Oh, of course she is. Yes, I know that now. I remember you coming and taking her out once. She was a high-spirited girl, rather bad-tempered in some ways, but she was very fond of her father and mother, I think. No, she was away at a school in Switzerland when it happened, I’m glad to say, because it would have been a terrible shock to her if she’d been at home and the one who saw them.’

  ‘And there was a boy, too, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Oh yes. Master Edward. His father was a bit worried about him, I think. He looked as though he disliked his father.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing in that. Boys go through that stage. Was he very devoted to his mother?’

  ‘Well, she fussed over him a
bit too much, I think, which he found tiresome. You know, they don’t like a mother fussing over them, telling them to wear thicker vests or put an extra pullover on. His father, he didn’t like the way he wore his hair. It was – well they weren’t wearing hair like the way they are nowadays, but they were beginning to, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘But the boy wasn’t at home at the time of the tragedy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose it was a shock to him?’

  ‘Well, it must have been. Of course, I wasn’t going to the house any more at that time so I didn’t hear so much. If you ask me, I didn’t like that gardener. What was his name now – Fred, I think. Fred Wizell. Some name like that. Seems to me if he’d done a bit of – well, a bit of cheating or something like that and the General had found him out and was going to sack him, I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘To shoot the husband and wife?’

  ‘Well, I’d have thought it more likely he’d just have shot the General. If he shot the General and the wife came along, then he’d have had to shoot her too. You read things like that in books.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver thoughtfully, ‘one does read all sorts of things in books.’

  ‘There was the tutor. I didn’t like him much.’

  ‘What tutor?’

  ‘Well, there was a tutor for the boy earlier. You know, he couldn’t pass an exam and things at the earlier school he was at – prep school or something. So they had a tutor for him. He was there for about a year, I think. Lady Ravenscroft liked him very much. She was musical, you know, and so was this tutor. Mr Edmunds, I think his name was. Rather a namby-pamby sort of young man, I thought myself, and it’s my opinion that General Ravenscroft didn’t care for him much.’

  ‘But Lady Ravenscroft did.’

  ‘Oh, they had a lot in common, I think. And I think she was the one really that chose him rather more than the General. Mind you, he had very nice manners and spoke to everyone nicely and all that –’

  ‘And did – what’s-his-name?’

  ‘Edward? Oh yes, he liked him all right, I think. Almost a bit of hero-worship. Anyway, don’t you believe any stories you hear about scandals in the family or her having an affair with anyone or General Ravenscroft with that rather po-faced girl who did filing work for him and all that sort of thing. No. Whoever that wicked murderer was, it’s one who came from outside. The police never got on to anyone, a car was seen near there but there was nothing to it and they never got any further. But all the same I think one ought to look about for somebody perhaps who’d known them in Malaya or abroad or somewhere else, or even when they were first living at Bournemouth. One never knows.’

  ‘What did your husband think about it?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘He wouldn’t have known as much about them as you would, of course, but still he might have heard a lot.’

  ‘Oh, he heard a lot of talk, of course. In the George and Flag, of an evening, you know. People saying all sorts of things. Said as she drank and that cases of empty bottles had been taken out of the house. Absolutely untrue, that was, I know for a fact. And there was a nephew as used to come and see them sometimes. Got into trouble with the police in some way, he did, but I don’t think there was anything in that. The police didn’t, either. Anyway, it wasn’t at that time.’

  ‘There was no one else really living in the house, was there, except the General and Lady Ravenscroft?’

  ‘Well, she had a sister as used to come sometimes, Lady Ravenscroft did. She was a half-sister, I think. Something like that. Looked rather like Lady Ravenscroft. She made a bit of trouble between them, I always used to think, when she came for a visit. She was one of those who likes stirring things up, if you know what I mean. Just said things to annoy people.’

  ‘Was Lady Ravenscroft fond of her?’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, I don’t think she was really. I think the sister more or less wished herself on to them sometimes and she didn’t like not to have her, but I think she found it pretty trying to have her there. The General quite liked her because she played cards well. Played chess and things with him and he enjoyed that. And she was an amusing woman in a way. Mrs Jerryboy or something like that, her name was. She was a widow, I think. Used to borrow money from them, I think, too.’

  ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, ma’am, no, I didn’t like her. I disliked her very much. I thought she was one of those trouble-makers, you know. But she hadn’t been down for some time before the tragedy happened. I don’t really remember very much what she was like. She had a son as came with her once or twice. Didn’t like him very much. Shifty, I thought.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I suppose nobody will really ever know the truth. Not now. Not after all this time. I saw my goddaughter the other day.’

  ‘Did you now, ma’am. I’d be interested to hear about Miss Celia. How is she? All right?’

  ‘Yes. She seems quite all right. I think she’s thinking perhaps of getting married. At any rate she’s got a –’

  ‘Got a steady boy-friend, has she?’ said Mrs Buckle. ‘Ah well, we’ve all got that. Not that we all marry the first one we settle on. Just as well if you don’t, nine times out of ten.’

  ‘You don’t know a Mrs Burton-Cox, do you?’ asked Mrs Oliver.

  ‘Burton-Cox? I seem to know that name. No, I don’t think so. Wasn’t living down here or come to stay with them or anything? No, not that I remember. Yet I did hear something. Some old friend of General Ravenscroft, I think, which he’d known in Malaya. But I don’t know.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I mustn’t stay gossiping with you any longer. It’s been so nice to see you and Marlene.’

  Chapter 9

  Results of Elephantine Research

  ‘A telephone call for you,’ said Hercule Poirot’s man-servant, George. ‘From Mrs Oliver.’

  ‘Ah yes, George. And what had she to say?’

  ‘She wondered if she could come and see you this evening, sir, after dinner.’

  ‘That would be admirable,’ said Poirot. ‘Admirable. I have had a tiring day. It will be a stimulating experience to see Mrs Oliver. She is always entertaining as well as being highly unexpected in the things she says. Did she mention elephants, by the way?’

  ‘Elephants, sir? No, I do not think so.’

  ‘Ah. Then it would seem perhaps that the elephants have been disappointing.’

  George looked at his master rather doubtfully. There were times when he did not quite understand the relevance of Poirot’s remarks.

  ‘Ring her back,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘tell her I shall be delighted to receive her.’

  George went away to carry out this order, and returned to say that Mrs Oliver would be there about quarter to nine.

  ‘Coffee,’ said Poirot. ‘Let coffee be prepared and some petit-fours. I rather think I ordered some in lately from Fortnum and Mason.’

  ‘A liqueur of any kind, sir?’

  ‘No, I think not. I myself will have some Sirop deCassis.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mrs Oliver arrived exactly on time. Poirot greeted her with every sign of pleasure.

  ‘And how are you, chère madame?’

  ‘Exhausted,’ said Mrs Oliver.

  She sank down into the armchair that Poirot indicated.

  ‘Completely exhausted.’

  ‘Ah. Qui va à la chasse – oh, I cannot remember the saying.’

  ‘I remember it,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I learnt it as a child. “Qui va à la chasse perd sa place.”’

  ‘That, I am sure, is not applicable to the chase you have been conducting. I am referring to the pursuit of elephants, unless that was merely a figure of speech.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I have been pursuing elephants madly. Here, there and everywhere. The amount of petrol I have used, the amount of trains I have taken, the amount of letters I’ve written, the amount of telegrams I’ve sent �
� you wouldn’t believe how exhausting it all is.’

  ‘Then repose yourself. Have some coffee.’

  ‘Nice, strong, black coffee – yes, I will. Just what I want.’

  ‘Did you, may I ask, get any results?’

  ‘Plenty of results,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know whether any of them are any use.’

  ‘You learn facts, however?’

  ‘No. Not really. I learnt things that people told me were facts, but I strongly doubt myself whether any of them were facts.’

  ‘They were hearsay?’

  ‘No. They were what I said they would be. They were memories. Lots of people who had memories. The trouble is, when you remember things you don’t always remember them right, do you?’

  ‘No. But they are still what you might describe perhaps as results. Is not that so?’

  ‘And what have you done?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You are always so stern, madame,’ said Poirot. ‘You demand that I run about, that I also do things.’

  ‘Well, have you run about?’

  ‘I have not run about, but I have had a few consultations with others of my own profession.’

  ‘It sounds far more peaceful than what I have been doing,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Oh, this coffee is nice. It’s really strong. You wouldn’t believe how tired I am. And how muddled.’

  ‘Come, come. Let us have good expectancy. You have got things. You have got something, I think.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of different suggestions and stories. I don’t know whether any of them are true.’

  ‘They could be not true, but still be of use,’ said Poirot.

  ‘Well, I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and that’s what I think, too. I mean, that’s what Ithought when I went about it. When people remember something and tell you about it – I mean, it’s often not quite actually what occurred, but it’s what they themselves thought occurred.’

  ‘But they must have had something on which to base it,’ said Poirot.

  ‘I’ve brought you a list of a kind,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I don’t need to go into details of where I went or what I said or why, I went out deliberately for – well, information one couldn’t perhaps get from anybody in this country now. But it’s all from people who knew something about the Ravenscrofts, even if they hadn’t known them very well.’