“There was another forger in this village. Someone, that is, who had once been accused of forgery but had got off lightly as a first offender and with extenuating circumstances.”
“Is this a new character? One I know?”
“No, you do not know him. He is dead.”
“Oh? When did he die?”
“About two years ago. The exact date I do not as yet know. But I shall have to know. He is someone who had practised forgery and who lived in this place. And because of a little what you might call girl trouble arousing jealousy and various emotions, he was knifed one night and died. I have the idea, you see, that a lot of separated incidents might tie up more closely than anyone has thought. Not any of them. Probably not all of them, but several of them.”
“It sounds interesting,” said Mrs. Oliver, “but I can’t see—”
“Nor can I as yet,” said Poirot. “But I think dates might help. Dates of certain happenings, where people were, what happened to them, what they were doing. Everybody thinks that the foreign girl forged the Will and probably,” said Poirot, “everybody was right. She was the one to gain by it, was she not? Wait—wait—”
“Wait for what?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“An idea that passed through my head,” said Poirot.
Mrs. Oliver sighed and took another date.
“You return to London, Madame? Or are you making a long stay here?”
“Day after tomorrow,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I can’t stay any longer. I’ve got a good many things cropping up.”
“Tell me, now—in your flat, your house, I cannot remember which it is now, you have moved so many times lately, there is room there to have guests?”
“I never admit that there is,” said Mrs. Oliver. “If you ever admit that you’ve got a free guest room in London, you’ve asked for it. All your friends, and not only your friends, your acquaintances or indeed your acquaintances’ third cousins sometimes, write you letters and say would you mind just putting them up for a night. Well, I do mind. What with sheets and laundry, pillow cases and wanting early morning tea and very often expecting meals served to them, people come. So I don’t let on that I have got an available spare room. My friends come and stay with me. The people I really want to see, but the others—no, I’m not helpful. I don’t like just being made use of.”
“Who does?” said Hercule Poirot. “You are very wise.”
“And anyway, what’s all this about?”
“You could put up one or two guests, if need arose?”
“I could,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Who do you want me to put up? Not you yourself. You’ve got a splendid flat of your own. Ultra modern, very abstract, all squares and cubes.”
“It is just that there might be a wise precaution to take.”
“For whom? Somebody else going to be killed?”
“I trust and pray not, but it might be within the bound of possibility.”
“But who? Who? I can’t understand.”
“How well do you know your friend?”
“Know her? Not well. I mean, we liked each other on a cruise and got in the habit of pairing off together. There was something—what shall I say?—exciting about her. Different.”
“Did you think you might put her in a book some day?”
“I do hate that phrase being used. People are always saying it to me and it’s not true. Not really. I don’t put people in books. People I meet, people I know.”
“Is it perhaps not true to say, Madame, that you do put people in books sometimes? People that you meet, but not, I agree, people that you know. There would be no fun in that.”
“You’re quite right,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’re really rather good at guessing things sometimes. It does happen that way. I mean, you see a fat woman sitting in a bus eating a currant bun and her lips are moving as well as eating, and you can see she’s either saying something to someone or thinking up a telephone call that she’s going to make, or perhaps a letter she’s going to write. And you look at her and you study her shoes and the skirt she’s got on and her hat and guess her age and whether she’s got a wedding ring on and a few other things. And then you get out of the bus. You don’t want ever to see her again, but you’ve got a story in your mind about somebody called Mrs. Carnaby who is going home in a bus, having had a very strange interview somewhere where she saw someone in a pastry cook’s and was reminded of someone she’d only met once and who she had heard was dead and apparently isn’t dead. Dear me,” said Mrs. Oliver, pausing for breath. “You know, it’s quite true. I did sit across from someone in a bus just before I left London, and here it is all working out beautifully inside my head. I shall have the whole story soon. The whole sequence, what she’s going back to say, whether it’ll run her into danger or somebody else into danger. I think I even know her name. Her name’s Constance. Constance Carnaby. There’s only one thing would ruin it.”
“And what is that?”
“Well, I mean, if I met her again in another bus, or spoke to her or she talked to me or I began to know something about her. That would ruin everything, of course.”
“Yes, yes. The story must be yours, the character is yours. She is your child. You have made her, you begin to understand her, you know how she feels, you know where she lives and you know what she does. But that all started with a real, live human being and if you found out what the real live human being was like—well then, there would be no story, would there?”
“Right again,” said Mrs. Oliver. “As to what you were saying about Judith, I think that is true. I mean, we were together a lot on the cruise, and we went to see the places but I didn’t really get to know her particularly well. She’s a widow, and her husband died and she was left badly off with one child, Miranda, whom you’ve seen. And it’s true that I’ve got rather a funny feeling about them. A feeling as though they mattered, as though they’re mixed up in some interesting drama. I don’t want to know what the drama is. I don’t want them to tell me. I want to think of the sort of drama I would like them to be in.”
“Yes. Yes, I can see that they are—well, candidates for inclusion for another best seller by Ariadne Oliver.”
“You really are a beast sometimes,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You make it all sound so vulgar.” She paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is.”
“No, no, it is not vulgar. It is just human.”
“And you want me to invite Judith and Miranda to my flat or house in London?”
“Not yet,” said Poirot. “Not yet until I am sure that one of my little ideas might be right.”
“You and your little ideas! Now I’ve got a piece of news for you.”
“Madame, you delight me.”
“Don’t be too sure. It will probably upset your ideas. Supposing I tell you that the forgery you have been so busy talking about wasn’t a forgery at all.”
“What is that you say?”
“Mrs. Ap Jones Smythe, or whatever her name is, did make a codicil to her Will leaving all her money to the au pair girl and two witnesses saw her sign it, and signed it also in the presence of each other. Put that in your moustache and smoke it.”
Nineteen
“Mrs.—Leaman—” said Poirot, writing down the name.
“That’s right. Harriet Leaman. And the other witness seems to have been a James Jenkins. Last heard of going to Australia. And Miss Olga Seminoff seems to have been last heard of returning to Czechoslovakia, or wherever she came from. Everybody seems to have gone somewhere else.”
“How reliable do you think this Mrs. Leaman is?”
“I don’t think she made it all up, if that’s what you mean. I think she signed something, that she was curious about it, and that she took the first opportunity she had of finding out what she’d signed.”
“She can read and write?”
“I suppose so. But I agree that people aren’t very good sometimes, at reading old ladies’ handwriting, which is very spiky and very hard to read. If there were any rumours flyi
ng about later, about this Will or codicil, she might have thought that that was what she’d read in this rather undecipherable handwriting.”
“A genuine document,” said Poirot. “But there was also a forged codicil.”
“Who says so?”
“Lawyers.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t forged at all.”
“Lawyers are very particular about these matters. They were prepared to come into court with expert witnesses.”
“Oh well,” said Mrs. Oliver, “then it’s easy to see what must have happened, isn’t it?”
“What is easy? What happened?”
“Well, of course, the next day or a few days later, or even as much as a week later, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe either had a bit of a tiff with her devoted au pair attendant, or she had a delicious reconciliation with her nephew, Hugo, or her niece Rowena, and she tore up the Will or scratched out the codicil or something like that, or burnt the whole thing.”
“And after that?”
“Well, after that, I suppose, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe dies, and the girl seizes her chance and writes a new codicil in roughly the same terms in as near to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s handwriting as she can, and the two witnessing signatures as near as she can. She probably knows Mrs. Leaman’s writing quite well. It would be on national health cards or something like that, and she produces it, thinking that someone will agree to having witnessed the Will and that all would be well. But her forgery isn’t good enough and so trouble starts.”
“Will you permit me, chère Madame, to use your telephone?”
“I will permit you to use Judith Butler’s telephone, yes.”
“Where is your friend?”
“Oh, she’s gone to get her hair done. And Miranda has gone for a walk. Go on, it’s in the room through the window there.”
Poirot went in and returned about ten minutes later.
“Well? What have you been doing?”
“I rang up Mr. Fullerton, the solicitor. I will now tell you something. The codicil, the forged codicil that was produced for probate was not witnessed by Harriet Leaman. It was witnessed by a Mary Doherty, deceased, who had been in service with Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe but had recently died. The other witness was the James Jenkins, who, as your friend Mrs. Leaman has told you, departed for Australia.”
“So there was a forged codicil,” said Mrs. Oliver. “And there seems to have been a real codicil as well. Look here, Poirot, isn’t this all getting a little too complicated?”
“It is getting incredibly complicated,” said Hercule Poirot. “There is, if I may mention it, too much forgery about.”
“Perhaps the real one is still in the library at Quarry House, within the pages of Enquire Within upon Everything.”
“I understand all the effects of the house were sold up at Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s death, except for a few pieces of family furniture and some family pictures.”
“What we need,” said Mrs. Oliver, “is something like Enquire Within here now. It’s a lovely title, isn’t it? I remember my grandmother had one. You could, you know, inquire within about everything, too. Legal information and cooking recipes and how to take ink stains out of linen. How to make homemade face powder that would not damage the complexion. Oh—and lots more. Yes, wouldn’t you like to have a book like that now?”
“Doubtless,” said Hercule Poirot, “it would give the recipe for treatment of tired feet.”
“Plenty of them, I should think. But why don’t you wear proper country shoes?”
“Madame, I like to look soigné in my appearance.”
“Well, then you’ll have to go on wearing things that are painful, and grin and bear it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “All the same, I don’t understand anything now. Was that Leaman woman telling me a pack of lies just now?”
“It is always possible.”
“Did someone tell her to tell a pack of lies?”
“That too is possible.”
“Did someone pay her to tell me a pack of lies?”
“Continue,” said Poirot, “continue. You are doing very nicely.”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully, “that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, like many another rich woman, enjoyed making Wills. I expect she made a good many during her life. You know; benefiting one person and then another. Changing about. The Drakes were well off, anyway. I expect she always left them at least a handsome legacy, but I wonder if she ever left anyone else as much as she appears, according to Mrs. Leaman and according to the forged Will as well, to that girl Olga. I’d like to know a bit more about that girl, I must say. She certainly seems a very successful disappearess.”
“I hope to know more about her shortly,” said Hercule Poirot.
“How?”
“Information that I shall receive shortly.”
“I know you’ve been asking for information down here.”
“Not here only. I have an agent in London who obtains information for me both abroad and in this country. I should have some news possibly soon from Herzogovinia.”
“Will you find out if she ever arrived back there?”
“That might be one thing I should learn, but it seems more likely that I may get information of a different kind—letters perhaps written during her sojourn in this country, mentioning friends she may have made here, and become intimate with.”
“What about the schoolteacher?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Which one do you mean?”
“I mean the one who was strangled—the one Elizabeth Whittaker told you about?” She added, “I don’t like Elizabeth Whittaker much. Tiresome sort of woman, but clever, I should think.” She added dreamily, “I wouldn’t put it past her to have thought up a murder.”
“Strangle another teacher, do you mean?”
“One has to exhaust all the possibilities.”
“I shall rely, as so often, on your intuition, Madame.”
Mrs. Oliver ate another date thoughtfully.
Twenty
When he left Mrs. Butler’s house, Poirot took the same way as had been shown him by Miranda. The aperture in the hedge, it seemed to him, had been slightly enlarged since last time. Somebody, perhaps, with slightly more bulk than Miranda, had used it also. He ascended the path in the quarry, noticing once more the beauty of the scene. A lovely spot, and yet in some way, Poirot felt as he had felt before, that it could be a haunted spot. There was a kind of pagan ruthlessness about it. It could be along these winding paths that the fairies hunted their victims down or a cold goddess decreed that sacrifices would have to be offered.
He could understand why it had not become a picnic spot. One would not want for some reason to bring your hard-boiled eggs and your lettuce and your oranges and sit down here and crack jokes and have a jollification. It was different, quite different. It would have been better, perhaps, he thought suddenly, if Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had not wanted this fairy-like transformation. Quite a modest sunk garden could have been made out of a quarry without the atmosphere, but she had been an ambitious woman, ambitious and a very rich woman. He thought for a moment or two about Wills, the kind of Wills made by rich women, the kind of lies told about Wills made by rich women, the places in which the Wills of rich widows were sometimes hidden, and he tried to put himself back into the mind of a forger. Undoubtably the Will offered for probate had been a forgery. Mr. Fullerton was a careful and competent lawyer. He was sure of that. The kind of lawyer, too, who would never advise a client to bring a case or to take legal proceedings unless there was very good evidence and justification for so doing.
He turned a corner of the pathway feeling for the moment that his feet were much more important than his speculations. Was he taking a short cut to Superintendent Spence’s dwelling or was he not? As the crow flies, perhaps, but the main road might have been more good to his feet. This path was not a grassy or mossy one, it had the quarry hardness of stone. Then he paused.
In front of him were two figures. Sitting on an outcrop of rock was Michael G
arfield. He had a sketching block on his knees and he was drawing, his attention fully on what he was doing. A little way away from him, standing close beside a minute but musical stream that flowed down from above, Miranda Butler was standing. Hercule Poirot forgot his feet, forgot the pains and ills of the human body, and concentrated again on the beauty that human beings could attain. There was no doubt that Michael Garfield was a very beautiful young man. He found it difficult to know whether he himself liked Michael Garfield or not. It is always difficult to know if you like anyone beautiful. You like beauty to look at, at the same time you dislike beauty almost on principle. Women could be beautiful, but Hercule Poirot was not at all sure that he liked beauty in men. He would not have liked to be a beautiful young man himself, not that there had ever been the least chance of that. There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good. He had never been handsome or good-looking. Certainly never beautiful.
And Miranda? He thought again, as he had thought before, that it was her gravity that was so attractive. He wondered what passed through her mind. It was the sort of thing one would never know. She would not say what she was thinking easily. He doubted if she would tell you what she was thinking, if you asked her. She had an original mind, he thought, a reflective mind. He thought too she was vulnerable. Very vulnerable. There were other things about her that he knew, or thought he knew. It was only thinking so far, but yet he was almost sure.
Michael Garfield looked up and said,
“Ha! Señor Moustachios. A very good afternoon to you, sir.”
“Can I look at what you are doing or would it incommode you? I do not want to be intrusive.”
“You can look,” said Michael Garfield, “it makes no difference to me.” He added gently, “I’m enjoying myself very much.”
Poirot came to stand behind his shoulder. He nodded. It was a very delicate pencil drawing, the lines almost invisible. The man could draw, Poirot thought. Not only design gardens. He said, almost under his breath:
Hallowe'en Party Page 17
