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‘I hate it. I’ve never thought about it before. What it can do, and everything.’
‘My dear friend,’ said Hercule Poirot, as George extricated her from the flapping folds of watery oilskin. ‘Come and sit down here. Let George finally relieve you of—what is it you are wearing?’
‘I got it in Cornwall,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Oilskins. A real, proper fisherman’s oilskin.’
‘Very useful to him, no doubt,’ said Poirot, ‘but not, I think, so suitable for you. Heavy to wear. But come—sit down and tell me.’
‘I don’t know how,’ said Mrs oliver, sinking into a chair. ‘Sometimes, you know, I can’t feel it’s really true. But it happened. It really happened.’
‘Tell me,’ said Poirot.
‘That’s what I’ve come for. But now I’ve got here, it’s so difficult because I don’t know where to begin.’
‘At the beginning?’ suggested Poirot, ‘or is that too conventional a way of acting?’
‘I don’t know when the beginning was. Not really. It could have been a long time ago, you know.’
‘Calm yourself,’ said Poirot. ‘Gather together the various threads of this matter in your mind and tell me. What is it that has so upset you?’
‘It would have upset you, too,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘At least, I suppose it would.’ She looked rather doubtful. ‘One doesn’t know, really, what does upset you. You take so many things with a lot of calm.’
‘It is often the best way,’ said Poirot.
‘All right,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It began with a party.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Poirot, relieved to have something as ordinary and sane as a party presented to him. ‘A party. You went to a party and something happened.’
‘Do you know what a Hallowe’en party is?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘I know what Hallowe’en is,’ said Poirot. ‘The 31st of October.’ He twinkled slightly as he said, ‘When witches ride on broomsticks.’
‘There were broomsticks,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘They gave prizes for them.’
‘Prizes?’
‘Yes, for who brought the best decorated ones.’
Poirot looked at her rather doubtfully. Originally relieved at the mention of a party, he now again felt slightly doubtful. Since he knew that Mrs Oliver did not partake of spirituous liquor[33 - did not partake of spirituous liquor – не пила спиртных напитков], he could not make one of the assumptions that he might have made in any other case.
‘A children’s party,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Or rather, an eleven-plus party.’
‘Eleven-plus?’
‘Well, that’s what they used to call it, you know, in schools. I mean they see how bright you are, and if you’re bright enough to pass your eleven-plus, you go on to a grammar school or something. But if you’re not bright enough, you go to something called a Secondary Modern[34 - Secondary Modern [school] – государственная средняя школа с практическим уклоном для детей 11–16 лет, существовала в Великобритании до 60-х гг. XX в.]. A silly name. It doesn’t seem to mean anything.’
‘I do not, I confess, really understand what you are talking about,’ said Poirot. They seemed to have got away from parties and entered into the realms of education.
Mrs Oliver took a deep breath and began again.
‘It started really,’ she said, ‘with the apples.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Poirot, ‘it would. It always might with you, mightn’t it?’
He was thinking to himself of a small car on a hill and a large woman getting out of it, and a bag of apples breaking, and the apples running and cascading down the hill.
‘Yes,’ he said encouragingly, ‘apples.’
‘Bobbing for apples,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘That’s one of the things you do at a Hallowe’en party.’
‘Ah yes, I think I have heard of that, yes.’
‘You see, all sorts of things were being done. There was bobbing for apples, and cutting sixpence off a tumblerful of flour, and looking in a looking-glass—’
‘To see your true love’s face?’ suggested Poirot knowledgeably.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘you’re beginning to under stand at last.’
‘A lot of old folklore, in fact,’ said Poirot, ‘and this all took place at your party.’
‘Yes, it was all a great success. It finished up with Snapdragon. You know, burning raisins in a great dish. I suppose—’ her voice faltered, ‘—I suppose that must be the actual time when it was done.’
‘When what was done?’
‘A murder. After the Snapdragon everyone went home,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘That, you see, was when they couldn’t find her.’
‘Find whom?’
‘A girl. A girl called Joyce. Everyone called her name and looked around and asked if she’d gone home with anyone else, and her mother got rather annoyed and said that Joyce must have felt tired or ill or something and gone off by herself, and that it was very thoughtless of her not to leave word. All the sort of things that mothers say when things like that happen. But anyway, we couldn’t find Joyce.’
‘And had she gone home by herself?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘she hadn’t gone home…’ Her voice faltered. ‘We found her in the end—in the library. That’s where—where someone did it, you know. Bobbing for apples. the bucket was there. A big, galvanized bucket. they wouldn’t have the plastic one. Perhaps if they’d had the plastic one it wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have been heavy enough. It might have tipped over—’
‘What happened?’ said Poirot. His voice was sharp.
‘That’s where she was found,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Someone, you know, someone had shoved her head down into the water with the apples. Shoved her down and held her there so that she was dead, of course. Drowned. Drowned. Just in a galvanized iron bucket nearly full of water. Kneeling there, sticking her head down to bob at an apple. I hate apples,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I never want to see an apple again.’
Poirot looked at her. He stretched out a hand and filled a small glass with cognac.
‘Drink this,’ he said. ‘It will do you good.’
CHAPTER 4
Mrs Oliver put down the glass and wiped her lips.
‘You were right,’ she said. ‘That—that helped. I was getting hysterical.’
‘You have had a great shock, I see now. When did this happen?’
‘Last night. Was it only last night? Yes, yes, of course.’
‘And you came to me.’
It was not a quite a question, but it displayed a desire for more information than Poirot had yet had.
‘You came to me—why?’
‘I thought you could help,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You see, it’s—it’s not simple.’
‘It could be and it could not,’ said Poirot. ‘A lot depends. You must tell me more, you know. The police, I presume, are in charge. A doctor was, no doubt, called. What did he say?’
‘There’s to be an inquest,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Naturally.’
‘Tomorrow or the next day.’
‘This girl, Joyce, how old was she?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I should think perhaps twelve or thirteen.’
‘Small for her age?’
‘No, no, I should think rather mature, perhaps. Lumpy,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Well developed? You mean sexy-looking?’
‘Yes, that is what I mean. But I don’t think that was the kind of crime it was—I mean that would have been more simple, wouldn’t it?’
‘It is the kind of crime,’ said Poirot, ‘of which one reads every day in the paper. A girl who is attacked, a school child who is assaulted—yes, every day. This happened in a private house which makes it different, but perhaps not so different as all that. But all the same, I’m not sure yet that you’ve told me everything.’
‘No, I don’t suppose I have,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I haven’t told you the reason, I mean, why I came to you.’
‘You knew this Joyce, you knew her well?’
‘I didn’t know her at all. I’d better explain to you, I think, just how I came to be there.’
‘There is where?’
‘Oh, a place called Woodleigh Common.’
‘Woodleigh Common,’ said Poirot thoughtfully. ‘Now where lately—’ he broke off.
‘It’s not very far from London. About—oh, thirty to forty miles, I think. It’s near Medchester. It’s one of those places where there are a few nice houses, but where a certain amount of new building has been done. Residential. A good school nearby, and people can commute from there to London or into Medchester. It’s quite an ordinary sort of place where people with what you might call everyday reasonable incomes[35 - people with … everyday reasonable income – люди с приличным доходом] live.’
‘Woodleigh Common,’ said Poirot again, thought fully.
‘I was staying with a friend there. Judith Butler. She’s a widow. I went on a Hellenic cruise[36 - Hellenic (= Greek) cruise – круиз по Греции] this year and Judith was on the cruise and we became friends. She’s got a daughter. A girl called Miranda who is twelve or thirteen. Anyway, she asked me to come and stay and she said friends of hers were giving this party for children, and it was to be a Hallowe’en party. She said perhaps I had some interesting ideas.’
‘Ah,’ said Poirot, ‘she did not suggest this time that you should arrange a murder hunt or anything of that kind?’
‘Good gracious, no,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Do you think I should ever consider such a thing again?’
‘I should think it unlikely.’
‘But it happened, that’s what’s so awful,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have happened just because I was there, could it?’
‘I do not think so. At least—Did any of the people at the party know who you were?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘One of the children said something about my writing books and that they liked murders. That’s how it—well—that’s what led to the thing—I mean to the thing that made me come to you.’
‘Which you still haven’t told me.’
‘Well, you see, at first I didn’t think of it. Not straight away. I mean, children do queer things sometimes. I mean there are queer children about, children who—well, once I suppose they would have been in mental homes and things, but they send them home now and tell them to lead ordinary lives or something, and then they go and do something like this.’
‘There were some young adolescents there?’
‘There were two boys, or youths as they always seem to call them in police reports. About sixteen to eighteen.’
‘I suppose one of them might have done it. Is that what the police think?’
‘They don’t say what they think,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but they looked as though they might think so.’
‘Was this Joyce an attractive girl?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You mean attractive to boys, do you?’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘I think I meant—well, just the plain simple meaning of the word.’
‘I don’t think she was a very nice girl,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘not one you’d want to talk to much. She was the sort of girl who shows off and boasts. It’s a rather tiresome age, I think. It sounds unkind what I’m saying, but—’
‘It is not unkind in murder to say what the victim was like,’ said Poirot. ‘It is very, very necessary. The personality of the victim is the cause of many a murder. How many people were there in the house at the time?’
‘You mean for the party and so on? Well, I suppose there were five or six women, some mothers, a school-teacher, a doctor’s wife, or sister, I think, a couple of middle-aged married people, the two boys of sixteen to eighteen, a girl of fifteen, two or three of eleven or twelve—well that sort of thing. About twenty-five or thirty in all, perhaps.’
‘Any strangers?’
‘They all knew each other, I think. Some better than others. I think the girls were mostly in the same school. There were a couple of women who had come in to help with the food and the supper and things like that. when the party ended, most of the mothers went home with their children. I stayed behind with Judith and a couple of others to help Rowena Drake, the woman who gave the party, to clear up a bit, so the cleaning women who came in the morning wouldn’t have so much mess to deal with. You know, there was a lot of flour about, and paper caps out of crackers[37 - paper caps out of crackers – бумажные колпачки от хлопушек] and different things. So we swept up a bit, and we got to the library last of all. And that’s when—when we found her. And then I remembered what she’d said.’
‘What who had said?’
‘Joyce.’
‘What did she say? We are coming to it now, are we not? We are coming to the reason why you are here?’
‘Yes. I thought it wouldn’t mean anything to—oh, to a doctor or the police or anyone, but I thought it might mean something to you.’
‘Eh bien,’ said Poirot, ‘tell me. Was this something Joyce said at the party?’
