"You have perhaps heard that the dead
girl Joyce was heard by several witnesses
to say that she had with her own eyes
witnessed a murder."
"In a place like this," said Mr.
Fullerton, "one usually hears any rumour
that may be going round. One usually
hears it, too, if I may add these words, in
a singularly exaggerated form not usually
worthy of credence."
"That also," said Poirot, "is quite true.
Joyce was, I gather, just thirteen years of
age. A child of nine could remember something
she had seen--a hit-and-run accident,
a fight or a struggle with knives on
a dark evening, or a school-teacher who
was strangled, say--all these things might
leave a very strong impression on a child's
mind about which she would not speak, being uncertain, perhaps, of the actual
facts she had seen, and mulling them over
in her own mind. Forgetting about them
even, possibly, until something happened
to remind her. You agree that that is a
possible happening?"
"Oh yes, yes, but I hardly--I think it
is an extremely far-fetched supposition."
"You had, also, I believe, a disappearance
here of a foreign girl. Her name, I
believe, was Olga or Sonia--I am not sure
of the surname."
"Olga Seminoff. Yes, indeed."
"Not, I fear, a very reliable character?"
"No."
"She was companion or nurse attendant
to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, was she not, whom you described to me just now? Mrs.
Drake's aunt--"
"Yes. She had had several girls in that
202
position--two other foreign girls, I think,
one of them with whom she quarrelled
almost immediately, and another one who
was nice but painfully stupid. Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe was not one to suffer
fools gladly. Olga, her last venture, seems
to have suited her very well. She was not, if I remember rightly, a particularly
attractive girl," said Mr. Fullerton. "She
was short, rather stocky, had rather a dour
manner, and people in the neighbourhood
did not like her very much."
"But Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe did like
her," suggested Poirot.
"She became very much attached to her
--unwisely so, it seemed at one moment."
"Ah, indeed."
"I have no doubt," said Mr. Fullerton, "that I am not telling you anything that
you have not heard already. These things, as I say, go round the place like wildfire."
"I understand that Mrs. LlewellynSmythe
left a large sum of money to the
girl."
"A most surprising thing to happen,"
said Mr. Fullerton. "Mrs. LlewellynSmythe
had not changed her fundamental
testamentary disposition for many years,
except for adding new charities or altering
legacies left void by death. Perhaps I am
telling you what you know already, if you
are interested in this matter. Her money
had always been left jointly to her nephew,
Hugo Drake, and his wife, who was also
his first cousin, and so also niece to Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe. If either of them
predeceased her the money went to the
survivor. A good many bequests were left
to charities and to old servants. But what
was alleged to be her final disposal of her
property was made about three weeks
before her death, and not, as heretofore,
drawn up by our firm. It was a codicil
written in her own handwriting. It
included one or two charities—not so
many as before—the old servants had no
legacies at all, and the whole residue of
her considerable fortune was left to Olga
Seminoff in gratitude for the devoted
service and affection she had shown her.
A most astonishing disposition, one that
seemed totally unlike anything Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe had ever done before."
"And then?" said Poirot.
"You have presumably heard more or
less the developments. From the evidence
204
of handwriting experts, it became clear
that the codicil was a complete forgery. It
bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe's handwriting, no more
than that. Mrs. Smythe had disliked the
typewriter and had frequently got Olga to
write letters of a personal nature, as far as
possible copying her employer's handwriting--sometimes,
even, signing the
letter with her employer's signature. She
had had plenty of practice in doing this. It
seems that when Mrs. LlewellynSmythe
died the girl went one step further and
thought that she was proficient enough to
make the handwriting acceptable as that of
her employer. But that sort of thing won't
do with experts. No, indeed it won't."
"Proceedings were about to be taken to
contest the document?"
"Quite so. There was, of course, the
usual legal delay before the proceedings
actually came to court. During that period
the young lady lost her nerve and well, as
you said yourself just now, she--
disappeared."
205
13
WHEN Hercule Poirot had taken
his leave and departed, Jeremy
Fullerton sat before his desk
drumming gently with his fingertips. His
eyes, however, were far away—lost in
thought.
He picked up a document in front of
him and dropped his eyes down to it, but
without focusing his glance. The discreet
buzz of the house telephone caused him to
pick up the receiver on his desk.
"Yes, Miss Miles?"
"Mr. Holden is here, sir."
"Yes. Yes, his appointment, I believe,
was for nearly three quarters of an hour
ago. Did he give any reason for having
been so late? . . . Yes, yes, I quite see.
Rather the same excuse he gave last time.
Will you tell him I've seen another client,
and I am now too short of time. Make an
appointment with him for next week, will
you? We can't have this sort of thing going
on."
206
"Yes, Mr. Fullerton."
He replaced the receiver and sat looking
thoughtfully down at the document in
front of him. He was still not reading it.
His mind was going over events of the
past. Two years—close on two years ago
—and that strange little man this morning
with his patent leather shoes and his big
moustaches, had brought it back to him,
asking all those questions.
Now he was going over in his own mind
a conversation of nearly two years ago.
He saw again, sitting in the chair opposite
him, a girl, a short, stocky figure—the olive
brown skin, the dark red generous mouth,
the heavy cheekbones and the fierceness of
the blue eyes that looked into his beneath
the heavy, beetling brows. A passionate
face, a face full of vitality, a face that
had known suffering—would probably
always know suffering—but would never
learn to accept suffering. The kind of
woman who would fight and protest until
the end. Where was she now, he wondered?
Somehow or other she had managed—what
had she managed exactly? Who had helped
her? Had anyone helped her? Somebody
must have done so.
207
She was back again, he supposed, in
some trouble-stricken spot in Central
Europe where she had come from, where
she belonged, where she had had to go
back to because there was no other course
for her to take unless she was content to
lose her liberty.
Jeremy Fullerton was an upholder of the
law. He believed in the law, he was
contemptuous of many of the magistrates
of to-day with their weak sentences, their
acceptance of scholastic needs. The
students who stole books, the young
married women who denuded the supermarkets, the girls who filched money from
their employers, the boys who wrecked
telephone boxes, none of them in real
need, none of them desperate, most of
them had known nothing but overindulgence
in bringing-up and a fervent
belief that anything they could not afford
to buy was theirs to take. Yet along with
his intrinsic belief in the administration of
the law justly, Mr. Fullerton was a man
who had compassion. He could be sorry
for people. He could be sorry, and was
sorry, for Olga Seminoff though he was
208
quite unaffected by the passionate arguments
she advanced for herself.
"I came to you for help. I thought you
would help me. You were kind last year.
You helped me with forms so that I could
remain another year in England. So they
say to me: 'You need not answer any questions
you do not wish to. You can be
represented by a lawyer.9 So I come to
you."
"The circumstances you have
instanced--" and Mr. Fullerton remembered
how dryly and coldly he had said
that, all the more dryly and coldly because
of the pity that lay behind the dryness of
the statement "--do not apply. In this
case I am not at liberty to act for you
legally. I am representing already the
Drake family. As you know, I was Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe's solicitor."
"But she is dead. She does not want a solicitor when she is dead."
"She was fond of you," said Mr.
Fullerton.
"Yes, she was fond of me. That is what
I am telling you. That is why she wanted
to give me the money."
"All her money?"
209
"Why not? Why not? She did not like
her relations."
"You are wrong. She was very fond of
her niece and nephew."
"Well, then, she may have liked Mr.
Drake but she did not like Mrs. Drake.
She found her very tiresome. Mrs. Drake
interfered. She would not let Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe do always what she
liked. She would not let her eat the food
she liked."
"She is a very conscientious woman, and
she tried to get her aunt to obey the
doctor's orders as to diet and not too much
exercise and many other things."
"People do not always want to obey a
doctor's orders. They do not want to be
interfered with by relations. They like
living ther own lives and doing what they
want and having what they want. She had
plenty of money. She could have what she
wanted! She could have as much as she
liked of everything. She was rich—rich—
rich, and she could do what she liked with
her money. They have already quite
enough money, Mr. and Mrs. Drake.
They have a fine house and clothes and
210
two cars. They are very well-to-do. Why
should they have any more?"
"They were her only living relations."
"She wanted me to have the money. She
was sorry for me. She knew what I had
been through. She knew about my father,
arrested by the police and taken away. We
never saw him again, my mother and I.
And then my mother and how she died.
All my family died. It is terrible, what I
have endured. You do not know what it is
like to live in a police state, as I have lived
in it. No, no. You are on the side of the
police. You are not on my side."
"No," Mr. Fullerton said, "I am not on
your side. I am very sorry for what has
happened to you, but you've brought this
trouble about yourself."
"That is not true! It is not true that I
have done anything I should not do. What
have I done? I was kind to her, I was nice
to her. I brought her in lots of things that
she was not supposed to eat. Chocolates
and butter. All the time nothing but
vegetable fats. She did not like vegetable
fats. She wanted butter. She wanted lots
of butter."
211
"It's not just a question of butter," said
Mr. Fullerton.
"I looked after her, I was nice to her!
And so she was grateful. And then when
she died and I find that in her kindness
and her affection she has left a signed
paper leaving all her money to me, then
those Drakes come along and say I shall
not have it. They say all sorts of things.
They say I had a bad influence. And then
they say worse things than that. Much
worse. They say I wrote the Will myself.
That is nonsense. She wrote it. She wrote
it. And then she sent me out of the room.
She got the cleaning woman and Jim the
gardener. She said they had to sign the
paper, not me. Because I was going to get
the money. Why should not I have the
money? Why should I not have some good
luck in my life, some happiness? It seemed
so wonderful. All the things I planned to
do when I knew about it."
"I have no doubt, yes, I have no
doubt."
"Why shouldn't I have plans? Why
should not I rejoice? I am going to be
happy and rich and have all the things I
212
want. What did I do wrong? Nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Nothing"
"I have tried to explain to you," said
Mr. Fullerton.
"That is all lies. You say I tell lies. You
say I wrote the paper myself. I did not
write it myself. She wrote it. Nobody can
say anything different."
"Certain people say a good many
things," said Mr. Fullerton. "Now listen.
Stop protesting and listen to me. It is true, is it not, that Mrs. Llewellyn-Sm
ythe in
the letters you wrote for her, often asked
you to copy her handwriting as nearly as
you could? That was because she had an
old-fashioned idea that to write typewritten
letters to people who are friends or
with whom you have a personal acquaintance, is an act of rudeness. That is a
survival from Victorian days. Nowadays
nobody cares whether they receive handwritten
letters or typewritten ones. But to
Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe that was discourtesy.
You understand what I am saying?"
'Yes, I understand. And so she asks me. She says 'Now, Olga/ she says. 'These
four letters you will answer as I have told
you and that you have taken down in
213
shorthand. But you will write them in
handwriting and you will make the handwriting
as close to mine as possible.' And
she told me to practise writing her handwriting, to notice how she made her a's, her b's and her Fs and all the different
letters. "So long as it is reasonably like my
handwriting,5 she said, "that will do, and
then you can sign my name. But I do not
want people to think that I am no longer able to write my own letters. Although, as
you know, the rheumatism in my wrist is
getting worse and I find it more difficult, but I don't want my personal letters
typewritten."
"You could have written them in your
ordinary handwriting," said Mr.
Fullerton, "and put a note at the end
saying 'per secretary" or per initials if you
liked."
"She did not want me to do that. She
wanted it to be thought that she wrote the
letters herself."
And that, Mr. Fullerton thought, could
be true enough. It was very like Louise
Llewellyn-Smythe. She was always
passionately resentful of the fact that she
could no longer do the things she used to
214
do, that she could no longer walk far or
go up hills quickly or perform certain
actions with her hands, her right hand
especially. She wanted to be able to say
"I'm perfectly well, perfectly all right, and
there's nothing I can't do if I set my mind
to it." Yes, what Olga was telling him now
was certainly true, and because it was true
it was one of the reasons why the codicil
appended to the last Will properly drawn
out and signed by Louise LlewellynSmythe
had been accepted at first without
suspicion. It was in his own office, Mr.
Fullerton reflected, that suspicions had
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