by Mark Place
"Madame, you have been most persevering, most noble."
"Celia is coming along in about half an hour's time. You wanted to meet her, didn't you? I've told her that you are - well, helping me in this matter. Or would you rather she came to see you?"
"No," said Poirot, "I think I should like her to come in the way you have arranged."
"I don't suppose she'll stay very long. If we get rid of her in about an hour, that would be all right, just to think over things a bit, and then Mrs. Burton-Cox is coming."
"Ah, yes. That will be interesting. Yes, that will be very interesting."
Mrs. Oliver sighed. "Oh, dear, it's a pity, though, isn't it?"
She said again, "We do have too much material, don't we?"
"Yes," said Poirot. "We do not know what we are looking for. All we know of still is, in all probability, the double suicide of a married couple who lived quiet and happy lives together. And what have we got to show for cause, for reason? We've gone forward and back to the right, to the left, to the west, to the east."
"Quite right," said Mrs. Oliver. "Everywhere. We haven't been to the North Pole yet," she added.
"Nor to the South Pole," said Poirot.
"So what is there, when it all comes to it?"
"Various things," said Poirot. "I have made here a list. Do you want to read it?"
Mrs. Oliver came over and sat beside him and looked over his shoulder. "Wigs," she said, pointing to the first item. "Why wigs first?"
"Four wigs," said Poirot, "seem to be interesting. Interesting and rather difficult to solve."
"I believe the shop she got her wigs from has gone out of the trade now. People go to quite different places for wigs and they're not wearing so many as they did just then. People used to wear wigs to go abroad. You know, because it saves bother in traveling."
"Yes, yes," said Poirot, "we will do what we can with wigs. Anyway, that is one thing that interests me. And then there are other stories. Stories of mental disturbance in the family. Stories of a twin sister who was mentally disturbed and spent a good many years of her life in a mental home."
"It doesn't seem to lead anywhere," said Mrs. Oliver. "I mean to say, I suppose she could have come and shot the two of them, but I don't really see why."
"No," said Poirot, "the fingerprints on the revolver were definitely only the fingerprints of General Ravenscroft and his wife, I understand. Then there are stories of a child. A child in India was murdered or attacked, possibly by this twin sister of Lady Ravenscroft. Possibly by some quite different woman - possibly by an ayah or a servant. Point two. You know a little more about money."
"Where does money come into it?" said Mrs. Oliver in some surprise.
"It does not come into it," said Poirot. "That is what is so interesting. Money usually comes in. Money someone got as a result of that suicide. Money lost as a result of it. Money somewhere causing difficulties, causing trouble, causing covetousness and desire. It is difficult, that. Difficult to see. There does not seem to have been any large amount of money anywhere. There are various stories of love affairs, women who were attractive to the husband, men who were attractive to the wife. An affair there one side or the other could have led to suicide or to murder. It very often does. Then we come to what at the moment inclines me to the most interest. That is why I am so anxious to meet Mrs. Burton-Cox."
"Oh. That awful woman. I don't see why you think she's important. All she did was to go being a nosey-parker and wanting me to find out things."
"Yes, but why did she want you to find out things? It seems to me very odd, that. It seems to me that that is something that one has to find out about. She is the link, you see."
"The link?"
"Yes. We do not know what the link was, where it was, how it was. All we know is that she wants desperately to learn more about this suicide. Being a link, she connects both with your godchild, Celia Ravenscroft, and with the son who is not her son."
"What do you mean - not her son?"
"He is an adopted son," said Poirot. "A son she adopted because her own son died,"
"How did her own child die? Why? When?"
"All these things I asked myself. She could be a link, a link of emotion, a wish for revenge through hatred, through some love affair. At any rate I must see her. I must make up my mind about her. Yes. I cannot help but think that is very important."
There was a ring at the bell and Mrs. Oliver went out of the room to answer it. "This, I think, could be Celia," she said. "You're sure it's all right?"
"By me, yes," said Poirot. "By her also, I hope."
Mrs. Oliver came back a few minutes later. Celia Ravenscroft was with her. She had a doubtful, suspicious look.
"I don't know," she said, "if I"
She stopped, staring at Hercule Poirot.
"I want to introduce you," said Mrs. Oliver, "to someone who is helping me, and I hope is helping you also. That is, helping you in what you want to know and to find out. This is Monsieur Hercule Poirot. He has special genius in finding out things."
"Oh," said Celia. She looked very doubtfully at the egg-shaped head, the monstrous moustaches and the small stature. "I think," she said rather doubtfully, "that I have heard of him."
Hercule Poirot stopped himself with a slight effort from saying firmly, "Most people have heard of me." It was not quite as true as it used to be, because many people who had heard of Hercule Poirot and known him were now reposing with suitable memorial stones over them in churchyards. He said: "Sit down, mademoiselle. I will tell you this much about myself. That when I start an investigation I pursue it to the end. I will bring to light the truth and if it is, shall we say, truly the truth that you want, then I will deliver that knowledge to you. But it may be that you want reassuring. That is not the same thing as the truth. I can find various aspects that might reassure you. Will that be enough? If so, do not ask for more."
Celia sat down in the chair he had pushed towards her, and looked at him rather earnestly. Then she said: "You don't think I'd care for the truth, is that it?"
"I think," said Poirot, "that the truth might be - a shock, a sorrow, and it might be that you would have said 'why did I not leave all this behind? Why did I ask for knowledge? It is painful knowledge about which I can do nothing helpful or hopeful.' 'It is a double suicide by a father and a mother that I - well, we'll admit it - that I loved.' It is not a disadvantage to love a mother and father."
"It seems to be considered so nowadays occasionally," said Mrs. Oliver. "New article of belief, shall we say."
"That's the way I've been living," said Celia. "Beginning to wonder, you know. Catching on to odd things that people said sometimes. People who looked at me rather pityingly. But more than that. With curiosity as well. One begins to find out, you know, things about people, I mean. People you meet, people you know, people who used to know your family. I don't want this life. I want... you think I don't really want it, but I do - I want truth. I'm able to deal with truth. Just tell me something."
It was not a continuation of the conversation. Celia had turned on Poirot with a separate question. Something which had replaced what had been in her mind just previously. "You saw Desmond, didn't you?" she said. "He went to see you. He told me he had."
"Yes. He came to see me. Did you not want him to do so?"
"He didn't ask me."
"If he had asked you?"
"I don't know. I don't know whether I should have forbidden him to do so, told him on no account to do such a thing, or whether I should have encouraged it."
"I would like to ask you one question, mademoiselle. I want to know if there is one clear thing in your mind that matters to you, that could matter to you more than anything else."
"Well, what is that?"
"As you say, Desmond Burton-Cox came to see me. A very attractive likeable young man, and very much in earnest over what he came to say. Now that - that is the really important thing. The important thing is if you and he really wish to marry -
because that is serious. That is - though young people do not always think so nowadays - that is a link together for life. Do you want to enter into that state? It matters. What difference can it make to you or to Desmond whether the death of two people was a double suicide or something quite different?"
"You think it is something quite different - or, it was?"
"I do not as yet know," said Poirot. "I have reason to believe that it might be. There are certain things that do not accord with a double suicide, but as far as I can go on the opinion of the police - and the police are very reliable, Mademoiselle Celia, very reliable - they put together all the evidence and they thought very definitely that it could be nothing else but a double suicide."
"But they never knew the cause of it? That's what you mean -"
"Yes," said Poirot, "that's what I mean."
"And don't you know the cause of it, either? I mean, from looking into things or thinking about them, or whatever you do?"
"No, I am not sure about it," said Poirot. "I think there might be something very painful to learn and I am asking you whether you will be wise enough to say: 'The past is the past. Here is a young man whom I care for and who cares for me. This is the future we are spending together, not the past.'"
"Did he tell you he was an adopted child?" asked Celia.
"Yes, he did."
"You see, what business is it really, of hers? Why should she come worrying Mrs. Oliver here, trying to make Mrs. Oliver ask me questions, find out things. She's not his own mother."
"Does he care for her?"
"No," said Celia. "I'd say on the whole he dislikes her. I think he always has."
"She's spent money on him, schooling and on clothes and on all sorts of different things. And you think she cares for him?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. She wanted, I suppose, a child to replace her own child. She'd had a child who died in an accident, that was why she wanted to adopt someone, and her husband had died quite recently. All these dates are so difficult."
"I know, I know. I would like perhaps to know one thing."
"About her or about him?"
"Is he provided for financially?"
"I don't know quite what you mean by that. He'll be able to support me - to support a wife. I gather some money was settled on him when he was adopted. A sufficient sum, that is. I don't mean a fortune or anything like that."
"There is nothing that she could - withhold?"
"What, you mean that she'd cut off the money supplies if he married me? I don't think she's ever threatened to do that, or indeed that she could do it. I think it was all fixed up by lawyers or whoever arranges adoptions. I mean, they make a lot of fuss, these adoption societies, from all I hear."
"I would ask you something else which you might know but nobody else does. Presumably Mrs. Burton-Cox knows it. Do you know who his actual mother was?"
"You think that might have been one of the reasons for her being so nosey and all that? Something to do with, as you say, what he was really. I don't know. I suppose he might have been an illegitimate child. They're the usual ones that go for adoption, aren't they? She might have known something about his real mother or his real father, or something like that. If so, she didn't tell him. I gather she just told him the silly things they suggest you should say. That it is just as nice to be adopted, because it shows you really were wanted. There's a lot of silly slop like that."
"I think some societies suggest that that's the way you should break the news. Does he or you know of any blood relations?"
"I don't know. I don't think he knows, but I don't think it worries him at all. He's not that kind of a worrier."
"Do you know if Mrs. Burton-Cox was a friend of your family, of your mother and father? Did you ever meet her, as far as you can remember, when you were living in your own home in the early days?"
"I don't think so. I think Desmond's mother - I mean, I think Mrs. Burton-Cox went to Malaya. I think perhaps her husband died out in Malaya, and that Desmond was sent to school in England while they were out there and that he was boarded with some cousins or people who take in children for holidays. And that's how we came to be friends in those days. I always remembered him, you know. I was a great hero-worshiper. He was wonderful at climbing trees and he taught me things about birds' nests and birds' eggs. So it seemed quite natural, when I met him again I mean, met him at the university, and we both talked about where we'd lived and then he asked me my name. He said, 'Only your Christian name I know,' and then we remembered quite a lot of things together. It's what made us, you might say, get acquainted. I don't know everything about him. I don't know anything. I want to know. How can you arrange your life and know what you're going to do with your life if you don't know all about the things that affect you, that really happened?"
"So you tell me to carry on with my investigation?"
"Yes, if it's going to produce any results, though I don't think it will, because in a way, well, Desmond and I have tried our hand at finding out a few things. We haven't been very successful. It seems to come back to this plain fact which isn't really the story of a life. It's the story of a death, isn't it? Of two deaths, that's to say. When it's a double suicide, one thinks of it as one death. Is it in Shakespeare or where does the quotation come from - 'And in death they were not divided'?"
She turned to Poirot again. "Yes, go on. Go on finding out. Go on telling Mrs. Oliver or telling me direct. I'd rather you told me direct." She turned towards Mrs. Oliver. "I don't mean to be horrid to you, Godmother. You've been a very nice godmother to me always, but - but I'd like it straight from the horse's mouth. I'm afraid that's rather rude, Monsieur Poirot, but I didn't mean it that way."
"No," said Poirot, "I am content to be the horse's mouth."
"And you think you will be?"
"I always believe that I can."
"And it's always true, is it?"
"It is usually true," said Poirot. "I do not say more than that."
Chapter 13
MRS. BURTON-COX
"Well," said Mrs. Oliver as she returned to the room after seeing Celia to the door. "What do you think of her?"
"She is a personality," said Poirot, "an interesting girl. Definitely, if I may put it so, she is somebody, not anybody."
"Yes, that's true enough," said Mrs. Oliver.
"I would like you to tell me something."
"About her? I don't really know her very well. One doesn't really, with godchildren. I mean, you only see them, as it were, at stated intervals rather far apart."
"I didn't mean her. Tell me about her mother."
"Oh. I see."
"You knew her mother?"
"Yes. We were in a sort of pensionnat in Paris together. People used to send girls to Paris then to be finished," said Mrs. Oliver. "That sounds more like an introduction to a cemetery than an introduction into society. What do you want to know about her?"
"You remember her? You remember what she was like?"
"Yes. As I tell you, one doesn't entirely forget things or people because they're in the past."
"What impression did she make on you?"
"She was beautiful," said Mrs. Oliver. "I do remember that. Not when she was about thirteen or fourteen. She had a lot of puppy fat then. I think we all did," she added thoughtfully.
"Was she a personality?"
"It's difficult to remember because, you see, she wasn't my only friend or my greatest friend. I mean, there were several of us together - a little pack, as you might say. People with tastes more or less the same. We were keen on tennis and we were keen on being taken to the opera and we were bored to death being taken to the picture galleries. I really can only give you a general idea."
"Molly Preston-Grey. That was her name. Had few boy friends?"
"We had one or two passions, I think. Not for pop singers, of course. They hadn't happened yet. Actors usually. There was one rather famous variety actor. A girl - one of the girls - had him pinned up over her bed
and Mademoiselle Girand, the French mistress, on no account allowed that actor to be pinned up there. 'C'est ne pas convenable,' she said. The girl didn't tell her that he was her father! We laughed," added Mrs. Oliver. "Yes, we laughed a good deal."
"Well, tell me more about Molly or Margaret Preston-Grey. Does this girl remind you of her?"
"No, I don't think she does. No. They are not alike. I think Molly was more - was more emotional than this girl."
"There was a twin sister, I understand. Was she at the same pensionnat?"
"No, she wasn't. She might have been since they were the same age, but no, I think she was in some entirely different place in England. I'm not sure. I have a feeling that the twin sister Dolly, whom I had met once or twice very occasionally and who of course at that time looked exactly like Molly - I mean they hadn't started trying to look different, have different hair-dos and all that, as twins do usually when they grow up. I think Molly was devoted to her sister Dolly, but she didn't talk about her very much. I have a feeling - nowadays, I mean, I didn't have it then - that there might have been something a bit wrong perhaps with the sister even then. Once or twice, I remember, there were mentions of her having been ill or gone away for a course of treatment somewhere. Something like that. I remember once wondering whether she was a cripple. She was taken once by an aunt on a sea voyage to do her health good." She shook her head. "I can't really remember, though. I just had a feeling that Molly was devoted to her and would have liked to have protected her in some way. Does that seem nonsense to you?"
"Not at all," said Hercule Poirot.
"There were other times, I think, when she didn't want to talk about her. She talked about her mother and her father. She was fond of them, I think, in the ordinary sort of way. Her mother came once to Paris and took her out, I remember. Nice woman. Not very exciting or good-looking or anything. Nice, quiet, kindly."
"I see. So you have nothing to help us there? Boy friends?"