Elephants Can Remember

by Agatha Christie

  ‘Yes. She is nice. Very nice. And you were quite right, you know, she is another elephant.’

  ‘Meaning, chère madame?’

  ‘I mean that she remembered Molly Ravenscroft.’

  ‘And she remembered her wigs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Briefly she outlined what the retired hairdresser had told her about the wigs.

  ‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘that agrees. That is exactly what Superintendent Garroway mentioned to me. The four wigs that the police found. Curls, an evening type of head-dress, and two other plainer ones. Four.’

  ‘So I really only told you what you knew already?’

  ‘No, you told me something more than that. She said – that is what you told me just now, is it not? – that Lady Ravenscroft wanted two extra wigs to add to the two that she already had and that this was about three weeks to six weeks before the suicide tragedy occurred. Yes, that is interesting, is it not?’

  ‘It’s very natural,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I mean, you know that people, women, I mean, may do awful damage to things. To false hair and things of that kind. If it can’t be re-dressed and cleaned, if it’s got burnt or got stuff spilt on it you can’t get out, or it’s been dyed and dyed all wrong – something like that – well then, of course you have to get two new wigs or switches or whatever they are. I don’t see what makes you excited about that.’

  ‘Not exactly excited,’ said Poirot, ‘no. It is a point, but the more interesting point is what you have just added. It was a French lady, was it not, who brought the wigs to be copied or matched?’

  ‘Yes. I gathered some kind of companion or something. Lady Ravenscroft had been or was in hospital or in a nursing home somewhere and she was not in good health and she could not come herself to make a choice or anything of that kind.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And so her French companion came.’

  ‘Do you know the name of that companion by any chance?’

  ‘No. I don’t think Mrs Rosentelle mentioned it. In fact I don’t think she knew. The appointment was made by Lady Ravenscroft and the French girl or woman just brought the wigs along for size and matching and all the rest of it, I suppose.’

  ‘Well,’ said Poirot, ‘that helps me towards the further step that I am about to take.’

  ‘What have you learnt?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Have you done anything?’

  ‘You are always so sceptical,’ said Poirot. ‘You always consider that I do nothing, that I sit in a chair and repose myself.’

  ‘Well I think you sit in a chair and think,’ admitted Mrs Oliver, ‘but I quite agree that you don’t often go out and do things.’

  ‘In the near future I think I may possibly go out and do things,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘and that will please you. I may even cross the Channel though certainly not in a boat. A plane, I think is indicated.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Do you want me to come too?’

  ‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘I think it would be better if I went alone on this occasion.’

  ‘You really will go?’

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes. I will run about with all activity and so you should be pleased with me, madame.’

  When he had rung off, he dialled another number which he looked up from a note he had made in his pocket-book. Presently he was connected to the person whom he wished to speak to.

  ‘My dear Superintendent Garroway, it is Hercule Poirot who addresses you. I do not derange you too much? You are not very busy at this moment?’

  ‘No, I am not busy,’ said Superintendent Garroway. ‘I am pruning my roses, that’s all.’

  ‘There is something that I want to ask you. Quite a small thing.’

  ‘About our problem of the double suicide?’

  ‘Yes, about our problem. You said there was a dog in the house. You said that the dog went for walks with the family, or so you understood.’

  ‘Yes, there was some mention made of a dog. I think it may have been either the housekeeper or someone who said that they went for a walk with the dog as usual that day.’

  ‘In examination of the body was there any sign that Lady Ravenscroft had been bitten by a dog? Not necessarily very recently or on that particular day?’

  ‘Well, it’s odd you should say that. I can’t say I’d have remembered about it if you hadn’t mentioned such a thing. But yes, there were a couple of scars. Not bad ones. But again the housekeeper mentioned that the dog had attacked its mistress more than once and bitten her, though not very severely. Look here, Poirot, there was no rabies about, if that’s what you are thinking. There couldn’t have been anything of that kind. After all she was shot – they were both shot. There was no question of any septic poisoning or danger of tetanus.’

  ‘I do not blame the dog,’ said Poirot, ‘it was only something I wanted to know.’

  ‘One dog bite was fairly recent, about a week before, I think, or two weeks somebody said. There was no case of necessary injections or anything of that kind. It had healed quite well. What’s that quotation?’ went on Superintendent Garroway. ‘“The dog it was that died.” I can’t remember where it comes from but –’

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t the dog that died,’ said Poirot. ‘That wasn’t the point of my question. I would like to have known that dog. He was perhaps a very intelligent dog.’

  After he had replaced the receiver with thanks to the Superintendent, Poirot murmured: ‘An intelligent dog. More intelligent perhaps than the police were.’

  Chapter 17

  Poirot Announces Departure

  Miss Livingstone showed in a guest. ‘Mr Hercules Porrett.’

  As soon as Miss Livingstone had left the room, Poirot shut the door after her and sat down by his friend, Mrs Ariadne Oliver.

  He said, lowering his voice slightly, ‘I depart.’

  ‘You do what?’ said Mrs Oliver, who was always slightly startled by Poirot’s methods of passing on information.

  ‘I depart. I make the departure. I take a plane to Geneva.’

  ‘You sound as though you were UNO or UNESCO or something.’

  ‘No. It is just a private visit that I make.’

  ‘Have you got an elephant in Geneva?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you might look at it that way. Perhaps two of them.’

  ‘I haven’t found out anything more,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘In fact I don’t know who I can go to, to find out any more.’

  ‘I believe you mentioned, or somebody did, that your goddaughter, Celia Ravenscroft, had a young brother.’

  ‘Yes. He’s called Edward, I think. I’ve hardly ever seen him. I took him out once or twice from school, I remember. But that was years ago.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s at university, in Canada I think. Or he’s taking some engineering course there. Do you want to go and ask him things?’

  ‘No, not at the moment. I should just like to know where he is now. But I gather he was not in the house when this suicide happened?’

  ‘You’re not thinking – you’re not thinking for a moment that he did it, are you? I mean, shot his father and his mother, both of them. I know boys do sometimes. Very queer they are sometimes when they’re at a funny age.’

  ‘He was not in the house,’ said Poirot. ‘That I know already from my police reports.’

  ‘Have you found out anything else interesting? You look quite excited.’

  ‘I am excited in a way. I have found out certain things that may throw light upon what we already know.’

  ‘Well, what throws light on what?’

  ‘It seems to me possible now that I can understand why Mrs Burton-Cox approached you as she did and tried to get you to obtain information for her about the facts of the suicide of the Ravenscrofts.’

  ‘You mean she wasn’t just being a nosey-parker?’

  ‘No. I think there was some motive behind it. This is where, perhaps, money comes in.’

  ‘Money? What’s money got to do with that? She’s quite
well off, isn’t she?’

  ‘She has enough to live upon, yes. But it seems that her adopted son whom she regards apparently as her true son – he knows that he was adopted although he knows nothing about the family from which he really came. It seems that when he came of age he made a Will, possibly urged by his adopted mother to do so. Perhaps it was merely hinted to him by some friends of hers or possibly by some lawyer that she had consulted. Anyway, on coming of age he may have felt that he might as well leave everything to her, to his adopted mother. Presumably at that time he had nobody else to leave it to.’

  ‘I don’t see how that leads to wanting news about a suicide.’

  ‘Don’t you? She wanted to discourage the marriage. If young Desmond had a girl-friend, if he proposed to marry her in the near future, which is what a lot of young people do nowadays – they won’t wait or think it over. In that case, Mrs Burton-Cox would not inherit the money he left, since the marriage would invalidate any earlier Will, and presumably if he did marry his girl he would make a new Will leaving everything to her and not to his adopted mother.’

  ‘And you mean Mrs Burton-Cox didn’t want that?’

  ‘She wanted to find something that would discourage him from marrying the girl. I think she hoped, and probably really believed as far as that goes, that Celia’s mother killed her husband, afterwards shooting herself. That is the sort of thing that might discourage a boy. Even if her father killed her mother, it is still a discouraging thought. It might quite easily prejudice and influence a boy at that age.’

  ‘You mean he’d think that if her father or mother was a murderer, the girl might have murderous tendencies?’

  ‘Not quite as crude as that but that might be the main idea, I should think.’

  ‘But he wasn’t rich, was he? An adopted child.’

  ‘He didn’t know his real mother’s name or who she was, but it seems that his mother, who was an actress and a singer and who managed to make a great deal of money before she became ill and died, wanted at one time to get her child returned to her and when Mrs Burton-Cox would not agree to that, I should imagine she thought about this boy a great deal and decided that she would leave her money to him. He will inherit this money at the age of twenty-five, but it is held in trust for him until then. So of course Mrs Burton-Cox doesn’t want him to marry, or only to marry someone that she really approves of or over whom she might have influence.’

  ‘Yes, that seems to me fairly reasonable. She’s not a nice woman though, is she?’

  ‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘I did not think her a very nice woman.’

  ‘And that’s why she didn’t want you coming to see her and messing about with things and finding out what she was up to.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Poirot. ‘

  Anything else you have learnt?’

  ‘Yes, I have learnt – that is only a few hours ago really – when Superintendent Garroway happened to ring me up about some other small matters, but I did ask him and he told me that the housekeeper, who was elderly, had very bad eyesight.’

  ‘Does that come into it anywhere?’

  ‘It might,’ said Poirot. He looked at his watch. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it is time that I left.’

  ‘You are on your way to catch your plane at the airport?’

  ‘No. My plane does not leave until tomorrow morning. But there is a place I have to visit today – a place that I wish to see with my own eyes. I have a car waiting outside now to take me there –’

  ‘What is it you want to see?’ Mrs Oliver asked with some curiosity.

  ‘Not so much to see – to feel. Yes – that is the right word – to feel and to recognize what it will be that I feel . . .’

  Chapter 18

  Interlude

  Hercule Poirot passed through the gate of the churchyard. He walked up one of the paths, and presently, against a moss-grown wall he stopped, looking down on a grave. He stood there for some minutes looking first at the grave, then at the view of the Downs and sea beyond. Then his eyes came back again. Flowers had been put recently on the grave. A small bunch of assorted wild flowers, the kind of bunch that might have been left by a child, but Poirot did not think that it was a child who had left them. He read the lettering on the grave.

  To the memory of

  DOROTHEA JARROW

  Died Sept 15th 1960

  Also of

  MARGARET RAVENSCROFT

  Died Oct 3rd 1960

  Sister of above

  Also of

  ALISTAIR RAVENSCROFT

  Died Oct 3rd 1960

  Her husband

  In their Death they were not divided

  Forgive us our trespasses

  As we forgive those that trespass against us

  Lord, have Mercy upon us

  Christ, have Mercy upon us

  Lord, have Mercy upon us

  Poirot stood there a moment or two. He nodded his head once or twice. Then he left the churchyard and walked by a footpath that led out on to the cliff and along the cliff. Presently he stood still again looking out to the sea. He spoke to himself.

  ‘I am sure now that I know what happened and why. I understand the pity of it and the tragedy. One has to go back such a long way. In my end is my beginning, or should one put it differently? “In my beginning was my tragic end”? The Swiss girl must have known – but will she tell me? The boy believes she will. For their sakes – the girl and the boy. They cannot accept life unless they know.’

  Chapter 19

  Maddy and Zélie

  ‘Mademoiselle Rouselle?’ said Hercule Poirot. He bowed.

  Mademoiselle Rouselle extended her hand. About fifty, Poirot thought. A fairly imperious woman. Would have her way. Intelligent, intellectual, satisfied, he thought, with life as she had lived it, enjoying the pleasures and suffering the sorrows life brings.

  ‘I have heard your name,’ she said. ‘You have friends, you know, both in this country and in France. I do not know exactly what I can do for you. Oh, I know that you explained, in the letter that you sent me. It is an affair of the past, is it not? Things that happened. Not exactly things that happened, but the clue to things that happened many, many years ago. But sit down. Yes. Yes, that chair is quite comfortable, I hope. There are some petit-fours and the decanter is on the table.’

  She was quietly hospitable without any urgency. She was unworried but amiable.

  ‘You were at one time a governess in a certain family,’ said Poirot. ‘The Preston-Greys. Perhaps now you hardly remember them.’

  ‘Oh yes, one does not forget, you know, things that happen when you were young. There was a girl, and a boy about four or five years younger in the family I went to. They were nice children. Their father became a General in the Army.’

  ‘There was also another sister.’

  ‘Ah yes, I remember. She was not there when I first came. I think she was delicate. Her health was not good. She was having treatment somewhere.’

  ‘You remember their Christian names?’

  ‘Margaret, I think was one. The other one I am not sure of by now.’

  ‘Dorothea.’

  ‘Ah yes. A name I have not often come across. But they called each other by shorter names. Molly and Dolly. They were identical twins, you know, remarkably alike. They were both very handsome young women.’

  ‘And they were fond of each other?’

  ‘Yes, they were devoted. But we are, are we not, becoming slightly confused? Preston-Grey is not the name of the children I went to teach. Dorothea Preston-Grey married a Major – ah, I cannot remember the name now. Arrow? No, Jarrow. Margaret’s married name was –’

  ‘Ravenscroft,’ said Poirot.

  ‘Ah, that. Yes. Curious how one cannot remember names. The Preston-Greys are a generation older. Margaret Preston-Grey had been in a pensionnat in this part of the world, and when she wrote after her marriage asking Madame Benoıˆt, who ran that pensionnat, if she knew of someone who would come to her as nursery-gove
rness to her children, I was recommended. That is how I came to go there. I spoke only of the other sister because she happened to be staying there during part of my time of service with the children. The children were a girl, I think then of six or seven. She had a name out of Shakespeare. I remember, Rosalind or Celia.’

  ‘Celia,’ said Poirot. ‘And the boy was only about three or four. His name was Edward. A mischievous but lovable child. I was happy with them.’

  ‘And they were happy, I hear, with you. They enjoyed playing with you and you were very kind in your playing with them.’

  ‘Moi, j’aime les enfants,’ said Mademoiselle Rouselle.

  ‘They called you “Maddy,” I believe.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Ah, I like hearing that word. It brings back past memories.’

  ‘Did you know a boy called Desmond? Desmond Burton-Cox?’

  ‘Ah yes. He lived I think in a house next door or nearly next door. We had several neighbours and the children very often came to play together. His name was Desmond. Yes, I remember.’

  ‘You were there long, mademoiselle?’

  ‘No. I was only there for three or four years at most. Then I was recalled to this country. My mother was very ill. It was a question of coming back and nursing her, although I knew it would not be perhaps for very long. That was true. She died a year and a half or two years at the most after I returned here. After that I started a small pensionnat out here, taking in rather older girls who wanted to study languages and other things. I did not visit England again, although for a year or two I kept up communication with the country. The two children used to send me a card at Christmas time.’

  ‘Did General Ravenscroft and his wife strike you as a happy couple?’

  ‘Very happy. They were fond of their children.’

  ‘They were very well suited to each other?’

  ‘Yes, they seemed to me to have all the necessary qualities to make their marriage a success.’

  ‘You said Lady Ravenscroft was devoted to her twin sister. Was the twin sister also devoted to her?’