Hallowe'en Party hp-36 Read online

  Hallowe'en Party

  ( Hercule Poirot - 36 )

  Agatha Christie

  Agatha Christie

  Hallowe'en Party

  To P. G. Wodehouse whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years.

  Also to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me that he enjoys my books

  MRS. ARIADNE OLIVER had gone with the friend with whom she was staying, Judith Butler, to help with the preparations for a children's party which was to take place that same evening.

  At the moment it was a scene of chaotic activity. Energetic women came in and out of doors moving chairs, small tables, flower vases, and carrying large quantities of yellow pumpkins which they disposed strategically in selected spots.

  It was to be a Hallowe'en party for invited guests of an age group between ten and seventeen years old.

  Mrs. Oliver, removing herself from the main group, leant against a vacant background of wall and held up a large yellow pumpkin, looking at it critically-"The last time I saw one of these," she said, sweeping back her grey hair from her prominent forehead, "was in the United States last year-hundreds of them. All over the house. I've never seen so many pumpkins. As a matter of fact," she added thoughtfully, "I've never really known the difference between a pumpkin and a vegetable marrow. What's this one?"

  "Sorry, dear," said Mrs. Butler, as she fell over her friend's feet.

  Mrs. Oliver pressed herself closer against the wall.

  "My fault," she said. "I'm standing about and getting in the way. But it was rather remarkable, seeing so many pumpkins or vegetable marrows, whatever they are. They were everywhere, in the shops, and in people's houses, with candles or night lights inside them or strung up. Very interesting really. But it wasn't for a Hallowe'en party, it was Thanksgiving.

  Now I've always associated pumpkins with Hallowe'en and that's the end of October.

  Thanksgiving comes much later, doesn't it? Isn't it November, about the third week in November? Anyway, here, Hallowe'en is definitely the 31st of October, isn't it? First Hallowe'en and then, what comes next?

  All Souls' Day?

  That's when in Paris you go to cemeteries and put flowers on graves.

  Not a sad sort of feast. I mean, all the children go too, and enjoy themselves. You go to flower markets first and buy lots and lots of lovely flowers. Flowers never look so lovely as they do in Paris in the market there."

  A lot of busy women were falling over Mrs. Oliver occasionally, but they were not listening to her. They were all too busy with what they were doing.

  They consisted for the most part of mothers, one or two competent spinsters; there were useful teenagers, boys of sixteen and seventeen climbing up ladders or standing on chairs to put decorations, pumpkins or vegetable marrows or brightly coloured witch balls at a suitable elevation; girls from eleven to fifteen hung about in groups and giggled.

  "And after All Souls' Day and cemeteries," went on Mrs. Oliver, lowering her bulk on to the arm of a settee, "you have All Saints' Day.

  I think I'm right?"

  Nobody responded to this question.

  Mrs. Drake, a handsome middle-aged woman who was giving the party, made a pronouncement.

  "I'm not calling this a Hallowe'en party, although of course it is one really. I'm calling it the Eleven Plus party. It's that sort of age group. Mostly people who are leaving The Elms and going on to other schools."

  "But that's not very accurate, Rowena, is it?" said Miss Whittaker, resetting her pince-nez on her nose disapprovingly.

  Miss Whittaker as a local schoolteacher was always firm on accuracy.

  "Because we've abolished the eleven plus some time ago."

  Mrs. Oliver rose from the settee apologetically.

  "I haven't been making myself useful. I've just been sitting here saying silly things about pumpkins and vegetable marrows"-And resting my feet, she thought, with a slight pang of conscience, but without sufficient feeling of guilt to say it aloud.

  "Now what can I do next?" she asked, and added, "What lovely apples!"

  Someone had just brought a large bowl of apples into the room. Mrs. Oliver was partial to apples.

  "Lovely red ones," she added.

  "They're not really very good," said Rowena Drake.

  "But they look nice and partified. That's for bobbing for apples.

  They're rather soft apples, so people will be able to get their teeth into them better.

  Take them into the library, will you, Beatrice? Bobbing for apples always makes a mess with the water slopping over, but that doesn't matter with the library carpet, it's so old. Oh! thank you, Joyce."

  Joyce, a sturdy thirteen-year-old, seized the bowl of apples. Two rolled off it and stopped, as though arrested by a witch's wand, at Mrs. Oliver's feet.

  "You like apples, don't you?" said Joyce. "I read you did, or perhaps I heard it on the telly. You're the one who writes murder stories, aren't you?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "We ought to have made you do something connected with murders. Have a murder at the party to-night and make people solve it."

  "No, thank you," said Mrs. Oliver. "Never again."

  "What do you mean, never again?"

  "Well, I did once, and it didn't turn out much of a success," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "But you've written lots of books," said Joyce, "you make a lot of money out of them, don't you?"

  "In a way.," said Mrs. Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue.

  "And you've got a detective who's a Finn."

  Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs. Oliver would have thought, arrived at the seniority of the eleven-plus, said sternly, "Why a Finn?"

  "I've often wondered," said Mrs. Oliver truthfully.

  Mrs. Hargreaves, the organist's wife, came into the room breathing heavily, and bearing a large green plastic pail.

  "What about this," she said, "for the apple bobbing? Kind of gay, I thought."

  Miss Lee, the doctor's dispenser, said, "Galvanised bucket's better.

  Won't tip over so easily. Where are you going to have it, Mrs. Drake?"

  "I thought the bobbing for apples had better be in the library. The carpet's old there and a lot of water always gets spilt, anyway."

  "All right. We'll take 'em along.

  Rowena, here's another basket of apples."

  "Let me help," said Mrs. Oliver.

  She picked up the two apples at her feet.

  Almost without noticing what she was doing, she sank her teeth into one of them and began to crunch it. Mrs. Drake abstracted the second apple from her firmly and restored it to the basket. A buzz of conversation broke out.

  "Yes, but where are we going to have the Snapdragon?"

  "You ought to have the Snapdragon in the library, it's much the darkest room."

  "No, we're going to have that in the dining-room."

  "We'll have to put something on the table first."

  "There's a green baize cloth to put on that and then the rubber sheet over it."

  "What about the looking-glasses? Shall we really see our husbands in them?"

  Surreptitiously removing her shoes and still quietly champing at her apple, Mrs. Oliver lowered herself once more on to the settee and surveyed the room full of people critically. She was thinking in her authoress's mind:

  "Now, if I was going to make a book about all these people, how should I do it? They're nice people, I should think, on the whole, but who knows?"

  In a way, she felt, it was rather fascinating not to know anything about them.

  They all lived in Woodleigh Common, some of them had faint tags attached to them in her memory because of what Judith
had told her.

  Miss Johnson-something to do with the church, not the vicar's sister.

  Oh no, it was the organist's sister, of course. Rowena Drake, who seemed to run things in Woodleigh Common. The puffing woman who had brought in the pail, a particularly hideous plastic pail. But then Mrs. Oliver had never been fond of plastic things. And then the children, the teenage girls and boys.

  So far they were really only names to Mrs. Oliver. There was a Nan and a Beatrice and a Cathie, a Diana and a Joyce, who was boastful and asked questions.

  I don't like Joyce much, thought Mrs. Oliver. A girl called Ann, who looked tall and superior. There were two adolescent boys who appeared to have just got used to trying out different hair styles, with rather unfortunate results. A smallish boy entered in some condition of shynesss.

  "Mummy sent these mirrors to see if they'd do," he said; in a slightly breathless voice, Mrs. Drake took them from him. "^hank you so irouch. Eddy," she said.

  "They're just ordinary looking hand mirrors," said the girl called Ann.

  "Shall we really see our future husbands' faces in them?"

  "Some of you may and some may not," said Judith Butler.

  "Did you ever seen your husband's face when you went to a party-I mean this kind of a party?"

  "Of course she didn't," said Joyce.

  "She might have," said the superior Beatdce.

  "ESP. they call it. Extra sensory perception," she added in the tone of one pleased with being thoroughly conversant with the terms of the times. "read one of your books," said Ann to Mrs. Oliver.

  "The Dying Goldfish. It was quite good," she said kindly.

  "I didn't like that one," said Joyce. "There wasn't enouigh blood in it. I like murders to have lotfs of blood."

  "It's A bit messy," said Mrs. Oliver, "don't you think?"

  "But exciting," said Joyce.

  "Not necessarily," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "I saw a murder once," said Joyce.

  "Don't be silly, Joyce," said Miss Whittaker, the schoolteacher.

  "I did," said Joyce.

  "Did you really," asked Cathie, gazing at Joyce with wide eyes, "really and truly see a murder?"

  "Of course she didn't," said Mrs. Drake.

  "Don't say silly things, Joyce."

  "I did see a murder," said Joyce. "I did. I did. I did."

  A seventeen-year-old boy poised on a ladder looked down interestedly.

  "What kind of a murder?" he asked.

  "I don't believe it," said Beatrice.

  "Of course not," said Cathie's mother. "She's just making it up."

  "I'm not. I saw it."

  "Why didn't you go to the police about it?" asked Cathie.

  "Because I didn't know it was a murder when I saw it. It wasn't really till a long time afterwards, I mean, that I began to know that it was a murder. Something that somebody said only about a month or two ago suddenly made me think: Of course, that was a murder I saw."

  "You see," said Arm, "she's making it all up. It's nonsense."

  "When did it happen?" asked Beatrice.

  "Years ago," said Joyce. "I was quite young at the time," she added.

  "Who murdered who?" said Beatrice.

  "I shan't tell any of you," said Joyce. "You're all so horrid about it."

  Miss Lee came in with another kind of bucket. Conversation shifted to a comparison of buckets or plastic pails as most suitable for the sport of bobbing for apples. The majority of the helpers returned to the library for an appraisal on the spot. Some of the younger members, it may be said, were anxious to demongstrate, by a rehearsal of the difficulties and their own accomplishment in the sport. Hair got wet, water got spilt, towels were sent for to mop it up. In the end it was decided that a galvanised bucket was preferable to the more meretricious charms of a plastic pail which overturned rather too eeasily.

  Mrs. Oliver, setting down a bowl of apples which she had carried in to replenish the store required for tomorrow, once more helped herself to one.

  "I read in the paper that you were fond of eating apples," the accusing voice of Ann or Susan-she was not quite sure which-spoke to her."

  "It's my besetting sin," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "It would be more fun if it was melons," objected one of the boys. "They're so juicy. Think of the mess it would make," he said, surveying the carpet with pleasurable anticipation.

  Mrs. Oliver, feeling a little guilty at the public arraignment of greediness, left the room in search of a particular apartment, the geography of which is usually fairly easily identified. She went up the staircase and, turning the corner on the half landing, cannoned into a pair, a girl and a boy, clasped in each other's arms and leaning against the door which Mrs. Oliver felt fairly certain was the door to the room to which she herself was anxious to gain access. The couple paid no attention to her. They sighed and they snuggled. Mrs. Oliver wondered how old they were. The boy was fifteen, perhaps, the girl little more than twelve, although the development of her chest seemed certainly on the mature side.

  Apple Trees was a house of fair size. It had, she thought, several agreeable nooks and corners. How selfish people are, thought Mrs. Oliver. No consideration for others. That well-known tag from the past came into her mind. It had been said to her in succession by a nursemaid, a nanny, a governess, her grandmother, two great aunts her mother and a few others.

  "Excuse me," said Mrs. Oliver in a loud, clear voice.

  The boy and the girl clung closer than ever, their lips fastened on each other's.

  "Excuse me," said Mrs. Oliver again, "do you mind letting me pass? I want to get in at this door."

  Unwillingly the couple fell apart. They looked at her in an aggrieved fashion. Mrs. Oliver went in, banged the door and shot the bolt.

  It was not a very close fitting door. The faint sound of words came to her from outside.

  "Isn't that like people?" one voice said in a somewhat uncertain tenor.

  "They might see we didn't want to be disturbed."

  "People are so selfish," piped a girl's voice.

  "They never think of anyone but themselves."

  "No consideration for others," said the boy's voice.

  PREPARATIONS for a children's party usually give far more trouble to the organisers than an entertainment devised for those of adult years.

  Food of good quality and suitable alcoholic refreshment-with lemonade on the side, that, to the right people, is quite enough to make a party go. It may cost more but the trouble is infinitely less. So Ariadne Oliver and her friend Judith Butler agreed together.

  "What about teenage parties?" said Judith.

  "I don't know much about them," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "In one way," said Judith, "I think they're probably least trouble of all. I mean, they just throw all of us adults out.

  And say they'll do it all themselves."

  "And do they?"

  "Well, not in our sense of the word," said Judith. "They forget to order some of the things, and order a lot of other things that nobody likes. Having turfed us out, then they say there were things we ought to have provided for them to find. They break a lot of glasses, and other things, and there's always somebody undesirable or who brings an undesirable friend. You know the sort of thing. Peculiar drugs and what do they call it? Flower Pot or Purple Hemp or LSD, which I always have thought just meant money, but apparently it doesn't."

  "I suppose it costs it," suggested Ariadne Oliver.

  "It's very unpleasant, and Hemp has a nasty smell."

  "It all sounds very depressing," said Mrs. Oliver.

  "Anyway, this party will go all right.

  Trust Rowena Drake for that. She's a wonderful organiser. You'll see."

  "I don't feel I even want to go to a party," sighed Mrs. Oliver.

  "You go up and lie down for an hour or so. You'll see. You'll enjoy it when you get there. I wish Miranda hadn't got a temperature she's so disappointed at not being able to go, poor child."

  Th
e party came into being at half past seven. Ariadne Oliver had to admit that her friend was right. Arrivals were punctual.

  Everything went splendidly. It was well imagined, well run and ran like clockwork.

  There were red and blue lights on the stairs and yellow pumpkins in profusion.

  The girls and boys arrived holding decorated broomsticks for a competition.

  After greetings, Rowena Drake announced the programme for the evening.

  "First, judging of the broomstick competition," she said, "three prizes, first, second and third. Then comes cutting the flour cake.

  That'll be in the small conservatory. Then bobbing for apples-there's a list pinned upon the wall over there of the partners for that event-then there'll be dancing.

  Every time the lights go out you change partners. Then girls to the small study where they'll be given their mirrors. After that, supper.

  Snapdragon and then prize-giving."

  Like all parties, it went slightly stickily at first. The brooms were admired, they were very small miniature brooms, and on the whole the decorating of them had not reached a very high standard of merit,

  "which makes it easier," said Mrs. Drake in an aside to one of her friends.

  "And it's a very useful thing because I mean there are always one or two children one knows only too well won't win a prize at anything else, so one can cheat a little over this."

  "So unscrupulous, Rowena."

  "I'm not really. I just arrange so that things should be fair and evenly divided.

  The whole point is that everyone wants to win something"

  "What's the Flour Game?" asked Ariadne Oliver.

  "Oh yes, of course, you weren't here when we were doing it. Well, you just fill a tumbler with flour, press it in well, then you turn it out in a tray and place a sixpence on top of it. Then everyone slices a slice off it very carefully so as not to tumble the sixpence off. As soon as someone tumbles the sixpence off, that person goes out. It's a sort of elimination.

  The last one left in gets the sixpence of course. Now then, away we go."

  And away they went. Squeals of excitement were heard coming from the library where bobbing for apples went on, and competitors returned from there with wet locks and having disposed a good deal of water about their persons.