Hallowe'en Party hp-36 Read online

  "Well, they've all gone now," said Rowena Drake, hearing the final shutting of the hall door. "Now what can I do for you? Something more about that dreadful party?

  I wish I'd never had it here. But no other house really seemed suitable. Is Mrs. Oliver still staying with Judith Butler?"

  "Yes. She is, I believe, returning to London in a day or two. You had not met her before?"

  "No. I love her books."

  "She is, I believe, considered a very good writer," said Poirot.

  "Oh well, she is a good writer. No doubt of that. She's a very amusing person too. Has she any ideas herself-I mean about who might have done this awful thing?"

  "I think not. And you, Madame?"

  "I told you already. I've no idea whatever."

  "You would perhaps say so, and yet-you might, might you not, have, perhaps, what amounts to a very good idea, but only an idea. A half-formed idea. A possibie idea."

  "Why should you think that?"

  She looked at him curiously.

  "You might have seen something-something quite small and unimportant but which on reflection might seem more significant to you, perhaps, than it had done at first."

  "You must have something in your mind. Monsieur Poirot, some definite incident."

  "Well, I admit it. It is because of what someone said to me."

  "Indeed! And who was that?"

  "A Miss Whittaker. A schoolteacher."

  "Oh yes, of course. Elizabeth Whittaker. She's the mathematics mistress, isn't she, at The Elms? She was at the party, I remember. Did she see something?"

  "It was not so much that she saw something as she had the idea that you might have seen something."

  Mrs. Drake looked surprised and shook her head.

  "I can't think of anything I can possibly have seen," said Rowena Drake, "but one never knows."

  "It had to do with a vase," said Poirot. "A vase of flowers."

  "A vase of flowers?" Rowena Drake looked puzzled. Then her brow cleared. "Oh, of course. I know. Yes, there was a big vase of autumn leaves and chrysanthemums on the table in the angle of the stairs. A very nice glass vase. One of my wedding presents. The leaves seemed to be drooping and so did one or two of the flowers. I remember noticing it as I passed through the hall-it was near the end of the party, I think, by then, but I'm not sure-I wondered why it looked like that, and I went up and dipped my fingers into it and found that some idiot must have forgotten to put any water into it after arranging it. It made me very angry. So I took it into the bathroom and filled it up.

  But what could I have seen in that bathroom?

  There was nobody in it. I am quite sure of that. I think one or two of the older girls and boys had done a little harmless, what the Americans call 'necking' there during the course of the party, but there was certainly nobody when I went into it with the vase."

  "No, no, I do not mean that," said Poirot. "But I understood that there was an accident. That the vase slipped out of your hand and it fell to the hall below and was shattered to pieces."

  "Oh yes," said Rowena. "Broken to smithereens. I was rather upset about it because as I've said, it had been one of our wedding presents, and it was really a perfect flower vase, heavy enough to hold big autumn bouquets and things like that.

  It was very stupid of me. One of those things. My fingers just slipped. It went out of my hand and crashed on the hall floor below.

  Elizabeth Whittaker was standing there. She helped me pick up the pieces and sweep some of the broken glass out of the way in case someone stepped on it. We just swept it into a corner by the Grandfather clock to be cleared up later."

  She looked inquiringly at Poirot.

  "Is that the incident you mean?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Poirot. "Miss Whittaker wondered, I think, how you had come to drop the vase. She thought that something perhaps had startled you."

  "Startled me?" Rowena Drake looked at him, then frowned as she tried to think again. "No, I don't think I was startled, anyway. It was just one of those ways things do slip out of your hands. Sometimes when you're washing up. I think, really, it's a result of being tired. I was pretty tired by that time, what with the preparations for the party and running the party and all the rest of it. It went very well, I must say. I think it was-oh, just one of those clumsy actions that you can't help when you're tired."

  "There was nothing-you are sure-that startled you? Something unexpected that you saw."

  "Saw? Where? In the hall below? I didn't see anything in the hall below. It was empty at the moment because everyone was in at the Snapdragon excepting, of course, for Miss Whittaker.

  And I don't think I even noticed her until she came forward to help when I ran down."

  "Did you see someone, perhaps, leaving the library door?"

  "The library door? I see what you mean. Yes, I could have seen that." She paused for quite a long time, then she looked at Poirot with a very straight, firm glance.

  "I didn't see anyone leave the library," she said. "Nobody at all?"

  He wondered. The way in which she said it was what aroused the belief in his mind that she was not speaking the truth, that instead she had seen someone or something, perhaps the door just opening a little, a mere glance perhaps of a figure inside. But she was quite firm in her denial. Why, he wondered, had she been so firm? Because the person she had seen was a person she did not want to believe for one moment had had anything to do with the crime committed on the other side of the door? Someone she cared about, or someone which seemed more likely, he thought-someone whom she wished to protect. Someone, perhaps, who had not long passed beyond childhood, someone whom she might feel was not truly conscious of the awful thing they had just done.

  He thought her a hard creature but a person of integrity. He thought that she was, like many women of the same type, women who were often magistrates, or who ran councils or charities, or interested themselves in what used to be called "good works". Women who had an inordinate belief in extenuating circumstances, who were ready, strangely enough, to make excuses for the young criminal. An adolescent boy, a mentally retarded girl.

  Someone perhaps who had already been-what is the phrase-"in care". If that had been the type of person she had seen coming out of the library, then he thought it possible that Rowena Drake's protective instinct might have come into play. It was not unknown in the present age for children to commit crimes, quite young children.

  Children of seven, of nine and so on, and it was often difficult to know how to dispose of these natural, it seemed, young criminals who came before the juvenile courts. Excuses had to be brought for them.

  Broken homes. Negligent and unsuitable parents. But the people who spoke the most vehemently for them, the people who sought to bring forth every excuse for them, were usually the type of Rowena Drake. A stern and censorious woman, except in such cases.

  For himself, Poirot did not agree. He was a man who thought first always of justice. He was suspicious, had always been suspicious, of mercy-too much mercy, that is to say. Too much mercy, as he knew from former experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

  "I see," said Poirot. "I see."

  "You don't think it's possible that Miss Whittaker might have seen someone go into the library?" suggested Mrs. Drake.

  Poirot was interested.

  "Ah, you think that that might have been so?"

  "It seemed to me merely a possibility.

  She might have caught sight of someone going in through the library, say, perhaps five minutes or so earlier, and then, when I dropped the vase it might have suggested to her that I could have caught a glimpse of the same person. That I might have seen who it was. Perhaps she doesn't like to say anything that might suggest, unfairly perhaps, some person whom she had perhaps only half glimpsed not enough to be sure of. Some back view perhaps of a child, or a youn
g boy."

  "You think, do you not, Madame, that it was shall we say, a child a boy or girl, a mere child, or a young adolescent?

  You think it was not any definite one of these but, shall we say, you think that that is the most likely type to have committed the crime we are discussing?"

  She considered the point thoughtfully, turning it over in her mind.

  "Yes," she said at last, "I suppose I do.

  I haven't thought it out. It seems to me that crimes are so often associated nowadays with the young. People who don't really know quite what they are doing, who want silly revenges, who have an instinct for destruction. Even the people who wreck telephone boxes, or who slash the tyres of cars, do all sorts of things just to hurt people, just because they hate -not anyone in particular, but the whole world.

  It's a sort of symptom of this age.

  So I suppose when one comes across something like a child drowned at a party for no reason really, one does assume that it's someone who is not yet fully responsible for their actions. Don't you agree with me that-that-well, that that is certainly the most likely possibility here?"

  "The police, I think, share your point of view-or did share it."

  "Well, they should know. We have a very good class of policeman in this district. They've done well in several crimes. They are painstaking and they never give up. I think probably they will solve this murder, though I don't think it will happen very quickly. These things seem to take a long time. A long time of patient gathering of evidence."

  "The evidence in this case will not be very easy to gather, Madame."

  "No, I suppose it won't. When my husband was killed-He was a cripple, you know. He was crossing the road and a car ran over him and knocked him down.

  They never found the person who was responsible. As you know, my husband-or perhaps you don't know-my husband was a polio victim. He was partially paralysed as a result of polio, six years ago.

  His condition had improved, but he was still crippled, and it would be difficult for him to get out of the way if a car bore down upon him quickly. I almost felt that I had been to blame, though he always insisted on going out without me or without anyone with him, because he would have resented very much being in the care of a nurse, or a wife who took the part of a nurse, and he was always careful before crossing a road. Still, one does blame oneself when accidents happen."

  "That came on top of the death of your aunt?"

  "No. She died not long afterwards.

  Everything seems to come at once, doesn't it?"

  "That is very true," said Hercule Poirot. He went on: "The police were not able to trace the car that ran down your husband?"

  "It was a Grasshopper Mark 7, I believe. Every third car you notice on the road is a Grasshopper Mark 7 or was then. It's the most popular car on the market, they tell me. They believe it was pinched from the Market Place in Medchester. A car park there. It belonged to a Mr. Waterhouse, an elderly seed merchant in Medchester. Mr. Waterhouse was a slow and careful driver. It was certainly not he who caused the accident.

  It was clearly one of those cases where irresponsible young men help themselves to cars. Such careless, or should I say such callous young men, should be treated, one sometimes feels, more severely than they are now."

  "A long gaol sentence, perhaps. Merely to be fined, and the fine paid by indulgent relatives, makes little impression."

  "One has to remember," said Rowena Drake, "that there are young people at an age when it is vital that they should continue with their studies if they are to have the chance of doing well in life."

  "The sacred cow of eduction," said Hercule Poirot. "That is a phrase I have heard uttered," he added quickly, "by people well, should I say people who ought to know. People who themselves hold academic posts of some seniority."

  "They do not perhaps make enough allowances for youth, for a bad bringing up. Broken homes."

  "So you think they need something other than gaol sentences?"

  "Proper remedial treatment," said Rowena Drake firmly.

  "And that will make (another oldfashioned proverb) a silk purse out of a sow's ear? You do not believe in the maxim 'the fate of every man have we bound about his neck'?"

  Mrs. Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased.

  "An Islamic saying, I believe," said Poirot.

  Mrs. Drake looked unimpressed.

  "I hope," she said, "we do not take our ideas or perhaps I should say our ideals from the Middle East."

  "One must accept facts," said Poirot, "and a fact that is expressed by modern biologists - Western biologists" he hastened to add, " seems to suggest very strongly that the root of a person's actions lies in his genetic make-up. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer in potential at two or three or four years old. Or of course a mathematician or a musical genius."

  "We are not discussing murderers," said Mrs. Drake. "My husband died as a result of an accident. An accident caused by a careless and badly adjusted personality.

  Whoever the boy or your man was there is always the hope of eventual adjustment to a belief and acceptance that it is a duty to consider others, W be twA to feel an abhorrence if you have taken life unawares, simply out of what may be described as criminal carelessness that was not really criminal in intent."

  "You are quite sure? therefore, that it was not criminal intent?"

  "I should doubt it very much." Mrs. Drake looked slightly surprised.

  "I do not think that the police ever seriously considered that possibility. I certainly did not. It was an accident. A very tragic accident which altered the pattern of many lives, including my own"

  "You say we're not discussing murderers," said Poirot. "But in the case of Joyce that is just what we are discussing. There was no accident about that. Deliberate hands pushed that child's head down into water, holding her there till death occurred. Deliberate intent."

  "I know. I know. It's terrible. I don't like to think of it, to be reminded of it."

  She got up, moving about restlessly.

  Poirot pushed on relentlessly.

  "We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find the motive involved."

  "It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless."

  "You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent of enjoying killing someone? Presumably killing someone young and immature."

  "One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is difficult to find out. Even psychiatrists do not agree."

  "You refuse to accept a simpler explanation?"

  She looked puzzled.

  "Simpler?"

  "Someone not mentally disturbed, not a possible case for psychiatrists to disagree over. Somebody perhaps who just wanted to be safe."

  "Safe? Oh, you mean "

  "The girl had boasted that same day, some hours previously, that she had seen someone commit a murder."

  "Joyce," said Mrs. Drake, with calm certainty, "was really a very silly little girl.

  Not, I am afraid, always very truthful."

  "So everyone has told me," said Hercule Poirot. "I am beginning to believe, you know, that what everybody has told me must be right," he added with a sigh. "It usually is."

  He rose to his feet, adopting a different manner.

  "I must apologise, Madame. I have talked of painful things to you, things that do not truly concern me here. But it seemed from what Miss Whittaker told me 'Why don't you find out more from her?'"

  "You mean-?"

  "She is a teacher. She knows, much better than I can, what potentialities (as you have called them) exist amongst the children she teacher."

  She paused and then said:

  "Miss Ernlyn, too."

  "The head-mistress?" Poirot looked surprised.

  "Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is a natural psychologist. You said I might have ideas-half-formed ones-as to who killed Joyce. I haven't-but I think Miss Ernlyn might."

 
"This is interesting?"

  "I don't mean has evidence. I mean she just knows. She could tell you-but I don't think she will."

  "I begin to see," said Poirot, "that I have still a long way to go.

  People know things-but they will not tell them to me."

  He looked thoughtfully at Rowena Drake.

  "Your aunt, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, had an au pair girl who looked after her, a foreign girl."

  "You seem to have got hold of all the local gossip." Rowena spoke dryly. "Yes, that is so. She left here rather suddenly soon after my aunt's death."

  "For good reasons, it would seem."

  "I don't know whether it's libel or slander to say so-but there seems no doubt that she forged a codicil to my aunt's Will-or that someone helped her to do so."

  "Someone?"

  "She was friendly with a young man who worked in a solicitor's office in Medchester. He had been mixed up in a forgery case before. The case never came to court because the girl disappeared. She realised the Will would not be admitted to probate, and that there was going to be a court case. She left the neighbourhood and has never been heard of since."

  "She too came, I have heard, from a broken home," said Poirot.

  Rowena Drake looked at him sharply but he was smiling amiably.

  "Thank you for all you have told me, Madame," he said.

  When Poirot had left the house, he went for a short walk along a turning off the main road which was labelled "Helpsly Cemetery Road".

  The cemetery in question did not take him long to reach. It was at most ten minutes' walk. It was obviously a cemetery that had been made in the last ten years, presumably to cope with the rising importance of Woodleigh as a residential entity. The church, a church of reasonable size dating from some two or three centuries back, had had a very small enclosure round it already well filled. So the new cemetery had come into being with a footpath connecting it across two fields. It was, Poirot, thought, a businesslike, modern cemetery with appropriate sentiments on marble or granite slabs; it had urns, chippings, small plantations of bushes or flowers. No interesting old epitaphs or inscriptions. Nothing much for an antiquarian. Cleaned, neat, tidy and with suitable sentiments expressed.