Agatha Christie: Elephants Can Remember

Sir Wesley Kent, on her other side, had also been an agreeable lunch companion. He had said very nice things about her books, and had had the tact to say things that did not make her feel embarrassed, which so many people could do almost without trying. He had mentioned one or two reasons why he had liked one or other of her books, and they had been the right reasons, and therefore Mrs. Oliver had thought favorably of him for that reason. Praise from men, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself, is always acceptable. It was women who gushed. Some of the things that women wrote to her! Really!

Not always women, of course. Sometimes emotional young men from very faraway countries. Only last week she had received a fan letter beginning, "Reading your book, I feel what a noble woman you must be." After reading The Second Goldfish he had then gone off into an intense kind of literary ecstasy which was, Mrs. Oliver felt, completely unfitting.

She was not unduly modest. She thought the detective stories she wrote were quite good of their kind. Some were not so good and some were much better than others. But there was no reason, so far as she could see, to make anyone think she was a noble woman. She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself.

Well, all things considered, she had got through this ordeal very well. She had quite enjoyed herself, talked to some nice people. Now they were moving to where coffee was being handed round and where you could change partners and chat with other people. This was the moment of danger, as Mrs. Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren't really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.

Question: "I must tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are." Answer from flustered author: "Well, that's very kind. I am so glad."

"You must understand that I've been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful."

"Oh, it's very nice of you. Very nice indeed." It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman's books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren't good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs. Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.

"I listen to you," Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice. "I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got-no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say 'Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.' "

"But I don't," Mrs. Oliver had said at that moment. "I'm not bad but-"

"Ah, do not say 'I don't' like that. You must say you do; even if you do not think you do, you ought to say you do."

"I wish, Albertina," said Mrs. Oliver, "that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well.

Can't you pretend to be me one day, and I'll listen behind the door?"

"Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say 'Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.' You must say that to everybody. They should know it.

They should announce it. Oh, yes-it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are. It must not be like that." It had been rather, Mrs. Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there'd be not much difficulty here. There'd be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn't matter much.

She would go and smile and be nice and say, "So kind of you.

I'm so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one's books." All the stale old things. Rather as though you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads. And then, before very long now, she could leave.

Her eyes went round the table because she might perhaps see some friends there as well as would-be admirers. Yes, she did see in the distance Maurine Grant, who was great fun.

The moment came, the literary women and the attendant cavaliers who had also attended the lunch, rose. They streamed towards chairs, towards coffee tables, towards sofas, and confidential corners. The moment of peril, Mrs. Oliver often thought of it to herself, though usually at cocktails and not literary parties because she seldom went to the latter. At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid. In this case it was the first dilemma that came to her. A large woman. Ample proportions, large white champing teeth. What in French could have been called une femme formidable, but who definitely had not only the French variety of being formidable, but the English one of being supremely bossy. Obviously she either knew Mrs. Oliver, or was intent on making her acquaintance there and then. The last was how it happened to go.

"Oh, Mrs. Oliver," she said in a high-pitched voice. "What a pleasure to meet you today. I have wanted to for so long. I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never traveling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about." Oh, well, thought Mrs. Oliver, not my favorite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.

She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way, rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.

"There. Now we are settled. I don't suppose you know my name. I am Mrs. Burton-Cox."

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs. Burton-Cox? Did she write books also? No, she couldn't really remember anything about her. But she seemed to have heard the name. A faint thought came to her. A book on politics, something like that? Not fiction, not fun, not crime.

Perhaps a high-brow intellectual with political bias? That ought to be easy, Mrs. Oliver thought with relief. I can just let her talk and say, "How interesting!" from time to time.

"You'll be very surprised, really, at what I'm going to say," said Mrs. Burton-Cox. "But I have felt, from reading your books, how sympathetic you are, how much you understand of human nature. And I feel that if there is anyone who can give me an answer to the question I want to ask, you will be the one to do so."

"I don't think, really…" said Mrs. Oliver, trying to think of suitable words to say that she felt very uncertain of being able to rise to the heights demanded of her.

Mrs. Burton-Cox dipped a lump of sugar in her coffee and crunched it in a rather carnivorous way, as though it was a bone. Ivory teeth, perhaps, thought Mrs. Oliver vaguely. Ivory?

Dogs had ivory, walruses had ivory and elephants had ivory, of course. Great big tusks of ivory. Mrs. Burton-Cox was saying: "Now the first thing I must ask you-I'm pretty sure that I am right, though-you have a goddaughter, haven't you? A daughter who's called Celia Ravenscroft?"