Agatha Christie - Hallowe'en Party

"Will you permit me, chere Madame, to use your telephone?"

"I will permit you to use Judith Butler's telephone, yes."

"Where is your friend?"

"Oh, she's gone to get her hair done.

And Miranda has gone for a walk. Go on, it's in the room through the window there."

Poirot went in and returned about ten minutes later.

"Well? What have you been doing?"

"I rang up Mr. Fullerton, the solicitor. I will now tell you something. The codicil, the forged codicil that was produced for probate was not witnessed by Harriet Leaman. It was witnessed by a Mary Doherty, deceased, who had been in service with Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe but had recently died. The other witness was the James Jenkins, who, as your friend Mrs. Leaman has told you, departed for Australia."

"So there was a forged codicil," said Mrs. Oliver. "And there seems to have been a real codicil as well. Look here, Poirot, isn't this all getting a little too complicated?"

"It is getting incredibly complicated," said Hercule Poirot. "There is, if I may mention it, too much forgery about."

"Perhaps the real one is still in the library at Quarry House, within the pages of Enquire Within upon Everything."

"I understand all the effects of the house were sold up at Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's death, except for a few pieces of family furniture and some family pictures."

"What we need," said Mrs. Oliver, "is something like Enquire Within here now.

It's a lovely title, isn't it? I remember my grandmother had one. You could, you know, inquire within about everything, too. Legal information and cooking recipes and how to take ink stains out of linen. How to make home-made face powder that would not damage the complexion. Oh-and lots more. Yes, wouldn't you like to have a book like that now?"

"Doubtless," said Hercule Poirot, "it would give the recipe for treatment of tired feet."

"Plenty of them, I should think. But why don't you wear proper country shoes?"

"Madame, I like to look soigne in my appearance."

"Well, then you'll have to go on wearing things that are painful, and grin and bear it," said Mrs. Oliver. "All the same, I don't understand anything now. Was that Leaman woman telling me a pack of lies just now?"

"It is always possible."

"Did someone tell her to tell a pack of lies?"

"That too is possible."

"Did someone pay her to tell me a pack of lies?"

"Continue," said Poirot, "continue. You are doing very nicely."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully, "that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, like many another rich woman, enjoyed making Wills.

I expect she made a good many during her life. You know; benefiting one person and then another.

Changing about. The Drakes were well off, anyway. I expect she always left them at least a handsome legacy, but I wonder if she ever left anyone else as much as she appears, according to Mrs. Leaman and according to the forged Will as well, to that girl Olga. I'd like to know a bit more about that girl, I must say. She certainly seems a very successful disappearess."

"I hope to know more about her shortly," said Hercule Poirot.

"How?"

"Information that I shall receive shortly."

"I know you've been asking for information down here. "

"Not here only. I have an agent in London who obtains information for me both abroad and in this country. I should have some news possibly soon from Herzogovinia."

"Will you find out if she ever arrived back there?"

"That might be one thing I should learn, but it seems more likely that I may get information of a different kind letters perhaps written during her sojourn in this country, mentioning friends she may have made here, and become intimate with."

"What about the school-teacher?" said Mrs. Oliver.

"Which one do you mean?"

"I mean the one who was strangled the one Elizabeth Whittaker told you about?" she added, "I don't like Elizabeth Whittaker much. Tiresome sort of woman, but clever, I should think." She added dreamily, "I wouldn't put it past her to have thought up a murder."

"Strangle another teacher, do you mean?"

"One has to exhaust all the possibilities."

"I shall rely, as so often, on your intuition, Madame."

Mrs. Oliver ate another date thoughtfully.

WHEN he left Mrs. Butler's house, Poirot took the same way as had been shown him by Miranda. The aperture in the hedge, it seemed to him, had been slightly enlarged since last time. Somebody, perhaps, with slightly more bulk than Miranda, had used it also. He ascended the path in the quarry, noticing once more the beauty of the scene. A lovely spot, and yet in some way, Poirot felt as he had felt before, that it could be a haunted spot. There was a kind of pagan ruthlessness about it. It could be along these winding paths that the fairies hunted their victims down or a cold goddess decreed that sacrifices would have to be offered.

He could understand why it had not become a picnic spot. One would not want for some reason to bring your hard-boiled eggs and your lettuce and your oranges and sit down here and crack jokes and have a jollification. It was different, quite different. It would have been better, perhaps, he thought suddenly, if Mrs. Llewellyn- Smythe had not wanted this fairy-like transformation. Quite a modest sunk garden could have been made out of a quarry without the atmosphere, but she had been an ambitious woman, ambitious and a very rich woman. He thought for a moment or two about Wills, the kind of Wills made by rich women, the kind of lies told about Wills made by rich women, the places in which the Wills of rich widows were sometimes hidden, and he tried to put himself back into the mind of a forger.

Undoubtedly the Will offered for probate had been a forgery. Mr. Fullerton was a careful and competent lawyer. He was sure of that. The kind of lawyer, too, who would never advise a client to bring a case or to take legal proceedings unless there was very good evidence and justification for so doing.

He turned a corner of the pathway feeling for the moment that his feet were much more important than his speculations.

Was he taking a short cut to Superintendent Spence's dwelling or was he not? As the crow flies, perhaps, but the main road might have been more good to his feet. This path was not a grassy or mossy one, it had the quarry hardness of stone. Then he paused.

In front of him were two figures. Sitting on an outcrop of rock was Michael Garfield. He had a sketching block on his knees and he was drawing, his attention fully on what he was doing. A little way away from him, standing close beside a minute but musical stream that flowed down from above, Miranda Butler was standing. Hercule Poirot forgot his feet, forgot the pains and ills of the human body, and concentrated again on the beauty that human beings could attain.

There was no doubt that Michael Garfield was a very beautiful young man. He found it difficult to know whether he himself liked Michael Garfield or not. It is always difficult to know if you like anyone beautiful. You like beauty to look at, at the same time you dislike beauty almost on principle. Women could be beautiful, but Hercule Poirot was not at all sure that he liked beauty in men. He would not have liked to be a beautiful young man himself, not that there had ever been the least chance of that. There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good. He had never been handsome or good-looking. Certainly never beautiful.

And Miranda? He thought again, as he had thought before, that it was her gravity that was so attractive. He wondered what passed through her mind. It was the sort of thing one would never know. She would not say what she was thinking easily. He doubted if she would tell you what she was thinking, if you asked her. She had an original mind, he thought, a reflective mind. He thought too she was vulnerable.