“Chère Madame,” Poirot bowed and presented Mrs. Oliver with a bouquet1, very stylised, a posy inthe Victorian manner.
“M. Poirot! Well, really, that is very nice of you, and it’s very like you somehow. All myflowers are always so untidy.” She looked towards a vase of rather temperamental- lookingchrysanthemums, then back to the prim2 circle of rosebuds3. “And how nice of you to come and seeme.”
“I come, Madame, to offer you my felicitations on your recovery.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I suppose I am all right again.” She shook her head to and fro rathergingerly. “I get headaches, though,” she said. “Quite bad headaches.”
“You remember, Madame, that I warned you not to do anything dangerous.”
“Not to stick my neck out, in fact. That I suppose is just what I did do.” She added, “I feltsomething evil was about. I was frightened, too, and I told myself I was a fool to be frightened,because what was I frightened of? I mean, it was London. Right in the middle of London. Peopleall about. I mean—how could I be frightened? It wasn’t like a lonely wood or anything.”
Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He wondered, had Mrs. Oliver really felt this nervous fear,had she really suspected the presence of evil, the sinister4 feeling that something or someonewished her ill, or had she read it into the whole thing afterwards? He knew only too well howeasily that could be done. Countless5 clients had spoken in much the same words that Mrs. Oliverhad just used. “I knew something was wrong. I could feel evil. I knew something was going tohappen,” and actually they had not felt anything of the kind. What kind of a person was Mrs.
Oliver?
He looked at her consideringly. Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition.
One intuition succeeded another with remarkable7 rapidity and Mrs. Oliver always claimed theright to justify8 the particular intuition which turned out to be right!
And yet one shared very often with animals the uneasiness of a dog or a cat before athunderstorm, the knowledge that there is something wrong, although one does not know what it isthat is wrong.
“When did it come upon you, this fear?”
“When I left the main road,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Up till then it was all ordinary and quiteexciting and—yes, I was enjoying myself, though vexed9 at finding how difficult it was to trailanybody.”
She paused, considering. “Just like a game. Then suddenly it didn’t seem so much like a game,because there were queer little streets and rather sort of broken-down places, and sheds and openspaces being cleared for building—oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain it. But it was all different.
Like a dream really. You know how dreams are. They start with one thing, a party or something,and then suddenly you find you’re in a jungle or somewhere quite different—and it’s all sinister.”
“A jungle?” said Poirot. “Yet, it is interesting you should put it like that. So it felt to you asthough you were in a jungle and you were afraid of a peacock?”
“I don’t know that I was especially afraid of him. After all, a peacock isn’t a dangerous sort ofanimal. It’s—well I mean I thought of him as a peacock because I thought of him as a decorativecreature. A peacock is very decorative10, isn’t it? And this awful boy is decorative too.”
“You didn’t have any idea anyone was following you before you were hit?”
“No. No, I’d no idea—but I think he directed me wrong all the same.”
Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
“But of course it must have been the Peacock who hit me,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Who else? Thedirty boy in the greasy11 clothes? He smelt12 nasty but he wasn’t sinister. And it could hardly be thatlimp Frances something—she was draped over a packing case with long black hair streaming allover the place. She reminded me of some actress or other.”
“You say she was acting13 as a model?”
“Yes. Not for the Peacock. For the dirty boy. I can’t remember if you’ve seen her or not.”
“I have not yet had that pleasure—if it is a pleasure.”
“Well, she’s quite nice looking in an untidy, arty sort of way. Very much made up. Dead whiteand lots of mascara and the usual kind of limp hair hanging over her face. Works in an art galleryso I suppose it’s quite natural that she should be all among the beatniks, acting as a model. Howthese girls can! I suppose she might have fallen for the Peacock. But it’s probably the dirty one.
All the same I don’t see her coshing me on the head somehow.”
“I had another possibility in mind, Madame. Someone may have noticed you following David—and in turn followed you.”
“Someone saw me trailing David, and then they trailed me?”
“Or someone may have been already in the mews or the yard, keeping perhaps an eye on thesame people that you were observing.”
“That’s an idea, of course,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I wonder who they could be?”
Poirot gave an exasperated14 sigh. “Ah, it is there. It is difficult—too difficult. Too many people,too many things. I cannot see anything clearly. I see only a girl who said that she may havecommitted a murder! That is all that I have to go on and you see even there there are difficulties.”
“What do you mean by difficulties?”
“Reflect,” said Poirot.
Reflection had never been Mrs. Oliver’s strong point.
“You always mix me up,” she complained.
“I am talking about a murder, but what murder?”
“The murder of the stepmother, I suppose.”
“But the stepmother is not murdered. She is alive.”
“You really are the most maddening man,” said Mrs. Oliver.
Poirot sat up in his chair. He brought the tips of his fingers together and prepared—or so Mrs.
Oliver suspected—to enjoy himself.
“You refuse to reflect,” he said. “But to get anywhere we must reflect.”
“I don’t want to reflect. What I want to know is what you’ve been doing about everything whileI’ve been in hospital. You must have done something. What have you done?”
Poirot ignored this question.
“We must begin at the beginning. One day you ring me up. I was in distress15. Yes, I admit it, Iwas in distress. Something extremely painful had been said to me. You, Madame, were kindnessitself. You cheered me, you encouraged me. You gave me a delicious tasse de chocolat. And whatis more you not only offered to help me, but you did help me. You helped me to find a girl whohad come to me and said that she thought she might have committed a murder! Let us askourselves, Madame, what about this murder? Who has been murdered? Where have they beenmurdered? Why have they been murdered?”
“Oh do stop,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’re making my head ache again, and that’s bad for me.”
Poirot paid no attention to this plea. “Have we got a murder at all? You say—the stepmother—but I reply that the stepmother is not dead—so as yet we have no murder. But there ought to havebeen a murder. So me, I inquire first of all, who is dead? Somebody comes to me and mentions amurder. A murder that has been committed somewhere and somehow. But I cannot find thatmurder, and what you are about to say once again, that the attempted murder of Mary Restarickwill do very well, does not satisfy Hercule Poirot.”
“I really can’t think what more you want,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“I want a murder,” said Hercule Poirot.
“It sounds very bloodthirsty when you say it like that!”
“I look for a murder and I cannot find a murder. It is exasperating—so I ask you to reflect withme.”
“I’ve got a splendid idea,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Suppose Andrew Restarick murdered his first wifebefore he went off in a hurry to South Africa. Had you thought of that possibility?”
“I certainly did not think of any such thing,” said Poirot indignantly.
“Well, I’ve thought of it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It’s very interesting. He was in love with this otherwoman, and he wanted like Crippen to go off with her, and so he murdered the first one andnobody ever suspected.”
Poirot drew a long, exasperated sigh. “But his wife did not die until eleven or twelve years afterhe’d left this country for South Africa, and his child could not have been concerned in the murderof her own mother at the age of five years old.”
“She could have given her mother the wrong medicine or perhaps Restarick just said that shedied. After all, we don’t know that she’s dead.”
“I do,” said Hercule Poirot. “I have made inquiries16. The first Mrs. Restarick died on the 14thApril, 1963.”
“How can you know these things?”
“Because I have employed someone to check the facts. I beg of you, Madame, do not jump toimpossible conclusions in this rash way.”
“I thought I was being rather clever,” said Mrs. Oliver obstinately17. “If I was making it happen ina book that’s how I would arrange it. And I’d make the child have done it. Not meaning to, butjust by her father telling her to give her mother a drink made of pounded up box hedge.”
“Non d’un nom d’un nom!” said Poirot.
“All right,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You tell it your way.”
“Alas, I have nothing to tell. I look for a murder and I do not find one.”
“Not after Mary Restarick is ill and goes to hospital and gets better and comes back and is illagain, and if they looked they’d probably find arsenic18 or something hidden away by Normasomewhere.”
“That is exactly what they did find.”
“Well, really, M. Poirot, what more do you want?”
“I want you to pay some attention to the meaning of language. That girl said to me the samething as she had said to my manservant, Georges. She did not say on either occasion ‘I have triedto kill someone’ or ‘I have tried to kill my stepmother.’ She spoke6 each time of a deed that hadbeen done, something that had already happened. Definitely happened. In the past tense.”
“I give up,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You just won’t believe that Norma tried to kill her stepmother.”
“Yes, I believe it is perfectly19 possible that Norma may have tried to kill her stepmother. I thinkit is probably what happened—it is in accord psychologically. With her distraught frame of mind.
But it is not proved. Anyone, remember, could have hidden a preparation of arsenic amongstNorma’s things. It could even have been put there by the husband.”
“You always seem to think that husbands are the ones who kill their wives,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“A husband is usually the most likely person,” said Hercule Poirot, “so one considers him first.
It could have been the girl, Norma, or it could have been one of the servants, or it could have beenthe au pair girl, or it could have been old Sir Roderick. Or it could have been Mrs. Restarickherself.”
“Nonsense. Why?”
“There could be reasons. Rather far-fetched reasons, but not beyond the bounds of belief.”
“Really, Monsieur Poirot, you can’t suspect everybody.”
“Mais oui, that is just what I can do. I suspect everybody. First I suspect, then I look forreasons.”
“And what reason would that poor foreign child have?”
“It might depend on what she is doing in that house, and what her reasons are for coming toEngland and a good deal more beside.”
“You’re really crazy.”
“Or it could have been the boy David. Your Peacock.”
“Much too far-fetched. David wasn’t there. He’s never been near the house.”
“Oh yes he has. He was wandering about its corridors the day I went there.”
“But not putting poison in Norma’s room.”
“How do you know?”
“But she and that awful boy are in love with each other.”
“They appear to be so, I admit.”
“You always want to make everything difficult,” complained Mrs. Oliver.
“Not at all. Things have been made difficult for me. I need information and there is only oneperson who can give me information. And she has disappeared.”
“You mean Norma.”
“Yes, I mean Norma.”
“But she hasn’t disappeared. We found her, you and I.”
“She walked out of that café and once more she has disappeared.”
“And you let her go?” Mrs. Oliver’s voice quivered with reproach.
“Alas!”
“You let her go? You didn’t even try to find her again?”
“I did not say I had not tried to find her.”
“But so far you have not succeeded. M. Poirot, I really am disappointed with you.”
“There is a pattern,” said Hercule Poirot almost dreamily. “Yes, there is a pattern. But becausethere is one factor missing, the pattern does not make sense. You see that, don’t you?”
“No,” said Mrs. Oliver, whose head was aching.
Poirot continued to talk more to himself than his listener. If Mrs. Oliver could be said to belistening. She was highly indignant with Poirot and she thought to herself that the Restarick girlhad been quite right and that Poirot was too old! There, she herself had found the girl for him, hadtelephoned him so that he might arrive in time, had gone off herself to shadow the other half of thecouple. She had left the girl to Poirot, and what had Poirot done—lost her! In fact she could notreally see that Poirot had done anything at all of any use at any time whatever. She wasdisappointed in him. When he stopped talking she would tell him so again.
Poirot was quietly and methodically outlining what he called “the pattern.”
“It interlocks. Yes, it interlocks and that is why it is difficult. One thing relates to another andthen you find that it relates to something else that seems outside the pattern. But it is not outsidethe pattern. And so it brings more people again into a ring of suspicion. Suspicion of what? Thereagain one does not know. We have first the girl and through all the maze20 of conflicting patterns Ihave to search the answer to the most poignant21 of questions. Is the girl a victim, is she in danger?
Or is the girl very astute22? Is the girl creating the impression she wants to create for her ownpurposes? It can be taken either way. I need something still. Some one sure pointer, and it is theresomewhere. I am sure it is there somewhere.”
Mrs. Oliver was rummaging23 in her handbag.
“I can’t think why I can never find my aspirin24 when I want it,” she said in a vexed voice.
“We have one set of relationships that hook up. The father, the daughter, the stepmother. Theirlives are interrelated. We have the elderly uncle, somewhat gaga, with whom they live. We havethe girl Sonia. She is linked with the uncle. She works for him. She has pretty manners, prettyways. He is delighted with her. He is, shall we say, a little soft about her. But what is her role inthe household?”
“Wants to learn English, I suppose,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“She meets one of the members of the Herzogovinian Embassy—in Kew Gardens. She meetshim there, but she does not speak to him. She leaves behind her a book and he takes it away—”
“What is all this?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Has this anything to do with the other pattern? We do not as yet know. It seems unlikely but itmay not be unlikely. Had Mary Restarick unwittingly stumbled upon something which might bedangerous to the girl?”
“Don’t tell me all this has something to do with espionage25 or something.”
“I am not telling you. I am wondering.”
“You said yourself that old Sir Roderick was gaga.”
“It is not a question of whether he is gaga or not. He was a person of some importance duringthe war. Important papers passed through his hands. Important letters can have been written tohim. Letters which he was at perfect liberty to have kept once they had lost their importance.”
“You’re talking of the war and that was ages ago.”
“Quite so. But the past is not always done with, because it is ages ago. New alliances are made.
Public speeches are made repudiating26 this, denying that, telling various lies about something else.
And suppose there exist still certain letters or documents that will change the picture of a certainpersonality. I am not telling you anything, you understand. I am only making assumptions.
Assumptions such as I have known to be true in the past. It might be of the utmost importance thatsome letters or papers should be destroyed, or else passed to some foreign government. Who betterto undertake that task than a charming young lady who assists and aids an elderly notability tocollect material for his memoirs27. Everyone is writing their memoirs nowadays. One cannot stopthem from doing so! Suppose that the stepmother gets a little something in her food on the day thatthe helpful secretary plus au pair girl is doing the cooking? And suppose it is she who arrangesthat suspicion should fall on Norma?”
“What a mind you have,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Tortuous, that’s what I call it. I mean, all thesethings can’t have happened.”
“That is just it. There are too many patterns. Which is the right one? The girl Norma leaveshome, goes to London. She is, as you have instructed me, a third girl sharing a flat with two othergirls. There again you may have a pattern. The two girls are strangers to her. But then what do Ilearn? Claudia Reece-Holland is private secretary to Norma Restarick’s father. Here again wehave a link. Is that mere28 chance? Or could there be a pattern of some kind behind it? The othergirl, you tell me, acts as a model, and is acquainted with the boy you call ‘the Peacock’ with whomNorma is in love. Again a link. More links. And what is David—the Peacock—doing in all this? Ishe in love with Norma? It would seem so. Her parents dislike it as is only probable and natural.”
“It’s odd about Claudia Reece- Holland being Restarick’s secretary,” said Mrs. Oliverthoughtfully. “I should judge she was unusually efficient at anything she undertook. Perhaps it wasshe who pushed the woman out of the window on the seventh floor.”
Poirot turned slowly towards her.
“What are you saying?” he demanded. “What are you saying?”
“Just someone in the flats—I don’t even know her name, but she fell out of a window or threwherself out of a window on the seventh floor and killed herself.”
Poirot’s voice rose high and stern.
“And you never told me?” he said accusingly.
Mrs. Oliver stared at him in surprise.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean? I ask you to tell me of a death. That is what I mean. A death. And you say thereare no deaths. You can think only of an attempted poisoning. And yet here is a death. A death at—what is the name of those mansions29?”
“Borodene Mansions.”
“Yes, yes. And when did it happen?”
“This suicide? Or whatever it was? I think—yes—I think it was about a week before I wentthere.”
“Perfect! How did you hear about it?”
“A milkman told me.”
“A milkman, bon Dieu!”
“He was just being chatty,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It sounded rather sad. It was in the daytime—very early in the morning, I think.”
“What was her name?”
“I’ve no idea. I don’t think he mentioned it.”
“Young, middle-aged30, old?”
Mrs. Oliver considered. “Well, he didn’t say her exact age. Fifty-ish, I think, was what he said.”
“I wonder now. Anyone the three girls knew?”
“How can I tell? Nobody has said anything about it.”
“And you never thought of telling me.”
“Well, really, M. Poirot, I cannot say that it has anything to do with all this. Well, I suppose itmay have—but nobody seems to have said so, or thought of it.”
“But yes, there is the link. There is this girl, Norma, and she lives in those flats, and one daysomebody commits suicide (for that, I gather, was the general impression). That is, somebodythrows herself or falls out of a seventh-floor high window and is killed. And then? Some days laterthis girl Norma, after having heard you talk about me at a party, comes to call upon me and shesays to me that she is afraid that she may have committed a murder. Do you not see? A death—and not many days later someone who thinks she may have committed a murder. Yes, this must bethe murder.”
Mrs. Oliver wanted to say “Nonsense” but she did not quite dare to do so. Nevertheless, shethought it.
“This then must be the one piece of knowledge that had not yet come to me. This ought to tie upthe whole thing! Yes, yes, I do not see yet how, but it must be so. I must think. That is what I mustdo. I must go home and think until slowly the pieces fit together—because this will be the keypiece that ties them all together…Yes. At last. At last I shall see my way.”
He rose to his feet and said, “Adieu, chère Madame,” and hurried from the room. Mrs. Oliver atlast relieved her feelings.
“Nonsense,” she said to the empty room. “Absolute nonsense. I wonder if four would be toomany aspirins to take?”
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bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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rosebuds
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| 蔷薇花蕾，妙龄少女，初入社交界的少女( rosebud的名词复数 ) | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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rummaging
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的现在分词 )； 海关检查 | |
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aspirin
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| n.阿司匹林 | |
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espionage
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| n.间谍行为，谍报活动 | |
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repudiating
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的现在分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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mere
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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middle-aged
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