Mrs. Oliver put down the glass and wiped her lips.
“You were right,” she said. “That—that helped. I was getting hysterical1.”
“You have had a great shock, I see now. When did this happen?”
“Last night. Was it only last night? Yes, yes, of course.”
“And you came to me.”
It was not quite a question, but it displayed a desire for more information than Poirot had yethad.
“You came to me—why?”
“I thought you could help,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You see, it’s—it’s not simple.”
“It could be and it could not,” said Poirot. “A lot depends. You must tell me more, you know.
The police, I presume2, are in charge. A doctor was, no doubt, called. What did he say?”
“There’s to be an inquest,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Naturally.”
“Tomorrow or the next day.”
“This girl, Joyce, how old was she?”
“I don’t know exactly. I should think perhaps twelve or thirteen.”
“Small for her age?”
“No, no, I should think rather mature, perhaps. Lumpy,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Well-developed? You mean sexy-looking?”
“Yes, that is what I mean. But I don’t think that was the kind of crime it was—I mean thatwould have been more simple, wouldn’t it?”
“It is the kind of crime,” said Poirot, “of which one reads every day in the paper. A girl who isattacked, a school child who is assaulted—yes, every day. This happened in a private house whichmakes it different, but perhaps not so different as all that. But all the same, I’m not sure yet thatyou’ve told me everything.”
“No, I don’t suppose I have,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I haven’t told you the reason, I mean, why Icame to you.”
“You knew this Joyce, you knew her well?”
“I didn’t know her at all. I’d better explain to you, I think, just how I came to be there.”
“There is where?”
“Oh, a place called Woodleigh Common.”
“Woodleigh Common,” said Poirot thoughtfully4. “Now where lately—” he broke off.
“It’s not very far from London. About—oh, thirty to forty miles, I think. It’s near Medchester.
It’s one of those places where there are a few nice houses, but where a certain amount of newbuilding has been done. Residential5. A good school nearby, and people can commute6 from there toLondon or into Medchester. It’s quite an ordinary sort of place where people with what you mightcall everyday reasonable incomes live.”
“Woodleigh Common,” said Poirot again, thoughtfully.
“I was staying with a friend there. Judith Butler. She’s a widow7. I went on a Hellenic cruise8 thisyear and Judith was on the cruise and we became friends. She’s got a daughter. A girl calledMiranda who is twelve or thirteen. Anyway, she asked me to come and stay and she said friends ofhers were giving this party for children, and it was to be a Hallowe’en party. She said perhaps Ihad some interesting ideas.”
“Ah,” said Poirot, “she did not suggest this time that you should arrange a murder hunt oranything of that kind?”
“Good gracious9, no,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Do you think I should ever consider such a thingagain?”
“I should think it unlikely10.”
“But it happened, that’s what’s so awful,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I mean, it couldn’t have happenedjust because I was there, could it?”
“I do not think so. At least—Did any of the people at the party know who you were?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver. “One of the children said something about my writing books and thatthey liked murders. That’s how it—well—that’s what led to the thing—I mean to the thing thatmade me come to you.”
“Which you still haven’t told me.”
“Well, you see, at first I didn’t think of it. Not straight away. I mean, children do queer11 thingssometimes. I mean there are queer children about, children who—well, once I suppose they wouldhave been in mental homes and things, but they send them home now and tell them to leadordinary lives or something, and then they go and do something like this.”
“There were some young adolescents there?”
“There were two boys, or youths as they always seem to call them in police reports. Aboutsixteen to eighteen.”
“I suppose one of them might have done it. Is that what the police think?”
“They don’t say what they think,” said Mrs. Oliver, “but they looked as though they might thinkso.”
“Was this Joyce an attractive girl?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You mean attractive to boys, do you?”
“No,” said Poirot, “I think I meant—well, just the plain simple meaning of the word.”
“I don’t think she was a very nice girl,” said Mrs. Oliver, “not one you’d want to talk to much.
She was the sort of girl who shows off and boasts12. It’s a rather tiresome13 age, I think. It soundsunkind what I’m saying, but—”
“It is not unkind14 in murder to say what the victim was like,” said Poirot. “It is very, verynecessary. The personality of the victim is the cause of many a murder. How many people werethere in the house at the time?”
“You mean for the party and so on? Well, I suppose there were five or six women, somemothers, a schoolteacher, a doctor’s wife, or sister, I think, a couple of middle-aged15 marriedpeople, the two boys of sixteen to eighteen, a girl of fifteen, two or three of eleven or twelve—wellthat sort of thing. About twenty-five or thirty in all, perhaps.”
“Any strangers?”
“They all knew each other, I think. Some better than others. I think the girls were mostly in thesame school. There were a couple of women who had come in to help with the food and thesupper and things like that. When the party ended, most of the mothers went home with theirchildren. I stayed behind with Judith and a couple of others to help Rowena Drake, the womanwho gave the party, to clear up a bit, so the cleaning women who came in the morning wouldn’thave so much mess to deal with. You know, there was a lot of flour about, and paper caps out ofcrackers and different things. So we swept up a bit, and we got to the library last of all. And that’swhen—when we found her. And then I remembered what she’d said.”
“What who had said?”
“Joyce.”
“What did she say? We are coming to it now, are we not? We are coming to the reason why youare here?”
“Yes. I thought it wouldn’t mean anything to—oh, to a doctor or the police or anyone, but Ithought it might mean something to you.”
“Eh bien,” said Poirot, “tell me. Was this something Joyce said at the party?”
“No—earlier in the day. That afternoon when we were fixing things up. It was after they’dtalked about my writing murder stories and Joyce said ‘I saw a murder once’ and her mother orsomebody said ‘Don’t be silly, Joyce, saying things like that’ and one of the older girls said‘You’re just making it up’ and Joyce said ‘I did. I saw it I tell you. I did. I saw someone do amurder,’ but no one believed her. They just laughed and she got very angry.”
“Did you believe her?”
“No, of course not.”
“I see,” said Poirot, “yes, I see.” He was silent for some moments, tapping a finger on the table.
Then he said: “I wonder—she gave no details—no names?”
“No. She went on boasting16 and shouting a bit and being angry because most of the other girlswere laughing at her. The mothers, I think, and the older people, were rather cross with her. Butthe girls and the younger boys just laughed at her! They said things like ‘Go on, Joyce, when wasthis? Why did you never tell us about it?’ And Joyce said, ‘I’d forgotten all about it, it was so longago.’”
“Aha! Did she say how long ago?”
“‘Years ago,’” she said. You know, in rather a would-be grown-up way.
“‘Why didn’t you go and tell the police then?’ one of the girls said. Ann, I think, or Beatrice.
Rather a smug, superior17 girl.”
“Aha, and what did she say to that?”
“She said: ‘Because I didn’t know at the time it was a murder.’”
“A very interesting remark,” said Poirot, sitting up rather straighter in his chair.
“She’d got a bit mixed up by then, I think,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You know, trying to explainherself and getting angry because they were all teasing18 her.
“They kept asking her why she hadn’t gone to the police, and she kept on saying ‘Because Ididn’t know then that it was a murder. It wasn’t until afterwards that it came to me quite suddenlythat that was what I had seen.’”
“But nobody showed any signs of believing her—and you yourself did not believe her—butwhen you came across her dead you suddenly felt that she might have been speaking the truth?”
“Yes, just that. I didn’t know what I ought to do, or what I could do. But then, later, I thought ofyou.”
Poirot bowed his head gravely19 in acknowledgement. He was silent for a moment or two, then hesaid:
“I must pose3 to you a serious question, and reflect before you answer it. Do you think that thisgirl had really seen a murder? Or do you think that she merely believed that she had seen amurder?”
“The first, I think,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I didn’t at the time. I just thought that she was vaguelyremembering something she had once seen and was working it up to make it sound important andexciting. She became very vehement20, saying, ‘I did see it, I tell you. I did see it happen.’”
“And so.”
“And so I’ve come along to you,” said Mrs. Oliver, “because the only way her death makessense is that there really was a murder and that she was a witness to it.”
“That would involve certain things. It would involve that one of the people who were at theparty committed the murder, and that that same person must also have been there earlier that dayand have heard what Joyce said.”
“You don’t think I’m just imagining things, do you?” said Mrs. Oliver. “Do you think that it isall just my very far-fetched imagination?”
“A girl was murdered,” said Poirot. “Murdered by someone who had strength enough to holdher head down in a bucket of water. An ugly murder and a murder that was committed with whatwe might call, no time to lose. Somebody was threatened, and whoever it was struck as soon as itwas humanly possible.”
“Joyce could not have known who it was who did the murder she saw,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Imean she wouldn’t have said what she did if there was someone actually in the room who wasconcerned.”
“No,” said Poirot, “I think you are right there. She saw a murder, but she did not see themurderer’s face. We have to go beyond that.”
“I don’t understand exactly what you mean.”
“It could be that someone who was there earlier in the day and heard Joyce’s accusation21 knewabout the murder, knew who committed the murder, perhaps was closely22 involved with thatperson. It may have been that someone thought he was the only person who knew what his wifehad done, or his mother or his daughter or his son. Or it might have been a woman who knew whather husband or mother or daughter or son had done. Someone who thought that no one else knew.
And then Joyce began talking….”
“And so—”
“Joyce had to die?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“I have just remembered,” said Hercule Poirot, “why the name of Woodleigh Common wasfamiliar to me.”
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1
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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2
presume
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| vt.姑且认定，假定，推测，认为是理所当然；vi.假设，越权行事 | |
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pose
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| vt.造成，陈述；vi.摆姿势，装腔作势；n.姿势 | |
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4
thoughtfully
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| ad.考虑周到地 | |
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5
residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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commute
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| vi.乘车上下班；vt.减(刑)；折合；n.上下班交通 | |
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7
widow
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| n.寡妇 | |
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cruise
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| v.巡航，航游，缓慢巡行；n.海上航游 | |
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9
gracious
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| adj.亲切的，客气的，宽厚的，仁慈的 | |
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10
unlikely
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| adj.未必的，多半不可能的；不大可能发生的 | |
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11
queer
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| adj.奇怪的，异常的，不舒服的，眩晕的 | |
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12
boasts
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| v.有（引以为荣的事物）( boast的第三人称单数 )；扬言 | |
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13
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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14
unkind
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| adj.不仁慈的，不和善的 | |
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15
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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16
boasting
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| v.有（引以为荣的事物）( boast的现在分词 )；扬言；粗堑石头 | |
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17
superior
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| n.上级，高手，上标；adj.上层的，上好的，出众的，高傲的 | |
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18
teasing
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| adj.戏弄的，逗趣的v.取笑，戏弄( tease的现在分词 )；梳理（羊毛等） | |
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19
gravely
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| adv. 严肃地，庄重地 | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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21
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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closely
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| adv.紧密地；严密地，密切地 | |
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