Mrs. Reynolds was a complete contrast to Mrs. Drake. There was no air of poised1 competenceabout her, nor indeed was there ever likely to be.
She was wearing conventional black, had a moist handkerchief clasped in her hand and wasclearly prepared to dissolve into tears at any moment.
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” she said to Mrs. Oliver, “to bring a friend of yours down hereto help us.” She put a damp hand into Poirot’s and looked at him doubtfully. “And if he can helpin any way I’m sure I’ll be very grateful, though I don’t see what anyone can do. Nothing willbring her back, poor child. It’s awful to think of. How anyone could deliberately2 kill anyone ofthat age. If she had only cried out—though I suppose he rammed3 her head under water straightaway and held it there. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it. I really can’t.”
“Indeed, Madame, I do not want to distress4 you. Please do not think of it. I only want to ask youa few questions that might help—help, that is, to find your daughter’s murderer. You’ve no ideayourself, I suppose, who it can possibly be?”
“How could I have any idea? I shouldn’t have thought there was anyone, anyone living here, Imean. This is such a nice place. And the people living here are such nice people. I suppose it wasjust someone—some awful man who came in through one of the windows. Perhaps he’d takendrugs or something. He saw the light and that it was a party, so he gate-crashed.”
“You are quite sure that the assailant was male?”
“Oh, it must have been.” Mrs. Reynolds sounded shocked. “I’m sure it was. It couldn’t havebeen a woman, could it?”
“A woman might have been strong enough.”
“Well, I suppose in a way I know what you mean. You mean women are much more athleticnowadays and all that. But they wouldn’t do a thing like this, I’m sure. Joyce was only a child—thirteen years old.”
“I don’t want to distress you by staying here too long, Madame, or to ask you difficultquestions. That already, I am sure, the police are doing elsewhere, and I don’t want to upset youby dwelling5 on painful facts. It was just concerning a remark that your daughter made at the party.
You were not there yourself, I think?”
“Well, no, I wasn’t. I haven’t been very well lately and children’s parties can be very tiring. Idrove them there, and then later I came back to fetch them. The three children went together, youknow. Ann, that’s the older one, she is sixteen, and Leopold who is nearly eleven. What was itJoyce said that you wanted to know about?”
“Mrs. Oliver, who was there, will tell you what your daughter’s words were exactly. She said, Ibelieve, that she had once seen a murder committed.”
“Joyce? Oh, she couldn’t have said a thing like that. What murder could she possibly have seencommitted?”
“Well, everyone seems to think it was rather unlikely,” said Poirot. “I just wondered if youthought it likely. Did she ever speak to you about such a thing?”
“Seeing a murder? Joyce?”
“You must remember,” said Poirot, “that the term murder might have been used by someone ofJoyce’s age in a rather loose way. It might have been just a question of somebody being run overby a car, or of children fighting together perhaps and one pushing another into a stream or over abridge6. Something that was not meant seriously, but which had an unfortunate result.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything like that happening here that Joyce could have seen, and shecertainly never said anything about it to me. She must have been joking.”
“She was very positive,” said Mrs. Oliver. “She kept on saying that it was true and that she’dseen it.”
“Did anyone believe her?” asked Mrs. Reynolds.
“I don’t know,” said Poirot.
“I don’t think they did,” said Mrs. Oliver, “or perhaps they didn’t want to—er—well, encourageher by saying they believed it.”
“They were inclined to jeer7 at her and say she was making it all up,” said Poirot, lesskindhearted than Mrs. Oliver.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice of them,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “As though Joyce would tell a lot oflies about things like that.” She looked flushed and indignant.
“I know. It seems unlikely,” said Poirot. “It was more possible, was it not, that she might havemade a mistake, that she might have seen something she did think could have been described as amurder. Some accident, perhaps.”
“She’d have said something about it to me, if so, wouldn’t she?” said Mrs. Reynolds, stillindignant.
“One would think so,” said Poirot. “She did not say so at any time in the past? You might haveforgotten. Especially if it wasn’t really important.”
“When do you mean?”
“We don’t know,” said Poirot. “That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeksago—or three years. She said she had been ‘quite young’ at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational8 happening round here that you can recall?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. Youknow, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that. But nothingimportant that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.”
“But if Joyce said positively9 she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?”
“She wouldn’t say so unless she really did think so, would she?” said Mrs. Reynolds. “I thinkshe must have got something mixed up really.”
“Yes, it seems possible. I wonder,” he asked, “if I might speak to your two children who werealso at the party?”
“Well, of course, though I don’t know what you can expect them to tell you. Ann’s doing herwork for her ‘A’ levels upstairs and Leopold’s in the garden assembling a model aeroplane.”
Leopold was a solid, pudgy-faced boy entirely10 absorbed, it seemed, in mechanical construction.
It was some few moments before he could pay attention to the questions he was being asked.
“You were there, weren’t you, Leopold? You heard what your sister said. What did she say?”
“Oh, you mean about the murder?” He sounded bored.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Poirot. “She said she saw a murder once. Did she really see sucha thing?”
“No, of course she didn’t,” said Leopold. “Who on earth would she see murdered? It was justlike Joyce, that.”
“How do you mean, it was just like her?”
“Showing off,” said Leopold, winding11 round a piece of wire and breathing forcefully throughhis nose as he concentrated. “She was an awfully12 stupid sort of girl,” he added. “She’d sayanything, you know, to make people sit up and take notice.”
“So you really think she invented the whole thing?”
Leopold shifted his gaze to Mrs. Oliver.
“I expect she wanted to impress you a bit,” he said. “You write detective stories, don’t you? Ithink she was just putting it on so that you should take more notice of her than you did of theothers.”
“That would also be rather like her, would it?” said Poirot.
“Oh, she’d say anything,” said Leopold. “I bet nobody believed her though.”
“Were you listening? Do you think anyone believed it?”
“Well, I heard her say it, but I didn’t really listen. Beatrice laughed at her and so did Cathie.
They said ‘that’s a tall story,’ or something.”
There seemed little more to be got out of Leopold. They went upstairs to where Ann, lookingrather more than her sixteen years, was bending over a table with various study books spreadround her.
“Yes, I was at the party,” she said.
“You heard your sister say something about having seen a murder?”
“Oh yes, I heard her. I didn’t take any notice, though.”
“You didn’t think it was true?”
“Of course it wasn’t true. There haven’t been any murders here for ages. I don’t think there’sbeen a proper murder for years.”
“Then why do you think she said so?”
“Oh, she likes showing off. I mean she used to like showing off. She had a wonderful story onceabout having travelled to India. My uncle had been on a voyage there and she pretended she wentwith him. Lots of girls at school actually believed her.”
“So you don’t remember any what you call murders taking place here in the last three or fouryears?”
“No, only the usual kind,” said Ann. “I mean, the ones you read every day in the newspaper.
And they weren’t actually here in Woodleigh Common. They were mostly in Medchester, Ithink.”
“Who do you think killed your sister, Ann? You must have known her friends, you would knowany people who didn’t like her.”
“I can’t imagine who’d want to kill her. I suppose someone who was just batty. Nobody elsewould, would they?”
“There was no one who had—quarrelled with her or who did not get on with her?”
“You mean, did she have an enemy? I think that’s silly. People don’t have enemies really. Thereare just people you don’t like.”
As they departed from the room, Ann said:
“I don’t want to be nasty about Joyce, because she’s dead, and it wouldn’t be kind, but shereally was the most awful liar13, you know. I mean, I’m sorry to say things about my sister, but it’squite true.”
“Are we making any progress?” said Mrs. Oliver as they left the house.
“None whatever,” said Hercule Poirot. “That is interesting,” he said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Oliver looked as though she didn’t agree with him.
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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rammed
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| v.夯实（土等）( ram的过去式和过去分词 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输 | |
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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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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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abridge
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| v.删减，删节，节略，缩短 | |
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jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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