IAdmitted to Apple Trees, Hercule Poirot was shown into the drawing room and told that Mrs.
Drake would not be long.
In passing through the hall he heard the hum of female voices behind what he took to be thedining room door.
Poirot crossed to the drawing room window and surveyed the neat and pleasant garden. Welllaid out, kept studiously in control. Rampant1 autumn michaelmas daisies still survived, tied upseverely to sticks; chrysanthemums3 had not yet relinquished4 life. There were still a persistent5 roseor two scorning the approach of winter.
Poirot could discern no sign as yet of the preliminary activities of a landscape gardener. All wascare and convention. He wondered if Mrs. Drake had been one too many for Michael Garfield. Hehad spread his lures6 in vain. It showed every sign of remaining a splendidly kept suburban7 garden.
The door opened.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Monsieur Poirot,” said Mrs. Drake.
Outside in the hall there was a diminishing hum of voices as various people took their leave anddeparted.
“It’s our church Christmas fête,” explained Mrs. Drake. “A Committee Meeting forarrangements for it and all the rest of it. These things always go on much longer than they oughtto, of course. Somebody always objects to something, or has a good idea—the good idea usuallybeing a perfectly8 impossible one.”
There was a slight acerbity9 in her tone. Poirot could well imagine that Rowena Drake would putthings down as quite absurd, firmly and definitely. He could understand well enough from remarkshe had heard from Spence’s sister, from hints of what other people had said and from various othersources, that Rowena Drake was that dominant10 type of personality whom everyone expects to runthe show, and whom nobody has much affection for while she is doing it. He could imagine, too,that her conscientiousness11 had not been the kind to be appreciated by an elderly relative who washerself of the same type. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, he gathered, had come here to live so as to benear to her nephew and his wife, and that the wife had readily undertaken the supervision12 and careof her husband’s aunt as far as she could do so without actually living in the house. Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe had probably acknowledged in her own mind that she owed a great deal toRowena, and had at the same time resented what she had no doubt thought of as her bossy13 ways.
“Well, they’ve all gone now,” said Rowena Drake, hearing the final shutting of the hall door.
“Now what can I do for you? Something more about that dreadful party? I wish I’d never had ithere. But no other house really seemed suitable. Is Mrs. Oliver still staying with Judith Butler?”
“Yes. She is, I believe, returning to London in a day or two. You had not met her before?”
“No. I love her books.”
“She is, I believe, considered a very good writer,” said Poirot.
“Oh well, she is a good writer. No doubt of that. She’s a very amusing person too. Has she anyideas herself—I mean about who might have done this dreadful thing?”
“I think not. And you, Madame?”
“I’ve told you already. I’ve no idea whatever.”
“You would perhaps say so, and yet—you might, might you not, have, perhaps, what amountsto a very good idea, but only an idea. A half-formed idea. A possible idea.”
“Why should you think that?”
She looked at him curiously15.
“You might have seen something — something quite small and unimportant but which onreflection might seem more significant to you, perhaps, than it had done at first.”
“You must have something in your mind, Monsieur Poirot, some definite incident.”
“Well, I admit it. It is because of what someone said to me.”
“Indeed! And who was that?”
“A Miss Whittaker. A schoolteacher.”
“Oh yes, of course. Elizabeth Whittaker. She’s the mathematics mistress, isn’t she, at TheElms? She was at the party, I remember. Did she see something?”
“It was not so much that she saw something as she had the idea that you might have seensomething.”
Mrs. Drake looked surprised and shook her head.
“I can’t think of anything I can possibly have seen,” said Rowena Drake, “but one neverknows.”
“It had to do with a vase,” said Poirot. “A vase of flowers.”
“A vase of flowers?” Rowena Drake looked puzzled. Then her brow cleared. “Oh, of course, Iknow. Yes, there was a big vase of autumn leaves and chrysanthemums on the table in the angle ofthe stairs. A very nice glass vase. One of my wedding presents. The leaves seemed to be droopingand so did one or two of the flowers. I remember noticing it as I passed through the hall—it wasnear the end of the party, I think, by then, but I’m not sure—I wondered why it looked like that,and I went up and dipped my fingers into it and found that some idiot must have forgotten to putany water into it after arranging it. It made me very angry. So I took it into the bathroom and filledit up. But what could I have seen in that bathroom? There was nobody in it. I am quite sure of that.
I think one or two of the older girls and boys had done a little harmless, what the Americans call‘necking,’ there during the course of the party, but there was certainly nobody when I went into itwith the vase.”
“No, no, I do not mean that,” said Poirot. “But I understood that there was an accident. That thevase slipped out of your hand and it fell to the hall below and was shattered to pieces.”
“Oh yes,” said Rowena. “Broken to smithereens. I was rather upset about it because as I’ve said,it had been one of our wedding presents, and it was really a perfect flower vase, heavy enough tohold big autumn bouquets16 and things like that. It was very stupid of me. My fingers just slipped. Itwent out of my hand and crashed on the hall floor below. Elizabeth Whittaker was standing17 there.
She helped me to pick up the pieces and sweep some of the broken glass out of the way in casesomeone stepped on it. We just swept it into a corner by the Grandfather clock to be cleared uplater.”
She looked inquiringly at Poirot.
“Is that the incident you mean?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Poirot. “Miss Whittaker wondered, I think, how you had come to drop the vase. Shethought that something perhaps had startled you.”
“Startled me?” Rowena Drake looked at him, then frowned as she tried to think again. “No, Idon’t think I was startled, anyway. It was just one of those ways things do slip out of your hands.
Sometimes when you’re washing up. I think, really, it’s a result of being tired. I was pretty tired bythat time, what with the preparations for the party and running the party and all the rest of it. Itwent very well, I must say. I think it was—oh, just one of those clumsy actions that you can’t helpwhen you’re tired.”
“There was nothing—you are sure—that startled you? Something unexpected that you saw?”
“Saw? Where? In the hall below? I didn’t see anything in the hall below. It was empty at themoment because everyone was in at the Snapdragon excepting, of course, for Miss Whittaker. AndI don’t think I even noticed her until she came forward to help when I ran down.”
“Did you see someone, perhaps, leaving the library door?”
“The library door…I see what you mean. Yes, I could have seen that.” She paused for quite along time, then she looked at Poirot with a very straight, firm glance. “I didn’t see anyone leavethe library,” she said. “Nobody at all….”
He wondered. The way in which she said it was what aroused the belief in his mind that she wasnot speaking the truth, that instead she had seen someone or something, perhaps the door justopening a little, a mere18 glance perhaps of a figure inside. But she was quite firm in her denial.
Why, he wondered, had she been so firm? Because the person she had seen was a person she didnot want to believe for one moment had had anything to do with the crime committed on the otherside of the door? Someone she cared about, or someone—which seemed more likely, he thought—someone whom she wished to protect. Someone, perhaps, who had not long passed beyondchildhood, someone whom she might feel was not truly conscious of the awful thing they had justdone.
He thought her a hard creature but a person of integrity. He thought that she was, like manywomen of the same type, women who were often magistrates19, or who ran councils or charities, orinterested themselves in what used to be called “good works.” Women who had an inordinatebelief in extenuating20 circumstances, who were ready, strangely enough, to make excuses for theyoung criminal. An adolescent boy, a mentally retarded21 girl. Someone perhaps who had alreadybeen—what is the phrase—“in care.” If that had been the type of person she had seen coming outof the library, then he thought it possible that Rowena Drake’s protective instinct might have comeinto play. It was not unknown in the present age for children to commit crimes, quite youngchildren. Children of seven, of nine and so on, and it was often difficult to know how to dispose ofthese natural, it seemed, young criminals who came before the juvenile22 courts. Excuses had to bebrought for them. Broken homes. Negligent23 and unsuitable parents. But the people who spoke24 themost vehemently25 for them, the people who sought to bring forth26 every excuse for them, wereusually the type of Rowena Drake. A stern and censorious woman, except in such cases.
For himself, Poirot did not agree. He was a man who thought first always of justice. He wassuspicious, had always been suspicious, of mercy—too much mercy, that is to say. Too muchmercy, as he knew from former experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted infurther crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice hadbeen put first and mercy second.
“I see,” said Poirot. “I see.”
“You don’t think it’s possible that Miss Whittaker might have seen someone go into thelibrary?” suggested Mrs. Drake.
Poirot was interested.
“Ah, you think that that might have been so?”
“It seemed to me merely a possibility. She might have caught sight of someone going in throughthe library, say, perhaps five minutes or so earlier, and then, when I dropped the vase it might havesuggested to her that I could have caught a glimpse of the same person. That I might have seenwho it was. Perhaps she doesn’t like to say anything that might suggest, unfairly perhaps, someperson whom she had perhaps only half glimpsed—not enough to be sure of. Some back viewperhaps of a child, or a young boy.”
“You think, do you not, Madame, that it was—shall we say, a child—a boy or girl, a mere child,or a young adolescent? You think it was not any definite one of these but, shall we say, you thinkthat that is the most likely type to have committed the crime we are discussing?”
She considered the point thoughtfully, turning it over in her mind.
“Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose I do. I haven’t thought it out. It seems to me that crimes areso often associated nowadays with the young. People who don’t really know quite what they aredoing, who want silly revenges, who have an instinct for destruction. Even the people who wrecktelephone boxes, or who slash28 the tyres of cars, do all sorts of things just to hurt people, justbecause they hate—not anyone in particular, but the whole world. It’s a sort of symptom of thisage. So I suppose when one comes across something like a child drowned at a party for no reasonreally, one does assume that it’s someone who is not yet fully27 responsible for their actions. Don’tyou agree with me that—that—well, that that is certainly the most likely possibility here?”
“The police, I think, share your point of view—or did share it.”
“Well, they should know. We have a very good class of policeman in this district. They’ve donewell in several crimes. They are painstaking29 and they never give up. I think probably they willsolve this murder, though I don’t think it will happen very quickly. These things seem to take along time. A long time of patient gathering30 of evidence.”
“The evidence in this case will not be very easy to gather, Madame.”
“No, I suppose it won’t. When my husband was killed—He was a cripple, you know. He wascrossing the road and a car ran over him and knocked him down. They never found the personwho was responsible. As you know, my husband—or perhaps you don’t know—my husband wasa polio victim. He was partially31 paralyzed as a result of polio, six years ago. His condition hadimproved, but he was still crippled, and it would be difficult for him to get out of the way if a carbore down upon him quickly. I almost felt that I had been to blame, though he always insisted ongoing32 out without me or without anyone with him, because he would have resented very muchbeing in the care of a nurse, or a wife who took the part of a nurse, and he was always carefulbefore crossing a road. Still, one does blame oneself when accidents happen.”
“That came on top of the death of your aunt?”
“No. She died not long afterwards. Everything seems to come at once, doesn’t it?”
“That is very true,” said Hercule Poirot. He went on: “The police were not able to trace the carthat ran down your husband?”
“It was a Grasshopper33 Mark 7, I believe. Every third car you notice on the road is aGrasshopper Mark 7—or was then. It’s the most popular car on the market, they tell me. Theybelieve it was pinched from the Market Place in Medchester. A car park there. It belonged to a Mr.
Waterhouse, an elderly seed merchant in Medchester. Mr. Waterhouse was a slow and carefuldriver. It was certainly not he who caused the accident. It was clearly one of those cases whereirresponsible young men help themselves to cars. Such careless, or should I say such callousyoung men, should be treated, one sometimes feels, more severely2 than they are now.”
“A long gaol34 sentence, perhaps. Merely to be fined, and the fine paid by indulgent relatives,makes little impression.”
“One has to remember,” said Rowena Drake, “that there are young people at an age when it isvital that they should continue with their studies if they are to have the chance of doing well inlife.”
“The sacred cow of education,” said Hercule Poirot. “That is a phrase I have heard uttered,” headded quickly, “by people—well, should I say people who ought to know. People who themselveshold academic posts of some seniority.”
“They do not perhaps make enough allowances for youth, for a bad bringing up. Brokenhomes.”
“So you think they need something other than gaol sentences?”
“Proper remedial treatment,” said Rowena Drake firmly.
“And that will make—(another old-fashioned proverb)—a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? You donot believe in the maxim35 ‘the fate of every man have we bound about his neck?’”
Mrs. Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased36.
“An Islamic saying, I believe,” said Poirot. Mrs. Drake looked unimpressed.
“I hope,” she said, “we do not take our ideas—or perhaps I should say our ideals—from theMiddle East.”
“One must accept facts,” said Poirot, “and a fact that is expressed by modern biologists—Western biologists—” he hastened to add, “—seems to suggest very strongly that the root of aperson’s actions lies in his genetic37 makeup38. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer inpotential at two or three or four years old. Or of course a mathematician39 or a musical genius.”
“We are not discussing murderers,” said Mrs. Drake. “My husband died as a result of anaccident. An accident caused by a careless and badly adjusted personality. Whoever the boy oryoung man was, there is always the hope of eventual40 adjustment to a belief and acceptance that itis a duty to consider others, to be taught to feel an abhorrence41 if you have taken life unawares,simply out of what may be described as criminal carelessness that was not really criminal inintent?”
“You are quite sure, therefore, that it was not criminal in intent?”
“I should doubt it very much.” Mrs. Drake looked slightly surprised. “I do not think that thepolice ever seriously considered that possibility. I certainly did not. It was an accident. A verytragic accident which altered the pattern of many lives, including my own.”
“You say we are not discussing murderers,” said Poirot. “But in the case of Joyce that is justwhat we are discussing. There was no accident about that. Deliberate hands pushed that child’shead down into water, holding her there till death occurred. Deliberate intent.”
“I know. I know. It’s terrible. I don’t like to think of it, to be reminded of it.”
She got up, moving about restlessly. Poirot pushed on relentlessly42.
“We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find the motive43 involved.”
“It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless44.”
“You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent of enjoying killingsomeone? Presumably killing45 someone young and immature46.”
“One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is difficult to find out. Evenpsychiatrists do not agree.”
“You refuse to accept a simpler explanation?”
She looked puzzled. “Simpler?”
“Someone not mentally disturbed, not a possible case for psychiatrists47 to disagree over.
Somebody perhaps who just wanted to be safe.”
“Safe? Oh, you mean—”
“The girl had boasted that same day, some hours previously48, that she had seen someone commita murder.”
“Joyce,” said Mrs. Drake, with calm certainty, “was really a very silly little girl. Not, I amafraid, always very truthful49.”
“So everyone has told me,” said Hercule Poirot. “I am beginning to believe, you know, thatwhat everybody has told me must be right,” he added with a sigh. “It usually is.”
He rose to his feet, adopting a different manner.
“I must apologize, Madame. I have talked of painful things to you, things that do not trulyconcern me here. But it seemed from what Miss Whittaker told me—”
“Why don’t you find out more from her?”
“You mean—?”
“She is a teacher. She knows, much better than I can, what potentialities (as you have calledthem) exist amongst the children she teaches.”
She paused and then said:
“Miss Emlyn, too.”
“The headmistress?” Poirot looked surprised.
“Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is a natural psychologist. You said I might have ideas—half-formed ones—as to who killed Joyce. I haven’t—but I think Miss Emlyn might.”
“This is interesting….”
“I don’t mean has evidence. I mean she just knows. She could tell you—but I don’t think shewill.”
“I begin to see,” said Poirot, “that I have still a long way to go. People know things—but theywill not tell them to me.” He looked thoughtfully at Rowena Drake.
“Your aunt, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, had an au pair girl who looked after her, a foreign girl.”
“You seem to have got hold of all the local gossip.” Rowena spoke dryly. “Yes, that is so. Sheleft here rather suddenly soon after my aunt’s death.”
“For good reasons, it would seem.”
“I don’t know whether it’s libel or slander50 to say so—but there seems no doubt that she forged acodicil to my aunt’s Will—or that someone helped her to do so.”
“Someone?”
“She was friendly with a young man who worked in a solicitor’s office in Medchester. He hadbeen mixed up in a forgery51 case before. The case never came to court because the girl disappeared.
She realized the Will would not be admitted to probate, and that there was going to be a courtcase. She left the neighbourhood and has never been heard of since.”
“She too came, I have heard, from a broken home,” said Poirot.
Rowena Drake looked at him sharply but he was smiling amiably52.
“Thank you for all you have told me, Madame,” he said.
II
When Poirot had left the house, he went for a short walk along a turning off the main road whichwas labelled “Helpsly Cemetery53 Road.” The cemetery in question did not take him long to reach.
It was at most ten minutes’ walk. It was obviously a cemetery that had been made in the last tenyears, presumably to cope with the rising importance of Woodleigh as a residential54 entity55. Thechurch, a church of reasonable size dating from some two or three centuries back, had had a verysmall enclosure round it already well filled. So the new cemetery had come into being with afootpath connecting it across two fields. It was, Poirot thought, a businesslike, modern cemeterywith appropriate sentiments on marble or granite56 slabs57; it had urns58, chippings, small plantations59 ofbushes or flowers. No interesting old epitaphs or inscriptions61. Nothing much for an antiquarian.
Cleaned, neat, tidy and with suitable sentiments expressed.
He came to a halt to read a tablet erected62 on a grave contemporary with several others near it, alldating within two or three years back. It bore a simple inscription60, “Sacred to the Memory of HugoEdmund Drake, beloved husband of Rowena Arabella Drake, who departed this life March the20th 19—”
He giveth his beloved sleep
It occurred to Poirot, fresh from the impact of the dynamic Rowena Drake, that perhaps sleepmight have come in welcome guise63 to the late Mr. Drake.
An alabaster64 urn14 had been fixed65 in position there and contained the remains66 of flowers. Anelderly gardener, obviously employed to tend the graves of good citizens departed this life,approached Poirot in the pleasurable hopes of a few minutes’ conversation while he laid his hoeand his broom aside.
“Stranger in these parts, I think,” he said, “aren’t you, sir?”
“It is very true,” said Poirot. “I am a stranger with you as were my fathers before me.”
“Ah, aye. We’ve got that text somewhere or summat very like it. Over down the other corner, itis.” He went on, “He was a nice gentleman, he were, Mr. Drake. A cripple, you know. He had thatinfant paralysis67, as they call it, though as often as not it isn’t infants as suffer from it. It’s grown-ups. Men and women too. My wife, she had an aunt, who caught it in Spain, she did. Went therewith a tour, she did, and bathed somewhere in some river. And they said afterwards as it was thewater infection, but I don’t think they know much. Doctors don’t, if you ask me. Still, it’s made alot of difference nowadays. All this inoculation68 they give the children, and that. Not nearly asmany cases as there were. Yes, he were a nice gentleman and didn’t complain, though he took ithard, being a cripple, I mean. He’d been a good sportsman, he had, in his time. Used to bat for ushere in the village team. Many a six he’s hit to the boundary. Yes, he were a nice gentleman.”
“He died of an accident, did he not?”
“That’s right. Crossing the road, towards twilight69 this was. One of these cars come along, acouple of these young thugs in it with beards growing up to their ears. That’s what they say.
Didn’t stop either. Went on. Never looked to see. Abandoned the car somewhere in a car parktwenty miles away. Wasn’t their own car either. Pinched from a car park somewhere. Ah, it’sterrible, a lot of those accidents nowadays. And the police often can’t do anything about them.
Very devoted70 to him, his wife was. Took it very hard, she did. She comes here, nearly every week,brings flowers and puts them here. Yes, they were a very devoted couple. If you ask me, she won’tstay here much longer.”
“Really? But she has a very nice house here.”
“Yes, oh yes. And she does a lot in the village, you know. All these things—women’s institutesand teas and various societies and all the rest of it. Runs a lot of things, she does. Runs a bit toomany for some people. Bossy, you know. Bossy and interfering71, some people say. But the vicarrelies on her. She starts things. Women’s activities and all the rest of it. Gets up tours and outings.
Ah yes. Often thought myself, though I wouldn’t like to say it to my wife, that all these goodworks as ladies does, doesn’t make you any fonder of the ladies themselves. Always know best,they do. Always telling you what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. No freedom. Notmuch freedom anywhere nowadays.”
“Yet you think Mrs. Drake may leave here?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if she didn’t go away and live somewhere abroad. They liked being abroad,used to go there for holidays.”
“Why do you think she wants to leave here?”
A sudden rather roguish smile appeared on the old man’s face.
“Well, I’d say, you know, that she’s done all she can do here. To put it scriptural, she needsanother vineyard to work in. She needs more good works. Aren’t no more good works to be doneround here. She’s done all there is, and even more than there need be, so some think. Yes.”
“She needs a new field in which to labour?” suggested Poirot.
“You’ve hit it. Better settle somewhere else where she can put a lot of things right and bully72 alot of other people. She’d got us where she wants us here and there’s not much more for her todo.”
“It may be,” said Poirot.
“Hasn’t even got her husband to look after. She looked after him a good few years. That gaveher a kind of object in life, as you might say. What with that and a lot of outside activities, shecould be busy all the time. She’s the type likes being busy all the time. And she’s no children,more’s the pity. So it’s my view as she’ll start all over again somewhere else.”
“You may have something there. Where would she go?”
“I couldn’t say as to that. One of these Riviery places, maybe—or there’s them as goes to Spainor Portugal. Or Greece—I’ve heard her speak of Greece—Islands. Mrs. Butler, she’s been toGreece on one of them tours. Hellenic, they call them, which sounds more like fire and brimstoneto me.”
Poirot smiled.
“The isles73 of Greece,” he murmured. Then he asked: “Do you like her?”
“Mrs. Drake? I wouldn’t say I exactly like her. She’s a good woman. Does her duty to herneighbour and all that—but she’ll always need a power of neighbours to do her duty to—and ifyou ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty. Tells me how to prunemy roses which I know well enough myself. Always at me to grow some newfangled kind ofvegetable. Cabbage is good enough for me, and I’m sticking to cabbage.”
Poirot smiled. He said, “I must be on my way. Can you tell me where Nicholas Ransom74 andDesmond Holland live?”
“Past the church, third house on the left. They board with Mrs. Brand, go into MedchesterTechnical every day to study. They’ll be home by now.”
He gave Poirot an interested glance.
“So that’s the way your mind is working, is it? There’s some already as thinks the same.”
“No, I think nothing as yet. But they were among those present—that is all.”
As he took leave and walked away, he mused75, “Among those present—I have come nearly tothe end of my list.”
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rampant
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severely
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chrysanthemums
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relinquished
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persistent
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lures
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suburban
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perfectly
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acerbity
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dominant
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conscientiousness
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supervision
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bossy
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curiously
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standing
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mere
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magistrates
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extenuating
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juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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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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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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slash
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| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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ongoing
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| adj.进行中的，前进的 | |
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grasshopper
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| n.蚱蜢，蝗虫，蚂蚱 | |
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gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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displeased
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| a.不快的 | |
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genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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abhorrence
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| n.憎恶；可憎恶的事 | |
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relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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motiveless
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| adj.无动机的，无目的的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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immature
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| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
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psychiatrists
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| n.精神病专家，精神病医生( psychiatrist的名词复数 ) | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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forgery
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| n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为） | |
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amiably
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| adv.和蔼可亲地，亲切地 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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urns
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| n.壶( urn的名词复数 )；瓮；缸；骨灰瓮 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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inscriptions
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| （作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记 | |
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ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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alabaster
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| adj.雪白的；n.雪花石膏；条纹大理石 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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inoculation
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| n.接芽；预防接种 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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