Two pairs of eyes looked at Poirot uneasily.
“I don’t see what else we can tell you. We’ve both been interviewed by the police, M. Poirot.”
Poirot looked from one boy to the other. They would not have described themselves as boys;their manner was carefully adult. So much so that if one shut one’s eyes, their conversation couldhave passed as that of elderly clubmen. Nicholas was eighteen. Desmond was sixteen.
“To oblige a friend, I make my inquiries1 of those present on a certain occasion. Not theHallowe’en party itself—the preparations for that party. You were both active in these.”
“Yes, we were.”
“So far,” Poirot said, “I have interviewed cleaning women, I have had the benefit of policeviews, of talks to a doctor — the doctor who examined the body first — have talked to aschoolteacher who was present, to the headmistress of the school, to distraught relatives, haveheard much of the village gossip—By the way, I understand you have a local witch here?”
The two young men confronting him both laughed.
“You mean Mother Goodbody. Yes, she came to the party and played the part of the witch.”
“I have come now,” said Poirot, “to the younger generation, to those of acute eyesight and acutehearing and who have up-to-date scientific knowledge and shrewd philosophy. I am eager—veryeager—to hear your views on this matter.”
Eighteen and sixteen, he thought to himself, looking at the two boys confronting him. Youths tothe police, boys to him, adolescents to newspaper reporters. Call them what you will. Products oftoday. Neither of them, he judged, at all stupid, even if they were not quite of the high mentalitythat he had just suggested to them by way of a flattering sop2 to start the conversation. They hadbeen at the party. They had also been there earlier in the day to do helpful offices for Mrs. Drake.
They had climbed up stepladders, they had placed yellow pumpkins3 in strategic positions, theyhad done a little electrical work on fairy lights, one or other of them had produced some clevereffects in a nice batch4 of phoney photographs of possible husbands as imagined hopefully byteenage girls. They were also, incidentally, of the right age to be in the forefront of suspects in themind of Inspector5 Raglan and, it seemed, in the view of an elderly gardener. The percentage ofmurders committed by this group had been increasing in the last few years. Not that Poirotinclined to that particular suspicion himself, but anything was possible. It was even possible thatthe killing6 which had occurred two or three years ago might have been committed by a boy, youth,or adolescent of fourteen or twelve years of age. Such cases had occurred in recent newspaperreports.
Keeping all these possibilities in mind he pushed them, as it were, behind a curtain for themoment, and concentrated instead on his own appraisement7 of these two, their looks, their clothes,their manner, their voices and so on and so forth8, in the Hercule Poirot manner, masked behind aforeign shield of flattering words and much increased foreign mannerisms, so that they themselvesshould feel agreeably contemptuous of him, though hiding that under politeness and goodmanners. For both of them had excellent manners. Nicholas, the eighteen-year-old, was good-looking, wearing sideburns, hair that grew fairly far down his neck, and a rather funereal9 outfit10 ofblack. Not as a mourning for the recent tragedy, but what was obviously his personal taste inmodern clothes. The younger one was wearing a rose-coloured velvet11 coat, mauve trousers and akind of frilled shirting. They both obviously spent a good deal of money on their clothes whichwere certainly not purchased locally and were probably paid for by themselves and not by theirparents or guardians12.
Desmond’s hair was ginger-coloured and there was a good deal of fluffy13 profusion14 about it.
“You were there in the morning or afternoon of the party, I understand, helping15 with thepreparations for it?”
“Early afternoon,” corrected Nicholas.
“What sort of preparations were you helping with? I have heard of preparation from severalpeople, but I am not quite clear. They don’t all agree.”
“A good deal of the lighting16, for one thing.”
“Getting up on steps for things that had to be put high up.”
“I understand there were some very good photographic results too.”
Desmond immediately dipped into his pocket and took out a folder17 from which he proudlybrought certain cards.
“We faked up these beforehand,” he said. “Husbands for the girls,” he explained. “They’re allalike, birds are. They all want something up-to-date. Not a bad assortment18, are they?”
He handed a few specimens19 to Poirot who looked with interest at a rather fuzzy reproduction ofa ginger-bearded young man and another young man with an aureole of hair, a third one whosehair came to his knees almost, and there were a few assorted20 whiskers, and other facialadornments.
“Made ’em pretty well all different. It wasn’t bad, was it?”
“You had models, I suppose?”
“Oh, they’re all ourselves. Just makeup21, you know. Nick and I got ’em done. Some Nick took ofme and some I took of him. Just varied22 what you might call the hair motif23.”
“Very clever,” said Poirot.
“We kept ’em a bit out of focus, you know, so that they’d look more like spirit pictures, as youmight say.”
The other boy said,
“Mrs. Drake was very pleased with them. She congratulated us. They made her laugh too. Itwas mostly electrical work we did at the house. You know, fitting up a light or two so that whenthe girls sat with the mirror one or other of us could take up a position, you’d only to bob up overa screen and the girl would see a face in the mirror with, mind you, the right kind of hair. Beard orwhiskers or something or other.”
“Did they know it was you and your friend?”
“Oh, I don’t think so for a moment. Not at the party, they didn’t. They knew we had beenhelping at the house with some things, but I don’t think they recognized us in the mirrors. Weren’tsmart enough, I should say. Besides, we’d got sort of an instant makeup to change the image. Firstme, then Nicholas. The girls squeaked24 and shrieked25. Damned funny.”
“And the people who were there in the afternoon? I do not ask you to remember who was at theparty.”
“At the party, there must have been about thirty, I suppose, knocking about. In the afternoonthere was Mrs. Drake, of course, and Mrs. Butler. One of the schoolteachers, Whittaker I think hername is. Mrs. Flatterbut or some name like that. She’s the organist’s sister or wife. Dr. Ferguson’sdispenser, Miss Lee; it’s her afternoon off and she came along and helped too and some of the kidscame to make themselves useful if they could. Not that I think they were very useful. The girls justhung about and giggled26.”
“Ah yes. Do you remember what girls there were there?”
“Well, the Reynolds were there. Poor old Joyce, of course. The one who got done in and herelder sister Ann. Frightful27 girl. Puts no end of side on. Thinks she’s terribly clever. Quite sureshe’s going to pass all her ‘A’ levels. And the small kid, Leopold, he’s awful,” said Desmond.
“He’s a sneak28. He eavesdrops29. Tells tales. Real nasty bit of goods. And there was Beatrice Ardleyand Cathie Grant, who is dim as they make and a couple of useful women, of course. Cleaningwomen, I mean. And the authoress woman—the one who brought you down here.”
“Any men?”
“Oh, the vicar looked in if you count him. Nice old boy, rather dim. And the new curate. Hestammers when he’s nervous. Hasn’t been here long. That’s all I can think of now.”
“And then I understand you heard this girl—Joyce Reynolds—saying something about havingseen a murder committed.”
“I never heard that,” said Desmond. “Did she?”
“Oh, they’re saying so,” said Nicholas. “I didn’t hear her, I suppose I wasn’t in the room whenshe said it. Where was she—when she said that, I mean?”
“In the drawing room.”
“Yes, well, most of the people were in there unless they were doing something special. Ofcourse Nick and I,” said Desmond, “were mostly in the room where the girls were going to lookfor their true loves in mirrors. Fixing up wires and various things like that. Or else we were out onthe stairs fixing fairy lights. We were in the drawing room once or twice putting the pumpkins upand hanging up one or two that had been hollowed out to hold lights in them. But I didn’t hearanything of that kind when we were there. What about you, Nick?”
“I didn’t,” said Nick. He added with some interest, “Did Joyce really say that she’d seen amurder committed? Jolly interesting, you know, if she did, isn’t it?”
“Why is it so interesting?” asked Desmond.
“Well, it’s E.S.P., isn’t it? I mean there you are. She saw a murder committed and within anhour or two she herself was murdered. I suppose she had a sort of vision of it. Makes you think abit. You know these last experiments they’ve been having seems as though there is something youcan do to help it by getting an electrode, or something of that kind, fixed30 up to your jugular31 vein32.
I’ve read about it somewhere.”
“They’ve never got very far with this E.S.P. stuff,” said Desmond, scornfully. “People sit indifferent rooms looking at cards in a pack or words with squares and geometrical figures on them.
But they never see the right things, or hardly ever.”
“Well, you’ve got to be pretty young to do it. Adolescents are much better than older people.”
Hercule Poirot, who had no wish to listen to this high-level scientific discussion, broke in.
“As far as you can remember, nothing occurred during your presence in the house whichseemed to you sinister33 or significant in any way. Something which probably nobody else wouldhave noticed, but which might have come to your attention.”
Nicholas and Desmond frowned hard, obviously racking their brains to produce some incidentof importance.
“No, it was just a lot of clacking and arranging and doing things.”
“Have you any theories yourself?”
Poirot addressed himself to Nicholas.
“What, theories as to who did Joyce in?”
“Yes. I mean something that you might have noticed that could lead you to a suspicion onperhaps purely34 psychological grounds.”
“Yes, I can see what you mean. There might be something in that.”
“Whittaker for my money,” said Desmond, breaking into Nicholas’s absorption in thought.
“The schoolmistress?” asked Poirot.
“Yes. Real old spinster, you know. Sex-starved. And all that teaching, bottled up among a lot ofwomen. You remember, one of the teachers got strangled a year or two ago. She was a bit queer,they say.”
“Lesbian?” asked Nicholas, in a man of the world voice.
“I shouldn’t wonder. D’you remember Nora Ambrose, the girl she lived with? She wasn’t a badlooker. She had a boy friend or two, so they said, and the girl she lived with got mad with herabout it. Someone said she was an unmarried mother. She was away for two terms with someillness and then came back. They’d say anything in this nest of gossip.”
“Well, anyway, Whittaker was in the drawing room most of the morning. She probably heardwhat Joyce said. Might have put it into her head, mightn’t it?”
“Look here,” said Nicholas, “supposing Whittaker—what age is she, do you think? Forty odd?
Getting on for fifty—Women do go a bit queer at that age.”
They both looked at Poirot with the air of contented35 dogs who have retrieved36 something usefulwhich master has asked for.
“I bet Miss Emlyn knows if it is so. There’s not much she doesn’t know, about what goes on inher school.”
“Wouldn’t she say?”
“Perhaps she feels she has to be loyal and shield her.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’d do that. If she thought Elizabeth Whittaker was going off her head, wellthen, I mean, a lot of the pupils at the school might get done in.”
“What about the curate?” said Desmond hopefully. “He might be a bit off his nut. You know,original sin perhaps, and all that, and the water and the apples and the things and then—look here,I’ve got a good idea now. Suppose he is a bit barmy. Not been here very long. Nobody knowsmuch about him. Supposing it’s the Snapdragon put it into his head. Hell fire! All those flamesgoing up! Then, you see, he took hold of Joyce and he said ‘come along with me and I’ll show yousomething,’ and he took her to the apple room and he said ‘kneel down.’ He said ‘This is baptism,’
and pushed her head in. See? It would all fit. Adam and Eve and the apple and hell fire and theSnapdragon and being baptised again to cure you of sin.”
“Perhaps he exposed himself to her first,” said Nicholas hopefully. “I mean, there’s always gotto be a sex background to all these things.”
They both looked with satisfied faces to Poirot.
“Well,” said Poirot, “you’ve certainly given me something to think about.”
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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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sop
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| n.湿透的东西，懦夫；v.浸，泡，浸湿 | |
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pumpkins
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| n.南瓜( pumpkin的名词复数 )；南瓜的果肉，南瓜囊 | |
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batch
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| n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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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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appraisement
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| n.评价，估价；估值 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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17
folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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motif
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| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
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squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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sneak
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| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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eavesdrops
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| 偷听（别人的谈话）( eavesdrop的名词复数 ) | |
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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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jugular
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| n.颈静脉 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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retrieved
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| v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息） | |
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