“A telephone call for you,” said Hercule Poirot’s manservant, George. “From Mrs. Oliver.”
“Ah yes, George. And what had she to say?”
“She wondered if she could come and see you this evening, sir, after dinner.”
“That would be admirable,” said Poirot. “Admirable. I have had a tiring day. It will be astimulating experience to see Mrs. Oliver. She is always entertaining as well as being highlyunexpected in the things she says. Did she mention elephants, by the way?”
“Elephants, sir? No, I do not think so.”
“Ah. Then it would seem perhaps that the elephants have been disappointing.”
George looked at his master rather doubtfully. There were times when he did not quiteunderstand the relevance1 of Poirot’s remarks.
“Ring her back,” said Hercule Poirot, “tell her I shall be delighted to receive her.”
George went away to carry out this order, and returned to say that Mrs. Oliver would be thereabout quarter to nine.
“Coffee,” said Poirot. “Let coffee be prepared and some petit-fours. I rather think I orderedsome in lately from Fortnum and Mason.”
“A liqueur of any kind, sir?”
“No, I think not. I myself will have some Sirop de Cassis.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mrs. Oliver arrived exactly on time. Poirot greeted her with every sign of pleasure.
“And how are you, chère madame?”
“Exhausted2,” said Mrs. Oliver.
She sank down into the armchair that Poirot indicated.
“Completely exhausted.”
“Ah. Qui va à la chasse—oh, I cannot remember the saying.”
“I remember it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I learnt it as a child. ‘Qui va à la chasse perd sa place.’?”
“That, I am sure, is not applicable to the chase you have been conducting. I am referring to thepursuit of elephants, unless that was merely a figure of speech.”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I have been pursuing elephants madly. Here, there andeverywhere. The amount of petrol I have used, the amount of trains I have taken, the amount ofletters I’ve written, the amount of telegrams I’ve sent—you wouldn’t believe how exhausting it allis.”
“Then repose3 yourself. Have some coffee.”
“Nice, strong, black coffee—yes, I will. Just what I want.”
“Did you, may I ask, get any results?”
“Plenty of results,” said Mrs. Oliver. “The trouble is, I don’t know whether any of them are anyuse.”
“You learn facts, however?”
“No. Not really. I learnt things that people told me were facts, but I strongly doubt myselfwhether any of them were facts.”
“They were hearsay4?”
“No. They were what I said they would be. They were memories. Lots of people who hadmemories. The trouble is, when you remember things you don’t always remember them right, doyou?”
“No. But they are still what you might describe perhaps as results. Is not that so?”
“And what have you done?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“You are always so stern, madame,” said Poirot. “You demand that I run about, that I also dothings.”
“Well, have you run about?”
“I have not run about, but I have had a few consultations5 with others of my own profession.”
“It sounds far more peaceful than what I have been doing,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Oh, this coffee isnice. It’s really strong. You wouldn’t believe how tired I am. And how muddled6.”
“Come, come. Let us have good expectancy7. You have got things. You have got something, Ithink.”
“I’ve got a lot of different suggestions and stories. I don’t know whether any of them are true.”
“They could be not true, but still be of use,” said Poirot.
“Well, I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and that’s what I think, too. I mean, that’swhat I thought when I went about it. When people remember something and tell you about it—Imean, it’s often not quite actually what occurred, but it’s what they themselves thought occurred.”
“But they must have had something on which to base it,” said Poirot.
“I’ve brought you a list of a kind,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I don’t need to go into details of where Iwent or what I said or why, I went out deliberately8 for—well, information one couldn’t perhapsget from anybody in this country now. But it’s all from people who knew something about theRavenscrofts, even if they hadn’t known them very well.”
“News from foreign places, do you mean?”
“Quite a lot of them were from foreign places. Other people who knew them here rather slightlyor from people whose aunts or cousins or friends knew them long ago.”
“And each one that you’ve noted9 down had some story to tell—some reference to the tragedy orto people involved?”
“That’s the idea,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I’ll tell you roughly, shall I?”
“Yes. Have a petit-four.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Oliver.
She took a particularly sweet and rather bilious-looking one and champed it with energy.
“Sweet things,” she said, “really give you a lot of vitality10, I always think. Well now, I’ve got thefollowing suggestions. These things have usually been said to me starting by: —‘Oh yes, ofcourse!’ ‘How sad it was, that whole story!’ ‘Of course, I think everyone knows really whathappened.’ That’s the sort of thing.”
“Yes.”
“These people thought they knew what happened. But there weren’t really any very goodreasons. It was just something someone had told them, or they’d heard either from friends orservants or relations or things like that. The suggestions, of course, are all the kind that you mightthink they were. A. That General Ravenscroft was writing his memoirs11 of his Malayan days andthat he had a young woman who acted as his secretary and took dictation and typed things for himand was helping12 him, that she was a nice-looking girl and no doubt there was something there. Theresult being—well, there seemed to be two schools of thought. One school of thought was that heshot his wife because he hoped to marry the girl, and then when he had shot her, immediately washorror-stricken at what he’d done and shot himself. .?.?.”
“Exactly,” said Poirot. “A romantic explanation.”
“The other idea was that there had been a tutor who came to give lessons to the son who hadbeen ill and away from his prep school for six months or so—a good-looking young man.”
“Ah yes. And the wife had fallen in love with the young man. Perhaps had an affair with him?”
“That was the idea,” said Mrs. Oliver. “No kind of evidence. Just romantic suggestion again.”
“And therefore?”
“Therefore I think the idea was that the General probably shot his wife and then in a fit ofremorse shot himself. There was another story that the General had had an affair, and his wifefound out about it, that she shot him and then herself. It’s always been slightly different everytime. But nobody really knew anything. I mean, it’s always just a likely story every time. I mean,the General may have had an affair with a girl or lots of girls or just another married woman, or itmight have been the wife who had an affair with someone. It’s been a different someone in eachstory I’ve been told. There was nothing definite about it or any evidence for it. It’s just the gossipthat went around about twelve or thirteen years ago, which people have rather forgotten aboutnow. But they remember enough about it to tell one a few names and get things only moderatelywrong about what happened. There was an angry gardener who happened to live on the place,there was a nice elderly cook-housekeeper, who was rather blind and rather deaf, but nobodyseems to suspect that she had anything to do with it. And so on. I’ve got all the names andpossibilities written down. The names of some of them wrong and some of them right. It’s all verydifficult. His wife had been ill, I gather, for some short time, I think it was some kind of fever thatshe had. A lot of her hair must have fallen out because she bought four wigs14. There were at leastfour new wigs found among her things.”
“Yes. I, too, heard that,” said Poirot.
“Who did you hear it from?”
“A friend of mine in the police. He went back over the accounts of the inquest and the variousthings in the house. Four wigs! I would like to have your opinion on that, madame. Do you thinkthat four wigs seems somewhat excessive?”
“Well, I do really,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I had an aunt who had a wig13, and she had an extra wig,but she sent one back to be redressed15 and wore the second one. I never heard of anyone who hadfour wigs.”
Mrs. Oliver extracted a small notebook from her bag, ruffled16 the pages of it, searching forextracts.
“Mrs. Carstairs, she’s seventy-seven and rather gaga. Quote from her: ‘I do remember theRavenscrofts quite well. Yes, yes, a very nice couple. It’s very sad, I think. Yes. Cancer it was!’ Iasked her which of them had cancer,” said Mrs. Oliver, “but Mrs. Carstairs had rather forgottenabout that. She said she thought the wife came to London and consulted a doctor and had anoperation and then came home and was very miserable17, and her husband was very upset about her.
So of course he shot her and himself.”
“Was that her theory or did she have an exact knowledge?”
“I think it was entirely18 theory. As far as I can see and hear in the course of my investigations,”
said Mrs. Oliver, making rather a point of this last word, “when anybody has heard that any oftheir friends whom they don’t happen to know very well have sudden illness or consult doctors,they always think it’s cancer. And so do the people themselves, I think. Somebody else—I can’tread her name here, I’ve forgotten, I think it began with T—she said that it was the husband whohad cancer. He was very unhappy, and so was his wife. And they talked it over together and theycouldn’t bear the thought of it all, so they decided19 to commit suicide.”
“Sad and romantic,” said Poirot.
“Yes, and I don’t think really true,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It is worrying, isn’t it? I mean, the peopleremembering so much and that they really mostly seem to have made it up themselves.”
“They have made up the solution of something they knew about,” said Poirot. “That is to say,they know that somebody comes to London, say, to consult a doctor, or that somebody has been inhospital for two or three months. That is a fact that they know.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and then when they come to talk about it a long time afterwards,they’ve got the solution for it which they’ve made up themselves. That isn’t awfully20 helpful, is it?”
“It is helpful,” said Poirot. “You are quite right, you know, in what you said to me.”
“About elephants?” said Mrs. Oliver, rather doubtfully.
“About elephants,” said Poirot. “It is important to know certain facts which have lingered inpeople’s memories although they may not know exactly what the fact was, why it happened orwhat led to it. But they might easily know something that we do not know and that we have nomeans of learning. So there have been memories leading to theories—theories of infidelity, ofillness, of suicide pacts21, of jealousy22, all these things have been suggested to you. Further searchcould be made as to points if they seem in any way probable.”
“People like talking about the past,” said Mrs. Oliver. “They like talking about the past reallymuch more than they like talking about what’s happening now, or what happened last year. Itbrings things back to them. They tell you, of course, first about a lot of other people that you don’twant to hear about and then you hear what the other people that they’ve remembered knew aboutsomebody else that they didn’t know but they heard about. You know, so that the General andLady Ravenscroft you hear about is at one remove, as it were. It’s like family relationships,” shesaid. “You know, first cousin once removed, second cousin twice removed, all the rest of it. I don’tthink I’ve been really very helpful, though.”
“You must not think that,” said Poirot. “I am pretty sure that you will find that some of thesethings in your agreeable little purple-coloured notebook will have something to do with the pasttragedy. I can tell you from my own enquiries into the official accounts of these two deaths, thatthey have remained a mystery. That is, from the police point of view. They were an affectionatecouple, there was no gossip or hearsay much about them of any sex trouble, there was no illnessdiscovered such as would have caused anyone to take their own lives. I talk now only of the time,you understand, immediately preceding the tragedy. But there was a time before that, furtherback.”
“I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Oliver, “and I’ve got something about that from an oldNanny. An old Nanny who is now—I don’t know, she might be a hundred, but I think she’s onlyabout eighty. I remember her from my childhood days. She used to tell me stories about people inthe Services abroad—India, Egypt, Siam and Hong Kong and the rest.”
“Anything that interested you?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “there was some tragedy that she talked about. She seemed a bituncertain about what it was. I’m not sure that it had anything to do with the Ravenscrofts, it mighthave been to do with some other people out there because she doesn’t remember surnames andthings very well. It was a mental case in one family. Someone’s sister-in-law. Either GeneralWhoever-it-was’s sister or Mrs. Who-ever-it-was’s sister. Somebody who’d been in a mentalhome for years. I gathered she’d killed her own children or tried to kill her own children long ago,and then she’d been supposed to be cured or paroled or something and came out to Egypt, orMalaya or wherever it was. She came out to stay with the people. And then it seems there wassome other tragedy, connected again, I think, with children or something of that kind. Anyway, itwas something that was hushed up. But I wondered. I mean, if there was something mental in thefamily, either Lady Ravenscroft’s family or General Ravenscroft’s family. I don’t think it needhave been as near as a sister. It could have been a cousin or something like that. But—well, itseemed to me a possible line of enquiry.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “there’s always possibility and something that waits for many years and thencomes home to roost from somewhere in the past. That is what someone said to me. Old sins havelong shadows.”
“It seemed to me,” said Mrs. Oliver, “not that it was likely or even that old Nanny Matchamremembered it right or even really about it being the people she thought it was. But it might havefitted in with what that awful woman at the literary luncheon23 said to me.”
“You mean when she wanted to know. .?.?.”
“Yes. When she wanted me to find out from the daughter, my godchild, whether her mother hadkilled her father or whether her father had killed her mother.”
“And she thought the girl might know?”
“Well, it’s likely enough that the girl would know. I mean, not at the time—it might have beenshielded from her—but she might know things about it which would make her be aware what thecircumstances were in their lives and who was likely to have killed whom, though she wouldprobably never mention it or say anything about it or talk to anyone about it.”
“And you say that woman—this Mrs.—”
“Yes. I’ve forgotten her name now. Mrs. Burton something. A name like that. She saidsomething about her son had this girlfriend and that they were thinking of getting married. And Ican quite see you might want to know, if so, whether her mother or father had criminal relations intheir family—or a loony strain. She probably thought that if it was the mother who killed thefather it would be very unwise for the boy to marry her, whereas if the father had killed themother, she probably wouldn’t mind as much,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“You mean that she would think that the inheritance would go in the female line?”
“Well, she wasn’t a very clever type of woman. Bossy24,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Thinks she knows alot, but no. I think you might think that way if you were a woman.”
“An interesting point of view, but possible,” said Poirot. “Yes, I realize that.” He sighed. “Wehave a lot to do still.”
“I’ve got another side light on things, too. Same thing, but second hand, if you know what Imean. You know. Someone says ‘The Ravenscrofts? Weren’t they that couple who adopted achild? Then it seems, after it was all arranged, and they were absolutely stuck on it—very, verykeen on it, one of their children had died in Malaya, I think—but at any rate they had adopted thischild and then its own mother wanted it back and they had a court case or something. But the courtgave them the custody25 of the child and the mother came and tried to kidnap it back.’”
“There are simpler points,” said Poirot, “arising out of your report, points that I prefer.”
“Such as?”
“Wigs. Four wigs.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I thought that was interesting you but I don’t know why. It doesn’tseem to mean anything. The other story was just somebody mental. There are mental people whoare in homes or loony bins26 because they have killed their children or some other child, for someabsolutely batty reason, no sense to it at all. I don’t see why that would make General and LadyRavenscroft want to kill themselves.”
“Unless one of them was implicated,” said Poirot.
“You mean that General Ravenscroft may have killed someone, a boy—an illigitimate child,perhaps, of his wife’s or of his own? No, I think we’re getting a bit too melodramatic there. Or shemight have killed her husband’s child or her own.”
“And yet,” said Poirot, “what people seem to be, they usually are.”
“You mean—?”
“They seemed an affectionate couple, a couple who lived together happily without disputes.
They seem to have had no case history of illness beyond a suggestion of an operation, of someonecoming to London to consult some medical authority, a possibility of cancer, of leukaemia,something of that kind, some future that they could not face. And yet, somehow we do not seem toget at something beyond what is possible, but not yet what is probable. If there was anyone else inthe house, anyone else at the time, the police, my friends that is to say, who have known theinvestigation at the time, say that nothing told was really compatible with anything else but withthe facts. For some reason, those two didn’t want to go on living. Why?”
“I knew a couple,” said Mrs. Oliver, “in the war—the second war, I mean—they thought thatthe Germans would land in England and they had decided if that happened they would killthemselves. I said it was very stupid. They said it would be impossible to go on living. It stillseems to me stupid. You’ve got to have enough courage to live through something. I mean, it’s notas though your death was going to do any good to anybody else. I wonder—”
“Yes, what do you wonder?”
“Well, when I said that I wondered suddenly if General and Lady Ravenscroft’s deaths did anygood to anyone else.”
“You mean somebody inherited money from them?”
“Yes. Not quite as blatant27 as that. Perhaps somebody would have a better chance of doing wellin life. Something there was in their life that they didn’t want either of their two children ever tohear about or to know about.”
Poirot sighed.
“The trouble with you, is,” he said, “you think so often of something that well might haveoccurred, that might have been. You give me ideas. Possible ideas. If only they were probableideas also. Why? Why were the deaths of those two necessary? Why is it—they were not in pain,they were not in illness, they were not deeply unhappy from what one can see. Then why, in theevening of a beautiful day, did they go for a walk to a cliff and taking the dog with them. .?.?.”
“What’s the dog got to do with it?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Well, I wondered for a moment. Did they take the dog, or did the dog follow them? Wheredoes the dog come in?”
“I suppose it comes in like the wigs,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Just one more thing that you can’texplain and doesn’t seem to make sense. One of my elephants said the dog was devoted28 to LadyRavenscroft, but another one said the dog bit her.”
“One always comes back to the same thing,” said Poirot. “One wants to know more.” Hesighed. “One wants to know more about the people, and how can you know people separated fromyou by a gulf29 of years.”
“Well, you’ve done it once or twice, haven’t you?” said Mrs. Oliver. “You know—somethingabout where a painter was shot or poisoned. That was near the sea on a sort of fortification orsomething. You found out who did that, although you didn’t know any of the people.”
“No. I didn’t know any of the people, but I learnt about them from the other people who werethere.” 1
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to do,” said Mrs. Oliver, “only I can’t get near enough. I can’t getto anyone who really knew anything, who was really involved. Do you think really we ought togive it up?”
“I think it would be very wise to give it up,” said Poirot, “but there is a moment when one nolonger wants to be wise. One wants to find out more. I have an interest now in that couple ofkindly people, with two nice children. I presume they are nice children?”
“I don’t know the boy,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I don’t think I’ve ever met him. Do you want to seemy goddaughter? I could send her to see you, if you like.”
“Yes, I think I would like to see her, meet her some way. Perhaps she would not wish to comeand see me, but a meeting could be brought about. It might, I think, be interesting. And there issomeone else I would like to see.”
“Oh! Who is that?”
“The woman at the party. The bossy woman. Your bossy friend.”
“She’s no friend of mine,” said Mrs. Oliver. “She just came up and spoke30 to me, that’s all.”
“You could resume acquaintance with her?”
“Oh yes, quite easily. I would think she’d probably jump at it.”
“I would like to see her. I would like to know why she wants to know these things.”
“Yes. I suppose that might be useful. Anyway—” Mrs. Oliver sighed—“I shall be glad to have arest from elephants. Nanny—you know, the old Nanny I talked about—she mentioned elephantsand that elephants didn’t forget. That sort of silly sentence is beginning to haunt me. Ah well, youmust look for more elephants. It’s your turn.”
“And what about you?”
“Perhaps I could look for swans.”
“Mon dieu, where do swans come in?”
“It is only what I remember, which Nanny reminded me of. That there were little boys I used toplay with and one used to call me Lady Elephant and the other one used to call me Lady Swan.
When I was Lady Swan I pretended to be swimming about on the floor. When I was LadyElephant they rode on my back. There are no swans in this.”
“That is a good thing,” said Poirot. “Elephants are quite enough.”
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relevance
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| n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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consultations
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| n.磋商（会议）( consultation的名词复数 )；商讨会；协商会；查找 | |
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muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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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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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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wig
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| n.假发 | |
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wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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redressed
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| v.改正( redress的过去式和过去分词 )；重加权衡；恢复平衡 | |
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ruffled
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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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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decided
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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pacts
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| 条约( pact的名词复数 )； 协定； 公约 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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bossy
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custody
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bins
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blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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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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gulf
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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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