Two days later, as Hercule Poirot drank his morning chocolate, he read at the same time a letterthat had been among his correspondence that morning. He was reading it now for the second time.
The handwriting was a moderately good one, though it hardly bore the stamp of maturity1.
Dear Monsieur Poirot,
I am afraid you will find this letter of mine somewhat peculiar2, but I believe itwould help if I mentioned a friend of yours. I tried to get in touch with her to askher if she would arrange for me to come and see you, but apparently3 she had lefthome. Her secretary—I am referring to Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, the novelist—hersecretary seemed to say something about her having gone on a safari4 in EastAfrica. If so, I can see she may not return for some time. But I’m sure she wouldhelp me. I would indeed like to see you so much. I am badly in need of advice ofsome kind.
Mrs. Oliver, I understand, is acquainted with my mother, who met her at aliterary luncheon5 party. If you could give me an appointment to visit you one dayI should be very grateful. I can suit my time to anything you suggested. I don’tknow if it is helpful at all but Mrs. Oliver’s secretary did mention the word“elephants.” I presume this has something to do with Mrs. Oliver’s travels inEast Africa. The secretary spoke6 as though it was some kind of password. I don’treally understand this but perhaps you will. I am in a great state of worry andanxiety and I would be very grateful if you could see me.
Yours truly,
Desmond Burton-Cox.
“Nom d’un petit bonhomme!” said Hercule Poirot.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said George.
“A mere7 ejaculation,” said Hercule Poirot. “There are some things, once they have invaded yourlife, which you find very difficult to get rid of again. With me it seems to be a question ofelephants.”
He left the breakfast table, summoned his faithful secretary, Miss Lemon, handed her the letterfrom Desmond Cox and gave her directions to arrange an appointment with the writer of the letter.
“I am not too occupied at the present time,” he said. “Tomorrow will be quite suitable.”
Miss Lemon reminded him of two appointments which he already had, but agreed that that leftplenty of hours vacant and she would arrange something as he wished.
“Something to do with the Zoological Gardens?” she enquired8.
“Hardly,” said Poirot. “No, do not mention elephants in your letter. There can be too much ofanything. Elephants are large animals. They occupy a great deal of the horizon. Yes. We can leaveelephants. They will no doubt arise in the course of the conversation I propose to hold withDesmond Burton-Cox.”
“Mr. Desmond Burton-Cox,” announced George, ushering9 in the expected guest.
Poirot had risen to his feet and was standing10 beside the mantelpiece. He remained for a momentor two without speaking, then he advanced, having summed up his own impression. A somewhatnervous and energetic personality. Quite naturally so, Poirot thought. A little ill at ease butmanaging to mask it very successfully. He said, extending a hand,“Mr. Hercule Poirot?”
“That is right,” said Poirot. “And your name is Desmond Burton-Cox. Pray sit down and tell mewhat I can do for you, the reasons why you have come to see me.”
“It’s all going to be rather difficult to explain,” said Desmond Burton-Cox.
“So many things are difficult to explain,” said Hercule Poirot, “but we have plenty of time. Sitdown.”
Desmond looked rather doubtfully at the figure confronting him. Really, a very comicpersonality, he thought. The egg-shaped head, the big moustaches. Not somehow very imposing11.
Not quite, in fact, what he had expected to encounter.
“You—you are a detective, aren’t you?” he said. “I mean you—you find out things. Peoplecome to you to find out, or to ask you to find out things for them.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “that is one of my tasks in life.”
“I don’t suppose that you know what I’ve come about or that you know anything much aboutme.”
“I know something,” said Poirot.
“You mean Mrs. Oliver, your friend Mrs. Oliver. She’s told you something?”
“She told me that she had had an interview with a goddaughter of hers, a Miss CeliaRavenscroft. That is right, is it not?”
“Yes. Yes, Celia told me. This Mrs. Oliver, is she—does she also know my mother—know herwell, I mean?”
“No. I do not think that they know each other well. According to Mrs. Oliver, she met her at aliterary luncheon recently and had a few words with her. Your mother, I understand, made acertain request to Mrs. Oliver.”
“She’d no business to do so,” said the boy.
His eyebrows12 came down over his nose. He looked angry now, angry—almost revengeful.
“Really,” he said. “Mothers—I mean—”
“I understand,” said Poirot. “There is much feeling these days, indeed perhaps there always hasbeen. Mothers are continually doing things which their children would much rather they did not.
Am I right?”
“Oh you’re right enough. But my mother—I mean, she interferes13 in things in which really shehas no concern.”
“You and Celia Ravenscroft, I understand, are close friends. Mrs. Oliver understood from yourmother that there was some question of marriage. Perhaps in the near future?”
“Yes, but my mother really doesn’t need to ask questions and worry about things which are—well, no concern of hers.”
“But mothers are like that,” said Poirot. He smiled faintly. He added, “You are, perhaps, verymuch attached to your mother?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Desmond. “No, I certainly wouldn’t say that. You see—well, I’dbetter tell you straight away, she’s not really my mother.”
“Oh, indeed. I had not understood that.”
“I’m adopted,” said Desmond. “She had a son. A little boy who died. And then she wanted toadopt a child so I was adopted, and she brought me up as her son. She always speaks of me as herson, and thinks of me as her son, but I’m not really. We’re not a bit alike. We don’t look at thingsthe same way.”
“Very understandable,” said Poirot.
“I don’t seem to be getting on,” said Desmond, “with what I want to ask you.”
“You want me to do something to find out something, to cover a certain line of interrogation?”
“I suppose that does cover it. I don’t know how much you know about—about well, what thetrouble is all about.”
“I know a little,” said Poirot. “Not details. I do not know very much about you or about MissRavenscroft, whom I have not yet met. I’d like to meet her.”
“Yes, well, I was thinking of bringing her to talk to you but I thought I’d better talk to youmyself first.”
“Well, that seems quite sensible,” said Poirot. “You are unhappy about something? Worried?
You have difficulties?”
“Not really. No. No, there shouldn’t be any difficulties. There aren’t any. What happened is athing that happened years ago when Celia was only a child, or a schoolgirl at least. And there wasa tragedy, the sort of thing that happens—well, it happens every day, any time. Two people youknow whom something has upset very much and they commit suicide. A sort of suicide pact14, thiswas. Nobody knew very much about it or why, or anything like that. But, after all, it happens andit’s no business really of people’s children to worry about it. I mean, if they know the facts that’squite enough, I should think. And it’s no business of my mother’s at all.”
“As one journeys through life,” said Poirot, “one finds more and more that people are ofteninterested in things that are none of their own business. Even more so than they are in things thatcould be considered as their own business.”
“But this is all over. Nobody knew much about it or anything. But, you see, my mother keepsasking questions. Wants to know things, and she’s got at Celia. She’s got Celia into a state whereshe doesn’t really know whether she wants to marry me or not.”
“And you? You know if you want to marry her still?”
“Yes, of course I know. I mean to marry her. I’m quite determined15 to marry her. But she’s gotupset. She wants to know things. She wants to know why all this happened and she thinks—I’msure she’s wrong — she thinks that my mother knows something about it. That she’s heardsomething about it.”
“Well, I have much sympathy for you,” said Poirot, “but it seems to me that if you are sensibleyoung people and if you want to marry, there is no reason why you should not. I may say that Ihave been given some information at my request about this sad tragedy. As you say, it is a matterthat happened years ago. There was no full explanation of it. There never has been. But in life onecannot have explanations of all the sad things that happen.”
“It was a suicide pact,” said the boy. “It couldn’t have been anything else. But—well. .?.?.”
“You want to know the cause of it. Is that it?”
“Well, yes, that’s it. That’s what Celia’s been worried about, and she’s almost made meworried. Certainly my mother is worried, though, as I’ve said, it’s absolutely no business of hers. Idon’t think any fault is attached to anyone. I mean, there wasn’t a row or anything. The trouble is,of course, that we don’t know. Well, I mean, I shouldn’t know anyway because I wasn’t there.”
“You didn’t know General and Lady Ravenscroft or Celia?”
“I’ve known Celia more or less all my life. You see, the people I went to for holidays and herpeople lived next door to each other when we were very young. You know—just children. And wealways liked each other, and got on together and all that. And then of course, for a long time allthat passed over. I didn’t meet Celia for a great many years after that. Her parents, you see, werein Malaya, and so were mine. I think they met each other again there—I mean my father andmother. My father’s dead, by the way. But I think when my mother was in Malaya she heardthings and she’s remembered now what she heard and she’s worked herself up about them and shesort of—sort of thinks things that can’t possibly be true. I’m sure they aren’t true. But she’sdetermined to worry Celia about them. I want to know what really happened. Celia wants to knowwhat really happened. What it was all about. And why? And how? Not just people’s silly stories.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, “it is not unnatural16 perhaps that you should both feel that. Celia, I shouldimagine, more than you. She is more disturbed by it than you are. But, if I may say so, does itreally matter? What matters is the now, the present. The girl you want to marry, the girl who wantsto marry you—what has the past to do with you? Does it matter whether her parents had a suicidepact or whether they died in an aeroplane accident or one of them was killed in an accident and theother one later committed suicide? Whether there were love affairs which came into their lives andmade for unhappiness.”
“Yes,” said Desmond Burton-Cox, “yes, I think what you say is sensible and quite right but—well, things have been built up in such a way that I’ve got to make sure that Celia is satisfied.
She’s—she’s a person who minds about things although she doesn’t talk about them much.”
“Has it not occurred to you,” said Hercule Poirot, “that it may be very difficult, if notimpossible, to find out what really happened.”
“You mean which of them killed the other or why, or that one shot the other and then himself.
Not unless—not unless there had been something.”
“Yes, but that something would have been in the past, so why does it matter now?”
“It oughtn’t to matter—it wouldn’t matter but for my mother interfering17, poking18 about in things.
It wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t suppose that, well, Celia’s ever thought much about it. I thinkprobably that she was away at school in Switzerland at the time the tragedy happened and nobodytold her much and, well, when you’re a teenager or younger still you just accept things assomething that happened, but that’s not anything to do with you really.”
“Then don’t you think that perhaps you’re wanting the impossible?”
“I want you to find out,” said Desmond. “Perhaps it’s not the kind of thing that you can find out,or that you like finding out—”
“I have no objection to finding out,” said Poirot. “In fact one has even a certain—curiosity, shallI say. Tragedies, things that arise as a matter of grief, surprise, shock, illness, they are humantragedies, human things, and it is only natural that if one’s attention is drawn19 to them one shouldwant to know. What I say is, is it wise or necessary to rake up things?”
“Perhaps it isn’t,” said Desmond, “but you see. .?.?.”
“And also,” said Poirot, interrupting him, “don’t you agree with me that it is rather animpossible thing to do after all this time?”
“No,” said Desmond, “that’s where I don’t agree with you. I think it would be quite possible.”
“Very interesting,” said Poirot. “Why do you think it would be quite possible?”
“Because—”
“Of what? You have a reason.”
“I think there are people who would know. I think there are people who could tell you if theywere willing to tell you. People, perhaps, who would not wish to tell me, who would not wish totell Celia, but you might find out from them.”
“That is interesting,” said Poirot.
“Things happened,” said Desmond. “Things happened in the past. I—I’ve sort of heard aboutthem in a vague way. There was some mental trouble. There was someone—I don’t know whoexactly, I think it might have been Lady Ravenscroft—I think she was in a mental home for years.
Quite a long time. Some tragedy had happened when she was quite young. Some child who diedor an accident. Something that—well, she was concerned in it in some way.”
“It is not what you know of your own knowledge, I presume?”
“No. It’s something my mother said. Something she heard. She heard it in Malaya, I think.
Gossip there from other people. You know how they get together in the Services, people like that,and the women all gossip together—all the memsahibs. Saying things that mightn’t be true at all.”
“And you want to know whether they were true or were not true?”
“Yes, and I don’t know how to find out myself. Not now, because it was a long time ago and Idon’t know who to ask. I don’t know who to go to, but until we really find out what did happenand why—”
“What you mean is,” said Poirot, “at least I think I am right only this is pure surmise20 on mypart, Celia Ravenscroft does not want to marry you unless she is quite sure that there is no mentalflaw passed to her presumably by her mother. Is that it?”
“I think that is what she has got into her head somehow. And I think my mother put it there. Ithink it’s what my mother wants to believe. I don’t think she’s any reason really for believing itexcept ill-mannered spite and gossip and all the rest of it.”
“It will not be a very easy thing to investigate,” said Poirot.
“No, but I’ve heard things about you. They say that you’re very clever at finding out what didhappen. Asking people questions and getting them to tell you things.”
“Whom do you suggest I should question or ask? When you say Malaya, I presume you are notreferring to people of Malayan nationality. You are speaking of what you might call the memsahibdays, the days when there were Service communities in Malaya. You are speaking of Englishpeople and the gossip in some English station there.”
“I don’t really mean that that would be any good now. I think whoever it was who gossiped,who talked—I mean, it’s so long ago now that they’d have forgotten all about it, that they areprobably dead themselves. I think that my mother’s got a lot of things wrong, that she’s heardthings and made up more things about them in her mind.”
“And you still think that I would be capable—”
“Well, I don’t mean that I want you to go out to Malaya and ask people things. I mean, none ofthe people would be there now.”
“So you think you could not give me names?”
“Not those sort of names,” said Desmond.
“But some names?”
“Well, I’ll come out with what I mean. I think there are two people who might know whathappened and why. Because, you see, they’d have been there. They’d have known, really known,of their own knowledge.”
“You do not want to go to them yourself?”
“Well, I could. I have in a way, but I don’t think, you see, that they—I don’t know. I wouldn’tlike to ask some of the things I want to ask. I don’t think Celia would. They’re very nice, andthat’s why they’d know. Not because they’re nasty, not because they gossip, but because theymight have helped. They might have done something to make things better, or have tried to do so,only they couldn’t. Oh, I’m putting it all so badly.”
“No,” said Poirot, “you are doing it very well, and I am interested and I think you havesomething definite in your mind. Tell me, does Celia Ravenscroft agree with you?”
“I haven’t said too much to her. You see, she was very fond of Maddy and of Zélie.”
“Maddy and Zélie?”
“Oh well, that’s their names. Oh, I must explain. I haven’t done it very well. You see, whenCelia was quite a child—at the time when I first knew her, as I say, when we were living next doorin the country—she had a French sort of—well, I suppose nowadays we call it an au pair girl butit was called a governess then. You know, a French governess. A mademoiselle. And you see, shewas very nice. She played with all of us children and Celia always called her ‘Maddy’ for short—and all the family called her Maddy.”
“Ah yes. The mademoiselle.”
“Yes, you see being French I thought—I thought perhaps she would tell you things that sheknew and wouldn’t wish to speak about to other people.”
“Ah. And the other name you mentioned?”
“Zélie. The same sort of thing, you see. A mademoiselle. Maddy was there, I think, for abouttwo or three years and then, later, she went back to France, or Switzerland I think it was, and thisother one came. Younger than Maddy was and we didn’t call her Maddy. Celia called her Zélie.
She was very young, pretty and great fun. We were all frightfully fond of her. She played gameswith us and we all loved her. The family did. And General Ravenscroft was very taken with her.
They used to play games together, picquet, you know and lots of things.”
“And Lady Ravenscroft?”
“Oh she was devoted21 to Zélie too, and Zélie was devoted to her. That’s why she came backagain after she’d left.”
“Came back?”
“Yes, when Lady Ravenscroft was ill, and had been in hospital, Zélie came back and was sort ofcompanion to her and looked after her. I don’t know, but I believe, I think, I’m almost sure thatshe was there when it—the tragedy—happened. And so, you see she’d know—what reallyhappened.”
“And you know her address? You know where she is now?”
“Yes. I know where she is. I’ve got her address. I’ve got both their addresses. I thought perhapsyou could go and see her, or both of them. I know it’s a lot to ask—” He broke off.
Poirot looked at him for some minutes. Then he said: “Yes, it is a possibility—certainly—apossibility.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
maturity
|
|
| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
safari
|
|
| n.远征旅行(探险、考察)；探险队，狩猎队 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
luncheon
|
|
| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
enquired
|
|
| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
ushering
|
|
| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
imposing
|
|
| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
eyebrows
|
|
| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
interferes
|
|
| vi. 妨碍，冲突，干涉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
pact
|
|
| n.合同，条约，公约，协定 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
unnatural
|
|
| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
interfering
|
|
| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
poking
|
|
| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
surmise
|
|
| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
devoted
|
|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |