No flowers for poor Tommy Tucker; and no more “kicks” out of life inChelsea. I felt a sudden fleeting1 compassion2 for the Tommy Tuckers oftoday. Yet after all, I reminded myself, how did I know that my view wasthe right one? Who was I to pronounce it a wasted life? Perhaps it was mylife, my quiet scholarly life, immersed in books, shut off from the world,that was the wasted one. Life at secondhand. Be honest now, was I gettingkicks out of life? A very unfamiliar3 idea! The truth was, of course, that Ididn’t want kicks. But there again, perhaps I ought to? An unfamiliar andnot very welcome thought.
I dismissed Tommy Tucker from my thoughts, and turned to my corres-pondence.
The principal item was a letter from my cousin Rhoda Despard, askingme to do her a favour. I grasped at this, since I was not feeling in the moodfor work this morning, and it made a splendid excuse for postponing4 it.
I went out into King’s Road, hailed a taxi, and was driven to the resid-ence of a friend of mine, a Mrs. Ariadne Oliver.
Mrs. Oliver was a well- known writer of detective stories. Her maid,Milly, was an efficient dragon who guarded her mistress from the on-slaughts of the outside world.
I raised my eyebrows5 inquiringly, in an unspoken question. Milly nod-ded a vehement6 head.
“You’d better go right up, Mr. Mark,” she said. “She’s in a mood thismorning. You may be able to help her snap out of it.”
I mounted two flights of stairs, tapped lightly on a door, and walked inwithout waiting for encouragement. Mrs. Oliver’s workroom was a good-sized room, the walls papered with exotic birds nesting in tropical foliage7.
Mrs. Oliver herself, in a state apparently8 bordering on insanity9, wasprowling round the room, muttering to herself. She threw me a brief unin-terested glance and continued to prowl. Her eyes, unfocused, swept roundthe walls, glanced out of the window, and occasionally closed in what ap-peared to be a spasm10 of agony.
“But why,” demanded Mrs. Oliver of the universe, “why doesn’t the idiotsay at once that he saw the cockatoo? Why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t havehelped seeing it! But if he does mention it, it ruins everything. There mustbe a way…there must be….”
She groaned11, ran her fingers through her short grey hair and clutched itin a frenzied12 hand. Then, looking at me with suddenly focused eyes, shesaid, “Hallo, Mark. I’m going mad,” and resumed her complaint.
“And then there’s Monica. The nicer I try to make her, the more irritat-ing she gets… Such a stupid girl… Smug, too! Monica… Monica? I believethe name’s wrong. Nancy? Would that be better? Joan? Everybody is al-ways Joan. Anne is the same. Susan? I’ve had a Susan. Lucia? Lucia? Lu-cia? I believe I can see a Lucia. Red-haired. Polo-necked jumper… Blacktights? Black stockings, anyway.”
This momentary13 gleam of good cheer was eclipsed by the memory of thecockatoo problem, and Mrs. Oliver resumed her unhappy prowling, pick-ing up things off tables unseeingly and putting them down again some-where else. She fitted with some care her spectacle case into a lacqueredbox which already contained a Chinese fan and then gave a deep sigh andsaid:
“I’m glad it’s you.”
“That’s very nice of you.”
“It might have been anybody. Some silly woman who wanted me toopen a bazaar14, or the man about Milly’s insurance card which Milly abso-lutely refuses to have—or the plumber15 (but that would be too much goodfortune, wouldn’t it?). Or, it might be someone wanting an interview—ask-ing me all those embarrassing questions which are always the same everytime. What made you first think of taking up writing? How many bookshave you written? How much money do you make? Etc. etc. I never knowthe answers to any of them and it makes me look such a fool. Not that anyof that matters because I think I am going mad, over this cockatoo busi-ness.”
“Something that won’t jell?” I said sympathetically. “Perhaps I’d bettergo away.”
“No, don’t. At any rate you’re a distraction16.”
I accepted this doubtful compliment.
“Do you want a cigarette?” Mrs. Oliver asked with vague hospitality.
“There are some somewhere. Look in the typewriter lid.”
“I’ve got my own, thanks. Have one. Oh no, you don’t smoke.”
“Or drink,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I wish I did. Like those American detect-ives that always have pints17 of rye conveniently in their collar drawers. Itseems to solve all their problems. You know. Mark, I really can’t thinkhow anyone ever gets away with a murder in real life. It seems to me thatthe moment you’ve done a murder the whole thing is so terribly obvious.”
“Nonsense. You’ve done lots of them.”
“Fifty-five at least,” said Mrs. Oliver. “The murder part is quite easy andsimple. It’s the covering up that’s so difficult. I mean, why should it be any-one else but you? You stick out a mile.”
“Not in the finished article,” I said.
“Ah, but what it costs me,” said Mrs. Oliver darkly. “Say what you like,it’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murderedand all have a motive18 for killing19 B—unless, that is, B is absolutely madlyunpleasant and in that case nobody will mind whether he’s been killed ornot, and doesn’t care in the least who’s done it.”
“I see your problem,” I said. “But if you’ve dealt with it successfully fifty-five times, you will manage to deal with it once again.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” said Mrs. Oliver, “over and over again, butevery single time I can’t believe it, and so I’m in agony.”
She seized her hair again and tugged20 it violently.
“Don’t,” I cried. “You’ll have it out by the roots.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Hair’s tough. Though when I had measlesat fourteen with a very high temperature, it did come out—all round thefront. Most shaming. And it was six whole months before it grew properlyagain. Awful for a girl—girls mind so. I thought of it yesterday when I wasvisiting Mary Delafontaine in that nursing home. Her hair was coming outjust like mine did. She said she’d have to get a false front when she wasbetter. If you’re sixty it doesn’t always grow again, I believe.”
“I saw a girl pull out another girl’s hair by the roots the other night,” Isaid. I was conscious of a slight note of pride in my voice as one who hasseen life.
“What extraordinary places have you been going to?” asked Mrs. Oliver.
“This was in a coffee bar in Chelsea.”
“Oh Chelsea!” said Mrs. Oliver. “Everything happens there, I believe.
Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don’t writeabout them much because I’m so afraid of getting the terms wrong. It’ssafer, I think, to stick to what you know.”
“Such as?”
“People on cruises, and in hotels, and what goes on in hospitals, and onparish councils — and sales of work — and music festivals, and girls inshops, and committees and daily women, and young men and girls whohike round the world in the interests of science, and shop assistants—”
She paused, out of breath.
“That seems fairly comprehensive to be getting on with,” I said.
“All the same, you might take me out to a coffee bar in Chelsea some-time—just to widen my experience,” said Mrs. Oliver wistfully.
“Any time you say. Tonight?”
“Not tonight. I’m too busy writing or rather worrying because I can’twrite. That’s really the most tiresome21 thing about writing — thougheverything is tiresome really, except the one moment when you get whatyou think is going to be a wonderful idea, and can hardly wait to begin.
Tell me, Mark, do you think it is possible to kill someone by remote con-trol?”
“What do you mean by remote control? Press a button and set off a ra-dioactive death ray?”
“No, no, not science fiction. I suppose,” she paused doubtfully, “I reallymean black magic.”
“Wax figures and pins in them?”
“Oh, wax figures are right out,” said Mrs. Oliver scornfully. “But queerthings do happen—in Africa or the West Indies. People are always tellingyou so. How natives just curl up and die. Voodoo—or juju… Anyway, youknow what I mean.”
I said that much of that was attributed nowadays to the power of sug-gestion. Word is always conveyed to the victim that his death has been de-creed by the medicine man—and his subconscious22 does the rest.
Mrs. Oliver snorted.
“If anyone hinted to me that I had been doomed23 to lie down and die, I’dtake a pleasure in thwarting24 their expectations!”
I laughed.
“You’ve got centuries of good Occidental sceptical blood in your veins25.
No predispositions.”
“Then you think it can happen?”
“I don’t know enough about the subject to judge. What put it into yourhead? Is your new masterpiece to be Murder by Suggestion?”
“No, indeed. Good old-fashioned rat poison or arsenic26 is good enoughfor me. Or the reliable blunt instrument. Not firearms if possible. Firearmsare so tricky27. But you didn’t come here to talk to me about my books.”
“Frankly no—The fact is that my cousin Rhoda Despard has got a churchfête and—”
“Never again!” said Mrs. Oliver. “You know what happened last time? Iarranged a Murder Hunt, and the first thing that happened was a realcorpse. I’ve never quite got over it!”
“It’s not a Murder Hunt. All you’d have to do would be to sit in a tentand sign your own books—at five bob a time.”
“We- e- l- l- l,” said Mrs. Oliver doubtfully. “That might be all right. Ishouldn’t have to open the fête? Or say silly things? Or have to wear ahat?”
None of these things, I assured her, would be required of her.
“And it would only be for an hour or two,” I said coaxingly28. “After that,there’ll be a cricket match—no, I suppose not this time of year. Childrendancing, perhaps. Or a fancy dress competition—”
Mrs. Oliver interrupted me with a wild scream.
“That’s it,” she cried. “A cricket ball! Of course! He sees it from the win-dow…rising up in the air…and it distracts him—and so he never mentionsthe cockatoo! What a good thing you came, Mark. You’ve been wonderful.”
“I don’t quite see—”
“Perhaps not, but I do,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It’s all rather complicated, andI don’t want to waste time explaining. Nice as it’s been to see you, what I’dreally like you to do now is to go away. At once.”
“Certainly. About the fête—”
“I’ll think about it. Don’t worry me now. Now where on earth did I putmy spectacles? Really, the way things just disappear….”
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1
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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postponing
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| v.延期，推迟( postpone的现在分词 ) | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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pints
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| n.品脱( pint的名词复数 )；一品脱啤酒 | |
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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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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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thwarting
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| 阻挠( thwart的现在分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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coaxingly
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| adv. 以巧言诱哄，以甘言哄骗 | |
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