Hallowe'en Party (18 page)

“M
rs.—Leaman—” said Poirot, writing down the name.

“That's right. Harriet Leaman. And the other witness seems to have been a James Jenkins. Last heard of going to Australia. And Miss Olga Seminoff seems to have been last heard of returning to Czechoslovakia, or wherever she came from. Everybody seems to have gone somewhere else.”

“How reliable do you think this Mrs. Leaman is?”

“I don't think she made it all up, if that's what you mean. I think she signed something, that she was curious about it, and that she took the first opportunity she had of finding out what she'd signed.”

“She can read and write?”

“I suppose so. But I agree that people aren't very good sometimes, at reading old ladies' handwriting, which is very spiky and very hard to read. If there were any rumours flying about later,
about this Will or codicil, she might have thought that that was what she'd read in this rather undecipherable handwriting.”

“A genuine document,” said Poirot. “But there
was
also a forged codicil.”

“Who says so?”

“Lawyers.”

“Perhaps it wasn't forged at all.”

“Lawyers are very particular about these matters. They were prepared to come into court with expert witnesses.”

“Oh well,” said Mrs. Oliver, “then it's easy to see what must have happened, isn't it?”

“What is easy? What happened?”

“Well, of course, the next day or a few days later, or even as much as a week later, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe either had a bit of a tiff with her devoted
au pair
attendant, or she had a delicious reconciliation with her nephew, Hugo, or her niece Rowena, and she tore up the Will or scratched out the codicil or something like that, or burnt the whole thing.”

“And after that?”

“Well, after that, I suppose, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe dies, and the girl seizes her chance and writes a new codicil in roughly the same terms in as near to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's handwriting as she can, and the two witnessing signatures as near as she can. She probably knows Mrs. Leaman's writing quite well. It would be on national health cards or something like that, and she produces it, thinking that someone will agree to having witnessed the Will and that all would be well. But her forgery isn't good enough and so trouble starts.”

“Will you permit me, chère Madame, to use your telephone?”

“I will permit you to use Judith Butler's telephone, yes.”

“Where is your friend?”

“Oh, she's gone to get her hair done. And Miranda has gone for a walk. Go on, it's in the room through the window there.”

Poirot went in and returned about ten minutes later.

“Well? What have you been doing?”

“I rang up Mr. Fullerton, the solicitor. I will now tell you something. The codicil, the forged codicil that was produced for probate was not witnessed by Harriet Leaman. It was witnessed by a Mary Doherty, deceased, who had been in service with Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe but had recently died. The other witness was the James Jenkins, who, as your friend Mrs. Leaman has told you, departed for Australia.”

“So there was a forged codicil,” said Mrs. Oliver. “And there seems to have been a real codicil as well. Look here, Poirot, isn't this all getting a little too complicated?”

“It is getting incredibly complicated,” said Hercule Poirot. “There is, if I may mention it, too much forgery about.”

“Perhaps the real one is still in the library at Quarry House, within the pages of
Enquire Within upon Everything.
”

“I understand all the effects of the house were sold up at Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's death, except for a few pieces of family furniture and some family pictures.”

“What we need,” said Mrs. Oliver, “is something like
Enquire Within
here now. It's a lovely title, isn't it? I remember my grandmother had one. You could, you know, inquire within about everything, too. Legal information and cooking recipes and how to take ink stains out of linen. How to make homemade face powder
that would not damage the complexion. Oh—and lots more. Yes, wouldn't you like to have a book like that now?”

“Doubtless,” said Hercule Poirot, “it would give the recipe for treatment of tired feet.”

“Plenty of them, I should think. But why don't you wear proper country shoes?”

“Madame, I like to look
soigné
in my appearance.”

“Well, then you'll have to go on wearing things that are painful, and grin and bear it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “All the same, I don't understand anything now. Was that Leaman woman telling me a pack of lies just now?”

“It is always possible.”

“Did someone
tell
her to tell a pack of lies?”

“That too is possible.”

“Did someone
pay
her to tell me a pack of lies?”

“Continue,” said Poirot, “continue. You are doing very nicely.”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully, “that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, like many another rich woman, enjoyed making Wills. I expect she made a good many during her life. You know; benefiting one person and then another. Changing about. The Drakes were well off, anyway. I expect she always left them at least a handsome legacy, but I wonder if she ever left anyone else as much as she appears, according to Mrs. Leaman and according to the forged Will as well, to that girl Olga. I'd like to know a bit more about that girl, I must say. She certainly seems a very successful disappearess.”

“I hope to know more about her shortly,” said Hercule Poirot.

“How?”

“Information that I shall receive shortly.”

“I know you've been asking for information down here.”

“Not here only. I have an agent in London who obtains information for me both abroad and in this country. I should have some news possibly soon from Herzogovinia.”

“Will you find out if she ever arrived back there?”

“That might be one thing I should learn, but it seems more likely that I may get information of a different kind—letters perhaps written during her sojourn in this country, mentioning friends she may have made here, and become intimate with.”

“What about the schoolteacher?” said Mrs. Oliver.

“Which one do you mean?”

“I mean the one who was strangled—the one Elizabeth Whittaker told you about?” She added, “I don't like Elizabeth Whittaker much. Tiresome sort of woman, but clever, I should think.” She added dreamily, “I wouldn't put it past her to have thought up a murder.”

“Strangle another teacher, do you mean?”

“One has to exhaust all the possibilities.”

“I shall rely, as so often, on your intuition, Madame.”

Mrs. Oliver ate another date thoughtfully.

W
hen he left Mrs. Butler's house, Poirot took the same way as had been shown him by Miranda. The aperture in the hedge, it seemed to him, had been slightly enlarged since last time. Somebody, perhaps, with slightly more bulk than Miranda, had used it also. He ascended the path in the quarry, noticing once more the beauty of the scene. A lovely spot, and yet in some way, Poirot felt as he had felt before, that it could be a haunted spot. There was a kind of pagan ruthlessness about it. It could be along these winding paths that the fairies hunted their victims down or a cold goddess decreed that sacrifices would have to be offered.

He could understand why it had not become a picnic spot. One would not want for some reason to bring your hard-boiled eggs and your lettuce and your oranges and sit down here and crack jokes and have a jollification. It was different, quite different. It would have been better, perhaps, he thought suddenly, if Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had not wanted this fairy-like transformation. Quite a
modest sunk garden could have been made out of a quarry without the atmosphere, but she had been an ambitious woman, ambitious and a very rich woman. He thought for a moment or two about Wills, the kind of Wills made by rich women, the kind of lies told about Wills made by rich women, the places in which the Wills of rich widows were sometimes hidden, and he tried to put himself back into the mind of a forger. Undoubtably the Will offered for probate had been a forgery. Mr. Fullerton was a careful and competent lawyer. He was sure of that. The kind of lawyer, too, who would never advise a client to bring a case or to take legal proceedings unless there was very good evidence and justification for so doing.

He turned a corner of the pathway feeling for the moment that his feet were much more important than his speculations. Was he taking a short cut to Superintendent Spence's dwelling or was he not? As the crow flies, perhaps, but the main road might have been more good to his feet. This path was not a grassy or mossy one, it had the quarry hardness of stone. Then he paused.

In front of him were two figures. Sitting on an outcrop of rock was Michael Garfield. He had a sketching block on his knees and he was drawing, his attention fully on what he was doing. A little way away from him, standing close beside a minute but musical stream that flowed down from above, Miranda Butler was standing. Hercule Poirot forgot his feet, forgot the pains and ills of the human body, and concentrated again on the beauty that human beings could attain. There was no doubt that Michael Garfield was a very beautiful young man. He found it difficult to know whether he himself liked Michael Garfield or not. It is always difficult to know if you like anyone beautiful. You like beauty to look at, at the
same time you dislike beauty almost on principle. Women could be beautiful, but Hercule Poirot was not at all sure that he liked beauty in men. He would not have liked to be a beautiful young man himself, not that there had ever been the least chance of that. There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good. He had never been handsome or good-looking. Certainly never beautiful.

And Miranda? He thought again, as he had thought before, that it was her gravity that was so attractive. He wondered what passed through her mind. It was the sort of thing one would never know. She would not say what she was thinking easily. He doubted if she would tell you what she was thinking, if you asked her. She had an original mind, he thought, a reflective mind. He thought too she was vulnerable. Very vulnerable. There were other things about her that he knew, or thought he knew. It was only thinking so far, but yet he was almost sure.

Michael Garfield looked up and said,

“Ha! Señor Moustachios. A very good afternoon to you, sir.”

“Can I look at what you are doing or would it incommode you? I do not want to be intrusive.”

“You can look,” said Michael Garfield, “it makes no difference to me.” He added gently, “I'm enjoying myself very much.”

Poirot came to stand behind his shoulder. He nodded. It was a very delicate pencil drawing, the lines almost invisible. The man could draw, Poirot thought. Not only design gardens. He said, almost under his breath:

“Exquisite!”

“I think so too,” said Michael Garfield.

He let it be left doubtful whether he referred to the drawing he was making, or to the sitter.

“Why?” asked Poirot.

“Why am I doing it? Do you think I have a reason?”

“You might have.”

“You're quite right. If I go away from here, there are one or two things I want to remember. Miranda is one of them.”

“Would you forget her easily?”

“Very easily. I am like that. But to have forgotten something or someone, to be unable to bring a face, a turn of a shoulder, a gesture, a tree, a flower, a contour of landscape, to know what it was like to see it but not to be able to bring that image in front of one's eyes, that sometimes causes—what shall I say—almost agony. You see, you record—and it all passes away.”

“Not the Quarry Garden or park. That has not passed away.”

“Don't you think so? It soon will. It soon will if no one is here. Nature takes over, you know. It needs love and attention and care and skill. If a Council takes it over—and that's what happens very often nowadays—then it will be what they call ‘kept up.' The latest sort of shrubs may be put in, extra paths will be made, seats will be put at certain distances. Litter bins even may be erected. Oh, they are so careful, so kind at preserving. You can't preserve this. It's wild. To keep something wild is far more difficult than to preserve it.”

“Monsieur Poirot.” Miranda's voice came across the stream.

Poirot moved forward, so that he came within earshot of her.

“So I find you here. So you came to sit for your portrait, did you?”

She shook her head.

“I didn't come for that. That just happened.”

“Yes,” said Michael Garfield, “yes, it just happened. A piece of luck sometimes comes one's way.”

“You were just walking in your favourite garden?”

“I was looking for the well, really,” said Miranda.

“A well?”

“There was a wishing well once in this wood.”

“In a former quarry? I didn't know they kept wells in quarries.”

“There was always a wood round the quarry. Well, there were always trees here. Michael knows where the well is but he won't tell me.”

“It will be much more fun for you,” said Michael Garfield, “to go on looking for it. Especially when you're not at all sure it really exists.”

“Old Mrs. Goodbody knows all about it.”

And added:

“She's a witch.”

“Quite right,” said Michael. “She's the local witch, Monsieur Poirot. There's always a local witch, you know, in most places. They don't always call themselves witches, but everyone knows. They tell a fortune or put a spell on your begonias or shrivel up your peonies or stop a farmer's cow from giving milk and probably give love potions as well.”

“It was a wishing well,” said Miranda. “People used to come here and wish. They had to go round it three times backwards and it was on the side of the hill, so it wasn't always very easy to do.”

She looked past Poirot at Michael Garfield. “I shall find it one day,” she said, “even if you won't tell me. It's here somewhere, but it was sealed up, Mrs. Goodbody said. Oh! years ago. Sealed up because it was said to be dangerous. A child fell into it years ago—Kitty Somebody. Someone else might have fallen into it.”

“Well, go on thinking so,” said Michael Garfield. “It's a good local story, but there
is
a wishing well over at Little Belling.”

“Of course,” said Miranda. “I know all about that one. It's a very common one,” she said. “Everybody knows about it, and it's very silly. People throw pennies into it and there's not any water in it any more so there's not even a splash.”

“Well, I'm sorry.”

“I'll tell you when I find it,” said Miranda.

“You mustn't always believe everything a witch says. I don't believe any child ever fell into it. I expect a cat fell into it once and got drowned.”

“Ding dong dell, pussy's in the well,” said Miranda. She got up. “I must go now,” she said. “Mummy will be expecting me.”

She moved carefully from the knob of rock, smiled at both the men and went off down an even more intransigent path that ran the other side of the water.

“‘Ding dong dell,'” said Poirot, thoughtfully. “One believes what one wants to believe, Michael Garfield. Was she right or was she not right?”

Michael Garfield looked at him thoughtfully, then he smiled.

“She is quite right,” he said. “There is a well, and it is as she says sealed up. I suppose it may have been dangerous. I don't think it was ever a wishing well. I think that's Mrs. Goodbody's own bit of fancy talk. There's a wishing tree, or there was once. A beech
tree halfway up the hillside that I believe people did go round three times backwards and wished.”

“What's happened to that? Don't they go round it any more?”

“No. I believe it was struck by lightning about six years ago. Split in two. So that pretty story's gone west.”

“Have you told Miranda about that?”

“No. I thought I'd rather leave her with her well. A blasted beech wouldn't be much fun for her, would it?”

“I must go on my way,” said Poirot.

“Going back to your police friend?”

“Yes.”

“You look tired.”

“I am tired,” said Hercule Poirot. “I am extremely tired.”

“You'd be more comfortable in canvas shoes or sandals.”

“Ah,
ça, non.
”

“I see. You are sartorially ambitious.” He looked at Poirot. “The
tout ensemble,
it is very good and especially, if I may mention it, your superb moustache.”

“I am gratified,” said Poirot, “that you have noticed it.”

“The point is rather, could anyone not notice it?”

Poirot put his head on one side. Then he said:

“You spoke of the drawing you are doing because you wish to remember the young Miranda. Does that mean you're going away from here?”

“I have thought of it, yes.”

“Yet you are, it seems to me,
bien placé ici.
”

“Oh yes, eminently so. I have a house to live in, a house small but designed by myself, and I have my work, but that is less satisfactory than it used to be. So restlessness is coming over me.”

“Why is your work less satisfactory?”

“Because people wish me to do the most atrocious things. People who want to improve their gardens, people who bought some land and they're building a house and want the garden designed.”

“Are you not doing her garden for Mrs. Drake?”

“She wants me to, yes. I made suggestions for it and she seemed to agree with them. I don't think, though,” he added thoughtfully, “that I really trust her.”

“You mean that she would not let you have what you wanted?”

“I mean that she would certainly have what
she
wanted herself and that though she is attracted by the ideas I have set out, she would suddenly demand something quite different. Something utilitarian, expensive and showy, perhaps. She would bully me, I think. She would insist on her ideas being carried out. I would not agree, and we should quarrel. So on the whole it is better I leave here before I quarrel. And not only with Mrs. Drake but many other neighbours. I am quite well-known. I don't need to stay in one spot. I could go and find some other corner of England, or it could be some corner of Normandy or Brittany.”

“Somewhere where you can improve, or help, nature? Somewhere where you can experiment or you can put strange things where they have never grown before, where neither sun will blister nor frost destroy? Some good stretch of barren land where you can have the fun of playing at being Adam all over again? Have you always been restless?”

“I never stayed anywhere very long.”

“You have been to Greece?”

“Yes. I should like to go to Greece again. Yes, you have something there. A garden on a Greek hillside. There may be cypresses
there, not much else. A barren rock. But if you wished, what could there not be?”

“A garden for gods to walk—”

“Yes. You're quite a mind reader, aren't you, Mr. Poirot?”

“I wish I were. There are so many things I would like to know and do not know.”

“You are talking now of something quite prosaic, are you not?”

“Unfortunately so.”

“Arson, murder and sudden death?”

“More or less. I do not know that I was considering arson. Tell me, Mr. Garfield, you have been here some considerable time, did you know a young man called Lesley Ferrier?”

“Yes, I remember him. He was in a Medchester solicitor's office, wasn't he? Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter. Junior clerk, something of that kind. Good-looking chap.”

“He came to a sudden end, did he not?”

“Yes. Got himself knifed one evening. Woman trouble, I gather. Everyone seems to think that the police know quite well who did it, but they can't get the evidence they want. He was more or less tied up with a woman called Sandra—can't remember her name for the moment—Sandra Somebody, yes. Her husband kept the local pub. She and young Lesley were running an affair, and then Lesley took up with another girl. Or that was the story.”

“And Sandra did not like it?”

“No, she did not like it at all. Mind you, he was a great one for the girls. There were two or three that he went around with.”