to commit crimes, quite young children.
Children of seven, of nine and so on, and it was often difficult to know how to
dispose of these natural, it seemed, young
229
criminals who came before the juvenile
courts. Excuses had to be brought for
them. Broken homes. Negligent and
unsuitable parents. But the people who
spoke the most vehemently for them, the
people who sought to bring forth every
excuse for them, were usually the type of
Rowena Drake. A stern and censorious
woman, except in such cases.
For himself, Poirot did not agree. He
was a man who thought first always of
justice. He was suspicious, had always
been suspicious, of mercy--too much
mercy, that is to say. Too much mercy, as he knew from former experience both
in Belgium and this country, often resulted
in further crimes which were fatal to innocent
victims who need not have been
victims if justice had been put first and
mercy second.
"I see," said Poirot. "I see."
"You don't think it's possible that Miss
Whittaker might have seen someone go
into the library?" suggested Mrs. Drake.
Poirot was interested.
"Ah, you think that that might have
been so?"
"It seemed to me merely a possibility.
230
She might have caught sight of someone
going in through the library, say, perhaps
five minutes or so earlier, and then, when
I dropped the vase it might have suggested
to her that I could have caught a glimpse
of the same person. That I might have
seen who it was. Perhaps she doesn't like
to say anything that might suggest,
unfairly perhaps, some person whom she
had perhaps only half glimpsed—not
enough to be sure of. Some back view
perhaps of a child, or a young boy."
"You think, do you not, Madame, that
it was—shall we say, a child—a boy or
girl, a mere child, or a young adolescent?
You think it was not any definite one of
these but, shall we say, you think that that
is the most likely type to have committed
the crime we are discussing?"
She considered the point thoughtfully,
turning it over in her mind.
"Yes," she said at last, "I suppose I do.
I haven't thought it out. It seems to me
that crimes are so often associated
nowadays with the young. People who
don't really know quite what they are
doing, who want silly revenges, who have
an instinct for destruction. Even the
231
c
people who wreck telephone boxes, or who
slash the tyres of cars, do all sorts of things
just to hurt people, just because they hate
--not anyone in particular, but the whole
world. It's a sort of symptom of this age.
So I suppose when one comes across something
like a child drowned at a party for
no reason really, one does assume that it's
someone who is not yet fully responsible
for their actions. Don't you agree with me
that--that--well, that that is certainly the
most likely possibility here?"
"The police, I think, share your point
of view--or did share it."
"Well, they should know. We have a
very good class of policeman in this
district. They've done well in several
crimes. They are painstaking and they
never give up. I think probably they will
solve this murder, though I don't think it
will happen very quickly. These things
seem to take a long time. A long time of
patient gathering of evidence."
"The evidence in this case will not be very easy to gather, Madame."
"No, I suppose it won't. When my
husband was killed-- He was a cripple, you know. He was crossing the road and
232
a car ran over him and knocked him down.
They never found the person who was
responsible. As you know, my husband--
or perhaps you don't know--my husband
was a polio victim. He was partially paralysed
as a result of polio, six years ago.
His condition had improved, but he was
him to get out of the way if a car bore
down upon him quickly. I almost felt that
I had been to blame, though he always
insisted on going out without me or
without anyone with him, because he
would have resented very much being in
the care of a nurse, or a wife who took the
part of a nurse, and he was always careful
before crossing a road. Still, one does
blame oneself when accidents happen."
"That came on top of the death of your
aunt?"
"No. She died not long afterwards.
Everything seems to come at once, doesn't
it?"
"That is very true," said Hercule
Poirot. He went on: "The police were not
able to trace the car that ran down your
husband?"
"It was a Grasshopper Mark 7, I
Hpi6 233
believe. Every third car you notice on the
road is a Grasshopper Mark 7—or was
then. It's the most popular car on the
market, they tell me. They believe it was
pinched from the Market Place in
Medchester. A car park there. It belonged
to a Mr. Waterhouse, an elderly seed
merchant in Medchester. Mr. Waterhouse
was a slow and careful driver. It was
certainly not he who caused the accident.
It was clearly one of those cases where
irresponsible young men help themselves
to cars. Such careless, or should I say such
callous young men, should be treated, one
sometimes feels, more severely than they
are now."
"A long gaol sentence, perhaps. Merely
to be fined, and the fine paid by indulgent
relatives, makes little impression."
"One has to remember," said Rowena
Drake, "that there are young people at an
age when it is vital that they should
continue with their studies if they are to
have the chance of doing well in life."
"The sacred cow of eduction," said
Hercule Poirot. "That is a phrase I have
heard uttered," he added quickly, "by
people—well, should I say people who
234
ought to know. People who themselves
hold academic posts of some seniority."
"They do not perhaps make enough
allowances for youth, for a bad bringing
up. Broken homes."
"So you think they need something
other than gaol sentences?"
"Proper remedial treatment," said
Rowena Drake firmly.
"And that will make—(another oldfashioned
proverb)—a silk purse out of a
sow's ear? You do not believe in the
maxim 'the fate of every man have we
bound about his neck'?"
Mrs. Drake looked extremely doubtful
and slightly displeased.
"An Islamic saying, I believe," said
Poirot.
Mrs. Drake looked unimpressed.
"I hope," she said, "we do not take our
ideas—or perhaps I should say our ideals
—from the Middle East."
"One must accept facts," said Poirot,
"and a fact that is expressed by modern
biologists—Western biologists—" he
hastened to add, "—seems to suggest very
strongly that the root of a person's actions
lies in his genetic make-up. That a
235
murderer of twenty-four was a murderer
in potential at two or three or four years
old. Or of course a mathematician or a
musical genius."
"We are not discussing murderers," said
Mrs. Drake. "My bu^and died as a result
of an accident. An accident caused by a
careless and badly adjusted personality.
Whoever the boy or yo^S man was'there is always the hope of eventual adjustment
to a belief and acceptance that it is a duty
to consider others, W be tw^ to feel
an abhorrence if you have taken nfe unawares, simply out of what may be
described as criminal carelessness that was
not really criminal in intent.
"You are quite sure? therefore, that it
was not criminal intent?
"I should doubt it very much." Mrs.
Drake looked slightly surprised. "I do not
think that the police ever seriously
considered that possibility. I certainly did
not. It was an accident. A very tragic accident
which altered the pattern of many
lives, including my o^11'
"You say we ?re not discussing
murderers," said Poirot. "But in the case
of Joyce that is just what we are
236
discussing. There was no accident about
that. Deliberate hands pushed that child's
head down into water, holding her there
till death occurred. Deliberate intent."
"I know. I know. It's terrible. I don't
like to think of it, to be reminded of it."
She got up, moving about restlessly.
Poirot pushed on relentlessly.
"We are still presented with a choice
there. We still have to find the motive
involved."
"It seems to me that such a crime must
have been quite motiveless."
"You mean committed by someone
mentally disturbed to the extent of
enjoying killing someone? Presumably
killing someone young and immature."
"One does hear of such cases. What is
the original cause of them is difficult to
find out. Even psychiatrists do not agree."
"You refuse to accept a simpler
explanation?"
She looked puzzled. "Simpler?"
"Someone not mentally disturbed, not a
possible case for psychiatrists to disagree
over. Somebody perhaps who just wanted
to be safe."
"Safe? Oh, you mean—"
237
"The girl had boasted that same day,
some hours previously, that she had seen
someone commit a murder."
"Joyce," said Mrs. Drake, with calm
certainty, "was really a very silly little girl.
Not, I am afraid, always very truthful."
"So everyone has told me," said Hercuk
Poirot. "I am beginning to believe, you
know, that what everybody has told me
must be right," he added with a sigh. "It
usually is."
He rose to his feet, adopting a different
manner.
"I must apologise, Madame. I have
talked of painful things to you, things that
do not truly concern me here. But it seemed from what Miss Whittaker told
me»»
"Why don't you find out more from
her?"
"You mean--?"
"She is a teacher. She knows, much
better than I can, what potentialities (as
you have called them) exist amongst the
children she teacher."
She paused and then said:
"Miss Ernlyn, too."
238
"The head-mistress?" Poirot looked
surprised.
"Yes. She knows things. I mean, she is
a natural psychologist. You said I might
have ideas--half-formed ones--as to who
killed Joyce. I haven't--but I think Miss
Ernlyn might."
"This is interesting ..."
"I don't mean has evidence. I mean she
just knows. She could tell you--but I
don't think she will."
"I begin to see," said Poirot, "that I
have still a long way to go. People know
things--but they will not tell them to me."
He looked thoughtfully at Rowena Drake.
"Your aunt, Mrs. LlewellynSmythe, had an au pair girl who looked after her, a foreign girl."
"You seem to have got hold of all the
local gossip." Rowena spoke dryly. "Yes, that is so. She left here rather suddenly
soon after my aunt's death."
"For good reasons, it would seem."
"I don't know whether it's libel or
slander to say so--but there seems no
doubt that she forged a codicil to my
aunt's Will--or that someone helped her
to do so."
239
"Someone?'
"She was friendly with a young man
who worked in a solicitor's office in
Medchester. He had been mixed up in a
forgery case before. The case never came
to court because the girl disappeared. She
realised the Will would not be admitted to
probate, and that there was going to be a
court case. She left the neighbourhood and
has never been heard of since."
"She too came, I have heard, from a
broken home," said Poirot.
Rowena Drake looked at him sharply
but he was smiling amiably.
"Thank you for all you have told me, Madame," he said.
When Poirot had left the house, he went
for a short walk along a turning off the
main road which was labelled "Helpsly
Cemetery Road". The cemetery in question
did not take him long to reach. It was
at most ten minutes' walk. It was obviously
a cemetery that had been made in
the last ten years, presumably to cope with
the rising importance of Woodleigh as a
residential entity. The church, a church of
reasonable size dating from some two or
240
three centuries back, had had a very small
enclosure round it already well filled. So
the new cemetery had come into being
with a footpath connecting it across two
fields. It was, Poirot, thought, a businesslike,
modern cemetery with appropriate
sentiments on marble or granite slabs; it
had urns, chippings, small plantations of
bushes or flowers. No interesting old epitaphs
or inscriptions. Nothing much for an
antiquarian. Cleaned, neat, tidy and with
suitable sentiments expressed.
He came to a halt to read a tablet
erected on a
grave contemporary with
several others near it, all dating within two
or three years back. It bore a simple
inscription, "Sacred to the Memory of
Hugo Edmund Drake, beloved husband of
Rowena Arabella Drake, who departed
this life March the 20th 19--"
He giveth his beloved sleep.
It occurred to Poirot, fresh from the
impact of the dynamic Rowena Drake, that perhaps sleep might have come in
welcome guise to the late Mr. Drake.
An alabaster urn had been fixed in
241
position there and contained the remains
of flowers. An elderly gardener, obviously
employed to tend the graves of good citizens
departed this life, approached Poirot
in the pleasurable hopes of a few minutes' conversation while he laid his hoe and his
broom aside.
"Stranger in these parts, I think," he
said, "aren't you, sir?"
"It is very true," said Poirot. "I am a
stranger with you as were my fathers
before me."
"Ah, aye. We've got that text somewhere
or summat very like it. Over down
the other corner, it is." He went on, "He
was a nice gentleman, he were, Mr.
Drake. A cripple, you know. He had that
infant paralysis, as they call it, though as
often as not it isn't infants as suffer from
it. It's grown-ups. Men and women too.
My wife, she had an aunt, who caught it
in Spain, she did. Went there with a tour, she did, and bathed somewhere in some
river. And they said afterwards as it was
the water infection, but I don't think they
know much. Doctors don't, if you ask
me. Still, it's made a lot of difference
nowadays. All this inoculation they give
242
the children, and that. Not nearly as many
cases as there were. Yes, he were a nice
gentleman and didn't complain, though he
took it hard, being a cripple, I mean. He'd
been a good sportsman, he had, in his
time. Used to bat for us here in the village
team. Many a six he's hit to the boundary.
Yes, he were a nice gentleman."
"He died of an accident, did he not?" "That's right. Crossing the road,
towards twilight this was. One of these
cars come along, a couple of these young
thugs in it with beards growing up to their
ears. That's what they say. Didn't stop
either. Went on. Never looked to see.
Abandoned the car somewhere in a car
park twenty miles away. Wasn't their own