car either. Pinched from a car park somewhere.
Ah, it's terrible, a lot of those accidents
nowadays. And the police often can't
do anything about them. Very devoted to
him, his wife was. Took it very hard, she
did. She comes here, nearly every week, brings flowers and puts them here. Yes, they were a very devoted couple. If you
ask me, she won't stay here much longer."
"Really? But she has a very nice house
here."
243
"Yes, oh yes. And she does a lot in the
village, you know. All these things—
women's institutes and teas and various
societies and all the rest of it. Runs a lot
of things, she does. Runs a bit too many
for some people. Bossy, you know. Bossy
and interfering, some people say. But the
vicar relies on her. She starts things.
Women's activities and all the rest of it.
Gets up tours and outings. Ah yes. Often
thought myself, though I wouldn't like to
say it to my wife, that all these good works
as ladies does, doesn't make you any
fonder of the ladies themselves. Always
know best, they do. Always telling you
what you should do and what you
shouldn't do. No freedom. Not much
freedom anywhere nowadays."
"Yet you think Mrs. Drake may leave
here?"
"I shouldn't wonder if she didn't go
away and live somewhere abroad. They
liked being abroad, used to go there for
holidays."
"Why do you think she wants to leave
here?"
A sudden rather roguish smile appeared
on the old man's face.
244
"Well, I'd say, you know, that's she's
done all she can do here. To put it scriptural, she needs another vineyard to work
in. She needs more good works. Aren't no
more good works to be done round here.
She's done all there is, and even more than
there need be, so some think. Yes."
"She needs a new field in which to
labour?" suggested Poirot.
"You've hit it. Better settle somewhere
else where she can put a lot of things right
and bully a lot of other people. She's got
us where she wants us here and there's not
much more for her to do."
"It may be," said Poirot.
"Hasn't even got her husband to look
after. She looked after him a good few
years. That gave her a kind of object in
life, as you might say. What with that and
a lot of outside activities, she could be
busy all the time. She's the type likes
being busy all the time. And she's no children, more's the pity. So it's my view as
she'll start all over again somewhere else."
"You may have something there. Where
would she go?"
"I couldn't say as to that. One of these
Riviery places, maybe--or there's them as
245
goes to Spain or Portugal. Or Greece--I've
heard her speak of Greece--Islands. Mrs.
Butler, she's been to Greece on one of
them tours. Hellenic, they call them,
which sounds more like fire and brimstone
to me."
Poirot smiled.
"The isles of Greece," he murmured.
Then he asked: "Do you like her?"
"Mrs. Drake? I wouldn't say I exactly like her. She's a good woman. Does her
duty to her neighbour and all that--but
she'll always need a power of neighbours
to do her duty to--and if you ask me,
nobody really likes people who are always
doing their duty. Tells me how to prune
my roses which I know well enough
myself. Always at me to grow some newfangled
kind of vegetable. Cabbage is good
enough for me, and I'm sticking to
cabbage."
Poirot smiled. He said, "I must be on
my way. Can you tell me where Nicholas
Ransome and Desmond Holland live?"
"Past the church, third house on the
left. They board with Mrs. Brand, go into
Medchester Technical every day to study.
They'll be home by now."
246
He gave Poirot an interested glance.
"So that's the way your mind is
working, is it? There's some already as
thinks the same."
"No, I think nothing as yet. But they
were among those present—that is all."
As he took leave and walked away, he
mused, "Among those present—I have
come nearly to the end of my list."
247
15
r | iWO pairs of eyes looked at Poirot
T
| uneasily.
^L "I don't see what else we can tell
you. We've both been interviewed by the
police, M. Poirot."
Poirot looked from one boy to the other.
They would not have described themselves
as boys; their manner was carefully adult.
So much so that if one shut one's eyes, their conversation could have passed as
that of elderly clubmen. Nicholas was
eighteen. Desmond was sixteen.
"To oblige a friend, I make my inquiries
of those present on a certain occasion. Not
the Hallowe'en party itself--the preparations
for that party. You were both
active in these."
"Yes, we were."
"So far," Poirot said, "I have interviewed
cleaning women, I have had the
benefit of police views, of talks to a doctor
--the doctor who examined the body first
--have talked to a school-teacher who was
248
present, to the headmistress of the school, to distraught relatives, have heard much of
the village gossip-- By the way, I understand
you have a local witch here?"
The two young men confronting him
both laughed.
"You mean Mother Goodbody. Yes, she
came to the party and played the part of
the witch."
<<I have come now," said Poirot, "to the
younger generation, to those of acute
eyesight and acute hearing and who have
up-to-date scientific knowledge and
shrewd philosophy. I am eager--very
eager--to hear your views on this matter."
Eighteen and sixteen, he thought to
himself, looking at the two boys confronting
him. Youths to the police, boys
to him, adolescents to newspaper
reporters. Call them what you will. Products
of to-day. Neither of them, he
judged, at all stupid, even if they were not
quite of the high mentality that he had just
suggested to them by way of a flattering
sop to start the conversation. They had
been at the party. They had also been
there earlier in the day to do helpful offices
for Mrs. Drake.
HP17
249
They had climbed up step-ladders, they
had placed yellow pumpkins in strategic
positions, they had done a little electrical
work on fairy lights, one or other of them
had produced some clever effects in a nice
batc
h of phoney photographs of possible
husbands as imagined hopefully by teenage
girls. They were also, incidentally, of the
right age to be in the forefront of suspects
in the mind of Inspector Raglan and, it
seemed, in the view of an elderly gardener.
The percentage of murders committed by
this age group had been increasing in the
last few years. Not that Poirot inclined
to that particular suspicion himself, but
anything was possible. It was even possible
that the killing which had occurred two
or three years ago might have been
committed by a boy, youth, or adolescent
of fourteen or twelve years of age. Such
cases had occurred in recent newspaper
reports.
Keeping all these possibilities in mind
he pushed them, as it were, behind a
curtain for the moment, and concentrated
instead on his own appraisement of these
two, their looks, their clothes, their
manner, their voices and so on and so
250
forth in the Hercule Poirot manner, masked behind a foreign shield of
nattering words and much increased
foreign mannerisms, so that they themselves
should feel agreeably contemptuous
of him, though hiding that under politeness
and good manners. For both of them
had excellent manners. Nicholas, the
eighteen-year-old, was good-looking, wearing side-burns, hair that grew fairly
far down his neck, and a rather funereal
outfit of black. Not as a mourning for the
recent tragedy, but what was obviously his
personal taste in modern clothes. The
younger one was wearing a rose-coloured
velvet coat, mauve trousers and a kind of
frilled shirting. They both obviously spent
a good deal of money on their clothes
which were certainly not purchased locally
and were probably paid for by themselves
and not by their parents or guardians.
Desmond^s hair was ginger coloured and
there was a good deal of fluffy profusion
about it.
"You were there in the morning or
afternoon of the party, I understand, helping with the preparations for it?"
"Early afternoon," corrected Nicholas.
251
"What sort of preparations were you
helping with? I have heard of preparation
from several people, but I am not quite
clear. They don't all agree."
"A good deal of the lighting, for one
thing."
"Getting up on steps for things that had
to be put high up."
"I understand there were some very
good photographic results too."
Desmond immediately dipped into his
pocket and took out a folder from which
he proudly brought certain cards.
"We faked up these beforehand," he
said. "Husbands for the girls," he
explained. "They're all alike, birds are.
They all want something up-to-date. Not
a bad assortment, are they?"
He handed a few specimens to Poirot
who looked with interest at a rather fuzzy
reproduction of a ginger-bearded young
man and another young man with an
aureole of hair, a third one whose hair
came to his knees almost, and there were
a few assorted whiskers, and other facial
adornments.
"Made "em pretty well all different. It
wasn't bad, was it?"
252
"You had models, I suppose?"
"Oh, they're all ourselves. Just
make-up, you know. Nick and I got 'em
done. Some Nick took of me and some I
took of him. Just varied what you might
call the hair motif."
"Very clever," said Poirot.
"We kept 'em a bit out of focus, you
know, so that they'd look more like spirit
pictures, as you might say."
The other boy said,
"Mrs. Drake was very pleased with them.
She congratulated us. They made her
laugh too. It was mostly electrical work we
did at the house. You know, fitting up a
light or two so that when the girls sat with
the mirror one or other of us could take
up a position, you'd only to bob up over
a screen and the girl would see a face in
the mirror with, mind you, the right kind
of hair. Beard or whiskers or something or
other."
"Did they know it was you and your
friend?"
"Oh, I don't think so for a moment. Not
at the party, they didn't. They knew we
had been helping at the house with some
things, but I don't think they recognised
253
us in the mirrors. Weren't smart enough, I should say. Besides, we'd got sort of an
instant make-up to change the image. First
me, then Nicholas. The girls squeaked and
shrieked. Damned funny."
"And the people who were there in the
afternoon? I do not ask you to remember
who was at the party."
"At the party, there must have been
about thirty, I suppose, knocking about.
In the afternoon there was Mrs. Drake, of course, and Mrs. Butler. One of the
school-teachers, Whittaker I think her
name is. Mrs. Flatterbut or some name
like that. She's the organist's sister or wife.
Dr. Ferguson's dispenser. Miss Lee; it's
her afternoon off and she came along and
helped too and some of the kids came to
make themselves useful if they could. Not
that I think they were very useful. The
"Ah yes. Do you remember what girls
there were there?"
"Well, the Reynolds were there. Poor ,
old Joyce, of course. The one who got *
done in, and her elder sister Arm.
Frightful girl. Puts no end of side on. ,
Thinks she's terribly clever. Quite sure
254
she's going to pass all her "A" levels. And
the small kid, Leopold, he's awful," said
Desmond. "He's a sneak. He eavesdrops.
Tells tales. Real nasty bit of goods. And
there was Beatrice Ardley and Cathie
Grant, who is dim as they make and a
couple of useful women, of course.
Cleaning women, I mean. And the
authoress woman—the one who brought
you down here."
"Any men?"
"Oh, the vicar looked in if you count
him. Nice old boy, rather dim. And the
new curate. He stammers when he's
nervous. Hasn't been here long. That's all
I can think of now."
"And then I understand you heard this
girl—Joyce Reynolds—saying something
about having seen a murder committed."
"I never heard that," said Desmond.
"Did she?"
"Oh, they're saying so," said Nicholas.
"I didn't hear her. I suppose I wasn't in
the room when she said it. Where was she
—when she said that, I mean?"
"In the drawing-room."
"Yes, well, most of the people were in
there unless they were doing something
255
special. Of course Nick and I," said
Desmond, "were mostly in the room
where the girls were going to look for their
true loves in mirrors. Fixing up wires and
various things like that. Or else we were
out on the stairs fixing fairy lights. We
were in the drawing-room once or twice
putting the pumpkins up and hanging up
one or two that had been hollowed out to
hold lights in them. But I didn't hear
anything of that kind when we were there.
What about you. Nick?"
"I didn't," said Nick. He added with
some interest, "Did Joyce really say that
she'd seen a murder committed? Jolly
interesting, you know, if she did, isn't it?"
"Why is it so interesting?" asked
Desmond.
"Well, it's ESP, isn't it? I mean there
you are. She saw a murder committed and
within an hour or two she herself was
murdered. I suppose she had a sort of
vision of it. Makes you think a bit. You
know these last experiments they've been
having seems as though there is something
you can do to help it by getting an electrode, or something of that kind, fixed up
256
to your jugular vein. I've read about it
somewhere."
"They've never got very far with this
ESP stuff," said Nicholas, scornfully.
"People sit in different rooms looking at
cards in a pack or words with squares and
geometrical figures on them. But they
never see the right things, or hardly ever."
"Well, you've got to be pretty young to
do it. Adolescents are much better than
older people."
Hercule Poirot, who had no wish to
listen to this high-level scientific discussion,
broke in.
"As far as you can remember, nothing
occurred during your presence in the
house which seemed to you sinister or
significant in any way. Something which
probably nobody else would have noticed, but which might have come to your attention."
Nicholas and Desmond frowned hard, obviously racking their brains to produce
some incident of importance.
"No, it was just a lot of clacking and
arranging and doing things."
"Have you any theories yourself?"
Poirot addressed himself to Nicholas.
257
"What, theories as to who did Joyce
in?"
"Yes. I mean something that you might