Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [26]
‘He asked if you would be able to call and see him this afternoon.’
‘That will be quite impossible,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Ring him up, will you? I’ve got to go out again at once, as a matter of fact. Did he leave a telephone number?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘That’s all right, then. We won’t have to look it up again. All right. Just ring him. Tell him I’m sorry that I can’t but that I’m out on the track of an elephant.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Miss Livingstone.
‘Say that I’m on the track of an elephant.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Livingstone, looking shrewdly at her employer to see if she was right in the feelings that she sometimes had that Mrs Ariadne Oliver, though a successful novelist, was at the same time not quite right in the head.
‘I’ve never hunted elephants before,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It’s quite an interesting thing to do, though.’
She went into the sitting-room, opened the top volume of the assorted books on the sofa, most of them looking rather the worse for wear, since she had toiled through them the evening before and written out a paper with various addresses.
‘Well, one has got to make a start somewhere,’ she said. ‘On the whole I think that if Julia hasn’t gone completely off her rocker by now, I might start with her. She always had ideas and after all, she knew that part of the country because she lived near there. Yes, I think we’ll start with Julia.’
‘There are four letters here for you to sign,’ said Miss Livingstone.
‘I can’t be bothered now,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I really can’t spare a moment. I’ve got to go down to Hampton Court, and it’s quite a long ride.’
The Honourable Julia Carstairs, struggling with some slight difficulty out of her armchair, the difficulty that those over the age of seventy have when rising to their feet after prolonged rest, even a possible nap, stepped forward, peering a little to see who it was who had just been announced by the faithful retainer who shared the apartment which she occupied in her status of a member of ‘Homes for the Privileged’. Being slightly deaf, the name had not come clearly to her. Mrs Gulliver. Was that it? But she didn’t remember a Mrs Gulliver. She advanced on slightly shaky knees, still peering forward.
‘I don’t expect you’ll remember me, it’s so many years since we met.’
Like many elderly people, Mrs Carstairs could remember voices better than she did faces.
‘Why,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s – dear me, it’s Ariadne! My dear, how very nice to see you.’
Greetings passed.
‘I just happened to be in this part of the world,’ explained Mrs Oliver. ‘I had to come down to see someone not far from here. And then I remembered that looking in my address book last night I had seen that this was quite near where you had your apartment. Delightful, isn’t it?’ she added, looking round.
‘Not too bad,’ said Mrs Carstairs. ‘Not quite all it’s written up to be, you know. But it has many advantages. One brings one’s own furniture and things like that, and there is a central restaurant where you can have a meal, or you can have your own things, of course. Oh yes, it’s very good, really. The grounds are charming and well kept up. But sit down, Ariadne, do sit down. You look very well. I saw you were at a literary lunch the other day, in the paper. How odd it is that one just sees something in the paper and almost the next day one meets the person. Quite extraordinary.’
‘I know,’ said Mrs Oliver, taking the chair that was offered her. ‘Things do go like that, don’t they.’
‘You are still living in London?’
Mrs Oliver said yes, she was still living in London. She then entered into what she thought of in her own mind, with vague memories of going to dancing class as a child, as the first figure of the Lancers. Advance, retreat, hands out, turn round twice, whirl round, and so on.
She enquired after Mrs Carstairs’s daughter and about the two grandchildren, and she asked about the other daughter, what she was doing. She appeared to be doing it in New Zealand. Mrs Carstairs did not seem to be quite sure what it was. Some kind of social research. Mrs Carstairs pressed an electric