Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [29]
‘Yes, Julia?’
‘I can’t help thinking that there might have been a man, you know.’
‘You mean that she –’
‘Yes, well – well, one thinks it rather likely, you know. The wigs, for one thing.’
‘I don’t quite see how the wigs come into it.’
‘Well, wanting to improve her appearance.’
‘She was thirty-five, I think.’
‘More. More. Thirty-six, I think. And, well, I know she showed me the wigs one day, and one or two of them really made her look quite attractive. And she used a good deal of make-up. And that had all started just after they had come to live there, I think. She was rather a good-looking woman.’
‘You mean, she might have met someone, some man?’
‘Well, that’s what I’ve always thought,’ said Mrs Carstairs. ‘You see, if a man’s getting off with a girl, people notice it usually because men aren’t so good at hiding their tracks. But a woman, it might be – well, I mean like someone she’d met and nobody knew much about it.’
‘Oh, do you really think so, Julia?’
‘No I don’t really think so,’ said Julia, ‘because I mean, people always do know, don’t they? I mean, you know, servants know, or gardeners or bus drivers. Or somebody in the neighbourhood. And they know. And they talk. But still, there could have been something like that, and either he found out about it . . .’
‘You mean it was a crime of jealousy?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘So you think it’s more likely that he shot her, then himself, than that she shot him and then herself.’
‘Well, I should think so, because I think if she were trying to get rid of him – well, I don’t think they’d have gone for a walk together and she’d have to have taken the revolver with her in a handbag and it would have been rather a bigger handbag if so. One has to think of the practical side of things.’
‘I know,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘One does. It’s very interesting.’
‘It must be interesting to you, dear, because you write these crime stories. So I expect really you would have better ideas. You’d know more what’s likely to happen.’
‘I don’t know what’s likely to happen,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘because, you see, in all the crimes that I write, I’ve invented the crimes. I mean, what I want to happen, happens in my stories. It’s not something that actually has happened or that could happen. So I’m really the worst person to talk about it. I’m interested to know what you think because you know people very well, Julia, and you knew them well. And I think she might have said something to you one day – or he might.’
‘Yes. Yes, now wait a minute when you say that, that seems to bring something back to me.’
Mrs Carstairs leaned back in her chair, shook her head doubtfully, half closed her eyes and went into a kind of coma. Mrs Oliver remained silent with a look on her face which women are apt to wear when they are waiting for the first signs of a kettle coming to the boil.
‘She did say something once, I remember, and I wonder what she meant by it,’ said Mrs Carstairs. ‘Something about starting a new life – in connection I think with St Teresa. St Teresa of Avila. . . .’
Mrs Oliver looked slightly startled.
‘But how did St Teresa of Avila come into it?’
‘Well, I don’t know really. I think she must have been reading a Life of her. Anyway, she said that it was wonderful how women get a sort of second wind. That’s not quite the term she used, but something like that. You know, when they are forty or fifty or that sort of age and they suddenly want to begin a new life. Teresa of Avila did. She hadn’t done anything special up till then except being a nun, then she went out and reformed all the convents, didn’t she, and flung her weight about and became a great Saint.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t seem quite the same thing.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said