Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [49]
‘Lady Ravenscroft?’
‘No, the other one – she married a Captain Jarrow – had two children; the younger one, a boy of four, was knocked down by a wheelbarrow or some kind of child’s garden toy – or a spade or a child’s hoe. Hit him on his head and he fell into an artificial pond or something and drowned. Apparently it was the older child, a girl of nine who did it. They were playing together and quarrelled, as children do. Doesn’t seem much doubt, but there was another story. Someone said the mother did it – got angry and hit him – and someone else said it was a woman who lived next door who hit him. Don’t suppose it’s of any interest to you – no bearing on a suicide pact entered into by the mother’s sister and her husband years after.’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘it does not seem to. But one likes to know background.’
‘Yes,’ said Garroway, ‘as I told you, one has to look into the past. I can’t say we’d thought of looking into the past as long ago as this. I mean, as I’ve said, all this was some years before the suicide.’
‘Were there any proceedings at the time?’
‘Yes. I managed to look up the case. Accounts of it. Newspaper accounts. Various things. There were some doubts about it, you know. The mother was badly affected. She broke down completely and had to go into hospital. They do say she was never the same woman again afterwards.’
‘But they thought she had done it?’
‘Well, that’s what the doctor thought. There was no direct evidence, you understand. She said that she had seen this happen from a window, that she’d seen the older child, the girl, hit the boy and push him in. But her account – well, I don’t think they believed it at the time. She talked so wildly.’
‘There was, I suppose, some psychiatric evidence?’
‘Yes. She went to a nursing home or hospital of some kind, she was definitely a mental case. She was a good long time in one or two different establishments having treatment, I believe under the care of one of the specialists from St Andrew’s Hospital in London. In the end she was pronounced cured, and released after about three years, and sent home to lead a normal life with her family.’
‘And she was then quite normal?’
‘She was always neurotic, I believe –’
‘Where was she at the time of the suicide? Was she staying with the Ravenscrofts?’
‘No – she had died nearly three weeks before that. She was staying with them at Overcliffe when it happened. It seemed again to be an illustration of the identical twin destiny. She walked in her sleep – had suffered from that over a period of years, it seems. She had had one or two minor accidents that way. Sometimes she took too many tranquilizers and that resulted in her walking round the house and sometimes out of it during the night. She was following a path along the cliff edge, lost her footing and fell over the cliff. Killed immediately – they didn’t find her until the next day. Her sister, Lady Ravenscroft, was terribly upset. They were very devoted to each other and she had to be taken to hospital suffering from shock.’
‘Could this tragic accident have led to the Ravenscrofts’ suicide some weeks later?’
‘There was never a suggestion of such a thing.’
‘Odd things happen with twins as you say – Lady Ravenscroft might have killed herself because of the link between her and her twin sister. Then the husband may have shot himself because possibly he felt guilty in some way –’
Superintendent Garroway said: ‘You have too many ideas, Poirot. Alistair Ravenscroft couldn’t have had an affair with his sister-in-law without everyone knowing about it. There was nothing of that kind – if that’s what you’ve been imagining.’
The telephone rang – Poirot rose and answered it. It was Mrs Oliver.
‘Monsieur Poirot, can you come to tea or sherry tomorrow? I have got Celia coming – and later on the bossy woman. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’
Poirot