Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [62]
‘Mrs Rosentelle?’ said Mrs Oliver, glancing down at a card. ‘I understand she said she could see me if I came here this morning. I don’t mean,’ she added, ‘having anything done to my hair, but I wanted to consult her about something and I believe a telephone call was made and she said if I came at half past eleven she could spare me a short time.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the girl. ‘I think Madam is expecting someone.’
She led the way through a passage down a short flight of steps and pushed a swing door at the bottom of it. From the hairdressing saloon they had passed into what was obviously Mrs Rosentelle’s house. The plump girl knocked at the door and said, ‘The lady to see you,’ as she put her nose in, and then asked rather nervously, ‘What name did you say?’
‘Mrs Oliver,’ said Mrs Oliver.
She walked in. It had a faint effect of what might have been yet another showroom. There were curtains of rose gauze and roses on the wallpaper and Mrs Rosentelle, a woman Mrs Oliver thought of as roughly her own age or possibly a good many years older, was just finishing what was obviously a cup of morning coffee.
‘Mrs Rosentelle?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Yes?’
‘You did expect me?’
‘Oh yes. I didn’t quite understand what it was all about. The lines are so bad on the telephone. That is quite all right, I have about half an hour to spare. Would you like some coffee?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I won’t keep you any longer than I need. It is just something that I want to ask you about, that you may happen to remember. You have had quite a long career, I understand, in the hairdressing business.’
‘Oh yes. I’m quite thankful to give over to the girls now. I don’t do anything myself these days.’
‘Perhaps you still advise people?’
‘Yes, I do that.’ Mrs Rosentelle smiled.
She had a nice, intelligent face with well arranged, brown hair, with somewhat interesting grey streaks in it here and there.
‘I’m not sure what it’s all about.’
‘Well, really I wanted to ask you a question about, well, I suppose in a way about wigs generally.’
‘We don’t do as much in wigs now as we used to do.’
‘You had a business in London, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. First in Bond Street and then we moved to Sloane Street but it’s very nice to live in the country after all that, you know. Oh yes, my husband and I are very satisfied here. We run a small business but we don’t do much in the wig line nowadays,’ she said, ‘though my husband does advise and get wigs designed for men who are bald. It really makes a big difference, you know, to many people in their business if they don’t look too old and it often helps in getting a job.’
‘I can quite imagine that,’ said Mrs Oliver.
From sheer nervousness she said a few more things in the way of ordinary chat and wondered how she would start on her subject. She was startled when Mrs Rosentelle leant forward and said suddenly, ‘You are Ariadne Oliver, aren’t you? The novel writer?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘as a matter of fact –’ she had her usual somewhat shame-faced expression when she said this, that was habitual to her – ‘yes, I do write novels.’
‘I’m so fond of your books. I’ve read a lot of them. Oh, this is very nice indeed. Now tell me in what way can I help you?’
‘Well, I wanted to talk about wigs and about something that happened a great many years ago and probably you mayn’t remember anything about it.’
‘Well, I rather wonder – do you mean fashions of years ago?’
‘Not exactly. It’s a woman, a friend of mine – actually I was at school with her – and then she married and went out to Malaya and came back to England, and there was a tragedy later and one of the things I think that people found surprising after it was that she had so many wigs. I think they had been all supplied by you, by your firm, I mean.’
‘Oh, a