Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [67]
‘I don’t see how that leads to wanting news about a suicide.’
‘Don’t you? She wanted to discourage the marriage. If young Desmond had a girl-friend, if he proposed to marry her in the near future, which is what a lot of young people do nowadays – they won’t wait or think it over. In that case, Mrs Burton-Cox would not inherit the money he left, since the marriage would invalidate any earlier Will, and presumably if he did marry his girl he would make a new Will leaving everything to her and not to his adopted mother.’
‘And you mean Mrs Burton-Cox didn’t want that?’
‘She wanted to find something that would discourage him from marrying the girl. I think she hoped, and probably really believed as far as that goes, that Celia’s mother killed her husband, afterwards shooting herself. That is the sort of thing that might discourage a boy. Even if her father killed her mother, it is still a discouraging thought. It might quite easily prejudice and influence a boy at that age.’
‘You mean he’d think that if her father or mother was a murderer, the girl might have murderous tendencies?’
‘Not quite as crude as that but that might be the main idea, I should think.’
‘But he wasn’t rich, was he? An adopted child.’
‘He didn’t know his real mother’s name or who she was, but it seems that his mother, who was an actress and a singer and who managed to make a great deal of money before she became ill and died, wanted at one time to get her child returned to her and when Mrs Burton-Cox would not agree to that, I should imagine she thought about this boy a great deal and decided that she would leave her money to him. He will inherit this money at the age of twenty-five, but it is held in trust for him until then. So of course Mrs Burton-Cox doesn’t want him to marry, or only to marry someone that she really approves of or over whom she might have influence.’
‘Yes, that seems to me fairly reasonable. She’s not a nice woman though, is she?’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘I did not think her a very nice woman.’
‘And that’s why she didn’t want you coming to see her and messing about with things and finding out what she was up to.’
‘Possibly,’ said Poirot. ‘
Anything else you have learnt?’
‘Yes, I have learnt – that is only a few hours ago really – when Superintendent Garroway happened to ring me up about some other small matters, but I did ask him and he told me that the housekeeper, who was elderly, had very bad eyesight.’
‘Does that come into it anywhere?’
‘It might,’ said Poirot. He looked at his watch. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it is time that I left.’
‘You are on your way to catch your plane at the airport?’
‘No. My plane does not leave until tomorrow morning. But there is a place I have to visit today – a place that I wish to see with my own eyes. I have a car waiting outside now to take me there –’
‘What is it you want to see?’ Mrs Oliver asked with some curiosity.
‘Not so much to see – to feel. Yes – that is the right word – to feel and to recognize what it will be that I feel . . .’
Chapter 18
Interlude
Hercule Poirot passed through the gate of the churchyard. He walked up one of the paths, and presently, against a moss-grown wall he stopped, looking down on a grave. He stood there for some minutes looking first at the grave, then at the view of the Downs and sea beyond. Then his eyes came back again. Flowers had been put recently on the grave. A small bunch of assorted wild flowers, the kind of bunch that might have been left by a child, but Poirot did not think that it was a child who had left them. He read the lettering on the grave.
To the memory of
DOROTHEA JARROW
Died Sept 15th 1960
Also of
MARGARET RAVENSCROFT
Died Oct 3rd 1960
Sister of above
Also of
ALISTAIR RAVENSCROFT
Died Oct 3rd 1960
Her husband
In their Death they were not divided
Forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those