Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [7]
Chapter 2
First Mention of Elephants
Having failed to find her friend Hercule Poirot at home, Mrs Oliver had to resort to a telephone enquiry.
‘Are you by any chance going to be at home this evening?’ asked Mrs Oliver.
She sat by her telephone, her fingers tapping rather nervously on the table.
‘Would that be –?’
‘Ariadne Oliver,’ said Mrs Oliver, who was always surprised to find she had to give her name because she always expected all her friends to know her voice as soon as they heard it.
‘Yes, I shall be at home all this evening. Does that mean that I may have the pleasure of a visit from you?’
‘It’s very nice of you to put it that way,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I don’t know that it will be such a pleasure.’
‘It is always a pleasure to see you, chère Madame.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I might be going to – well, bother you rather. Ask things. I want to know what you think about something.’
‘That I am always ready to tell anyone,’ said Poirot.
‘Something’s come up,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Something tiresome and I don’t know what to do about it.’
‘And so you will come and see me. I am flattered. Highly flattered.’
‘What time would suit you?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Nine o’clock? We will drink coffee together, perhaps, unless you prefer a Grenadine or a Sirop de Cassis. But no, you do not like that. I remember.’
‘George,’ said Poirot, to his invaluable manservant, ‘we are to receive tonight the pleasure of a visit from Mrs Oliver. Coffee, I think, and perhaps a liqueur of some kind. I am never sure what she likes.’
‘I have seen her drink kirsch, sir.’ ‘And also, I think, crème de menthe. But kirsch, I think, is what she prefers. Very well then,’ said Poirot. ‘So be it.’
Mrs Oliver came punctual to time. Poirot had been wondering, while eating his dinner, what it was that was driving Mrs Oliver to visit him, and why she was so doubtful about what she was doing. Was she bringing him some difficult problem, or was she acquainting him with a crime? As Poirot knew well, it could be anything with Mrs Oliver. The most commonplace things or the most extraordinary things. They were, as you might say, all alike to her. She was worried, he thought. Ah well, Hercule Poirot thought to himself, he could deal with Mrs Oliver. He always had been able to deal with Mrs Oliver. On occasion she maddened him. At the same time he was really very much attached to her. They had shared many experiences and experiments together. He had read something about her in the paper only that morning – or was it the evening paper? He must try and remember it before she came. He had just done so when she was announced.
She came into the room and Poirot deduced at once that his diagnosis of worry was true enough. Her hair-do, which was fairly elaborate, had been ruffled by the fact that she had been running her fingers through it in the frenzied and feverish way that she did sometimes. He received her with every sign of pleasure, established her in a chair, poured her some coffee and handed her a glass of kirsch.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Oliver, with the sigh of someone who has relief. ‘I expect you’re going to think I’m awfully silly, but still . . .’
‘I see, or rather, I saw in the paper that you were attending a literary luncheon today. Famous women writers. Something of that kind. I thought you never did that kind of thing.’
‘I don’t usually,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and I shan’t ever do it again.’
‘Ah. You suffered much?’ Poirot was quite sympathetic.
He knew Mrs Oliver’s embarrassing moments. Extravagant praise of her books always upset her highly because, as she had once told him, she never knew the proper answers.
‘You did not enjoy it?’
‘Up to a point I did,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and then something very tiresome happened.’
‘Ah. And that is what you have come to see me about.’
‘Yes, but I really don’t know why. I mean, it’s nothing to do with you and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you’d even be interested in. And I’m not really interested in it. At least, I suppose I must be or I wouldn’t have wanted to come to you to know what you thought.