Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [29]
‘Spence? Hm. Good type, Spence. Bull-dog breed. Good honest police officer of the old type. No graft. No violence. Not stupid either. Straight as a die.’
‘You appraise him correctly.’
‘Well,’ said Ferguson, ‘what did you tell him and what did he tell you?’
‘Both he and Inspector Raglan have been exceedingly kind to me. I hope you will likewise.’
‘I’ve nothing to be kind about,’ said Ferguson. ‘I don’t know what happened. Child gets her head shoved in a bucket and is drowned in the middle of a party. Nasty business. Mind you, doing in a child isn’t anything to be startled about nowadays. I’ve been called out to look at too many murdered children in the last seven to ten years—far too many. A lot of people who ought to be under mental restraint aren’t under mental restraint. No room in the asylums. They go about, nicely spoken, nicely got up and looking like everybody else, looking for somebody they can do in. And enjoy themselves. Don’t usually do it at a party, though. Too much chance of getting caught, I suppose, but novelty appeals even to a mentally disturbed killer.’
‘Have you any idea who killed her?’
‘Do you really suppose that’s a question I can answer just like that? I’d have to have some evidence, wouldn’t I? I’d have to be sure.’
‘You could guess,’ said Poirot.
‘Anyone can guess. If I’m called in to a case I have to guess whether the chap’s going to have measles or whether it’s a case of an allergy to shell-fish or to feather pillows. I have to ask questions to find out what they’ve been eating, or drinking, or sleeping on, or what other children they’ve been meeting. Whether they’ve been in a crowded bus with Mrs Smith’s or Mrs Robinson’s children who’ve all got the measles, and a few other things. Then I advance a tentative opinion as to which it is of the various possibilities, and that, let me tell you, is what’s called diagnosis. You don’t do it in a hurry and you make sure.’
‘Did you know this child?’
‘Of course. She was one of my patients. There are two of us here. Myself and Worrall. I happen to be the Reynolds’ doctor. She was quite a healthy child, Joyce. Had the usual small childish ailments. Nothing peculiar or out of the way. Ate too much, talked too much. Talking too much hadn’t done her any harm. Eating too much gave her what used to be called in the old days a bilious attack from time to time. She’d had mumps and chicken pox. Nothing else.’
‘But she had perhaps talked too much on one occasion, as you suggest she might be able to do?’
‘So that’s the tack you’re on? I heard some rumour of that. On the lines of “what the butler saw”—only tragedy instead of comedy. Is that it?’
‘It could form a motive, a reason.’
‘Oh yes. Grant you that. But there are other reasons. Mentally disturbed seems the usual answer nowadays. At any rate, it does always in the Magistrates’ courts. Nobody gained by her death, nobody hated her. But it seems to me with children nowadays you don’t need to look for the reason. The reason’s in another place. The reason’s in the killer’s mind. His disturbed mind or his evil mind or his kinky mind. Any kind of mind you like to call it. I’m not a psychiatrist. There are times when I get tired of hearing those words: “Remanded for a psychiatrist’s report,” after a lad has broken in somewhere, smashed the looking-glasses, pinched the bottles of whisky, stolen the silver, knocked an old woman on the head. Doesn’t matter much what it is now. Remand them for the psychiatrist’s report.’
‘And who would you favour, in this case, to remand for a psychiatrist’s report?’
‘You mean of those there at the “do” the other night?’
‘Yes.’
‘The murderer would have had to be there, wouldn’t he? Otherwise there wouldn’t have been a murder. Right? He was among the guests, he was among the helpers or he walked in through the window with malice aforethought. Probably he knew the fastenings of that house. Might have been in there before, looking round.