Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [41]
‘Yes. She was a great friend in a way. She told me very interesting things sometimes. All about elephants and rajahs. She’d been to India once. I wish I’d been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all our secrets. I haven’t so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy’s been to Greece, you know. That’s where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn’t take me.’
‘Who told you about Joyce?’
‘Mrs Perring. That’s our cook. She was talking to Mrs Minden who comes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water.’
‘Have you any idea who that someone was?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. They didn’t seem to know, but then they’re both rather stupid really.’
‘Do you know, Miranda?’
‘I wasn’t there. I had a sore throat and a temperature so Mummy wouldn’t take me to the party. But I think I could know. Because she was drowned. That’s why I asked if you thought people were born to be drowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes.’
Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from the Quarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with her elfin slimness—it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous for Poirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding back the more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in the garden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cucumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neat garden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalow house. Miranda led the way through an open french window, announcing with the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of a rare beetle:
‘I’ve got him all right.
‘Miranda, you didn’t bring him through the hedge, did you? You ought to have gone round by the path at the side gate.’
‘This is a better way,’ said Miranda. ‘Quicker and shorter.’
‘And much more painful, I suspect.’
‘I forget,’ said Mrs Oliver—‘I did introduce you, didn’t I, to my friend Mrs Butler?’
‘Of course. In the post office.’
The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments while there had been a queue in front of the counter. Poirot was better able now to study Mrs Oliver’s friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matter of a slim woman in a disguising head-scarf and a mackintosh. Judith Butler was a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled a dryad or a wood-nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water-spirit. She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply on her shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintly hollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea-green eyes fringed with long eyelashes.
‘I’m very glad to thank you properly Monsieur Poirot,’ said Mrs Butler. ‘It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you.’
‘When my friend, Mrs Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have to do it,’ said Poirot.
‘What nonsense,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all about this beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen? You’ll find the scones on the wire tray above the oven.’
Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile directed at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say, ‘She’s getting me out of the way for a short time.’
‘I tried not to let her know,’ said Miranda’s mother, ‘about this—this horrible thing that happened. But I suppose that was a forlorn chance from the start.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Poirot. ‘There’s nothing that goes round any residential centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularly an unpleasant disaster. And anyway,’ he added, ‘one cannot go long through life without knowing what goes on around one. And children seem particularly apt at that sort of thing.’
‘I don’t know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said “There’s a chiel among you taking notes”,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but he certainly knew what he was talking about.’
‘Joyce Reynolds certainly