Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [68]
‘Well, I’m sure if you’d say a word for me and tell them, being a lady as knows what’s what, how it came about, and how I never meant to—well, not to do anything dishonest in any way. I mean, all I did–’
‘All you did was to say nothing,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It seems quite a reasonable explanation.’
‘And if it could come from you—saying a word for me first, you know, to explain, I’d be ever so grateful.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Mrs Oliver.
Her eyes strayed to the garden path where she saw a neat figure approaching.
‘Well, thanks ever so much. They said as you were a very nice lady, and I’m sure I’m much obliged to you.’
She rose to her feet, replaced the cotton gloves which she had twisted entirely off in her anguish, made a kind of half nod or bob, and trotted off. Mrs Oliver waited until Poirot approached.
‘Come here,’ she said, ‘and sit down. What’s the matter with you? You look upset.’
‘My feet are extremely painful,’ said Hercule Poirot.
‘It’s those awful tight patent leather shoes of yours,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Sit down. Tell me what you came to tell me, and then I’ll tell you something that you may be surprised to hear!’
Chapter 18
Poirot sat down, stretched out his legs and said: ‘Ah! that is better.’
‘Take your shoes off,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and rest your feet.’
‘No, no, I could not do that.’ Poirot sounded shocked at the possibility.
‘Well, we’re old friends together,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and Judith wouldn’t mind if she came out of the house. You know, if you’ll excuse me saying so, you oughtn’t to wear patent leather shoes in the country. Why don’t you get yourself a nice pair of suède shoes? Or the things all the hippy-looking boys wear nowadays? You know, the sort of shoes that slip on, and you never have to clean them—apparently they clean themselves by some extraordinary process or other. One of these labour-saving gimmicks.’
‘I would not care for that at all,’ said Poirot severely. ‘No, indeed!’
‘The trouble with you is,’ said Mrs Oliver, beginning to unwrap a package on the table which she had obviously recently purchased, ‘the trouble with you is that you insist on being smart. You mind more about your clothes and your moustaches and how you look and what you wear than comfort. Now comfort is really the great thing. Once you’ve passed, say, fifty, comfort is the only thing that matters.’
‘Madame, chère Madame, I do not know that I agree with you.’
‘Well, you’d better,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘If not, you will suffer a great deal, and it will be worse year after year.’
Mrs Oliver fished a gaily covered box from its paper bag. Removing the lid of this, she picked up a small portion of its contents and transferred it to her mouth. She then licked her fingers, wiped them on a handkerchief, and murmured, rather indistinctly:
‘Sticky.’
‘Do you no longer eat apples? I have always seen you with a bag of apples in your hand, or eating them, or on occasions the bag breaks and they tumble out on the road.’
‘I told you,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I told you that I never want to see an apple again. No. I hate apples. I suppose I shall get over it some day and eat them again, but—well, I don’t like the associations of apples.’
‘And what is it that you eat now?’ Poirot picked up the gaily coloured lid decorated with a picture of a palm tree. ‘Tunis dates,’ he read. ‘Ah, dates now.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Dates.’
She took another date and put it in her mouth, removed a stone which she threw into a bush and continued to munch.
‘Dates,’ said Poirot. ‘It is extraordinary.’
‘What is extraordinary about eating dates? People do.’
‘No, no, I did not mean that. Not eating them. It is extraordinary that you should say to me like that –dates.’
‘Why?’ asked Mrs Oliver.
‘Because,’ said Poirot, ‘again and again you indicate to me the path, the how do you say, the chemin that I should take or that I should have already taken. You show me the way that I should go. Dates. Till this moment I did not realize how important dates were.’
‘I can’t see