Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [69]
‘The event took place four days ago. Yes, that is very true. But to everything that happens there has to be a past. A past which is by now incorporated in today, but which existed yesterday or last month or last year. The present is nearly always rooted in the past. A year, two years, perhaps even three years ago, a murder was committed. A child saw that murder. Because that child saw that murder on a certain date now long gone by, that child died four days ago. Is not that so?’
‘Yes. That’s so. At least, I suppose it is. It mightn’t have been at all. It might be just some mentally disturbed nut who liked killing people and whose idea of playing with water is to push somebody’s head under it and hold it there. It might have been described as a mental delinquent’s bit of fun at a party.’
‘It was not that belief that brought you to me, Madame.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘no, it wasn’t. I didn’t like the feel of things. I still don’t like the feel of things.’
‘And I agree with you. I think you are quite right. If one does not like the feel of things, one must learn why. I am trying very hard, though you may not think so, to learn why.’
‘By going around and talking to people, finding out if they are nice or not and then asking them questions?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And what have you learnt?’
‘Facts,’ said Poirot. ‘Facts which will have in due course to be anchored in their place by dates, shall we say.’
‘Is that all? What else have you learnt?’
‘That nobody believes in the veracity of Joyce Reynolds.’
‘When she said she saw someone killed? But I heard her.’
‘Yes, she said it. But nobody believes it is true. The probability is, therefore, that it was not true. That she saw no such thing.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘as though your facts were leading you backwards instead of remaining on the spot or going forward.’
‘Things have to be made to accord. Take forgery, for instance. The fact of forgery. Everybody says that a foreign girl, the au pair girl, so endeared herself to an elderly and very rich widow that that rich widow left a Will, or a codicil to a Will, leaving all her money to this girl. Did the girl forge that Will or did somebody else forge it?’
‘Who else could have forged it?’
‘There was another forger in this village. Someone, that is, who had once been accused of forgery but had got off lightly as a first offender and with extenuating circumstances.’
‘Is this a new character? One I know?’
‘No, you do not know him. He is dead.’
‘Oh? When did he die?’
‘About two years ago. The exact date I do not as yet know. But I shall have to know. He is someone who had practised forgery and who lived in this place. And because of a little what you might call girl trouble arousing jealousy and various emotions, he was knifed one night and died. I have the idea, you see, that a lot of separated incidents might tie up more closely than anyone has thought. Not any of them. Probably not all of them, but several of them.’
‘It sounds interesting,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but I can’t see–’
‘Nor can I as yet,’ said Poirot. ‘But I think dates might help. Dates of certain happenings, where people were, what happened to them, what they were doing. Everybody thinks that the foreign girl forged the Will and probably,’ said Poirot, ‘everybody was right. She was the one to gain by it, was she not? Wait—wait–’
‘Wait for what?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘An idea that passed through my head,’ said Poirot.
Mrs Oliver sighed and took another date.
‘You return to London, Madame? Or are you making a long stay here?’
‘Day after tomorrow,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I can’t stay any longer. I’ve got a good many things cropping up.’
‘Tell me, now—in your flat, your house, I cannot remember which it is now, you have moved so many times lately, there is room there to have guests?’
‘I never admit that there is,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘If you ever admit that