Elephants Can Remember (9 page)

‘And did – what’s-his-name?’

‘Edward? Oh yes, he liked him all right, I think. Almost a bit of hero-worship. Anyway, don’t you believe any stories you hear about scandals in the family or her having an affair with anyone or General Ravenscroft with that rather po-faced girl who did filing work for him and all that sort of thing. No. Whoever that wicked murderer was, it’s one who came from outside. The police never got on to anyone, a car was seen near there but there was nothing to it and they never got any further. But all the same I think one ought to look about for somebody perhaps who’d known them in Malaya or abroad or somewhere else, or even when they were first living at Bournemouth. One never knows.’

‘What did your husband think about it?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘He wouldn’t have known as much about them as you would, of course, but still he might have heard a lot.’

‘Oh, he heard a lot of talk, of course. In the George and Flag, of an evening, you know. People saying all sorts of things. Said as she drank and that cases of empty bottles had been taken out of the house. Absolutely untrue, that was, I know for a fact. And there was a nephew as used to come and see them sometimes. Got into trouble with the police in some way, he did, but I don’t think there was anything in that. The police didn’t, either. Anyway, it wasn’t at that time.’

‘There was no one else really living in the house, was there, except the General and Lady Ravenscroft?’

‘Well, she had a sister as used to come sometimes, Lady Ravenscroft did. She was a half-sister, I think. Something like that. Looked rather like Lady Ravenscroft. She made a bit of trouble between them, I always used to think, when she came for a visit. She was one of those who likes stirring things up, if you know what I mean. Just said things to annoy people.’

‘Was Lady Ravenscroft fond of her?’

‘Well, if you ask me, I don’t think she was really. I think the sister more or less wished herself on to them sometimes and she didn’t like not to have her, but I think she found it pretty trying to have her there. The General quite liked her because she played cards well. Played chess and things with him and he enjoyed that. And she was an amusing woman in a way. Mrs Jerryboy or something like that, her name was. She was a widow, I think. Used to borrow money from them, I think, too.’

‘Did you like her?’

‘Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, ma’am, no, I didn’t like her. I disliked her very much. I thought she was one of those trouble-makers, you know. But she hadn’t been down for some time before the tragedy happened. I don’t really remember very much what she was like. She had a son as came with her once or twice. Didn’t like him very much. Shifty, I thought.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I suppose nobody will really ever know the truth. Not now. Not after all this time. I saw my goddaughter the other day.’

‘Did you now, ma’am. I’d be interested to hear about Miss Celia. How is she? All right?’

‘Yes. She seems quite all right. I think she’s thinking perhaps of getting married. At any rate she’s got a –’

‘Got a steady boy-friend, has she?’ said Mrs Buckle. ‘Ah well, we’ve all got that. Not that we all marry the first one we settle on. Just as well if you don’t, nine times out of ten.’

‘You don’t know a Mrs Burton-Cox, do you?’ asked Mrs Oliver.

‘Burton-Cox? I seem to know that name. No, I don’t think so. Wasn’t living down here or come to stay with them or anything? No, not that I remember. Yet I did hear something. Some old friend of General Ravenscroft, I think, which he’d known in Malaya. But I don’t know.’ She shook her head.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I mustn’t stay gossiping with you any longer. It’s been so nice to see you and Marlene.’

‘A telephone call for you,’ said Hercule Poirot’s man-servant, George. ‘From Mrs Oliver.’

‘Ah yes, George. And what had she to say?’

‘She wondered if she could come and see you this evening, sir, after dinner.’

‘That would be admirable,’ said Poirot. ‘Admirable. I have had a tiring day. It will be a stimulating experience to see Mrs Oliver. She is always entertaining as well as being highly unexpected in the things she says. Did she mention elephants, by the way?’

‘Elephants, sir? No, I do not think so.’

‘Ah. Then it would seem perhaps that the elephants have been disappointing.’

George looked at his master rather doubtfully. There were times when he did not quite understand the relevance of Poirot’s remarks.

‘Ring her back,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘tell her I shall be delighted to receive her.’

George went away to carry out this order, and returned to say that Mrs Oliver would be there about quarter to nine.

‘Coffee,’ said Poirot. ‘Let coffee be prepared and some
petit-fours
. I rather think I ordered some in lately from Fortnum and Mason.’

‘A liqueur of any kind, sir?’

‘No, I think not. I myself will have some
Sirop de
Cassis
.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mrs Oliver arrived exactly on time. Poirot greeted her with every sign of pleasure.

‘And how are you,
chère madame
?’

‘Exhausted,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She sank down into the armchair that Poirot indicated.

‘Completely exhausted.’

‘Ah.
Qui va à la chasse
– oh, I cannot remember the saying.’

‘I remember it,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I learnt it as a child. “
Qui va à la chasse perd sa place
.”’

‘That, I am sure, is not applicable to the chase you have been conducting. I am referring to the pursuit of elephants, unless that was merely a figure of speech.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I have been pursuing elephants madly. Here, there and everywhere. The amount of petrol I have used, the amount of trains I have taken, the amount of letters I’ve written, the amount of telegrams I’ve sent – you wouldn’t believe how exhausting it all is.’

‘Then repose yourself. Have some coffee.’

‘Nice, strong, black coffee – yes, I will. Just what I want.’

‘Did you, may I ask, get any results?’

‘Plenty of results,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know whether any of them are any use.’

‘You learn facts, however?’

‘No. Not really. I learnt things that people told me were facts, but I strongly doubt myself whether any of them
were
facts.’

‘They were hearsay?’

‘No. They were what I said they would be. They were memories. Lots of people who had memories. The trouble is, when you remember things you don’t always remember them right, do you?’

‘No. But they are still what you might describe perhaps as results. Is not that so?’

‘And what have you done?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You are always so stern, madame,’ said Poirot. ‘You demand that I run about, that I also do things.’

‘Well, have you run about?’

‘I have not run about, but I have had a few consultations with others of my own profession.’

‘It sounds far more peaceful than what I have been doing,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Oh, this coffee is nice. It’s really strong. You wouldn’t believe how tired I am. And how muddled.’

‘Come, come. Let us have good expectancy. You have got things. You have got something, I think.’

‘I’ve got a lot of different suggestions and stories. I don’t know whether any of them are true.’

‘They could be not true, but still be of use,’ said Poirot.

‘Well, I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and that’s what I think, too. I mean, that’s what Ithought when I went about it. When people remember something and tell you about it – I mean, it’s often not quite actually what occurred, but it’s what they themselves thought occurred.’

‘But they must have had something on which to base it,’ said Poirot.

‘I’ve brought you a list of a kind,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I don’t need to go into details of where I went or what I said or why, I went out deliberately for – well, information one couldn’t perhaps get from anybody in this country now. But it’s all from people who knew something about the Ravenscrofts, even if they hadn’t known them very well.’

‘News from foreign places, do you mean?’

‘Quite a lot of them were from foreign places. Other people who knew them here rather slightly or from people whose aunts or cousins or friends knew them long ago.’

‘And each one that you’ve noted down had
some
story to tell – some reference to the tragedy or to people involved?’

‘That’s the idea,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I’ll tell you roughly, shall I?’

‘Yes. Have a
petit-four
.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She took a particularly sweet and rather bilious-looking one and champed it with energy.

‘Sweet things,’ she said, ‘really give you a lot of vitality, I always think. Well now, I’ve got the following suggestions. These things have usually been said to me starting by: – “Oh yes, of course!” “How sad it was, that whole story!” “Of course, I think everyone knows really what happened.” That’s the sort of thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘These people
thought
they knew what happened. But there weren’t really any very good reasons. It was just something someone had told them, or they’d heard either from friends or servants or relations or things like that. The suggestions, of course, are all the kind that you might think they were. A. That General Ravenscroft was writing his memoirs of his Malayan days and that he had a young woman who acted as his secretary and took dictation and typed things for him and was helping him, that she was a nice-looking girl and no doubt there was something there. The result being – well, there seemed to be two schools of thought. One school of thought was that he shot his wife because he hoped to marry the girl, and then when he had shot her, immediately was horror-stricken at what he’d done and shot himself . . .’

‘Exactly,’ said Poirot. ‘A romantic explanation.’

‘The other idea was that there had been a tutor who came to give lessons to the son who had been ill and away from his prep school for six months or so – a good-looking young man.’

‘Ah yes. And the wife had fallen in love with the young man. Perhaps had an affair with him?’

‘That was the idea,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘No kind of evidence. Just romantic suggestion again.’

‘And therefore?’

‘Therefore I think the idea was that the General probably shot his wife and then in a fit of remorse shot himself. There was another story that the General had had an affair, and his wife found out about it, that she shot him and then herself. It’s always been slightly different every time. But nobody really knew anything. I mean, it’s always just a likely story every time. I mean, the General may have had an affair with a girl or lots of girls or just another married woman, or it might have been the wife who had an affair with someone. It’s been a different someone in each story I’ve been told. There was nothing definite about it or any evidence for it. It’s just the gossip that went around about twelve or thirteen years ago, which people have rather forgotten about now. But they remember enough about it to tell one a few names and get things only moderately wrong about what happened. There was an angry gardener who happened to live on the place, there was a nice elderly cook-housekeeper, who was rather blind and rather deaf, but nobody seems to suspect that she had anything to do with it. And so on. I’ve got all the names and possibilities written down. The names of some of them wrong and some of them right. It’s all very difficult. His wife had been ill, I gather, for some short time, I think it was some kind of fever that she had. A lot of her hair must have fallen out because she bought four wigs. There were at least four new wigs found among her things.’

‘Yes. I, too, heard that,’ said Poirot.

‘Who did you hear it from?’

‘A friend of mine in the police. He went back over the accounts of the inquest and the various things in the house. Four wigs! I would like to have your opinion on that, madame. Do you think that four wigs seems somewhat excessive?’

‘Well, I do really,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I had an aunt who had a wig, and she had an extra wig, but she sent one back to be redressed and wore the second one. I never heard of anyone who had four wigs.’

Mrs Oliver extracted a small notebook from her bag, ruffled the pages of it, searching for extracts.

‘Mrs Carstairs, she’s seventy-seven and rather gaga. Quote from her: “I do remember the Ravenscrofts quite well. Yes, yes, a very nice couple. It’s very sad, I think. Yes. Cancer it was!” I asked her which of them had cancer,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but Mrs Carstairs had rather forgotten about that. She said she thought the wife came to London and consulted a doctor and had an operation and then came home and was very miserable, and her husband was very upset about her. So of course he shot her and himself.’

‘Was that her theory or did she have an exact knowledge?’

‘I think it was entirely theory. As far as I can see and hear in the course of my investigations,’ said Mrs Oliver, making rather a point of this last word, ‘when anybody has heard that any of their friends whom they don’t happen to know very well have sudden illness or consult doctors, they always think it’s cancer. And so do the people themselves, I think. Somebody else – I can’t read her name here, I’ve forgotten, I think it began with T – she said that it was the husband who had cancer. He was very unhappy, and so was his wife. And they talked it over together and they couldn’t bear the thought of it all, so they decided to commit suicide.’

‘Sad and romantic,’ said Poirot.

‘Yes, and I don’t think really true,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It is worrying, isn’t it? I mean, the people remembering so much and that they really mostly seem to have made it up themselves.’

‘They have made up the solution of something they knew about,’ said Poirot. ‘That is to say, they know that somebody comes to London, say, to consult a doctor, or that somebody has been in hospital for two or three months. That is a
fact
that they know.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and then when they come to talk about it a long time afterwards, they’ve got the solution for it which they’ve made up themselves. That isn’t awfully helpful, is it?’

‘It is helpful,’ said Poirot. ‘You are quite right, you know, in what you said to me.’

‘About elephants?’ said Mrs Oliver, rather doubtfully.

‘About elephants,’ said Poirot. ‘It is important to know certain facts which have lingered in people’s memories although they may not know exactly what the fact was, why it happened or what led to it. But they might easily know something that we do not know and that we have no means of learning. So there have been memories leading to theories – theories of infidelity, of illness, of suicide pacts, of jealousy, all these things have been suggested to you. Further search could be made as to points if they seem in any way probable.’

‘People like talking about the past,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘They like talking about the past really much more than they like talking about what’s happening now, or what happened last year. It brings things back to them. They tell you, of course, first about a lot of other people that you don’t want to hear about and then you hear what the other people that they’ve remembered knew about somebody else that they didn’t know but they heard about. You know, so that the General and Lady Ravenscroft you hear about is at one remove, as it were. It’s like family relationships,’ she said. ‘You know, first cousin once removed, second cousin twice removed, all the rest of it. I don’t think I’ve been really very helpful, though.’

‘You must not think that,’ said Poirot. ‘I am pretty sure that you will find that some of these things in your agreeable little purple-coloured notebook will have something to do with the past tragedy. I can tell you from my own enquiries into the official accounts of these two deaths, that they have remained a mystery. That is, from the police point of view. They were an affectionate couple, there was no gossip or hearsay much about them of any sex trouble, there was no illness discovered such as would have caused anyone to take their own lives. I talk now only of the time, you understand, immediately preceding the tragedy. But there was a time before that, further back.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘and I’ve got something about that from an old Nanny. An old Nanny who is now – I don’t know, she might be a hundred, but I think she’s only about eighty. I remember her from my childhood days. She used to tell me stories about people in the Services abroad – India, Egypt, Siam and Hong Kong and the rest.’

‘Anything that interested you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘there was some tragedy that she talked about. She seemed a bit uncertain about what it was. I’m not sure that it had anything to do with the Ravenscrofts, it might have been to do with some other people out there because she doesn’t remember surnames and things very well. It was a mental case in one family. Someone’s sister-in-law. Either General Whoever-it-was’s sister or Mrs Who-ever-it-was’ssister. Somebody who’d been in a mental home for years. I gathered she’d killed her own children or tried to kill her own children long ago, and then she’d been supposed to be cured or paroled or something and came out to Egypt, or Malaya or wherever it was. She came out to stay with the people. And then it seems there was some other tragedy, connected again, I think, with children or something of that kind. Anyway, it was something that was hushed up. But I wondered. I mean, if there was something mental in the family, either Lady Ravenscroft’s family or General Ravenscroft’s family. I don’t think it need have been as near as a sister. It could have been a cousin or something like that. But – well, it seemed to me a possible line of enquiry.’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘there’s always possibility and something that waits for many years and then comes home to roost from somewhere in the past. That is what someone said to me.
Old sins have long shadows
.’