Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie
She gave a little whinney of laughter, putting her head slightly on one side.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, as she tipped up the sherry glass, ‘perhaps you will think about it and I also will let you know. Perhaps the exact points and things that I am worried about.’
She looked at her watch.
‘Oh dear. Oh dear, I’m late for another appointment. I shall have to go. I am so sorry, dear Mrs Oliver, to have to run away so soon, but you know what it is. I had great difficulties finding a taxi this afternoon. One after another just turned his head aside and drove straight past me. All very, very difficult, isn’t it? I think Mrs Oliver has your address, has she not?’
‘I will give you my address,’ said Poirot. He removed a card from his pocket and handed it to her.
‘Oh yes, yes. I see. Monsieur Hercule Poirot. You are French, is that right?’
‘I am Belgian,’ said Poirot. ‘Oh yes, yes. Belgique. Yes, yes, I quite understand. I am so pleased to have met you and I feel so hopeful. Oh dear, I must go very, very fast.’
Shaking Mrs Oliver warmly by the hand, then extending the same hand to Poirot, she left the room and the door sounded in the hall.
‘Well, what do you think of that?’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘What do you?’ said Poirot.
‘She ran away,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘She ran away. You frightened her in some way.’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘I think you’ve judged quite right.’
‘She wanted me to get things out of Celia, she wanted me to get some knowledge out of Celia, some expression, some sort of secret she suspected was there, but she doesn’t want a real proper investigation, does she?’
‘I think not,’ said Poirot. ‘That is interesting. Very interesting. She is well-to-do, you think?’
‘I should say so. Her clothes are expensive, she lives at an expensive address, she is – it’s difficult to make out. She’s a pushing woman and a bossy woman. She sits on a lot of committees. There’s nothing, I mean, suspicious about her. I’ve asked a few people. Nobody likes her very much. But she’s a sort of public-spirited woman who takes part in politics, all those sort of things.’
‘Then what is wrong with her?’ said Poirot.
‘You think there is something wrong with her? Or do you just not like her, like I do?’
‘I think there is something there that she does not want to come to light,’ said Poirot.
‘Oh. And are you going to find out what it is?’
‘Naturally, if I can,’ said Poirot. ‘It may not be easy. She is in retreat. She was in retreat when she left us here. She was afraid of what questions I was going to ask her. Yes. It is interesting.’ He sighed. ‘One will have to go back, you know, even farther than one thought.’
‘What, back into the past again?’
‘Yes. Somewhere in the past, in more cases than one, there is something that one will have to know before we can come back again to what happened – what is it now? – fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, at a house called Overcliffe. Yes. One will have to go back again.’
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘And now, what is there to do? What is this list of yours?’
‘I have heard a certain amount of information through police records on what was found in the house. You will remember that among the things there were four wigs.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘you said that four wigs were too many.’
‘It seemed to be a little excessive,’ said Poirot. ‘I have also got certain useful addresses. The address of a doctor that might be helpful.’
‘The doctor? You mean, the family doctor?’
‘No, not the family doctor. The doctor who gave evidence at an inquest on a child who met with an accident. Either pushed by an older child or possibly by someone else.’
‘You mean by the mother?’
‘Possibly the mother, possibly by someone else who was in the house at the time. I know the part of England where that happened, and Superintendent Garroway has been able to trace him, through sources known to him and also through journalistic friends of mine, who were interested in this particular case.’
‘And you’re going to see – he must be a very old man by now.’
‘It is not him I shall go to see, it is his son. His son is also qualified as a specialist in various forms of mental disorders. I have an introduction to him and he might be able to tell me something interesting. There have also been enquiries into a case of money.’
‘What do you mean by money?’
‘Well, there are certain things we have to find out. That is one of the things in anything which might be a crime. Money. Who has money to lose by some happening, who has money to gain by something happening. That, one has to find out.’
‘Well, they must have found out in the case of the Ravenscrofts.’
‘Yes, that was all quite natural, it seems. They had both made normal wills, leaving in each case, the money to the other partner. The wife left her money to the husband and the husband left his money to his wife. Neither of them benefited by what happened because they both died. So that the people who did profit, were the daughter, Celia, and a younger child, Edward, who I gather is now at a university abroad.’
‘Well, that won’t help. Neither of the children were there or could have had anything to do with it.’
‘Oh no, that is quite true. One must go further – further back, further forward, further sideways to find out if there is some financial motive somewhere that is – well, shall we say, significant.’
‘Well, don’t ask me to do that sort of thing,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I’ve no real qualifications for that. I mean, that’s come up, I suppose, fairly reasonable in the – well, in the elephants that I’ve talked to.’
‘No. I think the best thing for you to do would be to, shall we say, take on the subject of the wigs.’
‘Wigs?’
‘There had been a note made in the careful police report at the time of the suppliers of the wigs, who were a very expensive firm of hairdressers and wig-makers in London, in Bond Street. Later, that particular shop closed and the business was transferred somewhere else. Two of the original partners continued to run it and I understand it has now been given up, but I have here an address of one of the principal fitters and hairdressers, and I thought perhaps that it would come more easily if enquiries were made by a woman.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘All right. What do you want me to do?’
‘Pay a visit to Cheltenham to an address I shall give you and there you will find a Madame Rosentelle. A woman no longer young but who was a very fashionable maker of ladies’ hair adornments of all kinds, and who was married, I understand, to another in the same profession, a hairdresser who specialized in surmounting the problems of gentlemen’s baldness. Toupees and other things.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘the jobs you do give me to do. Do you think they’ll remember anything about it?’
‘Elephants remember,’ said Hercule Poirot.
‘Oh, and who are you going to ask questions of ? This doctor you talked about?’
‘For one, yes.’
‘And what do you think he’ll remember?’
‘Not very much,’ said Poirot, ‘but it seems to me possible that he might have heard about a certain accident. It must have been an interesting case, you know. There must be records of the case history.’
‘You mean of the twin sister?’
‘Yes. There were two accidents as far as I can hear connected with her. One when she was a young mother living in the country, at Hatters Green I think the address was, and again later when she was in Malaya. Each time an accident which resulted in the death of a child. I might learn something about –’
‘You mean that as they were twin sisters, that Molly – my Molly I mean – might also have had mental disability of some kind? I don’t believe it for a minute. She wasn’t like t
‘Yes. Yes, so it would seem. And a very happy person on the whole, would you say?’
‘Yes. She was a happy person. A very happy person. Oh, I know I never saw anything of her later in life, of course; she was living abroad. But it always seemed to me on the very rare occasions when I got a letter or went to see her that she was a happy person.’
‘And the twin sister you did not really know?’
‘No. Well, I think she was . . . well, quite frankly she was in an institution of some kind, I think, on the rare occasions that I saw Molly. She wasn’t at Molly’s wedding, not as a bridesmaid even.’
‘That is odd in itself.’
‘I still don’t see what you’re going to find out from that.’
‘Just information,’ said Poirot.
Chapter 14
Dr Willoughby
Hercule Poirot got out of the taxi, paid the fare and a tip, verified the fact that the address he had come to was the address corresponding to that written down in his little notebook, took carefully a letter from his pocket addressed to Dr Willoughby, mounted the steps to the house and pressed the bell. The door was opened by a manservant. On reception of Poirot’s name he was told that Dr Willoughby was expecting him.
He was shown into a small, comfortable room with bookshelves up the side of it, there were two armchairs drawn to the fire and a tray with glasses on it and two decanters. Dr Willoughby rose to greet him. He was a man between fifty and sixty with a lean, thin body, a high forehead, dark-haired and with very piercing grey eyes. He shook hands and motioned him to a seat. Poirot produced the letter from his pocket.
‘Ah, yes.’
The doctor took it from him, opened it, read it and then, placing it beside him, looked at Poirot with some interest.
‘I had already heard,’ he said, ‘from Superintendent Garroway and also, I may say, from a friend of mine in the Home Office, who also begged me to do what I can for you in the matter that interests you.’
‘It is a rather serious favour to ask, I know,’ said Poirot, ‘but there are reasons which make it important for me.’
‘Important for you after this number of years?’
‘Yes. Of course I shall quite understand if those particular events have passed out of your mind altogether.’
‘I can’t say they’ve done that. I am interested, as you may have heard, in special branches of my profession, and have been for many years.’
‘Your father, I know, was a very celebrated authority on them.’
‘Yes, he was. It was a great interest in his life. He had a lot of theories, some of them triumphantly proved right and some of them which proved disappointing. It is, I gather, a mental case you are interested in?’
‘A woman. Her name was Dorothea Preston-Grey.’
‘Yes. I was quite a young man at the time. I was already interested in my father’s line of thought although my theories and his did not always agree. The work he did was interesting and the work I did in collaboration interested me very much. I don’t know what your particular interest was in Dorothea Preston-Grey, as she was at the time, Mrs Jarrow later.’
‘She was one of twins, I gather,’ said Poirot.
‘Yes. That was at that moment, I may say, my father’s particular field of study. There was a project on hand at that time, to follow up the general lives of selected pairs of identical twins. Those who were brought up in the same environment, those who through various chances of life were brought up in entirely different environments. To see how alike they remained, how similar the things were that happened to them. Two sisters, perhaps, or two brothers who had hardly spent any of their life together and yet in an extraordinary way the same things seemed to happen to them at the same time. It was all – indeed it has been all – extremely interesting. However, that is not your interest in the matter, I gather.’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘it is a case, I think – the part of it that is to say that I’m interested in – of an accident to a child.’
‘That is so. It was in Surrey, I think. Yes, a very pleasant area, that, in which people lived. Not very far from Camberley, I think. Mrs Jarrow was a young widow at that time and she had two small children. Her husband had recently died in an accident. She was, as a result –’
‘Mentally disturbed?’ asked Poirot.
‘No, she was not thought to be so. She was deeply shocked by her husband’s death and had a great sense of loss, but she was not recovering very satisfactorily in the impression of her own doctor. He did not quite like the way her convalescence was tending, and she did not seem to be getting over her bereavement in the way that he would have liked. It seemed to be causing her rather peculiar reactions. Anyway, he wanted a consultation and my father was asked by him to come and see what he could make of it. He found her condition interesting, and at the same time he thought it held very decided dangers, and he seemed to think that it would be as well if she was put under observation in some nursing home where particular care could be taken. Things like that. Even more so after the case when this accident to the child happened. There were two children, and according to Mrs Jarrow’s account of what happened, it was the older child, a girl who attacked the little boy who was four or five years younger than she was, hitting him with a garden spade or hoe, so that he fell into an ornamental pond they had in the garden and was drowned. Well, these things, as you know, happen quite often among children. Children are pushed in a perambulator into a pond sometimes because an older child, being jealous, thinks that “Mummy will have so much less trouble if only Edward or Donald, or whatever his name is, wasn’t here,” or, “It would be much nicer for her.” It all results from jealousy. There did not seem to be any particular cause or evidence of jealousy in this case, though. The child had not resented the birth of her brother. On the other hand, Mrs Jarrow had not wanted this second child. Although her husband had been pleased to have this second child coming, Mrs Jarrow did not want it. She had tried two doctors with the idea of having an abortion but did not succeed in finding one who would perform what was then an illegal operation. It was said by one of the servants, and also by a boy who was bringing a telegram, I believe, to the house, that it was a woman who attacked the boy, not the other child. And one of the servants said very definitely she had been looking out of the window and that it was her mistress. She said, “I don’t think the poor thing knows what she is doing nowadays. You know, just since the master died she’s been in, oh, such a state as never was.” Well, as I say, I don’t know exactly what you want to know about the case. A verdict was brought in of accident, it was considered to be an accident, and the children had been said to be playing together, pushing each other, etcetera, and that therefore it was undoubtedly a very unfortunate accident. It was left at that, but my father when consulted, and after a conversation with Mrs Jarrow and certain tests, questionnaires, sympathetic remarks to her and questions, he was quite sure she had been responsible for what happened. According to his advice it would be advisable for her to have mental treatment.’
‘But your father was quite sure that she had been responsible?’
‘Yes. There was a school of treatment at the time which was very popular and which my father believed in. That school’s belief was that after sufficient treatment, lasting sometimes quite a long time, a year or longer, people could resume a normal everyday life, and it was to their advantage to do so. They could be returned to live at home and with a suitable amount of attention, both medical and from those, usually near relatives, who were with them and could observe them living a normal life, everything would go well. This, I may say, did meet with success at first in many cases, but later there was a difference. Several cases had most unfortunate results. Patients who appeared to be cured came home to their natural surroundings, to a family, a husband, their mothers and fathers, and slowly relapsed, so that very often tragedies or near trage
Poirot shook his head sadly –
The doctor went on: ‘Yes. Well, I consider that in a mild way Dorothea Preston-Grey suffered from a form of mental disorder that was dangerous and that she could only be considered safe if she lived under supervision. This was not generally accepted, I may say, at the time, and my father did consider it most inadvisable. Once she had been committed to a very pleasant nursing home a very good treatment was given. And again, after a period of years she appeared to be completely sane, left the establishment, lived in an ordinary life with a very pleasant nurse more or less in charge of her, though considered in the household as a lady’s maid. She went about, made friends and sooner or later went abroad.’
‘To Malaya,’ said Poirot.
‘Yes. I see you’ve been correctly informed. She went to Malaya to stay with her twin sister.’
‘And there another tragedy happened?’
‘Yes. A child of a neighbour was attacked. It was thought at first by an amah, and afterwards I believe one of the native servants, a bearer, was suspected. But there again there seemed no doubt that Mrs Jarrow had, for one of those mental reasons known only to her, been guilty of the attack. There was no definite evidence, I understand, which could be brought against her. I think General – I forget his name now –’