it was all a great success. It finished up with Snapdragon. You know, burning raisins in a great dish. I suppose—’ her voice faltered, ‘—I suppose that must be the actual time when it was done.’
‘When what was done?’
‘A murder. After the Snapdragon everyone went home,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘That, you see, was when they couldn’t find her.’
‘Find whom?’
‘A girl. A girl called Joyce. Everyone called her name and looked around and asked if she’d gone home with anyone else, and her mother got rather annoyed and said that Joyce must have felt tired or ill or something and gone off by herself, and that it was very thoughtless of her not to leave word. All the sort of things that mothers say when things like that happen. But anyway, we couldn’t find Joyce.’
‘And had she gone home by herself?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘she hadn’t gone home…’ Her voice faltered. ‘We found her in the end—in the library. That’s where—where someone did it, you know. Bobbing for apples. The bucket was there. A big, galvanized bucket. They wouldn’t have the plastic one. Perhaps if they’d had the plastic one it wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have been heavy enough. It might have tipped over—’
‘What happened?’ said Poirot. His voice was sharp.
‘That’s where she was found,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Someone, you know, someone had shoved her head down into the water with the apples. Shoved her down and held her there so that she was dead, of course. Drowned. Drowned. Just in a galvanized iron bucket nearly full of water. Kneeling there, sticking her head down to bob at an apple. I hate apples,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I never want to see an apple again.’
Poirot looked at her. He stretched out a hand and filled a small glass with cognac.
‘Drink this,’ he said. ‘It will do you good.’
Mrs Oliver put down the glass and wiped her lips.
‘You were right,’ she said. ‘That—that helped. I was getting hysterical.’
‘You have had a great shock, I see now. When did this happen?’
‘Last night. Was it only last night? Yes, yes, of course.’
‘And you came to me.’
It was not a quite a question, but it displayed a desire for more information than Poirot had yet had.
‘You came to me—why?’
‘I thought you could help,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You see, it’s—it’s not simple.’
‘It could be and it could not,’ said Poirot. ‘A lot depends. You must tell me more, you know. The police, I presume, are in charge. A doctor was, no doubt, called. What did he say?’
‘There’s to be an inquest,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Naturally.’
‘Tomorrow or the next day.’
‘This girl, Joyce, how old was she?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I should think perhaps twelve or thirteen.’
‘Small for her age?’
‘No, no, I should think rather mature, perhaps. Lumpy,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Well developed? You mean sexy-looking?’
‘Yes, that is what I mean. But I don’t think that was the kind of crime it was—I mean that would have been more simple, wouldn’t it?’
‘It is the kind of crime,’ said Poirot, ‘of which one reads every day in the paper. A girl who is attacked, a school child who is assaulted—yes, every day. This happened in a private house which makes it different, but perhaps not so different as all that. But all the same, I’m not sure yet that you’ve told me everything.’
‘No, I don’t suppose I have,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I haven’t told you the reason, I mean, why I came to you.’
‘You knew this Joyce, you knew her well?’
‘I didn’t know her at all. I’d better explain to you, I think, just how I came to be there.’
‘There is where?’
‘Oh, a place called Woodleigh Common.’
‘Woodleigh Common,’ said Poirot thoughtfully. ‘Now where lately—’ he broke off.
‘It’s not very far from London. About—oh, thirty to forty miles, I think. It’s near Medchester. It’s one of those places where there are a few nice houses, but where a certain amount of new building has been done. Residential. A good school nearby, and people can commute from there to London or into Medchester. It’s quite an ordinary sort of place where people with what you might call everyday reasonable incomes live.’
‘Woodleigh Common,’ said Poirot again, thoughtfully.
‘I was staying with a friend there. Judith Butler. She’s a widow. I went on a Hellenic cruise this year and Judith was on the cruise and we became friends. She’s got a daughter. A girl called Miranda who is twelve or thirteen. Anyway, she asked me to come and stay and she said friends of hers were giving this party for children, and it was to be a Hallowe’en party. She said perhaps I had some interesting ideas.’
‘Ah,’ said Poirot, ‘she did not suggest this time that you should arrange a murder hunt or anything of that kind?’
‘Good gracious, no,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Do you think I should ever consider such a thing again?’
‘I should think it unlikely.’
‘But it happened, that’s what’s so awful,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have happened just because I was there, could it?’
‘I do not think so. At least—Did any of the people at the party know who you were?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘One of the children said something about my writing books and that they liked murders. That’s how it—well—that’s what led to the thing—I mean to the thing that made me come to you.’
‘Which you still haven’t told me.’
‘Well, you see, at first I didn’t think of it. Not straight away. I mean, children do queer things sometimes. I mean there are queer children about, children who—well, once I suppose they would have been in mental homes and things, but they send them home now and tell them to lead ordinary lives or something, and then they go and do something like this.’
‘There were some young adolescents there?’
‘There
