CHAPTER 16

Hercule Poirot looked with interest at Mrs Goodbody’s face. It was indeed perfect as a model for a witch. The fact that it almost undoubtedly went with extreme amiability of character did not dispel the illusion. She talked with relish and pleasure.

‘Yes, I was up there right enough, I was. I always does the witches round here. Vicar he complimented me last year and he said as I’d done such a good job in the pageant as he’d give me a new steeple hat. A witch’s hat wears out just like anything else does. Yes, I was right up there that day. I does the rhymes, you know. I mean the rhymes for the girls, using their own Christian name. One for Beatrice, one for Ann and all the rest of it. And I gives them to whoever is doing the spirit voice and they recite it out to the girl in the mirror, and the boys, Master Nicholas and young Desmond, they send the phoney photographs floating down. Make me die of laughing, some of it does. See those boys sticking hair all over their faces and photographing each other. And what they dress up in! I saw Master Desmond the other day, and what he was wearing you’d hardly believe. Rose-coloured coat and fawn breeches. Beat the girls hollow, they do. All the girls can think of is to push their skirts higher and higher, and that’s not much good to them because they’ve got to put on more underneath. I mean what with the things they call body stockings and tights, which used to be for chorus girls in my day and none other—they spend all their money on that. But the boys—my word, they look like kingfishers and peacocks or birds of paradise. Well, I like to see a bit of colour and I always think it must have been fun in those old historical days as you see on the pictures. You know, everybody with lace and curls and cavalier hats and all the rest of it. Gave the girls something to look at, they did. And doublet and hose. All the girls could think of in historical times, as far as I can see, was to put great balloon skirts on, crinolines they called them later, and great ruffles around their necks! My grandmother, she used to tell me that her young ladies—she was in service, you know, in a good Victorian family—and her young ladies (before the time of Victoria I think it was)—it was the time the King what had a head like a pear was on the throne—Silly Billy, wasn’t it, William IVth—well then, her young ladies, I mean my grandmother’s young ladies, they used to have muslin gowns very long down to their ankles, very prim but they used to damp their muslins with water so they stuck to them. You know, stuck to them so it showed everything there was to show. Went about looking ever so modest, but it tickled up the gentlemen, all right, it did.

‘I lent Mrs Drake my witch ball for the party. Bought that witch ball at a jumble sale somewhere. There it is hanging up there now by the chimney, you see? Nice bright dark blue. I keep it over my door.’

‘Do you tell fortunes?’

‘Mustn’t say I do, must I?’ she chuckled. ‘The police don’t like that. Not that they mind the kind of fortunes I tell. Nothing to it, as you might say. Place like this you always know who’s going with who, and so that makes it easy.’

‘Can you look in your witch ball, look in there, see who killed that little girl, Joyce?’

‘You got mixed up, you have,’ said Mrs Goodbody. ‘It’s a crystal ball you look in to see things, not a witch ball. If I told you who I thought it was did it, you wouldn’t like it. Say it was against nature, you would. But lots of things go on that are against nature.’

‘You may have something there.’

‘This is a good place to live, on the whole. I mean, people are decent, most of them, but wherever you go, the devil’s always got some of his own. Born and bred to it.’

‘You mean—black magic?’

‘No, I don’t mean that.’ Mrs Goodbody was scornful. ‘That’s nonsense, that is. That’s for people who like to dress up and do a lot of tomfoolery. Sex and all that. No, I mean those that the devil has touched with his hand. They’re born that way. The sons of Lucifer. They’re born so that killing don’t mean nothing to them, not if they profit by it. When they want a thing, they want it. And they’re ruthless to get it. Beautiful as angels, they can look like. Knew a little girl once. Seven years old. Killed her little brother and sister. Twins they were. Five or six months old, no more. Stifled them in their prams.’

‘That took place here in Woodleigh Common?’

‘No, no, it wasn’t in Woodleigh Common. I came across that up in Yorkshire, far as I remember. Nasty case. Beautiful little creature she was, too. You could have fastened a pair of wings on her, let her go on a platform and sing Christmas hymns, and she’d have looked right for the part. But she wasn’t. She was rotten inside. You’ll know what I mean. You’re not a young man. You know what wickedness there is about in the world.’

‘Alas!’ said Poirot. ‘You are right. I do know only too well. If Joyce really saw a murder committed—’

‘Who says she did?’ said Mrs Goodbody.

‘She said so herself.’

‘That’s no reason for believing. She’s always been a little liar.’ She gave him a sharp glance. ‘You won’t believe that, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot, ‘I do believe it. Too many people have told me so, for me to continue disbelieving it.’

‘Odd things crop up in families,’ said Mrs Goodbody. ‘You take the Reynolds, for example. There’s Mr Reynolds. In the estate business he is. Never cut much ice at it and never will. Never got on much, as you’d say. And Mrs Reynolds, always getting worried and upset about things. None of their three children take after their parents. There’s Ann, now, she’s got brains. She’s going to do well with her schooling, she is. She’ll go to college, I shouldn’t wonder, maybe get herself trained as a teacher. Mind you, she’s pleased with herself. She’s so pleased with herself that nobody can stick her. None of the boys look at her twice. And then there was Joyce. She wasn’t clever like Ann, nor as clever as her little brother Leopold, either, but she wanted to be. She wanted always to know more than other people and to have done better than other people and she’d say anything to make people sit up and take notice. But don’t you believe any single word she ever said was true. Because nine times out of ten it wasn’t.’

‘And the boy?’

‘Leopold? Well, he’s only nine or ten, I think, but he’s clever all right. Clever with his fingers and other ways, too. He wants to study things like physics. He’s good at mathematics, too. Quite surprised about it they were, in school. Yes, he’s clever. He’ll be one of these scientists, I expect. If you ask me, the things he does when he’s a scientist and the things he’ll think of—they’ll be nasty, like atom bombs! He’s one of the kind that studies and are ever so clever and think up something that’ll destroy half the globe, and all us poor folk with it. You beware of Leopold. He plays tricks on people, you know, and eavesdrops. Finds out all their secrets. Where he gets all his pocket money from I’d like to know. It isn’t from his mother or his father. They can’t afford to give him much. He’s got lots of money always. Keeps it in a drawer under his socks. He buys things. Quite a lot of expensive gadgets. Where does he get the money from? That’s what I’d like to know. Finds people’s secrets out, I’d say, and makes them pay him for holding his tongue.’

She paused for breath.

‘Well, I can’t help you, I’m afraid, in any way.’

‘You have helped me a great deal,’ said Poirot. ‘What happened to the foreign girl who is said to have run away?’

‘Didn’t go far, in my opinion. “Ding dong dell, pussy’s in the well.” That’s what I’ve always thought, anyway.’

CHAPTER 17

‘Excuse me, Ma’am, I wonder if I might speak to you a minute.’

Mrs Oliver, who was standing on the verandah of her friend’s house looking out to see if there were any signs of Hercule Poirot approaching—he had notified her by telephone that he would be coming round to see her about now—looked round.

A neatly attired woman of middle age was standing, twisting her hands nervously in their neat cotton gloves.

‘Yes?’ said Mrs Oliver, adding an interrogation point by her intonation.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you, I’m sure, Madam, but I thought—well, I thought…’

Mrs Oliver listened but did not attempt to prompt her. She wondered what was worrying the woman so much.

‘I take it rightly as you’re the lady who writes stories, don’t I? Stories about crimes and murders and things of that kind.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I’m the one.’

Her curiosity was now aroused. Was this a preface for a demand for an autograph or even a signed photograph? One never knew. The most unlikely things happened.

‘I thought as you’d be the right one to tell me,’ said the woman.

‘You’d better sit down,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She foresaw that Mrs Whoever-it-was—she was wearing a wedding ring so she was a Mrs—was the type who takes some time in getting to the point. The woman sat down and went on twisting her hands in their gloves.

‘Something you’re worried about?’ said Mrs Oliver, doing her best to start the flow.

‘Well, I’d like advice, and it’s true. It’s about something that happened a good while ago and I wasn’t really worried at the time. But you know how it is. You think things over and you wish you knew someone you could go and ask about it.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Oliver, hoping to inspire confidence by this entirely meretricious statement.

‘Seeing the things what have happened lately, you never do know, do you?’

‘You mean—?’

‘I mean what happened at the Hallowe’en party, or whatever they called it. I mean it shows you there’s people who aren’t dependable here, doesn’t it? And it shows you things before that weren’t as you thought they were. I mean, they mightn’t have been what you thought they were, if you understand what I mean.’

‘Yes?’ said Mrs Oliver, adding an even greater tinge of interrogation to the monosyllable. ‘I don’t think I know your name,’ she added.

‘Leaman. Mrs Leaman. I go out and do cleaning to oblige ladies here. Ever since my husband died, and that was five years ago. I used to work for Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, the lady who lived up at the Quarry House, before Colonel and Mrs Weston came. I don’t know if you ever knew her.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I never knew her. This is the first time I have been down to Woodleigh Common.’

‘I see. Well, you wouldn’t know much about what was going on perhaps at that time, and what was said at that time.’

‘I’ve heard a certain amount about it since I’ve been down here this time,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘You see, I don’t know anything about the law, and I’m worried always when it’s a question of law. Lawyers, I mean. They might tangle it up and I wouldn’t like to go to the police. It wouldn’t be anything to do with the police, being a legal matter, would it?’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Mrs Oliver, cautiously.

‘You know perhaps what they said at the time about the codi—I don’t know, some word like codi. Like the fish I mean.’

‘A codicil to the Will?’ suggested Mrs Oliver.

‘Yes, that’s right. That’s what I’m meaning. Mrs Llewellyn- Smythe, you see, made one of these cod—codicils and she left all her money to the foreign girl what looked after her. And it was a surprise, that, because she’d got relations living here, and she’d come here anyway to live near them. She was very devoted to them, Mr Drake, in particular. And it struck people as pretty queer, really. And then the lawyers, you see, they began saying things. They said as Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe hadn’t written the codicil at all. That the foreign pair girl had done it, seeing as she got all the money left to her. And they said as they were going to law about it. That Mrs Drake was going to counterset the Will—if that is the right word.’

‘The lawyers were going to contest the Will. Yes, I believe I did hear something about that,’ said Mrs Oliver encouragingly. ‘And you know something about it, perhaps?’

‘I didn’t mean no harm,’ said Mrs Leaman. A slight whine came into her voice, a whine with which Mrs Oliver had been acquainted several times in the past.

Mrs Leaman, she thought, was presumably an unreliable woman in some ways, a snooper perhaps, a listener at doors.

‘I didn’t say nothing at the time,’ said Mrs Leaman, ‘because you see I didn’t rightly know. But you see I thought it was queer and I’ll admit to a lady like you, who knows what these things are, that I did want to know the truth about it. I’d worked for Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe for some time, I had, and one wants to know how things happened.’

‘Quite,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘If I thought I’d done what I oughtn’t to have done, well, of course, I’d have owned up to it. But I didn’t think as I’d done anything really wrong, you see. Not at the time, if you understand,’ she added.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I’m sure I shall understand. Go on. It was about this codicil.’

‘Yes, you see one day Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe—she hadn’t felt too good that day and so she asked us to come in. Me that was, and young Jim who helps down in the garden and brings the sticks in and the coals, and things like that. So we went into her room, where she was, and she’d got papers before her there on the desk. And she turns to this foreign girl—Miss Olga we all called her—and said “You go out of the room now, dear, because you mustn’t be mixed up in this part of it,” or something like that. So Miss Olga, she goes out of the room and Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, she tells us to come close and she says “This is my Will, this is.” She got a bit of blotting paper over the top part of it but the bottom of it’s quite clear. She said “I’m writing something here on this piece of paper and I want you to be a witness of what I’ve written and of my signature at the end of it.” So she starts writing along the page. Scratchy pen she always used, she wouldn’t use Biros or anything like that. And she writes two or three lines of writing and then she signed her name, and then she says to me, “Now, Mrs Leaman, you write your name there. Your name and your address” and then she says to Jim “And now you write your name underneath there, and your address too. There. That’ll do. Now you’ve seen me write that and you’ve seen my signature and you’ve written your names, both of you, to say that’s that.” And then she says “That’s all. Thank you very much.” So we goes out of the room. Well, I didn’t think nothing more of it at the time, but I wondered a bit. And it happened as I turns my head just as I was going out of the room. You see the door doesn’t always latch properly. You have to give it a pull, to make it click. And so I was doing that—I wasn’t really looking, if you know what I mean—’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Oliver, in a noncommittal voice.

‘And so I sees Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe pull herself up from the chair—she’d got arthritis and had pain moving about sometimes—and go over to the bookcase and she pulled out a book and she puts that piece of paper she’d just signed—in an envelope it was—in one of the books. A big tall book it was in the bottom shelf. and she sticks it back is the bookcase. well, I never thought of it again, as you might say. No, really I didn’t. But when all this fuss came up, well, of course I felt—at least, I—’ She came to a stop.

Mrs Oliver had one of her useful intuitions.

‘But surely,’ she said, ‘you didn’t wait as long as all that—’

‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth, I will. I’ll admit I was curious. After all, I mean, you want to know when you’ve signed anything, what you’ve signed, don’t you? I mean, it’s only human nature.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘it’s only human nature.’

Curiosity, she thought, was a highly component part in Mrs Leaman’s human nature.

‘So I will admit that next day, when Mrs Lle wellyn- Smythe had driven into Medchester and I was doing her bedroom as usual—a bedsitting room she had because she had to rest a lot. And I thinks, “Well, one ought really to know when you’ve signed a thing, what it is you’ve signed.” I mean they always say with these hire purchase things, you should read the small print.’

‘Or in this case, the handwriting,’ suggested Mrs Oli ver.

‘So I thought, well, there’s no harm—it’s not as though I was taking anything. I mean to say I’d had to sign my name there, and I thought I really ought to know what I’d signed. So I had a look along the bookshelves. They needed dusting anyway. And I found the one. It was on the bottom shelf. It was an old book, a sort of Queen Victoria’s kind of book. And I found this envelope with a folded paper in it and the title of the book said Enquire Within upon Everything. And it seemed then as though it was, sort of meant, if you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It was clearly meant. And so you took out the paper and looked at it.’

‘That’s right, Madam. And whether I did wrong or not I don’t know. But anyway, there it was. It was a legal document all right. On the last page there was the writing what she’d made the morning before. New writing with a new scratchy pen she was using. It was clear enough to read, though, although she had a rather spiky handwriting.’

‘And what did it say?’ said Mrs Oliver, her curiosity now having joined itself to that previously felt by Mrs Leaman.

‘Well, it said something like, as far as I remember—the exact words I’m not quite sure of—something about a codicil and that after the legacies mentioned in her Will, she bequeathed her entire fortune to Olga—I’m not sure of the surname, it began with an S. Seminoff, or something like that—in consideration of her great kindness and attention to her during her illness. And there it was written down and she’d signed it and I’d signed it, and Jim had signed it. So I put it back where it was because I shouldn’t like Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe to know that I’d been poking about in her things.

‘But well, I said to myself, well, this is a surprise. And I thought, fancy that foreign girl getting all that money because we all know as Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe was very rich. Her husband had been in shipbuilding and he’d left her a big fortune, and I thought, well, some people have all the luck. Mind you, I wasn’t particularly fond of Miss Olga myself. She had a sharp way with her sometimes and she had quite a bad temper. But I will say as she was always very attentive and polite and all that, to the old lady. Looking out for herself, all right, she was, and she got away with it. And I thought, well, leaving all that money away from her own family. Then I thought, well, perhaps she’s had a tiff with them and likely as not that will blow over, so maybe she’ll tear this up and make another Will or codicil after all. But anyway, that was that, and I put it back and I forgot about it, I suppose.

‘But when all the fuss came up about the Will, and there was talk of how it had been forged and Mrs Llewellyn- Smythe could never have written that codicil herself—for that’s what they were saying, mind you, as it wasn’t the old lady who had written that at all, it was somebody else—’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘And so, what did you do?’

‘I didn’t do anything. And that’s what’s worrying me… I didn’t get the hang of things at once. And when I’d thought things over a bit I didn’t know rightly what I ought to do and I thought, well, it was all talk because the lawyers were against the foreigner, like people always are. I’m not very fond of foreigners myself, I’ll admit. At any rate, there it was, and the young lady herself was swanking about, giving herself airs, looking as pleased as Punch and I thought, well, maybe it’s all a legal thing of some kind and they’ll say she’s no right to the money because she wasn’t related to the old lady. So everything will be all right. And it was in a way because, you see, they gave up the idea of bringing the case. It didn’t come to court at all and as far as anyone knew, Miss Olga ran away. Went off back to the Continent somewhere, where she came from. So it looks as though there must have been some hocus-pocus of some kind on her part. Maybe she threatened the old lady and made her do it. You never know, do you? one of my nephews who’s going to be a doctor, says you can do wonderful things with hypnotism. I thought perhaps she hypnotised the old lady.’

‘This was how long ago?’

‘Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s been dead for—let me see, nearly two years.’

‘And it didn’t worry you?’

‘No, It didn’t worry me. Not at the time. Because you see, I didn’t rightly see that it mattered. Everything was all right, there wasn’t any question of that Miss Olga getting away with the money, so I didn’t see as it was any call for me—’

‘But now you feel differently?’

‘It’s that nasty death—the child that was pushed into a bucket of apples. Saying things about a murder, saying she’d seen something or known something about a murder. And I thought maybe as Miss Olga had murdered the old lady because she knew all this money was coming to her and then she got the wind up when there was a fuss and lawyers and the police, maybe, and so she ran away. So then I thought well, perhaps I ought to—well, I ought to tell someone, and I thought you’d be a lady as has got friends in legal departments. Friends in the police perhaps, and you’d explain to them that I was only dusting a bookshelf, and this paper was there in a book and I put it back where it belonged. I didn’t take it away or anything.’

‘But that’s what happened, was it, on that occasion? You saw Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write a codicil to her Will. You saw her write her name and you yourself and this Jim someone were both there and you both wrote your own names yourselves. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So if you both saw Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write her name, then that signature couldn’t have been a forgery, could it? Not if you saw her write it herself.’

‘I saw her write it herself and that’s the absolute truth I’m speaking. And Jim’d say so too only he’s gone to Australia, he has. Went over a year ago and I don’t know his address or anything. He didn’t come from these parts, anyway.’

‘And what do you want me to do?

‘Well, I want you to tell me if there’s anything I ought to say, or do—now. Nobody’s asked me, mind you. Nobody ever asked me if I knew anything about a Will.’

‘Your name is Leaman. What Christian name?’

‘Harriet.’

‘Harriet Leaman. And Jim, what was his last name?’

‘Well, now, what was it? Jenkins. That’s right. James Jenkins. I’d be much obliged if you could help me because it worries me, you see. All this trouble coming along and if that Miss Olga did it, murdered Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, I mean, and young Joyce saw her do it… She was ever so cock- a-hoop about it all, Miss Olga was, I mean about hearing from the lawyers as she’d come into a lot of money. But it was different when the police came round asking questions, and she went off very sudden, she did. Nobody asked me anything, they didn’t. But now I can’t help wondering if I ought to have said something at the time.’

‘I think,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘that you will probably have to tell this story of yours to whoever represented Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe as a lawyer. I’m sure a good lawyer will quite understand your feelings and your motive.’

‘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!’