CHAPTER 7

Mrs Reynolds was a complete contrast to Mrs Drake. There was no air of poised competence about her, nor indeed was there ever likely to be.

She was wearing conventional black, had a moist handkerchief clasped in her hand and was clearly prepared to dissolve into tears at any moment.

‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ she said to Mrs Oli ver, ‘to bring a friend of yours down here to help us.’ She put a damp hand into Poirot’s and looked at him doubtfully. ‘And if he can help in any way I’m sure I’ll be very grateful, though I don’t see what anyone can do. Nothing will bring her back, poor child. It’s awful to think of. How anyone could deliberately kill anyone of that age. If she had only cried out—though I suppose he rammed her head under water straight away and held it there. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it. I really can’t.’

‘Indeed, Madame, I do not want to distress you. Please do not think of it. I only want to ask you a few questions that might help—help, that is, to find your daughter’s murderer. You’ve no idea yourself, I suppose, who it can possibly be?’

‘How could I have any idea? I shouldn’t have thought there was anyone, anyone living here, I mean. This is such a nice place. And the people living here are such nice people. I suppose it was just someone—some awful man who came in through one of the windows. Perhaps he’d taken drugs or something. He saw the light and that it was a party, so he gate-crashed.’

‘You are quite sure that the assailant was male?’

‘Oh, it must have been.’ Mrs Reynolds sounded shocked. ‘I’m sure it was. It couldn’t have been a woman, could it?’

‘A woman might have been strong enough.’

‘Well, I suppose in a way I know what you mean. You mean women are much more athletic nowadays and all that. But they wouldn’t do a thing like this, I’m sure. Joyce was only a child—thirteen years old.’

‘I don’t want to distress you by staying here too long, Madame, or to ask you difficult questions. That already, I am sure, the police are doing elsewhere, and I don’t want to upset you by dwelling on painful facts. It was just concerning a remark that your daughter made at the party. You were not there yourself, I think?’

‘Well, no, I wasn’t. I haven’t been very well lately and children’s parties can be very tiring. I drove them there, and then later I came back to fetch them. The three children went together, you know. Ann, that’s the older one, she is sixteen, and Leopold who is nearly eleven. What was it Joyce said that you wanted to know about?’

‘Mrs Oliver, who was there, will tell you what your daughter’s words were exactly. She said, I believe, that she had once seen a murder committed.’

‘Joyce? Oh, she couldn’t have said a thing like that. What murder could she possibly have seen committed?’

‘Well, everyone seems to think it was rather unlikely,’ said Poirot. ‘I just wondered if you thought it likely. Did she ever speak to you about such a thing?’

‘Seeing a murder? Joyce?’

‘You must remember,’ said Poirot, ‘that the term murder might have been used by someone of Joyce’s age in a rather loose way. It might have been just a question of somebody being run over by a car, or of children fighting together perhaps and one pushing another into a stream or over a bridge. Something that was not meant seriously, but which had an unfortunate result.’

‘Well, I can’t think of anything like that happening here that Joyce could have seen, and she certainly never said anything about it to me. She must have been joking.’

‘She was very positive,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘She kept on saying that it was true and that she’d seen it.’

‘Did anyone believe her?’ asked Mrs Reynolds.

‘I don’t know,’ said Poirot.

‘I don’t think they did,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘or perhaps they didn’t want to—er—well, encourage her by saying they believed it.’

‘They were inclined to jeer at her and say she was making it all up,’ said Poirot, less kind-hearted than Mrs Oliver.

‘Well, that wasn’t very nice of them,’ said Mrs Reynolds. ‘As though Joyce would tell a lot of lies about things like that.’ She looked flushed and indignant.

‘I know. It seems unlikely,’ said Poirot. ‘It was more possible, was it not, that she might have made a mistake, that she might have seen something she did think could have been described as a murder. Some accident, perhaps.’

‘She’d have said something about it to me, if so, wouldn’t she?’ said Mrs Reynolds, still indignant.

‘One would think so,’ said Poirot. ‘She did not say so at any time in the past? You might have forgotten. Especially if it wasn’t really important.’

‘When do you mean?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Poirot. ‘That is one of the difficulties. It might have been three weeks ago—or three years. She said she had been “quite young” at the time. What does a thirteen-year-old consider quite young? There was no sensational happening round here that you can recall?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, you do hear of things. Or read about them in the papers. You know, I mean women being attacked, or a girl and her young man, or things like that. But nothing important that I can remember, nothing that Joyce took an interest in or anything of that kind.’

‘But if Joyce said positively she saw a murder, would you think she really thought so?’

‘She wouldn’t say so unless she really did think so, would she?’ said Mrs Reynolds. ‘I think she must have got something mixed up really.’

‘Yes, it seems possible. I wonder,’ he asked, ‘if I might speak to your two children who were also at the party?’

‘Well, of course, though I don’t know what you can expect them to tell you. Ann’s doing her work for her “A” levels upstairs and Leopold’s in the garden assembling a model aeroplane.’

Leopold was a solid, pudgy faced boy entirely absorbed, it seemed, in mechanical construction. It was some few moments before he could pay attention to the questions he was being asked.

‘You were there, weren’t you, Leopold? You heard what your sister said. What did she say?’

‘Oh, you mean about the murder?’ He sounded bored. ‘Yes, that’s what I mean,’ said Poirot. ‘She said she saw a murder once. Did she really see such a thing?’

‘No, of course she didn’t,’ said Leopold. ‘Who on earth would she see murdered? It was just like Joyce, that.’

‘How do you mean, it was just like her?’

‘Showing off,’ said Leopold, winding round a piece of wire and breathing forcefully through his nose as he concentrated. ‘She was an awfully stupid sort of girl,’ he added. ‘She’d say anything, you know, to make people sit up and take notice.’

‘So you really think she invented the whole thing?’

Leopold shifted his gaze to Mrs Oliver.

‘I expect she wanted to impress you a bit,’ he said. ‘You write detective stories, don’t you? I think she was just putting it on so that you should take more notice of her than you did of the others.’

‘That would also be rather like her, would it?’ said Poirot.

‘Oh, she’d say anything,’ said Leopold. ‘I bet nobody believed her though.’

‘Were you listening? Do you think anyone believed it?’

‘Well, I heard her say it, but I didn’t really listen. Beatrice laughed at her and so did Cathie. They said “that’s a tall story,” or something.’

There seemed little more to be got out of Leopold. They went upstairs to where Ann, looking rather more than her sixteen years, was bending over a table with various study books spread round her.

‘Yes, I was at the party,’ she said.

‘You heard your sister say something about having seen a murder?’

‘Oh yes, I heard her. I didn’t take any notice, though.’

‘You didn’t think it was true?’

‘Of course it wasn’t true. There haven’t been any murders here for ages. I don’t think there’s been a proper murder for years.’

‘Then why do you think she said so?’

‘Oh, she likes showing off. I mean she used to like showing off. She had a wonderful story once about having travelled to India. My uncle had been on a voyage there and she pretended she went with him. Lots of girls at school actually believed her.’

‘So you don’t remember any what you call murders taking place here in the last three or four years?’

‘No, only the usual kind,’ said Ann. ‘I mean, the ones you read every day in the newspaper. And they weren’t actually here in Woodleigh Common. They were mostly in Medchester, I think.’

‘Who do you think killed your sister, Ann? You must have known her friends, you would know any people who didn’t like her.’

‘I can’t imagine who’d want to kill her. I suppose someone who was just batty. Nobody else would, would they?’

‘There was no one who had—quarrelled with her or who did not get on with her?’

‘You mean, did she have an enemy? I think that’s silly. People don’t have enemies really. There are just people you don’t like.’

As they departed from the room, Ann said:

‘I don’t want to be nasty about Joyce, because she’s dead, and it wouldn’t be kind, but she really was the most awful liar, you know. I mean, I’m sorry to say things about my sister, but it’s quite true.’

Are we making any progress?’ said Mrs Oliver as they left the house.

‘None whatever,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘That is interesting,’ he said thoughtfully.

Mrs Oliver looked as though she didn’t agree with him.