Elephants Can Remember - Christie Agatha - Страница 29

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Oliver. "I've no real qualifications for that. I mean, that's come up, I suppose, fairly reasonably 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 wigmakers 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 inquiries 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 India. 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 that. She was affectionate, loving, very good-looking, emotional and-oh, she was a terribly nice person." "Yes. Yes, so it would seem. And a 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.

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 gray 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 favor 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.

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