seems to me most unlikely.'
'It does not seem so unlikely to me,' said Poirot. 'Children do see things. They are so often, you see, not expected to be where they are.'
'But surely when they go home and relate what they have seen?'
'They might not,' said Poirot. 'They might not, you see, be sure what they had seen. Especially if what they had seen had been faintly frightening to them. Children do not always go home and report a street accident they have seen, or some unexpected violence. Children keep their secrets very well. Keep them and think about them. Sometimes they like to feel that they know a secret, a secret which they are keeping for themselves.'
'They'd tell their mothers,' said Mr. Fullerton.
'I am not so sure of that,' said Poirot. 'In my experience the things that children do not tell their mothers are quite numerous.'
'What interests you so much, may I know, about this case of Lesley Ferrier? The regrettable death of a young man by a violence which is so lamentably often amongst us nowadays?'
'I know nothing about him. But I wanted to know something about him because his is a violent death that occurred not many years ago. That might be important to me.'
'You know, Mr. Poirot,' said Mr. Fullerton, with some slight acerbity, 'I really cannot quite make out why you have come to me, and in what you are really interested. You cannot surely suspect any tie-up between the death of Joyce Reynolds and the death of a young man of promise but slightly criminal activities who has been dead for some years?'
'One can suspect anything,' said Poirot. 'One has to find out more.'
'Excuse me, what one has to have in all matters dealing with crime, is evidence.'
'You have perhaps heard that the dead girl Joyce was heard by several witnesses to say that she had with her own eyes witnessed a murder.'
'In a place like this,' said Mr. Fullerton, 'one usually hears any rumour that may be going round. One usually hears it, too, if I may add these words, in a singularly exaggerated form not usually worthy of credence.'
'That also,' said Poirot, 'is quite true. Joyce was, I gather, just thirteen years of age. A child of nine could remember something she had seen-a hit-and-run accident, a fight or a struggle with knives on a dark evening, or a school-teacher who was strangled, say-all these things might leave a very strong impression on a child's mind about which she would not speak, being uncertain, perhaps, of the actual facts she had seen, and mulling them over in her own mind. Forgetting about them even, possibly, until something happened to remind her. You agree that that is a possible happening?'
'Oh yes, yes, but I hardly-I think it is an extremely far-fetched supposition.'
'You had, also, I believe, a disappearance here of a foreign girl. Her name, I believe, was Olga or Sonia-I am not sure of the surname.'
'Olga Seminoff. Yes, indeed.'
'Not, I fear, a very reliable character?'
'No.'
'She was companion or nurse attendant to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, was she not, whom you described to me just now? Mrs. Drake's aunt-'
'Yes. She had had several girls in that position-two other foreign girls, I think, one of them with whom she quarrelled almost immediately, and another one who was nice but painfully stupid.
Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe was not one to suffer fools gladly. Olga, her last venture, seems to have suited her very well. She was not, if I remember rightly, a particularly attractive girl,' said Mr. Fullerton. 'She was short, rather stocky, had rather a dour manner, and people in the neighbourhood did not like her very much.'
'But Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe did like her,' suggested Poirot.
'She became very much attached to her -unwisely so, it seemed at one moment.'
'Ah, indeed.'
'I have no doubt,' said Mr. Fullerton, 'that I am not telling you anything that you have not heard already. These things, as I say, go round the place like wildfire.'
'I understand that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe left a large sum of money to the girl.'
'A most surprising thing to happen,' said Mr. Fullerton. 'Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had not changed her fundamental testamentary disposition for many years, except for adding new charities or altering legacies left void by death. Perhaps I am telling you what you know already, if you are interested in this matter. Her money had always been left jointly to her nephew, Hugo Drake, and his wife, who was also his first cousin, and so also niece to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe. If either of them predeceased her the money went to the survivor. A good many bequests were left to charities and to old servants. But what was alleged to be her final disposal of her property was made about three weeks before her death, and not, as heretofore, drawn up by our firm. It was a codicil written in her own handwriting. It included one or two charities not so many as before the old servants had no legacies at all, and the whole residue of her considerable fortune was left to Olga Seminoff in gratitude for the devoted service and affection she had shown her. A most astonishing disposition, one that seemed totally unlike anything Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had ever done before.'
'And then?' said Poirot.
'You have presumably heard more or less the developments. From the evidence of handwriting experts, it became clear that the codicil was a complete forgery. It bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's handwriting, no more than that. Mrs. Smythe had disliked the typewriter and had frequently got Olga to write letters of a personal nature, as far as possible copying her employer's handwriting-sometimes, even, signing the letter with her employer's signature. She had had plenty of practice in doing this. It seems that when Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe died the girl went one step further and thought that she was proficient enough to make the handwriting acceptable as that of her employer. But that sort of thing won't do with experts. No, indeed it won't.'
'Proceedings were about to be taken to contest the document?'
'Quite so. There was, of course, the usual legal delay before the proceedings actually came to court. During that period the young lady lost her nerve and well, as you said yourself just now, she-disappeared.'
WHEN Hercule Poirot had taken his leave and departed, Jeremy Fullerton sat before his desk drumming gently with his fingertips. His eyes, however, were far away lost in thought.
He picked up a document in front of him and dropped his eyes down to it, but without focusing his glance. The discreet buzz of the house telephone caused him to pick up the receiver on his desk.
'Yes, Miss Miles?'
'Mr. Holden is here, sir.'
'Yes. Yes, his appointment, I believe, was for nearly three quarters of an hour ago. Did he give any reason for having been so late??
Yes, yes, I quite see.
Rather the same excuse he gave last time.
Will you tell him I've seen another client, and I am now too short of time. Make an appointment with him for next week, will you? We can't have this sort of thing going on.'
'Yes, Mr. Fullerton.'
He replaced the receiver and sat looking thoughtfully down at the document in front of him. He was still not reading it.
His mind was going over events of the past. Two years close on two years ago and that strange little man this morning with his patent leather shoes and his big moustaches, had brought it back to him, asking all those questions.
