'I see,' said Poirot. 'I see.'
'You don't think it's possible that Miss Whittaker might have seen someone go into the library?' suggested Mrs. Drake.
Poirot was interested.
'Ah, you think that that might have been so?'
'It seemed to me merely a possibility.
She might have caught sight of someone going in through the library, say, perhaps five minutes or so earlier, and then, when I dropped the vase it might have suggested to her that I could have caught a glimpse of the same person. That I might have seen who it was. Perhaps she doesn't like to say anything that might suggest, unfairly perhaps, some person whom she had perhaps only half glimpsed not enough to be sure of. Some back view perhaps of a child, or a young boy.'
'You think, do you not, Madame, that it was shall we say, a child a boy or girl, a mere child, or a young adolescent?
You think it was not any definite one of these but, shall we say, you think that that is the most likely type to have committed the crime we are discussing?'
She considered the point thoughtfully, turning it over in her mind.
'Yes,' she said at last, 'I suppose I do.
I haven't thought it out. It seems to me that crimes are so often associated nowadays with the young. People who don't really know quite what they are doing, who want silly revenges, who have an instinct for destruction. Even the people who wreck telephone boxes, or who slash the tyres of cars, do all sorts of things just to hurt people, just because they hate -not anyone in particular, but the whole world.
It's a sort of symptom of this age.
So I suppose when one comes across something like a child drowned at a party for no reason really, one does assume that it's someone who is not yet fully responsible for their actions. Don't you agree with me that-that-well, that that is certainly the most likely possibility here?'
'The police, I think, share your point of view-or did share it.'
'Well, they should know. We have a very good class of policeman in this district. They've done well in several crimes. They are painstaking and they never give up. I think probably they will solve this murder, though I don't think it will happen very quickly. These things seem to take a long time. A long time of patient gathering of evidence.'
'The evidence in this case will not be very easy to gather, Madame.'
'No, I suppose it won't. When my husband was killed-He was a cripple, you know. He was crossing the road and a car ran over him and knocked him down.
They never found the person who was responsible. As you know, my husband-or perhaps you don't know-my husband was a polio victim. He was partially paralysed as a result of polio, six years ago.
His condition had improved, but he was still crippled, and it would be difficult for him to get out of the way if a car bore down upon him quickly. I almost felt that I had been to blame, though he always insisted on going out without me or without anyone with him, because he would have resented very much being in the care of a nurse, or a wife who took the part of a nurse, and he was always careful before crossing a road. Still, one does blame oneself when accidents happen.'
'That came on top of the death of your aunt?'
'No. She died not long afterwards.
Everything seems to come at once, doesn't it?'
'That is very true,' said Hercule Poirot. He went on: 'The police were not able to trace the car that ran down your husband?'
'It was a Grasshopper Mark 7, I believe. Every third car you notice on the road is a Grasshopper Mark 7 or was then. It's the most popular car on the market, they tell me. They believe it was pinched from the Market Place in Medchester. A car park there. It belonged to a Mr. Waterhouse, an elderly seed merchant in Medchester. Mr. Waterhouse was a slow and careful driver. It was certainly not he who caused the accident.
It was clearly one of those cases where irresponsible young men help themselves to cars. Such careless, or should I say such callous young men, should be treated, one sometimes feels, more severely than they are now.'
'A long gaol sentence, perhaps. Merely to be fined, and the fine paid by indulgent relatives, makes little impression.'
'One has to remember,' said Rowena Drake, 'that there are young people at an age when it is vital that they should continue with their studies if they are to have the chance of doing well in life.'
'The sacred cow of eduction,' said Hercule Poirot. 'That is a phrase I have heard uttered,' he added quickly, 'by people well, should I say people who ought to know. People who themselves hold academic posts of some seniority.'
'They do not perhaps make enough allowances for youth, for a bad bringing up. Broken homes.'
'So you think they need something other than gaol sentences?'
'Proper remedial treatment,' said Rowena Drake firmly.
'And that will make (another oldfashioned proverb) a silk purse out of a sow's ear? You do not believe in the maxim 'the fate of every man have we bound about his neck'?'
Mrs. Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased.
'An Islamic saying, I believe,' said Poirot.
Mrs. Drake looked unimpressed.
'I hope,' she said, 'we do not take our ideas or perhaps I should say our ideals from the Middle East.'
'One must accept facts,' said Poirot, 'and a fact that is expressed by modern biologists - Western biologists' he hastened to add, ' seems to suggest very strongly that the root of a person's actions lies in his genetic make-up. That a murderer of twenty-four was a murderer in potential at two or three or four years old. Or of course a mathematician or a musical genius.'
'We are not discussing murderers,' said Mrs. Drake. 'My husband died as a result of an accident. An accident caused by a careless and badly adjusted personality.
Whoever the boy or your man was there is always the hope of eventual adjustment to a belief and acceptance that it is a duty to consider others, W be twA to feel an abhorrence if you have taken life unawares, simply out of what may be described as criminal carelessness that was not really criminal in intent.'
'You are quite sure? therefore, that it was not criminal intent?'
'I should doubt it very much.' Mrs. Drake looked slightly surprised.
'I do not think that the police ever seriously considered that possibility. I certainly did not. It was an accident. A very tragic accident which altered the pattern of many lives, including my own'
'You say we're not discussing murderers,' said Poirot. 'But in the case of Joyce that is just what we are discussing. There was no accident about that. Deliberate hands pushed that child's head down into water, holding her there till death occurred. Deliberate intent.'
'I know. I know. It's terrible. I don't like to think of it, to be reminded of it.'
She got up, moving about restlessly.
Poirot pushed on relentlessly.
'We are still presented with a choice there. We still have to find the motive involved.'
'It seems to me that such a crime must have been quite motiveless.'
'You mean committed by someone mentally disturbed to the extent of enjoying killing someone? Presumably killing someone young and immature.'
'One does hear of such cases. What is the original cause of them is difficult to find
