Dates.
Till this moment I did not realise how important dates were.'
'I can't see that dates have anything to do with what's happened here.
I mean, there's no real time involved. The whole thing took place what-only five days ago.'
'That event took place four days ago.
Yes, that is very true. But to everything that happens there has to be a past. A past which is by now incorporated in today, but which existed yesterday or last month or last year. The present is nearly always rooted in the past. A year, two years, perhaps even three years ago, a murder was committed. A child saw that murder.
Because that child saw that murder on a certain date now long gone by, that child died four days ago. Is not that so?'
'Yes. That's so. At least, I suppose it is. It mightn't have been at all. It might be just some mentally disturbed nut who likes killing people and whose idea of playing with water is to push somebody's head under it and hold it there. It might have been described as a mental delinquent's bit of fun at a party.'
'It was not that belief that brought you to me, Madame.'
'No,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'no, it wasn't.
I didn't like the feel of things. I still don't like the feel of things.'
'And I agree with you. I think you are quite right. If one does not like the feel of things, one must learn why. I am trying very hard, though you may not think so, to learn why.'
'By going around and talking to people, finding out if they are nice or not and then asking them questions?'
'Exactly.'
'And what have you learnt?'
'Facts,' said Poirot. 'Facts which will have in due course to be anchored in their place by dates, shall we say.'
'Is that all? What else have you learnt?'
'That nobody believes in the veracity of Joyce Reynolds.'
'When she said she saw someone killed?
But I heard her.'
'Yes, she said it. But nobody believes it is true. The probability is, therefore, that it was not true. That she saw no such thing.'
'It seems to me,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'as though your facts were leading you backwards instead of remaining on the spot or going forward.'
'Things have to be made to accord.
Take forgery, for instance. The fact of forgery. Everybody says that a foreign girl, the au pair girl, so endeared herself to an elderly and very rich widow that that rich widow left a Will, or a codicil to a Will, leaving all her money to this girl. Did the girl forge that Will or did somebody else forge it?'
'Who else could have forged it?'
'There was another forger in this village. Someone, that is, who had once been accused of forgery but had got off lightly as a first offender and with extenuating circumstances.'
'Is that a new character? One I know?'
'No, you do not know him. He is dead.'
'Oh? When did he die?'
'About two years ago. The exact date I do not as yet know. But I shall have to know. He is someone who had practised forgery and who lived in this place. And because of a little what you might call girl trouble arousing jealousy and various emotions, he was knifed one night and died. I have the idea, you see, that a lot of separated incidents might tie up more closely than anyone has thought. Not all of them.
Probably not all of them, but several of them.'
'It sounds interesting,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'but I can't see '
'Nor can I as yet,' said Poirot. 'But I think dates might help. Dates of certain happenings, where people were, what happened to them, what they were doing.
Everybody thinks that the foreign girl forged the Will and probably,' said Poirot, 'everybody was right. She was the one to gain by it, was she not? Wait wait '
'Wait for what?' said Mrs. Oliver.
'An idea that passed through my head,' said Poirot.
Mrs. Oliver sighed and took another date.
'You return to London, Madame? Or are you making a long stay here?'
'Day after to-morrow,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I can't stay any longer. I've got a good many things cropping up.'
'Tell me, now in your flat, your house, I cannot remember which it is now, you have moved so many times lately, there is room there to have guests?'
'I never admit that there is,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'If you ever admit that you've got a free guest room in London, you've asked for it. All your friends, and not only your friends, your acquaintances or indeed your acquaintances' third cousins sometimes, write you letters and say would you mind just putting them up for a night. Well, I do mind. What with sheets and laundry, pillow cases and wanting early morning tea and very often expecting meals served to them, people come. So I don't let on that I have got an available spare room. My friends come and stay with me. The people I really want to see, but the others -no, I'm not helpful. I don't like just being made use of.'
'Who does?' said Hercule Poirot. 'You are very wise.'
'And anyway, what's all this about?'
'You could put up one or two guests, if need arose?'
'I could,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Who do you want me to put up? Not you yourself. You've got a splendid flat of your own. Ultra modern, very abstract, all squares and cubes.'
'It is just that there might be a wise precaution to take.'
'For whom? Somebody else going to be killed?'
'I trust and pray not, but it might be within the bounds of possibility.'
'But who? Who? I can't understand.'
'How well do you know your friend?'
'Know her? Not well. I mean, we liked each other on a cruise and got in the habit of pairing off together. There was something-what shall I say?-exciting about her. Different.'
'Did you think you might put her in a book some day?'
'I do hate that phrase being used.
Poeple are always saying it to me and it's not true. Not really. I don't put people in books. People I meet, people I know.'
'It is perhaps not true to say, Madame, that you do put people in books sometimes?
People that you meet, but not, I agree, people that you know. There would be no fun in that.'
'You're quite right,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'You're really rather good at guessing things sometimes. It does happen that way. I mean, you see a fat woman sitting in a bus eating a currant bun and her lips are moving as well as eating, and you can see she's either saying something to someone or thinking up a telephone call that she's going to make, or perhaps a letter she's going to write. And you look at her and you study her shoes and the skirt she's got on and her hat and guess her age and whether she's got a wedding ring on and a few other things. And then you get out of the bus. You don't want ever to see her again, but you've got a story in your mind about somebody called Mrs. Carnaby who is going home in a bus, having had a very strange interview, somewhere where she saw someone in a pastry cook's and was reminded of someone she'd only met once and who she had heard was dead and apparently isn't dead. Dear me,' said Mrs. Oliver, pausing for breath. 'You know, it's quite true.
