'You needn't. I'm not asking you for it.'
'No. I can quite see that. But I'll give you the answer all the same. The answer is-nothing.'
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully.
'No. I wasn't there at the time. I mean, I wasn't in the house at the time. I can't remember now quite where I was. I think I was at school in Switzerland, or else I was staying with a school friend during the school holidays. You see, it's all rather mixed up in my mind by now.'
'I suppose,' said Mrs. Oliver doubtfully, 'it wouldn't be likely that you would know. Considering your age at the time.'
'I'd be interested,' said Celia, 'to know just what you feel about that. Do you think it would be likely for me to know all about it? Or not to know?'
'Well, you said you weren't in the house. If you'd been in the house at the time then, yes, I think it would be quite likely that you might know something. Children do. Teen-agers do. People of that age know a lot, they see a lot, they don't talk about it very often. But they do know things that the outside world wouldn't know, and they do know things that they wouldn't be willing, shall we say, to tell to police inquirers.'
'No. You're being quite sensible. I wouldn't've known. I don't think I did know. I don't think I had any idea. What did the police think? You don't mind my asking you that, I hope, because I should be interested. You see, I never read any account of the inquest or anything like that or the inquiry into it.'
'I think they thought it was a double suicide, but I don't think they ever had any inkling as to the reason for it.'
'Do you want to know what I think?'
'Not if you don't want me to know,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'But I expect you are interested. After all, you write crime stories about people who kill themselves or kill each other, or who have reasons for things. I should think you would be interested.'
'Yes, I'll admit that,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'But the last thing I want to do is to offend you by seeking for information which is no business of mine to know.'
'Well, I wondered,' said Celia. 'I've often wondered from time to time why, and how, but I knew very little about things. I mean, about how things were going on at home. The holidays before that I had been away on exchange on the continent, so I hadn't seen my mother and father really very recently. I mean, they'd come out to Switzerland and taken me out from school once or twice, but that was all. They seemed much as usual, but they seemed older. My father, I think, was ailing. I mean, getting feebler. I don't know if it was heart or what it was. One doesn't really think about that.
My mother, too, she was going rather nervy. Not hypochondriac, but a little inclined to fuss over her health. They were on good terms, quite friendly. There wasn't anything that I noticed. Only sometimes one would, well, sometimes one gets ideas. One doesn't think they're true or necessarily right at all, but one just wonders if-'
'I don't think we'd better talk about it any more,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'We don't need to know or find out. The whole thing's over and done with. The verdict was quite satisfactory.
No means to show, or motive, or anything like that. But there was no question of your father having deliberately killed your mother or of your mother having deliberately killed your father.'
'If I thought which was most likely,' said Celia, 'I would think my father killed my mother. Because, you see, it's more natural for a man to shoot anyone, I think. To shoot a woman for whatever reason it was. I don't think a woman, or a woman like my mother, would be so likely to shoot my father.
If she wanted him dead, I should think she might have chosen some other method. But I don't think either of them wanted the other one dead.'
'So it could have been an outsider.'
'Yes, but what does one mean by an outsider?' said Celia.
'Who else was there living in the house?'
'A housekeeper, elderly, rather blind and rather deaf, a foreign girl, an au pair girl, she'd been my governess once- she was awfully nice-she came back to look after my mother, who had been in hospital- And there was an aunt whom I never loved much. I don't think any of them could have been likely to have any grudge against my parents. There was nobody who profited by their deaths, except, I suppose, myself and my brother Edward, who was four years younger than I was. We inherited what money there was, but it wasn't very much. My father had his pension, of course. My mother had a small income of her own. No. There was nothing there of any importance.'
'I'm sorry,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I'm sorry if I've distressed you by asking all this.'
'You haven't distressed me. You've brought it up in my mind a little and it has interested me. Because, you see, I am of an age now that I wish I did know. I knew and was fond of them, as one is fond of parents. Not passionately, just normally, but I realize I don't know what they were really like. What their life was like. What mattered to them. I don't know anything about it all. I wish I did know. It's like a burr, something sticking into you, and you can't leave it alone. Yes.
I would like to know. Because then, you see, I shouldn't have to think about it any more.'
'So you do? Think about it?' Celia looked at her for a moment. She seemed to be trying to come to a decision.
'Yes,' she said, 'I think about it nearly all the time. I'm getting to have a thing about it, if you know what I mean. And Desmond feels the same.'
Chapter V. Old Sins Have Long Shadows
Helercule Poirot let the revolving door wind him round.
Arresting the swing of it with one hand, he stepped forward into the small restaurant. There were not many people there.
It was an unfashionable time of day, but his eyes soon saw the man he had come to meet. The square, solid bulk of Superintendent Spence rose from the table in one corner.
'Good,' he said. 'You have arrived here. You had no difficulty in finding it?'
'None at all. Your instructions were most adequate,'
'Let me introduce you now. This is Chief Superintendent Garroway. Monsieur Hercule Poirot.' Garroway was a tall, thin man with a lean, ascetic face, gray hair which left a small round spot like a tonsure, so that he had a faint resemblance to an ecclesiastic.
'This is wonderful,' said Poirot.
'I am retired now, of course,' said Garroway, 'but one remembers. Yes, certain things one remembers, although they are past and gone, and the general public probably remembers nothing about them. But yes.' Hercule Poirot very nearly said 'Elephants do remember,' but checked himself in time. That phrase was so associated in his mind now with Mrs. Ariadne Oliver that he found it difficult to restrain it from his tongue in many clearly unsuitable categories.
'I hope you have not been getting impatient,' said Superintendent Spence.
He pulled forward a chair, and the three men sat down. A menu was brought. Superintendent Spence, who was clearly addicted to this particular restaurant, offered tentative words of advice. Garroway and Poirot made their choice. Then, leaning back a little in their chairs and sipping glasses of sherry, they contemplated each other for some minutes in silence before speaking.
'I must apologize to you,' said Poirot, 'I really must apologize to you for coming to you with my demands about an affair which is over and done with.'
'What interests me,' said Spence, 'is what has interested you. I thought first that it was unlike you to have this wish to delve in the past. Is it connected with something that has occurred nowadays, or is it sudden curiosity about a rather inexplicable, perhaps, case? Do you agree with that?' He looked across the table.
'Inspector Garroway,' he said, 'as he was at that time, was the officer in charge of the investigations into the Ravenscroft shooting. He was an old friend of mine and so I had no difficulty in getting in touch with him.'
'And he was kind enough to come here today,' said Poirot, 'simply because I must admit to a curiosity which I am sure I have no right to feel about an affair that is past and done with.'
