no-older than that. She was with a family in Switzerland.'
'There was no-no mental trouble, I suppose, in the family?'
'Oh, you mean the boy-yes, might be, of course. You do hear very strange things. There was that boy who shot his father-that was somewhere near Newcastle, I think. Some years before that. You know. He'd been very depressed and at first I think they said he tried to hang himself when he was at the university, and then he came and shot his father. But nobody quite knew why. Anyway, there wasn't anything of that sort with the Ravenscrofts. No, I don't think so, in fact, I'm pretty sure of it. I can't help thinking, in some ways-'
'Yes, Julia?'
'I can't help thinking that there might have been a man, you know.'
'You mean that she-?'
'Yes, well-well, one thinks it rather likely, you know. The wigs, for one thing.'
'I don't quite see how the wigs come into it.'
'Well, wanting to improve her appearance.'
'She was thirty-five, I think.'
'More. More. Thirty-six, I think. And, well, I know she showed me the wigs one day, and one or two of them really made her look quite attractive. And she used a good deal of make-up. And that had all started just after they had come to live there, I think. She was rather a good-looking woman.'
'You mean, she might have met someone-some man?'
'Well, that's what I've always thought,' said Mrs. Carstairs. 'You see, if a man's getting off with a girl, people notice it usually because men aren't so good at hiding their tracks. But a woman, it might be-well, I mean like someone she'd met and nobody knew much about it.'
'Oh, do you really think so, Julia?'
'No, I don't really think so,' said Julia, 'because I mean, people always do know, don't they? I mean, you know, servants know, or gardeners or bus drivers. Or somebody in the neighborhood. And they know. And they talk. But still, there could have been something like that and either he found out about it…'
'You mean it was a crime of jealousy?'
'I think so, yes.'
'So you think it's more likely that he shot her, then himself, than that she shot him and then herself.'
'Well, I should think so, because I think if she were trying to get rid of him-well, I don't think they'd have gone for a walk together and she'd have to have taken the revolver with her in a handbag and it would have been rather a bigger handbag if so. One has to think of the practical side of things.'
'I know,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'One does. It's very interesting.'
'It must be interesting to you, dear, because you write these crime stories. So I expect really you would have better ideas. You'd know more what's likely to happen.'
'I don't know what's likely to happen,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'because, you see, in all the crimes that I write, I've invented the crimes. I mean, what I want to happen, happens in my stories. It's not something that actually has happened or that could happen. So I'm really the worst person to talk about it.
I'm interested to know what you think because you know people very well, Julia, and you knew them well. And I think she might have said something to you one day-or he might.'
'Yes. Yes, now wait a minute when you say that, that seems to bring something back to me.' Mrs. Carstays leaned back in her chair, shook her head doubtfully, half closed her eyes and went into a kind of coma.
Mrs. Oliver remained silent, with a look on her face which women are apt to wear when they are waiting for the first signs of a kettle coming to the boil.
'She did say something once, I remember, and I wonder what she meant by it,' said Mrs. Carstairs. 'Something about starting a new life-in connection, I think, with St. Teresa. St. Teresa of Avila.' Mrs. Oliver looked slightly startled.
'But how did St. Teresa of Avila come into it?'
'Well, I don't know really. I think she must have been reading a Life of her. Anyway, she said that it was wonderful how women get a sort of second wind. That's not quite the term she used, but something like that. You know, when they are forty or fifty or that sort of age and they suddenly want to begin a new life. Teresa of Avila did. She hadn't done anything special up till then except being a nun, then she went out and reformed all the convents, didn't she, and flung her weight about and became a great saint.'
'Yes, but that doesn't seem quite the same thing.'
'No, it doesn't,' said Mrs. Carstairs. 'But women do talk in a very silly way, you know, when they are referring to love affairs when they get on in life. About how it's never too late.'
Chapter VII. Back To The Nursery
Mrs. Oliver looked rather doubtfully at the three steps and the front door of a small, rather dilapidated-looking cottage in the side street. Below the windows some bulbs were growing, mainly tulips.
Mrs. Oliver paused, opened the little address book in her hand, verified that she was in the place she thought she was, and rapped gently with the knocker after having tried to press a bell-push of possible electrical significance but which did not seem to yield any satisfactory bell ringing inside, or anything of that kind. Presently, not getting any response, she knocked again. This time there were sounds from inside.
A shuffling sound of feet, some asthmatic breathing and hands apparently trying to manage the opening of the door. With this noise there came a few vague echoes in the letter box.
'Oh, drat it. Drat it. Stuck again, you brute, you.' Finally, success met these inward industries, and the door, making a creaky and rather doubtful noise, was slowly pulled open. A very old woman, with a wrinkled face, humped shoulders and a general arthritic appearance, looked at her. Visitor.
Her face was unwelcoming. It held no sign of fear, merely of distaste for those who came and knocked at the home of an Englishwoman's castle. She might have been seventy or eighty, but she was still a valiant defender of her home.
'I dunno what you've come about and I-' she stopped.
'Why,' she said, 'it's Miss Ariadne. Well, I never now! It's Miss Ariadne.'
'I think you're wonderful to know me,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'How are you, Mrs. Matcham?'
'Miss Ariadne! Just think of that now.' It was, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver thought, a long time ago since she had been addressed as Miss Ariadne, but the intonation of the voice, cracked with age though it was, rang a familiar note.
'Come in, m'dear,' said the old dame; 'come in now. You're lookin' well, you are. I dunno how many years it is since I've seen you. Fifteen at least.' It was a good deal more than fifteen, but Mrs. Oliver made no corrections. She came in. Mrs. Matcham was shaking hands, her hands were rather unwilling to obey their owner's orders.
She managed to shut the door and, shuffling her feet and limping, entered a small room which was obviously one that was kept for the reception of any likely or unlikely visitors whom Mrs. Matcham was prepared to admit to her home.
There were large numbers of photographs-some of babies, some of adults. Some in nice leather frames which were slowly drooping but had not quite fallen to pieces yet. One in a silver frame by now rather tarnished, representing a young woman in presentation court dress with feathers rising up on her head. Two naval officers, two military gentlemen, some photographs of naked babies sprawling on rugs. There was a sofa and two chairs. As bidden, Mrs. Oliver sat in a chair.
Mrs. Matcham pressed herself down on the sofa and pulled a cushion into the hollow of her back with some difficulty.
'Well, my dear, fancy seeing you. And you're still writing your pretty stories, are you?'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Oliver, assenting to this though with a slight doubt as to how far detective stories and stories of crime and general criminal behavior could be called pretty stories. But that, she thought, was very much a habit of Mrs. Matcham's.
'I'm all alone now,' said Mrs. Matcham. 'You remember Gracie, my sister? She died last autumn, she did. Cancer it was. They operated, but it was too late.'
